The Radical Consequences of Uprooting Roe in Restoring Rules of Gender Difference

Jessie Hill & Mae Kuykendall, Uprooting Roe, 12 Houston L. Rev. Online 50 (2022)

It’s official—the U.S. Supreme Court is likely poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in a matter of months. Yet, the roots of Roe run both wide and deep, and to uproot Roe would be to uproot the Constitution’s promise of equality in a radical way. Uprooting reproductive liberty is radical as jurisprudence, but even more shocking is the cavalier reversal of more than a century’s work to abolish the claims of coverture and biological destiny as women’s gendered legal fate. As each step in women’s emergence from bio-destiny generated a new and robust status as full citizens, so will an uprooting of Roe and its companion principles work to restore the iron rules of gender difference. Liberty, meet equality–and say farewell.