Alito opinion errors

 

This qualifies as merely a dissenting opinion to Roe.  Roe gives a 3 step test for how states should craft their legislation regarding abortion.  That is surely within the purview of the courts when reviewing legislation.  If you allow Mississippi to set up a test, why not the federal courts?  It is a privileges and immunities issue to give citizens some protection against the impact of a broad array of rules, and disparate impact, state by state, on a matter of private consequence.

It is true that no right to abortion appears in the Constitution’s text, but neither does the right to carry an AR-15, or authority for the FAA.  So are we to jettison all of the jurisprudence that has sustained the relevance of the Constitution because 5 people find Roe offensive?  Or should we heed Edmund Randolph’s guide to the drafters of the Constitution – “to insert essential principles only, lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events”.  (The right to privacy is at least provided for in the 4^th amendment.)

Roe provides a standard for crafting state laws; it does not approve of abortion in all circumstances.  It does not prohibit states from passing laws that prohibit abortion.  With Roe gone, there will be no standard available to states in considering legislation.  What about exceptions for incest and rape?  What about other cases where the Court has intervened in state legislative matters to correct issues?  Are we reverting to the Reconstruction Court which disemboweled the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments?