I'm gonna throw paws...

So that everyone can argue *properly* about Constitutional stuff, let's go over a couple things: 

The 9th and 10th Amendments in the BOR were a concession from Madison to the anti-Federalist concerns about the potential of enumeration turning into limitation. 

The anti-Feds were right. Over time, even with the "catch all" 9th and 10th, as we grew more temporally distant from the Founding, the tendency was for people to say "no right to X in the Constitution". But that's flat wrong, Madison said so, and he wrote the dang thing.

Enter the 14th Amendment. Ratified in response to the tendency of Southern states post Civil War to carve out exceptions to right for freedmen (who were made full citizens of the US), the 14th over time has had to be enforced against the States. through incorporation. \

Therefore, the crux of the Roe argument from a Constitutional perspective ought to be framed as: 

 1) how does one (cleanly, at least) incorporate an unenumerated right under the 14th? 

 2) where is the line drawn on the "competing rights" of a woman and a fetus? 

So yes, continue arguing over when and if a fetus has Constitutional rights. But please STOP saying "there's no right to an abortion under the Constitution". If you believe a fetus has rights, then abortion would violate those rights and would therefore not be a legal right in and of itself under *any* level of law. If you think a fetus does NOT have rights, then abortion is a medical procedure and is 100% covered by the 9th.

Comments

Popular Posts