A Kentucky woman Friday filed an emergency class-action lawsuit, asking a Jefferson County judge to allow her to terminate her pregnancy. It’s the first lawsuit of its kind in Kentucky since the state banned nearly all abortions in 2022 and one of the only times nationwide since before Roe v. Wade in 1973 that an adult woman has asked a court to intervene on her behalf and allow her to get an abortion.
Bodily autonomy enshrined in a nation’s most important document? Yeah that sounds pretty good.
Enshrining it is fine. But taking a weak stance to link it to an amendment that never had it in mind, well, opens you up for its interpretation to get overturned.
Seriously! Remember how when they wrote the 2nd ammendmen, they absolutely had modern firearms in mind, right? How is bodily autonomy a “weak stance”?
The other side argues that the unborn child has rights and that the 14th amendment does not protect abortion.
You’re trying to tie abortion to ‘bodily autonomy’ because you want abortion to be protected by the constitution. That way, states don’t get to decide for themselves.
Abortion would have better protections with its own amendment, but you know how difficult (impossible?) that will be, so it’s imperative that you find a way to tie it to existing amendments.
It’s not weak. Originalism is weak. It basically asserts that the constitution and all amendments must have been written by psychics who could predict every situation that would arise in the future, forever.
Of course things written decades or centuries ago couldn’t predict what’s relevant today or five decades from now, so of course they should be open to interpretation as the needs of society change. It’s the difference between following the spirit or the letter of the law, and it’s why most laws aren’t merely prescriptive, but outline motivations and goals.
It basically asserts that the constitution and all amendments must have been written by psychics who could predict every situation that would arise in the future, forever.
Not really. The constitution is a living document and was meant to grow with the times.
The problem is that it’s next to impossible to add amendments to the constitution now due to how divided the nation is. This means that in order for abortion to receive protection under the constitution, it would need to be tied to an existing amendment that was not drafted with abortion in mind.
That’s why it’s so crucial to make arguments like “abortion is bodily autonomy” rather than “abortion is a guaranteed right under the xth amendment.”
