Last Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court stripped away the constitutional right to an abortion, overruling the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and leaving the question of abortion’s legality to the states.
When I heard the news I was both shocked and numb, but not surprised. Last February the leaked opinion paper drafted by Justice Alito was a portent of what was to come. The ideas contained in the opinion have long been the brainchild of the conservative legal movement, lying dormant for a conservative Supreme Court majority to bring it to life. The opinion, drafted by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., outlined critiques of the Roe decision and contained the usual conservative talking points put forward by prolifers and conservatives over the last 40 years.
Alito’s opinion contained two propositions: The Constitution does not mention abortion, which means that states can allow it, regulate it or ban it, and second, Roe was “poorly reasoned” divisive, and unworkable.
So, basically, if it’s not mentioned in the Constitution, it doesn’t count.
Let’s not forget that Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett are current or former members of the Federalist Society.
The Federalist Society often referred to as the “conservative pipeline to the Supreme Court,” was founded in 1982 by conservative law students complaining about the “liberal bias” among their law school colleagues at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago.
The main tenet of the Federalist Society is “originalism,” which is the belief that the Constitution must be interpreted as the founding fathers intended at the time it was written. So, in a nutshell, members (which include many members of Congress and the Senate) don’t see fit to use the Constitution to protect the rights of women, people of color, LGBTQ citizens, or any other group of individuals not in the room when and where it was written.
So if you’re scratching your head over the recent Supreme Court last Thursday that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, but stripping away a woman’s right to choose, here’s why: Abortion isn’t mentioned in the Consitution, but guns are (in the guise of the right to bear arms).
You know what else isn’t mentioned in the Constitution? Lots of stuff: Gay marriage, transgender rights, interracial marriage, contraception, race, sexual relations, and women.
So, if we go, full-throttle Federalist, there really is no Constitutional precedent for the protection of LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, human rights, or civil rights for that matter. If we really want to go total Gilead, we can throw out the 13th Amendment that bans slavery, and the 14th Amendment that granted women and right to vote because these Amendments weren’t in the original Constitution.
Don’t think for a second that the Federalist Court will stop at gutting abortion rights.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas alluded to this last week when he said that the high court rulings that established gay rights and contraception rights should be “reconsidered” now that the right to abortion has been scorched. Thomas wrote that those rulings “were demonstrably erroneous decisions.” Thomas cited cases such as Griswold vs. Connecticut, which states that married couples have the right to obtain contraceptives, Lawerence v. Texas, which established the right to engage in private sexual acts, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which said there is a right to same-sex marriage.
Perhaps it’s time for a Constitutional make-over. It’s a living document, not crafted by a deity or carved in stone, and should be treated as such.
Our elected representatives need to get busy and craft amendments that explicitly mention women’s rights, minority rights, LGBTQ rights, the right to choose, and the right to contraception. These are basic human rights that need adult supervision and federal protection, and should not be subject to the personal political or religious leanings of appointed judges and courts. These basic human rights are inarguable and should not be subject to litigation.
We all know that nearly half of US states have laws on the books banning abortion, and we know that now that the Supreme Court has given those states the green light, a woman’s right to choose has jettisoned back in time over 50 years.
As a nation, we need to go forward, not backward.