Setting aside the record of insincerity from Alito himself and the other conservative justices, the reason not to trust his disclaimer is that the Supreme Court has become an institution whose primary role is to force a right-wing vision of American society on the rest of the country. The conservative majority’s main vehicle for this imposition is a presentist historical analysis that takes whatever stances define right-wing cultural and political identity at a given moment and asserts them as essential aspects of American law since the Founding, and therefore obligatory. Conservatives have long attacked the left for supporting a “living constitutionalism,” which they say renders the law arbitrary and meaningless. But the current majority’s approach is itself a kind of undead constitutionalism—one in which the dictates of the Constitution retrospectively shift with whatever Fox News happens to be furious about. Legal outcomes preferred by today’s American right conveniently turn out to be what the Founding Fathers wanted all along.
Adam Serwer, "The Constitution is Whatever the Right Wing Says It Is"
I have nothing much to add to what I think about overturning Roe than what I said in "The Woe of Roe 1" in May. This is a symbolic issue, and it symbolizes different things to different people. For the Left it symbolizes a regression to the Middle Ages, for the Right it symbolizes a restoration of traditional moral order. What it means in practice remains to be seen. Fifty years from now it will mean something very different from what it means now. A lot depends on the kind of society that we will have become.
Context is everything. Insofar as this decision is made at a time when American Democracy is in jeopardy from threats posed by fascists and religious fanatics, it's understandable that whatever the moral or legal merits that support the case for overturning the Roe decision, it feels like a victory for the religious fanatics and fascists. This decision has also to be seen in relationship to the decision the day before regarding its ruling on New York's concealed weapon law. If the argument that all Roe does is allow the states to decide their own abortion laws, shouldn't the states also be allowed to decide their own gun control laws? There isn't even a pretense of consistency. "We don't have to make credible arguments," they seem to be saying, "because we don't have to anymore. We just rule as we please because we have the votes." As Serwer points out elsewhere in the article quoted above regarding the New York decision--
In his concurrence in that case, Alito sneered, “How does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.” The logic of the assertion suggests that laws against murder are useless because murderers continue to exist; it is a quality of reasoning that might come from a fifth grader. The argument is also not in any sense a legal one, just a paraphrase of culture-war blather one hears in right-wing media—which are a much more significant influence on the majority than the law or the Constitution is. Clearly Alito does not believe laws against abortion to be similarly pointless even though abortions will continue regardless.
These are just Fox New talking points. As the Eastman/Trump scheme was a coup plot in search of a legal theory, so are the majority's opinions conservative outcomes in search of rationalizations to justify them. Like most ideological conservatives, law and order does not mean for them a respect for the rule of law, but to use any cockamamie justification to bend the law to conform to their idea of order. If you understand that, you understand why someone like Ginni Thomas feels perfectly justified in supporting Trump's coup attempt. The rule of law has no legitimacy for her and people like her to the degree that it does not reflect their reactionary vision for social order.
So the problem is not just their decision on this issue, but the lack of judicial constraint that it portends. Thomas and Alito are fanatics. And the others? Gorsuch and Barrett seem cluelessly, nerdily naive in their Federalist Society ideological bubble. Kavanagh is a chameleon. No surprise there. Roberts seems, relative to the others, to be more in touch with reality. But as has been pointed out, he no longer matters as a swing vote now after the Barrett appointment. I have to say that I was open to giving Barrett the benefit of the doubt. I thought she might be a conservative more in the Roberts vein, but alas.
Whether or not this is a Pyrrhic victory for the conservatives remains to be seen. Like the original Roe decision, the decision to overturn it now is perceived by huge swaths of Americans as overreach, and overreach did then and will now create a backlash. It would be ironic indeed if this decision, even moreso than the revelations of the J6 Committee, leads the country to retain the Democrats in power come November.One thing's for sure, though. Whatever legitimacy the court might have had until now is gone for the foreseeable future. For the conservatives on the court and elsewhere, it's about the exercise of raw power.
See "The Woe of Roe 1".