{"id":234262,"date":"2020-11-08T11:31:29","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T17:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=234262"},"modified":"2022-09-19T21:07:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T02:07:56","slug":"no-right-abortion-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/no-right-abortion-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"There is no ‘right’ to abortion in the U.S. Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Today’s abortion advocates no longer\u00a0consider abortion a “necessary evil” to save women from poverty or children from child abuse. Instead, they contend that access to abortion is vital to ensuring that women are equal to men. The abortion lobby itself (unlike many abortion advocates who haven’t yet gotten the memo) has also stopped claiming, “no one wants<\/em> an abortion.” Instead, abortion is now celebrated as an act of equality and a step on the path to success. However, it’s none of these things \u2014 least of all, a “right.”<\/p>\n

How we got here<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1973, the Supreme Court erroneously ruled in Roe v. Wade<\/em> that abortion is a constitutional right covered under the right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment. But, as Brian Clowes, Ph.D. pointed out in an article<\/a> for Human Life International, it takes a loose reading of the Fourth Amendment<\/a> to find a right to kill. The word “privacy” isn’t even present in the amendment. Clowes wrote, “the Supreme Court literally conjured [the right to abortion] out of thin air.”<\/p>\n

The track to finding a right to abortion began in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut<\/em>, which overturned a state law prohibiting the sale or distribution of birth control. The Supreme Court ruled in this case that the law violated the “right to marital privacy” though the justices disagreed on exactly which amendment this supposed right fell under. “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy,” wrote Justice Harry Blackmun in Griswold<\/em>. “In a line of decisions, however, the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy… does exist under the Constitution.”<\/p>\n

WATCH: Pro-Life Replies counters the claim, \u2018Abortion is a constitutional right\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1972, in Eisenstadt v. Baird<\/em>, the right to purchase birth control was expanded to include unmarried couples. The following year, that supposed right to privacy was used to justify legal abortion in both Roe v. Wade<\/em> and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton<\/a>,<\/em> which legalized abortion until birth.<\/p>\n

But as Clowes\u00a0wrote<\/a>, this was an injustice. “The best way to determine whether or not an activity should be legal is to determine whether or not it honors justice,” he said.<\/p>\n

“When people claim a ‘right’ to privacy in order to cover illicit and sinful actions, as in a constitutional right to abortion, justice always<\/em> suffers grave damage, because the rights of God and of other persons are simply disregarded,” he added.<\/p>\n

Clowes noted that Americans “value the concepts of ‘privacy,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘choice'” but those who wish to do wrong use those otherwise good ideas to cover up their evil deeds. “Thus,” he explained, “[anti-lifers] label any opposition to abortion … ‘intrusive,’ ‘anti-freedom,’ and ‘anti-choice.'”<\/p>\n