Quote:
|
Originally Posted by hannukah harry
actually, i have to disagree with you. you're techinically right, but many states still have anti-abortion laws on the books. so as soon as roe v. wade is overturned, those go back into effect. i think i read that when roe was originally decided, abortion was illegal in like 45 or 48 states. some may have made it legal, some may have removed the old ones, but i bet most would revert back to the old laws and make it illegal immediately.
|
This is a good point and one that I had overlooked. You are absolutely right that any currently unconstitutional state abortion bans would be reactivated if Roe were overturned. I do suspect, however, that such bans would be taken off the books if it looked like Roe was headed back to the Supreme Court. It just seems impossible that abortion would be banned in places like California, Washington, New York, etc.
The very worst thing that can happen in constitutional law is for the Court to completely reverse its position: doing so is a blow to the rule of law. The question then becomes: what do you do if the precident is really, really bad? Does anyone really think that Brown v. Board was a bad decision?
Here is the position I find myself in: Griswold invented a right to privacy that absolutely does not exist in the Constitution. If the states wanted to amend the Constitution and add such a right, they could do so. There has been no such amendment, however, so the right continues to not exist. Thus, Roe v. Wade is based on totally faulty precident. The federal judiciary should never have taken it upon itself to regulate a practice that falls squarely in the domain of state legislatures.
BUT: Roe has been on the books for all of my lifetime, plus an additional thirteen years. The instability created by overruling it would be terrible. A cornerstone of our society is stability of law: Locke discusses it, as does Montesquieu.
This bill, should it reach the Supreme Court, will have a massive impact on Constitutional Law in our nation. And yet I remain torn as to what outcome I would prefer.