It’s the 4th of July which means it’s my old roomie and pal Mary’s Birthday. Now that’s worth celebrating!!!
Today I teach Con Law 101. Okay, not really, but I wanted to deepen my understanding of the 14th Amendment which I haven’t thought about in detail since law school. While the language, “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,” seems straight forward to me as it relates to body autonomy, the Supreme Court has battled over the concept of liberty and the right to privacy for decades. I wanted to understand why. I enter the rabbit hole to the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs and end with my unfortunate and cynical conclusion that the court interprets the laws the way it wants to.
Admittedly, it’s not an easy task wrangling the different thoughts and opinions from over the years, but truthfully I don’t know why we are turning to precedent that existed when women had no official rights under the constitution. That being said, there is plenty of common law to show that abortion was not criminalized prior to the quickening stage, and that often abortion was criminalized to protect the life of the mother because abortion practices were quite dangerous. I also don’t understand why the issue at hand isn’t a women’s right to body autonomy and to make personal and private health decisions. I can only conclude it’s because if that was the “right” that was to be reviewed and balanced against a State’s interest, the Court would be hard pressed to come to the same decision. There was zero consideration, review, analysis or balancing of a woman’s interest in her health as it relates to the often life threatening and nearly always life changing state of being pregnant. We’ve officially returned to the dark ages.
References:
Cornell Law School Civil Rights
The Dobbs Decision Has Unleashed Legal Chaos for Doctors and Patients article in the New Yorker.
Sirius Gateway Info is -> here.
We listened to these songs throughout the show to give us a chance to digest and be inspired…You can’t hear them here because I don’t have the rights to them, but you can still enjoy them on your own time.
Our show music is from Shana Falana!
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