17 thoughts on “Roe V. Wade”

  2. Yes. It’s that bad.

    But if it is overturned, the law simply goes back to the status quo ante January 1973: That is to say, regulated by state regulatory regimes. Most of which would get updated in a hurry. It would be abortion on demand on Massachusetts, and all but impossible in South Dakota; and any range of possibilities in between in other states. It would be messy in this respect, but democracy often is messy. It would also be more politically legitimate.

  3. I’m okay with “Roe”, but would love to see reversal on “Casey” .

    For those less familiar with the trends, Roe says states may/should protect the unborn after 24 weeks gestation. Casey says no states can protect the unborn if that person somehow “threatens the life” of the mother. If the mother would be depressed or sad or bankrupt or have to break up with her boyfriend or lose her job or drain her savings or otherwise “ruin” her life, or lifestyle, upon the birth of a child, (even a child placed for adoption), then no state may interfere with that “threatened” mother’s choice to terminate the life of the child she has carried for two trimesters already…

    Casey is terrible law.

    1. “Casey is terrible law.”

      I had never heard of “Casey”; thanks. Just skimming over the link sounds like it is saying Casey is derived from Roe V Wade. So if the later is repealed/re-defined by the court it would presumably jettison Casey as well. In any case I am not a big fan of invented Constitutional rights like the “right” to abortion; especially coming from people who seem to doubt the the understanding of rights actually enumerated in said document like the 2nd Amendment.

      Planned Parenthood v. Casey

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey

    1. “Kill Roe v. Wade and you’ve handed over the US to Emperor Xi.”

      ?? Okay I will bite; how would China benefit from repealing Roe v. Wade?

        1. Nor is being cryptic. How exactly would repeal of that decision hand the USA to China? Would that cause them to rig the election and install a senile puppet president or something?

          1. I really do like to think of my fellow commenters here are intelligent, so I choose disingenuous, although if anyone really thinks my quip was “cryptic” rather than “ironic,” maybe I need to lower my expectations? Disingenuousness is a debate team tactic where you try to bait your opponent into saying something stupid. Not happening here. Not to mention the wall of text required to crosstie Marxism with Second-Wave Feminism. I was always suprised how many supposedly conservative women have internalized the Feminist view of so-called “reproductive rights.”

      1. Funny in an non-Euclidean sort of way. Manifold humor for an existentialist Rechtswissenschaft . Lo these many years ago I was a well-meaning lad who thought I wanted to be a lawyer, so I enrolled in a Constitutional Law class. Then I read Wickard v. Filburn (https://bit.ly/3uvbPk9).

        I am quite sincerely amused by the fact that leftists would cite the Roe court’s personal characteristics to discredit the decision if it had not gone their way.

  6. I get really tired of “experts” who say that “a women’s right of privacy [is] itself nowhere explicitly stated in the Constitution…” Have they read the Constitution? For example, the 9th Amendment:

    “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

    This was included to assure the anti-Federalists that the Bill of Rights could not be interpreted in the future as: 1) The government granting “rights” to the people (an oxymoron, since rights cannot be granted, only violated), and 2) That the rights listed, though necessarily not exhaustive, would nevertheless be taken as the only rights of the people. (Turns out, the Anti-Federalists fears about the Bill of Rights were dead on, and the 9th Amendment was no protection from a government that ignores all of the others.)

    Aside from that, though, it’s difficult to believe that the 4th Amendment is not an explicit expression of privacy rights:

    “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

    1. According to Wikipedia, it was decided on 14th Amendment grounds:

      “In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. But it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and protecting prenatal life.[4][5] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[5] The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as “fundamental”, which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.[6]”

      As this case was decided, balancing tests, trimesters and all, it appears pretty judicially activist, whether or not as a Libertarian one favors the way the case was decided?

      As to the 4th Amendment, it does not appear to confer a right to harbor the body of a deceased parent in your basement, although the police would need to supply Probable Cause that a law was broken by doing this that they could obtain a warrant and search your basement?

      1. There was a case here where some women buried her dead husband in the back yard. She was arrested, things went to the courts and, in the end, it was decided she could so bury him in the back yard, but ground water contamination regulations meant she had to dig him up and install a vault.

        I was also once confronted by the police when they were trying to find out what my next door neighbors did with a dead relative. Turns out they shipped him off to Sicily, and were cited for moving a corpse without a permit. They had some religious defense and, I think, got away with it.

      2. Harry Blackmun “wrote” the majority opinion on Roe v Wade (actually, a clerk did, and made up the whole “trimester” nonsense), and really didn’t know much about the Constitution. That’s why he (or his clerk) “grounded” the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment, which has nothing to do with privacy rights. When John Roberts went through his confirmation gauntlet, he was asked about the right to privacy. His take was that it was grounded in the 4th Amendment, followed by the 1st and 3rd Amendments…no mention of the 14th Amendment – until Bork said there was no Constitutional foundation for a right to privacy (which is why I applaud his non-confirmation), and Roberts replied (without foundation) that it was grounded in the 14th Amendment.

        The right to privacy doesn’t have to be grounded in anything other than the “it’s none of your fucking business, and outside of your delegated powers” principle to qualify for absolute protection by the 9th Amendment.

  7. “The right to privacy doesn’t have to be grounded in anything other than the “it’s none of your fucking business, and outside of your delegated powers” principle to qualify for absolute protection by the 9th Amendment.”

    If you couple the right to Abortion with the right to privacy, i.e. you can’t ask/tell anyone about getting/performing an abortion which any anti-abortion law would presumably require, there is at least one interesting permuatation that I can think of. I believe that in most states if you go to the Hospital emergency room with gun shot wounds the health care provider is required by law to inform law enforecement of such. Wouldn’t that violate the “right to privacy” of said gun shot victim who in allot of cases would likely prefer to remain annoymous?

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