Mind, I also thing the Democrats are at fault for not erecting a legislative framework to put privacy and other rights on a more solid footing when they've had the legislative initiative.

If that is the case there needs to be some motivated and deep pockets out there to craft up a law that is designed to challenge those norms, then it needs to get passed in some legislative body and signed into law within a state. The law will need to read in such a way that would motivate an aggressive attack from a party with deep pockets and get it all the way up to the SCOTUS where it might get picked up or might not.

I honestly think that those issues simply do not have the same levels of passion behind them that abortion did. The general populace just doesn’t care enough to make them worth the effort. Abortion beyond the first trimester of pregnancy had significant opposition across the political spectrum and that opposition grew week over week beyond that first trimester. Birth control, gay marriage, sexual privacy…they simply do not evoke the same levels of passion beyond a few fringe ultra religious right-wing groups.

Consider for example the recent wave of prophylactic legislation forbidding the teaching of 'critical race theory' in k-12 schools, although CRT as such is a kind of structural analysis that has gained adherents among legal sociologists, mostly at the post-grad level. The anti-CRT laws are mostly an attempt to shape school curriculums that mention race by legislative fiat, and provide a cause of action to fire teachers who indoctrinate students with (or perhaps merely expose them to) opinions that are out of step with the popular consensus.

Certainly, this is no overnight process. But a few years ago, people who said Roe was likely to be overturned were dismissed as alarmist. Fringe positions become mainstream by degrees, and those who don't pay attention to them often underestimate the intensity and speed of such changes.

Consider Mark Burns, an ultra-conservative pastor and regular candidate in South Carolina who recently came in second in the Congressional House primary, with 11,000 votes (about 25% of the total). He holds some rather extreme views, and while he lost this time he might continue to improve his electoral standings in future.

https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/6/14/pro-trump-sc-candida...

It’s not a hyperbolic comparison. I’m simply observing that other highly educated people (like the folks who thought I was about to be dragged to an internment camp) have built up conservatives as such a boogeyman, they don’t have a solid grasp on what’s within the realm of political reality and what isn’t. I detected the same hyperbole in your post.

The abrogation of Roe makes the Constitutional law of the US the same as Italy and still more liberal than Germany. Even if some states ban abortion, that just makes them like Ireland until a few years ago, or Poland now. The EU has some very religious places with extremely restricted abortion rights, and others with more liberal rights, and most in a mushy middle. Why isn’t that situation workable in the US?

Some of the other privacy cases might be on the chopping block too. You don’t have to be an “ultra conservative” to think substantive due process is a bunch of malarkey. That was my first reaction when I learned about it in law school a decade ago.

But say Griswold goes away. So what? Most European countries don’t have a similar right to contraception, yet contraception is legal there. 90% of Republicans support legalized contraception. Obergefell and Bostock are on firmer footing. But even then half of Republicans support same-sex marriage. Almost 80% support employment rights for LGBT people. The politics isn’t the same for those other issues.

Abortion is different because Roe was both legally infirm, and drew the Constitutional line in the wrong place. I’m not aware of any country that recognizes a right to abort an 20 week fetus without a medical reason, even if some countries like Canada allow it. Roe drew the line 10 weeks past where most civilized nations draw the line, and that made it a political target in the way contraception isn’t. Almost 30% of Republicans disagree with their party that abortion should be generally illegal at all stages. But even among most of those people it’s difficult to muster up a defense of Roe.

Just 15 months ago, you wrote 'Of course, overturning Roe isn’t really in the cards. There are just 3 votes for it.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311034

I don't know whether your analytic powers are less good than you imagine them to be, or you're being strategic; but given that you now write as if such an outcome had been obvious and inevitable all along, I'm not inclined to rely on your estimates.

And that justice comes from a different generation than the other 5 who voted to overturn, so there's even less reason to assume the others share his views.