Friday, May 06, 2022

The Constitution and Abortion

 

According to Judge Alito, there is no mention in the U.S. Constitution of the right to abortion.

He is correct. 

Likewise, there's no mention of gay marriage, birth control, free public education, light bulbs, ice cream, cars, planes.

Also there's no mention of electricity, internet, telephones, clean water, roads, hospitals, television, radio, libraries, corporate regulation and thousand of other things we take for granted to make life as we know it. 

If you carry Alito's statement to a conclusion that if something isn't in the Constitution it can be considered illegal, than probably 98% of our daily lives are being lived with the potential of them being illegal.   

The world was very different in 1787 when 55 white men sat down to create it. Nothing like it had been written on the workings of government from the time people lived in caves and thirty-nine of the delegates signed it in 1788 before it was sent to the states for ratification.

It contains 4,543 words. 

Those words work more than they don't to give structure to the country. It's success is also dependent on the good will of the officials who follow its principles -- principles. There also needs to be rationality to understand that to expect the situation of daily life in 2022 was something that the writers could not possibly have imagined.

Abortion existed when the Constitution was being written. From my research to write Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, the methods used were rather commonplace from cotton and fenugreek seeds to the knitting needles that my grandmother's friends admittedly relied on.

The law and abortion goes beyond the Constitution. The reality seems to be ignored by five of the Supreme Justices. Maybe people will rely on the newer abortion pill rather than natural seeds. Hopefully they won't go back to the knitting needles and back alley quacks. Legal or illegal it will continue.

Or better yet, maybe it should be legal everywhere.

I can dream. Dreams aren't mentioned in the Constitution either, so I should I consider that illegal too?


 

 

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