Professor: The Supreme Court is reshaping the culture wars in favor of conservatives

This is an op-ed by Nicholas Barry Creel, an assistant professor of business law at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville.

If the leaked Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Supreme Court majority opinion is accurate, which it appears to be, the United States is about to see a wave of total abortion bans hit this summer. The damage of this decision is however likely to extend far beyond reproductive rights.

In fact, this opinion seems primed to set off a new wave of conservative victories in the culture wars which will reshape American life as we know it in the coming months and years.

Twenty-two states, including our home state of Georgia, already have laws on the books to restrict abortion should Roe ever be overturned, which now seems inevitable.

Exceptions in cases of rape, incest and terminal deformity won’t likely even exist in most of the American south by the fall. The wealthy will still be able to find safe haven in liberal states such as California and New York, but for much of middle America, the procedure will either be totally unavailable or will force them to seek out back-alley clinics from days past.

More opinions on the recent leak: Justice Alito's draft opinion on abortion is a courageous gift to American children

Despite being decided by a 7-2 majority nearly 50 years ago, the core idea of a woman having the right to an abortion is not just being decided against in this case, it is being skewered. Far from a "narrow" opinion that only rescinds abortion rights, this opinion as crafted is built to serve as a signal to state legislatures that the federal judiciary is ready to revisit all manner of highly controversial issues that have upset conservatives in recent memory.

The majority opinion does this by declaring that "The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions." This is, in effect, the court’s way of establishing that the right to an abortion is not a “fundamental right” and is therefore not a right that the Court will zealously protect.

As such, the legal logic of this decision practically begs for states to challenge all issues decided under the guise of sexual privacy, a clearly illegitimate right in the Court’s mind. For example, the court’s relatively recent ruling in 2005 which legalized same-sex intercourse is unlikely to survive should the court be asked to revisit it. Even the Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which prevented states from banning contraception for married couples, is now on unsound legal ground.

Same-sex marriage is also likely to be targeted, as it is clearly not a right this Court can be expected to say is "deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions." Only legalized nationally in 2015 in a 5-4 decision, it now seems laughable to expect these conservative Justices to abide by the court’s precedent on most any matter their values do not align with.

And: If you truly value life, you'll ensure a healthy future for all 'saved' babies, right?

The leak of this draft opinion is itself unprecedented. One has to believe that a clerk let it leak out in the hopes that the public pressure ahead of the opinion’s formal release in the summer would be such that it causes a Supreme Court justice in the majority to change their vote between now and then. The reality may well be that this early exposure leads to the exact opposite result, causing even Chief Justice Roberts to take the majority’s side.

Knowing that the public has seen what they intend to do, vacillating now would only give the public more reason to believe that the court’s decisions are not truly based on interpretations of law but are instead political calculations made to advance ideological preferences. Chief Justice Roberts, long known as being an “institutionalist” who seeks to preserve the legitimacy of the court at all costs, will now be hard-pressed to do anything other than go along with the other conservative justices.

Which of these above rights the GOP-controlled states will first attack is anyone's guess, though the question is no longer "if," but "when?" each of these recent progressive victories will come under fire. The one thing that is crystal clear is that the Supreme Court just reshaped the culture wars, and conservatives now have the upper hand.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Supreme Court Roe v. Wade leak hints at a future of flipped precedents