Writing in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern explains that the five extremists (and the extraneous Chief Justice) on the Supreme Court have laid the groundwork for reversing rights that did not exist in 1868. They made their rationale clear in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday overruling Roe v. Wade is a devastating blow to individual autonomy and women’s equality, a horrific assault on liberty that will inflict unspeakable suffering and death in the states that are already criminalizing abortion. That decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, marks the culmination of a decadeslong battle against reproductive freedom.

But it also constitutes the start of another crusade—an all-out assault on the many other rights that are “all part of the same constitutional fabric,” as the liberal justices put it in dissent. With Dobbs, the majority has torn down the entire doctrine protecting gay rights, marriage, and contraception, among other personal liberties. These rights are now in grave and immediate jeopardy….

The basic threat is easy to grasp. For more than a century, a debate has raged over how courts should define the “liberty” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Some say it protects unenumerated rights, but only those deemed “fundamental” in 1868 when the amendment was ratified. Others say it also safeguards modern rights which are “so fundamental that the state must accord them its respect.” The court relied on this second conception of liberty in Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, as well as other cases like Skinner v. Oklahoma (barring involuntary sterilization) and Loving v. Virginia (safeguarding interracial marriage)…

The conservative legal movement scored its single greatest victory on Friday when the Supreme Court rewarded its relentless assault on a precedent that most Americans thought was settled. That movement will now devote its energy to toppling other precedents that, at this moment, many consider to be sacrosanct, or at least settled. Any statements to the contrary by the court’s far-right bloc are not to be believed. Less than four years ago, Kavanaugh told the nation, under oath, that he believed Roe was “settled,” then proceeded to unsettle it at the earliest opportunity. No constitutional right favored by progressives is safe from this Supreme Court’s wrecking ball.

Will Justice Thomas lead the way in overturning the Loving v Virginia decision? That would dissolve his marriage to Ginni. Is this his devious way of shedding a wife who has become a political burden? Just kidding.

The reality is that this extremist Court is taking a wrecking ball to our personal relations, which we assumed were secure. Now, they assert, we are to live by the rights, mores, and practices of 1868. This is the dream of the Federalist Society, which selected Trump’s three extremist justices for him.

Turning the clock back by a century and a half is not conservative. It’s nuts.