At this time two years ago, there was a Constitutional right to an abortion as set out in Roe and Casey per the SCOTUS’ answer which was clearly yes.
As far as I can tell it was a right to privacy that made abortions legal. Now, my question is going to be whether we will lose any privacy should they make Abortions illegal. ... then if we think that Abortions are pesky just wait when folks are told that they no longer have any right of privacy in anything.
That is really the problem with Alito's "reasoning".
There is a faction in the legal community, well represented on this Court, that is perfectly comfortable ignoring vast swaths of the Constitution and constitutional understandings that have existed for a century or more: the 9th Amendment simply doesn't exist; there is no substance to the 14th Amendment. I have referred to it as "Antebellum thinking", and it is.
Prior to the Civil War, especially after the
Dred Scott decision, "States' rights" were paramount and the federal government had no authority to legislate things like "opposing slavery", recognizing blacks as human beings - literally - or ensuring equal protection of the laws for anyone. Lest one believe the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments changed that, the Court, for
decades thereafter continued to flout the literal language of the Constitution to impose its will in the
Civil Rights Cases and
Plessy v. Ferguson.
This reasoning still obtains with Alito and his co-conspirators. Language like "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; "due process of law" and "equal protection of the laws" are quaint notions. Given that - and there is no exaggeration here - nothing we recognize as "civil rights" are immune from reversal by this Court.
