Abortion Made Easy
Its election season, so a few more words about abortion are necessary. Let me make it easy for you.
Everyone uses lists. Some are mundane, like the grocery list, which names the things to buy at the grocery store on the next visit. Some are seemingly more important, like the Constitution’s bill of rights, which sets out a number of rights, such as freedom of speech.
Now lists come in two kinds, illustrative and exhaustive. When I bought my air fryer it came with a list of recipes to try. The list was by no means exhaustive. It was merely illustrative of some things to try. There are many more, which can easily be found on YouTube if you are interested.
I mentioned the Constitution and its list of rights. Is the Constitution an exhaustive or merely illustrative list of those rights? That sounds like a hard question, but in fact it’s really an easy one answered definitively by the Ninth Amendment which says, “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In other words, the list of rights explicitly mentioned in the Constitution is merely illustrative, not exhaustive.
So the fact that a right is not explicitly mentioned in the text of the Constitution does not mean that it is not a constitutional right. So much for denying the right to abortion based on its not being explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. That argument ignores the text of the Ninth Amendment and is, therefore, egregiously wrong.
Now the point I’m making is hardly new. It was made in 1965 by Supreme Court Justice Goldberg concurring in Griswold vs. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), and joined by Justices Warren and Brennan. There the Supreme Court held that married couples had the right to use birth control. In his concurring opinion Justice Goldberg stated at 381 U.S. 491–92(footnotes omitted):
“While this Court has had little occasion to interpret the Ninth Amendment, ‘[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect.’ Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174. In interpreting the Constitution, ‘real effect should be given to all the words it uses.’ Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 151. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution may be regarded by some as a recent discovery and may be forgotten by others, but since 1791 it has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold. To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment, which specifically states that ‘[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’ (Emphasis added.)”
Back to abortion. The question really is whether the right to abortion is one retained by the people, notwithstanding not being explicitly listed in the Constitution. Controlling your own body seems fundamental to me. I think the Founders would agree, if only they had realized women were people, too.
The moral is short. Vote out everyone who doesn’t think women are people.
