In a Friday editorial defending Roe v. Wade, The New York Times implausibly suggested that Republican-led states would outlaw interracial marriage if they could.
WHAT THEY SAID
The Times editors began their nearly 1,500 word treatise — headlined “America Is Not Ready for the End of Roe v. Wade” — by asking readers to envision a terrifying reality in which the Supreme Court let states make their own laws.
- “Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry,” they wrote. “Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.”
The point of the thought experiment: Critics of Roe v. Wade are wrong to argue that the 1973 ruling, which created a constitutional right to abortion, inappropriately took the issue out of the hands of voters at the state level.
- “The problem with this reasoning is that, as in [Loving v. Virginia, the 1963 Supreme Court ruling protecting interracial marriage], leaving the matter to individual states and the political process means that millions of Americans will be denied their fundamental rights — in this case, the right of women to decide what happens inside their own bodies,” the editors wrote.
WHO ELSE?
The editorial board didn’t go as far as President Biden or Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who recently argued that the anticipated end of Roe directly threatens interracial marriage and other rights.
- But the editors made clear they agree with the elite liberal consensus: Many Republican voters can’t be trusted with democracy.
FACT CHECK: Gallup found last year that a record-high 94% of Americans support marriage between black people and white people.