This afternoon I attended Personal PAC’s annual luncheon in Chicago. The main speaker was Gloria Steinem and more than 1,400 women and men were present at the event. Personal PAC is an Illinois political action committee that is dedicated to the protection of women’s reproductive rights. As the organization rightly observes, “these rights are continually under attack” and are constantly “being eroded by elected officials who would seek to deny access to reproductive choice.”

During the luncheon I could not help but reflect on the stakes in the 2016 election. Of course, those stakes are “huge” and they affect an almost endless array of issues. One of them is a woman’s right to choose. With Donald Trump in the White House, there is a high probability that the Supreme Court will overrule Roe v. Wade. Opponents of Roe have attempted to achieve this goal for more than 40 years — without success. They have, however, come within a hair’s breadth of achieving that goal, and with Donald Trump in the White House the odds will definitely be stacked in their favor.

Three of the eight current justices — John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito — have made crystal clear their fierce opposition to Roe. If President Trump gets to replace Antonin Scalia and at least one of the three oldest sitting justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83), Anthony Kennedy (80), and Stephen Breyer (78) — there will almost certainly be a majority on the Supreme Court to overrule Roe. This is, indeed, a large part of the reason why Senate Republicans have unconscionably refused to confirm Merrick Garland.

Read more at Huffington Post