> Everyone agrees that the right to privacy is in the constitution.

That is demonstrably not true. Robert Bork may be dead, but many folks still believe what he said, which was that the Constitution does NOT guarantee a general right to privacy. Thomas specifically argued that the court should also look at overturning the right to contraception, private consensual sex, and gay marriage specifically because the same privacy right underlies those rulings.

One more thing to add the above comment. The ruling in Loving v Virginia, which is what allows interracial marriages like Thomas' to exist in Virginia in the first place, is also based on substantive due process (which is what underlies the privacy right in all these cases).

Quite conveniently, Loving v Virginia was not one of the rulings that Thomas argued needed revisiting.

Loving v Virginia is based both on due process and equal protection. He's not necessarily a hypocrite to be against Loving but not Roe.

But he did call out Obergefell, which is also based on equal protection, so he is very much a hypocrite for calling out that but not Loving.

(In the region known as the United States of America,) Abortion has actually historically been legal until the baby's first movement, which is four or five months. It's only fairly recently where things like banning abortion before pregnancy is even visible was implemented.

Such a blanket statement is false. Different countries and cultures have “historically” had very different rules around abortions.

Okay, let me edit my post to clarify that I'm speaking in the country where this discussion is happening, because it's about the supreme court decision of a specific country, lol.

Historically, abortion has been more often legal than illegal.

It was made illegal in the period from 1847 to 1880, and stayed that way until 1973 (roe v wade). Of the 246 years since the declaration of independence, abortion has been fully legal for 120 years, illegal in a patchwork of states for 33 years, and illegal fully for 93 years.

A good twitter thread with some fun re-framing of the history of abortion:

https://twitter.com/jskilesskinner/status/154116414331471462...

> So I wonder, why do you think the right to abortion stems from the right of privacy?

Because that is what the ruling in the case of Roe vs. Wade was, so it's been precedent in the United States for almost 50 years that the right to an abortion explicitly results from the right to bodily privacy.

> Everyone agrees that the right to privacy is in the constitution.

The recent Supreme Court ruling asserts that the right to privacy is not in the constitution.

>Because that is what the ruling in the case of Roe vs. Wade was, so it's been precedent in the United States for almost 50 years that the right to an abortion explicitly results from the right to bodily privacy.

Your argument appears be that precedents should never be overturned. If that's correct, your argument is obviously bad on the face of it. If that's wrong, I wonder what your argument actually is.

I mean, you can just refer to the Roe v. Wade judgement to understand the Supreme Court's view on why that is the case.

And you can refer to Dobbs to understand the Supreme Court's view on why it isn't the case.

You asked why somebody would think that the right to privacy is applicable in this situation. There is ample material describing why they might think that, including a Supreme Court judgement. It's not a difficult position to understand, regardless of whether you believe that view or not.

The existence of other material, including a later judgement, supporting the view that this isn't the case does not invalidate other views.

But Roe v. Wade (and abortion being protected under a right to privacy) was changed

Right, but the argument for why one would consider it to be protected is clearly spelled out in the original court case – regardless of any subsequent ruling.

You could read Roe instead of asking?