The through line between these two is controlling women.

And the eugenics movement wanted to control women and tell them which ones were fit to reproduce.

The abortion laws want to control women and tell them that

they have to bring a child to term. That's the connection. It's the opposite of the connection

that Thomas is making.

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus Slate's podcast about the law and the rule of law and the U.S.

Supreme Court. I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover those

things for Slate. And we're rounding up toward the end of the Supreme Court term, which will

end in the end of June and the blockbuster decisions to the extent we have any will come in the next

few weeks. But on this week's show, we wanted to continue a conversation we started

on the last show with Professor Melissa Murray and Joan Biscupic. It was a conversation about

abortion rights at the Supreme Court. Last week in Box v. Planned Parenthood, a case out of Indiana

that had to do with some new restrictions on abortion, the Supreme Court

initially issued a pretty mild ruling on the merits.

We'll get to that.

But Clarence Thomas, in a 20-page concurring opinion, pretty much rocked the culture wars with

a discussion comparing essentially abortion to eugenics.

It was a pretty stunning new turn in the abortion debate, and it took something that was

simmering, bubbling to just a full rollicking boil in the last weeks of the term.

In his concurrence, Justice Thomas cited a book written by Adam Cohen.

The book is imbeciles, the Supreme Court eugenics, and the sterilization of Kerry Buck.

It was an extraordinary tale of a very dark time in American history, a time when this country allowed for the sterilization of people deemed to be inferior.

...