By Mack Thompson, Editor
Let me be clear, I don’t have a degree in law although I did take Constitutional Law in college a few decades ago. But unlike most of you reading this I have read the 1973 decision. I read it in 1977 while in college and recently revisited it from the same text book I had then.
The late seventies were a time of great discord in this country. There were protests, often about several cultural topics from the Vietnam War to abortion and beyond. The 1973 Supreme Court stepped off into this swamp of cultural divide when it accepted the Wade case on appeal out of Texas. In its landmark decision the court basically held that a woman had a right to privacy as guaranteed by the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. It went on to state in the decision, authored by Justice Blackmun, the “right” to an abortion was not absolute and the various states could regulate it to a certain extent with compelling reason. The problem with this thinking was that in reality, it created a right out of whole cloth. No where in the Constitution does the word abortion even appear.
Justice Rehnquist in his dissent states as much. He further went on to state the obvious, that the Court’s only mission is to determine the legality of law … not to make it. We have three branches of government, the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial. Our Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives create laws. These laws then go to the executive branch headed by the President for enforcement through the various departments under him. The Judiciary, in this case the Supreme Court, when asked, decides the legality of the laws. The Court in 1973 overstepped its constitutional boundaries when it created a new right. Justice Ginsburg, a very liberal judge, said as much before she passed.
This decision, much like this column, is not about abortion, it’s about bad law. This decision does not ban abortion in this country, it merely sends the case back to the states and the people to decide for themselves. Whether you are for or against abortion, surely you are not against the ability to decide this situation for yourself. Certainly some states will be more restrictive than others. But each of us have the ability by voting for legislators to reach an outcome we want.
Another common complaint was that this was precedent and should not have been overturned. Were that the case, then we would still have slavery if not for the Dredd Scott decision being overturned. Or segregated schools because of Brown vs. Board of Education.
I did not mean to get down in the weeds too much by sharing this with you, but we, as a community, including myself, sometimes speak out about issues without truly informing ourselves. In this day and age, due to technology, we have an almost unlimited source of verified information with which to educate ourselves so that we can make reasoned debates and decisions.
