Apparently, the Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus terminating the right of a woman to abort a pregnancy, a right established fifty years ago and subsequently reaffirmed by the court. The leaked draft of an opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined in by at least four of the other conservative justices, disparages Roe as "wrongly decided". The opinion relies on the absence of any reference in the Constitution to a right to abortion and concludes that access to abortion remains a contentious, political issue best left to state legislatures.
This putative decision effectively rejects the existence of a constitutional right to privacy, a right recognized for decades and which underlies other bedrock decisions of the Supreme Court. Other recognized rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution but found to be supported by due process, equal protection and/or privacy rights, guaranteed by or implicit in the Bill of Rights amendments to the Constitution, are now at risk of being abrogated by this court.
Thus, the right to contraception, based upon marital privacy, the right to engage in consensual same sex and the right to same sex marriage are all subject to challenge on the same ground relied upon by the current court; that these rights are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution and, therefore, should be left to regulation by the states.
The Supreme Court is ushering in a theocratic era in which the liberties of citizens will be subject to the religious convictions of a majority of the legislators in the states where they live. Does anyone believe that this is the democratic republic envisioned by the Founders?
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