Whoopi Goldberg Lashes Out At Clarence Thomas Over Roe V. Wade Ruling On The View

By now, everyone has likely heard the news that on June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade. The decision ultimately reversed almost 50 years of legal precedent, and returned the decision of whether or not abortion should be legal back to the individual states. The original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark case for the Supreme Court, as it affirmed a person's right to bodily autonomy and freedom to make informed health care decisions. At the heart of the dispute was whether access to safe and legal abortion was a constitutionally protected right.

On January 22, 1973, the Court ruled in favor of Roe, federally decriminalizing abortions. The opinion was based on the fact that restricting access to abortions was in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, infringing upon a person's right to privacy. The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked back in May, and once wind of the impending decision was caught by abortion rights activists, the flood gates of rage-filled opinions were opened. 

Just about everyone with a platform has offered an opinion on the issue, including Whoopi Goldberg. On the June 27 episode of "The View," Goldberg issued an impassioned speech regarding her opposition to the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and taking specific aim at conservative justice, Clarence Thomas. In his concurring opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, Thomas expressed his additional interest in revisiting other Court decisions regarding the right to privacy mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment. The cases in question involve a person's right to contraception and same-sex marriage, and Thomas believes they are now "demonstrably erroneous."

Thomas is the second person of color to serve on the Court. As a Black man, his marriage to his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, who is white, was only made legal via the Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia. On air, Goldberg fired back, "You better hope that they don't come for you, Clarence, and say you should not be married to your wife, who happens to be white. Because they will move that." The host continued, "And you better hope that nobody says, you know, well, you're not in the Constitution. You're back to being a quarter of a person." Goldberg was referring to Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution that referred to any enslaved African-Americans as "three fifths of all other persons" (via Census Bureau).

Justice Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court by George H. W. Bush in October 1991, according to the Senate. And while justices are supposed to be non-partisan, Thomas is known to have a conservative leaning (via Oyez). After issuing his opinion on Roe v. Wade, and making his intentions to revisit other Supreme Court decisions clear, Justice Thomas has become the topic of many discussions. 

Whoopi Goldberg's call-out on "The View" has been echoed by many who felt enraged by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and fearful of what the future holds for the rights of so many people. One Twitter user even wrote, "[T]he state of our government has my stomach in knots and i'm scared to find out what's next for us. I don't want my rights revoked for me being me." Oyez, which is a law project that combines the legal intellect of many of the nation's top research universities and institutions, declared that Thomas "has shown his opinions to lean farther right than any other justice on the bench today." 

The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will surely have far-reaching effects, and regardless of where you stand on the issue, the debate on whether or not it should be a person's legal right to have an abortion or not will not stop with this new decision.