OPINION: The bride, Mrs. Thomas, wore white

Alaskans have a high regard for privacy and personal liberties. It’s part of our Alaska way of life and well enshrined in our Constitution. But, in these especially fragile times for personal rights, Alaskans need to carefully protect our most intimate decisions and pay attention to actions taken on our behalf by those in office.

Those drafting the U.S. Constitution began with great aspirations. Despite our beginnings tracing to a time when slavery was accepted, women and men who didn’t own land could not vote, and even witches were being burned. In due time, we have corrected course by expanding, not contracting, personal rights.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion of the court on abortion rests on the idea that rights not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution are not protected. This contradicts the court having established many such rights over the past 100 years including the presumption of innocence in criminal cases, the right to travel within the country and the right to privacy, especially marital privacy.

More history to come. But, first, a happy story about a celebrity couple.

The bride wore white. The groom wore black. They chose to marry in the bride’s hometown, Omaha, Nebraska, in 1987. Nothing stood in their way. But, just 24 years earlier, couples in their situation had to cross state lines to exercise this most personal choice. Their situation? The bride, Ginni Lamp, was white. The groom, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was Black.

Mixed-race marriage is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Nebraska’s mixed-race marriage ban stood until 1963. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally protected this fundamental right deciding unanimously that barring interracial marriage violated the Constitution.

But decisions protecting such unlisted rights do not deter Justice Alito. Looking back in time, Alito argues, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” Looking to the past, Alito also notes, “In deciding whether a right (is protected), the Court has long asked whether the right is ‘deeply rooted in (our) history and tradition’ and whether it is essential to our Nation’s ‘scheme of ordered Liberty.’” His opinion reaches even a century beyond our founding fathers. Alito draws heavily from English jurist Sir Matthew Hale who in 1673 describes abortion as a “great crime.” Sir Hale, in keeping with the times, went on to secure the execution of two women as witches.

Back to our happy couple and more 1600s history.

U.S. bans on mixed-race marriage, now found to be in violation of the Constitution, are indeed deeply rooted — reaching back to Maryland’s first law in 1661.

The Thomases celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary this year. They join the almost one in five U.S. marriages now between people of different ethnicities. Surely even the Thomases, among those occupying our highest seats of power, are thankful that our nation and our Constitution reach across the centuries to encompass modern mores.

In keeping with Alaska’s strong history of respecting privacy, Alaska was one of only nine states that never banned mixed-race marriage. But Alaska’s current administration turns backward and away from defending privacy.

Alaska is among the signers of a brief in the Supreme Court’s pending abortion case, joining a veritable who’s who of other states with the nation’s poorest records of support for women and children. The states echo Alito’s time warp arguments finding that abortion “is found nowhere in the text of the Constitution” and that elective abortion “is not deeply rooted in the history and tradition of our Nation.”

Alito finds that there is no constitutional right to abortion — not at any stage, in any pregnancy, or for any reason. Revoking the right of women to make personal choices about their bodies in consultation with their health providers is the ultimate disregard for privacy and undermines fundamental recognition of women as people. Repercussions for the health, safety, and well-being of women and their families denied access to abortion are well documented. Justice Alito’s personal loathing of abortion, dated reading of the Constitution and cherry-picking of history degrade both the institution of the Court and our nation’s long, steady progress toward liberty and justice.

Although late comers to statehood, we are early leaders on civil rights. With the activism of Elizabeth Peratrovich, Alaska passed the Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945 nearly 20 years before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Sue Libenson is a policy and communications analyst. Abortion has been private, safe and legal her entire adult life.

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