Alito’s Opinion is Traditionalism Masquerading as Originalism

It’s long been a truism that the precedents that would need to be toppled to overturn Roe v Wade would put in jeopardy or remove the underpinnings of rights to contraception, same sex marriage and a whole range of reproductive, erotic and matrimonial autonomy and freedom this country has long taken for granted. This is based on the jurisprudence of a “right to privacy” which is the basis of numerous court decisions going back to the 1960s. In a way it is antiseptic and structural. To do away with Roe you need to do away with the right of privacy and doing away with the right of privacy means a whole raft of other decisions fall. But reading Alito’s decision he didn’t want to leave it to that. He dismisses the privacy jurisprudence out of hand and then focuses his argument on these rights not being “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”