Supreme Court and Rights:
This Has Gotten Personal

It is startling, perhaps even stunning, that a Supreme Court decision was leaked weeks ahead of its official release. Certainly an investigation will be launched. The leaker may yet be found.
 
We ought to be more shocked by the substance of the prospective decision.
 
The initial target, of course, is women.
 
I have long regarded the abortion debate to be valid on an individual level. Sometimes I think abortion is right, sometimes I’m against it.
 
But the decision has to be individual. As a practical matter, abortion bans involve the crushing of personal independence. It is not, and should not be, my decision, the decision of religious absolutists, or the decision of government.
 
The reasoning of the draft opinion, the opinion that has been leaked, goes beyond today’s outrage.
 
Beginning half a century ago, protection of a woman’s right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy was based on the 9th and 14th Amendments. This new draft says that right is not covered because abortion was not part of America’s traditional rights.
 
The same interpretation of the 9th and 14th Amendments, before and since, protected voting rights for minorities, birth control, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and more. Saying that this legal basis is not valid, and was never valid, abolishes those legal protections.
 
The new draft decision should shock the conscience of anyone, no matter their circumstance.
 
I confess it does get even more personal for some of us.
 
Had my wife and I met and gotten married when we were decades younger, we would have been in violation of Missouri Criminal Code Section 563.240 specifically outlawing interracial marriage.
 
We would have been arrested and sent to prison. Both of us.
 
The protection of our rights, those of other couples, gay people, people who practice birth control, and women who do not wish to relinquish control of their bodies, is based on clear logic. The Constitution explicitly protects what are called unenumerated rights.
 
The Ninth Amendment:
 
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
 
For seven and a half decades, this was used to protect citizens from potential federal abuse of rights that were not specifically named. The fourteenth amendment extended that protection to state laws as well.
 
The Fourteenth Amendment includes this language:
 
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
 
The draft that the United States Supreme Court is due to officially announce in a few weeks includes this about unenumerated rights covered by those two amendments:
 
…any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”
 
We should find within ourselves a righteous and furious anger that the conservative Republican agenda has succeeded in targeting women.
 
We should find within ourselves more than a vague concern that it will not end there.