Texas abortion law architect urges Supreme Court to overturn same-sex marriage ruling

The man behind the notorious Texas abortion ban denounced the “court-invented rights to homosexual behavior.”

A LGBT+ flag being waved during a celebration in front of the United States Supreme Court upon the announcement of the Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment. 26 June 2015
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, who played a key role in writing the new Texas ban on abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, argued in a Supreme Court brief that the decisions that legalized same-sex relations and same-sex marriages in all 50 states should both be overturned along with Roe v. Wade, the historic Supreme Court decision that recognized the right to abortion.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case on a Mississippi abortion ban that violates Roe by banning many early abortions, and Mitchell wrote a brief on behalf of the rightwing organization Texas Right to Life to support the abortion ban.

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In his brief, he argued that women don’t need a right to abortion to have full control of their bodies. Instead, he said that they “can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse.”

By overturning Roe, Michell argued, an individual “can simply change their behavior… if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.”

In one section of the brief, Mitchell acknowledged that overturning Roe would put other decisions in jeopardy, including Lawrence v. Texas – the 2003 decision that banned states from criminalizing private, consensual gay sex – and Obergefell v. Hodges – the 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality in all 50 states.

Saying that the landmark LGBTQ victories “have no basis in constitutional text or historical practice,” Mitchell said that those cases “preserve the court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage.”

“Those ‘rights,’” he wrote, using scarequotes every time he used the word “rights” in reference to LGBTQ people, “are judicial concoctions.”

He said that there isn’t a…

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