Roe no

I intended to write this column about a silly mobile game I play, but that feels inappropriate considering what happened last week with the Supreme Court.

In case you somehow missed it, on Friday the Supreme Court officially confirmed its decision to reverse a 50 year old precedent on Roe v Wade, the ruling that has protected a woman's right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

The ruling in Roe v. Wade centers around the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Without getting into a full history of the case and its legal reasoning, the matter came down to the court deciding that the freedom of personal choice in regards to family life is one of the liberties protected by the due process clause.

I'm not going to get into the pro/anti-abortion argument here. There are some people that believe that bodily autonomy and the decision to reproduce is an inherent human right and what they do with their body is nobody's businesses but theirs. There are other people that believe that every effort should be made to bring every fertilized egg to term no matter how many women, or young girls, die agonizing deaths in the attempt.

The two opposing viewpoints have clashed for generations and that isn't likely to change any time soon.

For the entirety of most people's lives though, Roe v. Wade has established an unhappy middle-ground, weighing a woman's right to choose with the state's interest in protecting future potential citizens. Originally, it was decided that the first trimester was off-limits and that the state's ability to regulate abortion in the latter trimesters would gradually become less limited based on the viability of the fetus.

It has taken five decades, along with no small amount of unfortunate timing, for anti-abortion extremists to pack the Supreme Court with enough activist judges to overrule the case. But they finally did it. In a legal analysis with logic straight out of "Air Bud," this court has effectively decided that Americans don't have specific rights unless they were explicitly penned in by James Madison.

Regardless of your feelings on abortion, that should be concerning to any American.

The due process clause has been used to protect the rights of Americans on a variety issues over the years because certain states needed to be explicitly told that they can't do things like segregate people based on race.

Think of like this. At a recent fair I attended there was a small statue of a cow and a sign that said "Don't sit on the statue."

Now, any reasonable interpretation of that sign would conclude that standing on the statue, vaulting off it, or doing a handstand would similarly be prohibited even though none of those activities is noted by name. Yet, there's always going to be that bratty kid that tries to argue otherwise.

Certain states have a long history of being that bratty kid and for most of the history of the United States the Supreme Court has acted as the exasperated parent saying, "I know I told you to keep your feet off the table. It still counts if you're wearing socks."

At least, until now.

This ruling isn't going to stop at abortion. Justice Clarence Thomas gave up the game in his concurring opinion on which 14th Amendment protections his crew will be targeting next, name checking other cases that secured legal protections for contraception and same-sex marriage. (Curiously, he neglected to mention the case that protects interracial marriage. Presumably to avoid a fight with his wife, though she may be too busy trying to overthrow democracy to notice.)

Apparently Thomas believes that "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" just wasn't specific enough and if the founding fathers wanted that clause to apply to specific situations in the 21st century they would have created a constitutional mechanism for doing so. Like maybe a panel of people whose job it is to make those judgments.

Beyond the specifics of the case, what's concerning about what happened last week is that, under the flimsiest of pretenses, the Supreme Court essentially declared that it's not their job to judge things.

We already have one branch of government that has become regularly prone to dysfunctional abdication of their role. We can scarcely afford another.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and will address a lighter topic next week.