Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicks
Alito's Abortion Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to the 9th Amendment
The Constitution protects many more rights than it mentions, as James Madison explained.
https://reason.com/2022/06/24/alitos...9th-amendment/
While the libertarians are wrong about many things, they get this one right.
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Actually, not. Right at the top of your linked article:
The Constitution protects many more rights than it mentions, as James Madison explained.
So, what flows thereafter in the article is premised on the author's assumption that the original intent of the language in the Bill or Rights, and by extension the exhaustive list of "inalienable rights" includes some concept of "reproductive freedom" as defined by the Pro-Choice advocates. This is not only flawed logic, it leans a bit into demagogic territory, with some sophistry thrown in for good measure.
John Locke's description of inalienable rights could actually be interpreted as pro-life:
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions… (and) when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.”
A reflection of that list of rights was authored by US State Department in 1948 when it helped create the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No mention of abortion or "reproductive rights" in there either.
No, Roe allowed the US gov't, shrouded in a cloud or Supreme Court-provided armor, to use its disproportionality heavy finger to tip the scales away from the states and legislatures.
Ruth Bader-Ginsberg observed this.
“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.
She was correct on this. Abortion was a legal medical procedure for physicians to provide in many states before Roe. Those states legalized the practice via their state legislatures with "the consent of the governed" who elected them. Overturning Roe will move the decision-making on this closer to the voters, which is a good thing in my opinion.