{"id":93191,"date":"2016-04-24T10:51:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T14:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=93191"},"modified":"2016-04-26T11:36:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:36:49","slug":"abortion-rights-constitution-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-rights-constitution-show\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAbortion rights\u201d are in the Constitution? Show me where."},"content":{"rendered":"
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At the University of North Georgia, some students put on a celebration recently. What were they celebrating? Abortion, of course. With cookies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As UNG Students for Life reported<\/a>, members of the Skeptics Society encouraged visitors to take fetus shaped cookies and give reasons why abortion should stay legal. Examples ranged from, \u201cA woman controls her own body,\u201d to, \u201cMy vagina is too pretty to let a fetus crawl out.\u201d And then there was this:<\/p>\n

\"9-1\"<\/p>\n

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It’s common to hear how \u201cabortion rights\u201d are protected in the Constitution. When confronted with that argument, it’s best to respond with a single question.<\/p>\n

Where?<\/p>\n

You’ll typically get a puzzled look, which shouldn’t be surprising. After all, even the Supreme Court struggled to find an answer.<\/p>\n

\"NewDefundAd3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Roe v. Wade<\/i><\/a>, the Supreme Court discovered a constitutional right to abortion. That’s interesting, because nowhere in the Constitution does the word \u201cabortion\u201d even appear. They got around this by claiming abortion falls under the \u201cright of privacy.\u201d Where\u2019s that<\/i> right spelled out? It isn\u2019t. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion in Roe<\/i>, and even he admitted \u201cthe Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you go about finding rights that the Constitution makes no mention of? I\u2019m gonna let Justice Blackmun explain that himself.<\/p>\n

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In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251<\/a> (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.<\/p>\n

In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564<\/a> (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8<\/a> -9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350<\/a> (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616<\/a> (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478<\/a> (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 484<\/a> -485; in the Ninth Amendment, id., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399<\/a> (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed \u201cfundamental\u201d or \u201cimplicit in the concept of ordered liberty,\u201d Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325<\/a> (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.<\/p>\n

They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12<\/a> (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541<\/a> -542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S., at 453<\/a> -454; id., at 460, 463-465 [410 U.S. 113, 153] \u00a0\u00a0(WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166<\/a> (1944); and child rearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535<\/a> (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, cases about pornography, police search procedure, telephone wiretap use, foreign language instruction, private education, interracial marriage, birth control, and the distribution of religious materials all add up to a \u201cright of privacy.\u201d OK…and why is abortion part of it? I don\u2019t know–Blackmun just insisted that it was.<\/p>\n

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This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment\u2019s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman\u2019s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Also mentioned was \u201cthe detriment\u201d of being denied the chance to abort. Dr. Anthony Levatino<\/a> has performed over 1200 abortions, and in the video below, he describes what\u2019s done to fetuses in the second trimester. Watch it and decide how much detriment they experience.<\/p>\n