Just wondering. It seems to me that if you want to “enshrine” a right, you had better put it in the constitution, instead of fighting it out in every confirmation hearing.
Such an amendment probably wouldn’t pass, given the current composition of the Congress.
In order to get it into the constitution you need a 2/3 majority vote by both houses in congress (IIRC). If the issue is controversial enough that you have to keep fighting it out every few years there’s no way you’ll ever get the clear majority vote required to get it into the constitution.
That, or endorsement by 2/3 of the states, is required to get it officially proposed. Then it requires ratification by 3/4 of the states in order to pass and become an amendment.
For the subject at hand, don’t hold your breath.
Well, logic would tell you that the very act of suggesting that there needs to be a constitutional amendment indicates that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.
Nevertheless, there has been introduced by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr (D-Ill) in the last several years a proposed Constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to an abortion. Like literally thousands of other bills introduced in Congress, no action has been taken on it, and there is no chance that any would, considering that Republicans are in control of the House.
The proposed amendment states:
`Article–
`SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
`SECTION 2. Reproductive rights for women under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State.
`SECTION 3. The Congress shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
`SECTION 4. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.'.That’s interesting. Section 1 sounds like the ERA. Since it failed to get ratified, I wonder why it would be included – I would think it would lessen the chance of this one passing (two different things for opponents to object to = more opponents).
In Section 2, I wonder if “reproductive rights” is a legally defined term. Sounds awfully vague to me. I could see someone claiming it means the right to reproduce, rather than the right to do something that prevents reproduction.
Is the right to reproduced in question?
I had no idea Jackson was so…serious.
I would think an unambiguous right to privacy amendment would have a much better chance of passage, with just about the same effect as a reproductive freedom amendment. Plus, it would protect a whole host of individual freedoms which the right would like to control.
Who could vote against a constitutional right to privacy?
Well, back in 1976, when gender equality was a much more controversial issue than it is now, the ERA was approved by 2/3 of both House and Senate, and ratified in 30 states. It seems reasonable to think that it might pass more easily now. And in that case, it might pull support for the other clauses along with it.
And the proposed amendment that I’ve seen some discussion of and advocacy for is not meant to guarantee a right to abortion per se, but a right to privacy.
The “endorsement” means calling a constitutional convention, though:
That would probably never happen as it would open the amendment process to anything the comvention wanted to propose. The way government works these days, I suspect the convention would die of attrition as everyone on the country tried to get his pet amendment on the agenda.
A more reasonable approach would be for each state to get its own abortion laws in place to deal with the possiblity (slim as it might be) that *Roe *might be overturned. I think this has already been done to some extent.
Essentially this is what the fourth amendment is. You have the right to privacy within property that you own, and that can’t be impeded without a warrant. That your innards are “your property” is probably fairly well assumed.
But the right to privacy in your home doesn’t mean that you can’t kill your children there, obviously. It just means that the police can’t investigate the crime in your private area until they have official reason to believe that a crime has been commited there.
The right to privacy doesn’t aid pro-abortion as the issue isn’t privacy, but whether an abortion is a crime.
Not necessarily. Alaska is one of the few states with a specific right to privacy enumerated in the state constitution. On that basis, personal possession and use of marijuana in the privacy of your home was established in Ravin v. State of Alaska in 1975, and upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court in 2004. This invalidated all state laws that criminalized personal private use of marijuana (though federal drug laws were not affected). So a privacy amendment in the US Constitution could have far reaching effects on current laws which criminalize a wide range of personal, private behavior.
The link you cite says specifically, “the State had violated his right of privacy under both the federal and Alaska constitutions.” The federal version is the Fourth Amendment. And even there, he was required to bring in the federal 5th Amendment to remove the possbility that marijuana smoking can possibly be a crime given that due process cannot allow for him to be punished greater for using a narcotic of less danger than legal drugs, particularly given as that the action was performed in the privacy of his home where no other could be effected.
The Alaskan constitution doesn’t seem to add anything here except to reinforce what issues are particularly important to Alaskans (i.e. privacy) when taken to an Alaskan court.
Incorrect.
If you read the SCOTUS decisions on the matter, abortion rights are squarely based on a right to privacy that the courts have found throughout the Bill of Rights (including but not limited to the 4th Amendment).
The logic went roughly as marital privacy, medical privacy, reproductive privacy, right to contraceptives, right to abortion. See:
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965).
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972)
Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973)
Yes, but that only means they have decided that abortion is a medical issue and thus protected by privacy. If it was a crime instead of a medical issue, it would be a crime regardless of where the death took place.