I wrote this out for a friend recently who didn't quite understand why abortion can be regarded as a Constitutional right -
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Oh good grief - I stepped in it now, didn't I? <grin>
Anyway, it's been years since I read the "Roe Versus Wade" tome -
well-written book, btw. But here, I do know what we're talking about so
I'll just plunge right ahead.
US law is based on precedent. Judges use previous court decisions to
make their current decisions. The Constitution is not black and white -
there are grays, and the decision to legalize abortion falls into that
gray area - with protection coming from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 and 14
amendments.
You asked specifically about the 14th amendment, so I will try to sum it
up in a nutshell - but keep in mind, to truly understand it, you'll have
to read the actual case.
The book on Roe v. Wade is over a 1000 pages and took me an entire
summer to read and understand. Hopefully, I've managed to make it more
simple here.
> Seema, how exactly does the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to >guarantee
a woman's right to choose an abortion? The 14th Amendment >deals with civil
war debt, "equal protection," apportionment of >Representatives, and prohibits
leaders of insurrections (i.e., >Confederate leaders) from ever holding public
office. Were you >thinking of some other Amendment, or is there some twisted
Supreme Court reasoning I'm not familiar with?
I wouldn't call it "twisted" but the 14 Amendment deals specifically
with the constitutional right to privacy. Here is the text of article 1
of the 14th Amendment:
"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
If you want to interpret that, iirc, "without due process of law"
clause is what is important here; precedent cases (Planned Parenthood
versus Casey, Griswold versus Connecticut - if you read these cases,
you'll probably wonder how states could regulate contraception and in
some case, make it illegal) established a woman's right to privacy. So
you have to read between the lines & read Casey & Griswold to understand
why the 14th Amendment is relevant to Roe v. Wade. In a nutshell, the
Supreme Court ruled that the states had no right to regulate the private
affairs of individuals. You take this a step further and you can apply
those rulings to that of abortion. Roe v. Wade also set a precedent as
not declaring a fetus a citizen of the United States (you have to be
born in order to qualify as a citizen) therefore, a fetus does not have
a Constitutional right to life.
You take it a step further in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a case that came
after Casey and Griswold, and took the right of privacy beyond married
couples to single people, because to do otherwise would be
discriminatory.
In that opinion, Justice Brennan said: "If the right of privacy means
anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be
free from unwarranted government intrusion into matters so fundamentally
affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."
And to quote Justice Blackmum's wonderful majority opinion: "This right
of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept
of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it
is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's
reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a
woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
And that's all I've got to say about that.
If you don't want to read the book or the many cases regarding abortion
law, go here:
http://hometown.aol.com/abtrbng/overview.htm