“The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.” – Mother Teresa
“My view is regardless of whether you think prohibiting abortion is good or whether you think prohibiting abortion is bad, regardless of how you come out on that, my only point is the Constitution does not say anything about it. It leaves it up to democratic choice.” – Antonin Scalia
The popular belief is that the original Roe v Wade decision was about abortion, the right to privacy and a woman’s right to do what she wants with her own body. The reality is that it was one of many attempts to attack real democracy. The result of that decision was that it stole power from the voters, the individual states, and gave it to the unelected oligarchs on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.
How did the Roe v Wade decision help to greatly erode voters rights? When that decision came down from the Supreme Court, abortion was against the law in most of our states. Those laws were put into place by a majority of the state legislators, who were elected by the voters, and signed into law by governors, who were also voted into office by the voters in those individual states. So what the Roe v Wade decision did was to over turn the laws enacted by elected officials, and signed into law by elected executives, (governors). This was done by seven of nine, appointed, not elected Supreme Court Justices. This effectively took away the votes of the citizens of those states and their elected officials.
If the appointed for life Justices on the Supreme Court can abolish laws put into place by our elected representatives, then we are not a democratic republic, we are a judicial oligarchy. The implications of this decision are staggering. And the significance of the Roe decision really has nothing to do with abortion. If a majority of the Supreme Court Justices can overturn the will of the people, then why should anyone vote?
If this expansion of the legal precedence of judicial review is taken much further, the High Court can abrogate any laws that they find offensive for whatever reason they can dream up. In Roe, they found the right to abortion in the “penumbra” of the Constitution. In this case, penumbra means that it isn’t in the Constitution. The majority justices said it was implied in the 4th Amendment. One of the dissenting Justices, Byron White, recognize the threat when he wrote, “The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand.”
If the Justices can erase state laws when they create a Constitutional right that they pull out of the thin air of “the penumbra”, they can do this with any other issue that catches the imagination of the majority. They can find a right to “economic redistribution” and negate all laws that outlaw theft. The majority of Supreme Court Justices, especially those appointed by Democrats, could find a right to “sexual freedom” which would effectively eliminate all laws regarding pedophilia. That right is not in the Constitution, but it might be found by some Justices in the penumbra.
As a pro-life practicing Catholic, I’m opposed to most abortions. As a Constitutionalist, I see the Dobbs decision, that overturned Roe v Wade, as a return to the common sense,
