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Vice President Kamala Harris warns the Supreme Court will target the right to contraception and same-sex marriage after overturning Roe v. Wade

Kamala Harris stands in front of an American flag during a visit to Poland.
Vice President Kamala Harris during a visit to Poland on March 10, 2022.Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images
  • The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday.

  • Vice President Harris said she's concerned the court now will target birth control and same-sex marriage.

  • "I definitely think this is not over," she said on CNN.

Vice President Kamala Harris warned Monday that the Supreme Court would next target contraception and same-sex marriage after it overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

"I definitely think this is not over," Harris said in a CNN interview with reporter Dana Bash. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "just said the quiet part out loud," Harris added, when he wrote in a concurring opinion that the court should reconsider rulings on contraception and same-sex marriage.

On Friday, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks in Dobbs v. Jackson. The justices also voted 5-4 to overturn Roe, the landmark case that has been on the books since 1973. The decision means states will have the power to decide whether to legalize abortion unless Congress and the president create a new national abortion law or ban.

Thomas was alone in openly calling for other rights to get another look by the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that nothing in Friday's ruling "should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."

Harris was traveling on Air Force 2 on Friday morning en route to Aurora, Illinois, to unveil a maternal health plan from the Biden administration when the Supreme Court's decision came down.

"I was shocked," Harris said. "It's one thing when you know something is going to happen and it's another thing when it actually happens."

In May, Republicans blocked Democratic efforts in Congress to codify and extend Roe into federal law. Democrats have been urging voters to elect more of them into office in the upcoming November midterms on a pledge to nationalize abortion rights, but they are facing an uphill battle to keep their majorities, particularly in the House.

Harris, a former Democratic senator from California, has emerged as a leading voice on abortion rights since Politico published a leaked draft in early May of the Supreme Court's opinion on Dobbs.

"The court actually took a constitutional right that has been recognized for half a century and took it from the women of America," she said. "That's shocking when you think about it in terms of what that means in terms of democratic principles in terms of the ideals on which we were founded about liberty, about freedom."

Read the original article on Business Insider