The 14th, to me, encompasses everything that it means to be American: self-autonomy. The right to marry outside our race, the right to choose our sexual partner, the right to birth control are established in the due process clause.
Scalia said, "the Constitution's refusal to 'deny or disparage' other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges' list against laws duly enacted by the people".
Of course, anyone with a brain can see that Scalia was the first to abandon textualism or the reactionary idea that judges should not engage in 'judicial activism' whenever they came in conflict with conservative policy.
The rights to choose your sexual partner and marry outside your race are also established in the Equal Protection clause, which gives them a stronger basis in the constitution than birth control and abortion which solely rely on substantive due process.
http://www.notguiltynj.com/our-constitution-doesnt-give-us-r...
Lest they be accused of inconsistency, this Supreme Court likely intends to remove any existing protections for those rights as well.
The text I emphasized above is false.
After independence, the US adopted English common law, which "hazily" prohibited abortion after "quickening" (fetal movements usually first felt around 15-20 weeks' gestation), but lacked an actual written statute banning this. The first anti-abortion laws were introduced in Connecticut in 1821 (precipitated by a womanizing preacher who got one of his many young female fans pregnant, insisted she abort the fetus before marrying him because it'd damage his reputation, tried and failed medicine and then "mechanical" means, caused stillbirth, all without technically breaking any law): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#...
The Ninth Amendment was ratified in 1791: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
>That the common law did not condone even pre-quickening abortions is confirmed by what one might call a proto-felony-murder rule. Hale and Blackstone explained a way in which a pre-quickening abortion could rise to the level of a homicide. Hale wrote that if a physician gave a woman “with child” a “potion” to cause an abortion, and the woman died, it was “murder” because the potion was given “unlawfully to destroy her child within her.” 1 Hale 429–430 (emphasis added). As Blackstone explained, to be “murder” a killing had to be done with “malice aforethought, . . . either express or implied.” 4 Blackstone 198 (emphasis deleted). In the case of an abortionist, Blackstone wrote, “the law will imply [malice]” for the same reason that it would imply malice if a person who intended to kill one person accidentally killed a different person:
>“[I]f one shoots at A and misses him, but kills B, this is murder; because of the previous felonious intent, which the law transfers from one to the other. The same is the case, where one lays poison for A; and B, against whom the prisoner had no malicious intent, takes it, and it kills him; this is likewise murder. So also, if one gives a woman with child a medicine to procure abortion, and it operates so violently as to kill the woman, this is murder in the person who gave it.” Id., at 200–201 (emphasis added; footnote omitted).29
>Notably, Blackstone, like Hale, did not state that this proto-felony-murder rule required that the woman be “with quick child”—only that she be “with child.” Id., at 201. And it is revealing that Hale and Blackstone treated abortionists differently from other physicians or surgeons who caused the death of a patient “without any intent of doing [the patient] any bodily hurt.” Hale 429; see 4 Blackstone 197. These other physicians—even if “unlicensed”—would not be “guilty of murder or manslaughter.” Hale 429. But a physician performing an abortion would, precisely because his aim was an “unlawful” one.
>In sum, although common-law authorities differed on the severity of punishment for abortions committed at different points in pregnancy, none endorsed the practice. Moreover, we are aware of no common-law case or authority, and the parties have not pointed to any, that remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
>In this country, the historical record is similar. The “most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 594 (2008), reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least “a heinous misdemeanor,” 2 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 129–130 (1803), and that edition also included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule, 5 id., at 200–201. Manuals for justices of the peace printed in the Colonies in the 18th century typically restated the common-law rule on abortion, and some manuals repeated Hale’s and Blackstone’s statements that anyone who prescribed medication “unlawfully to destroy the child” would be guilty of murder if the woman died. See, e.g., J. Parker, Conductor Generalis 220 (1788); 2 R. Burn, Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer 221–222 (7th ed. 1762) (English manual stating the same).30
>The few cases available from the early colonial period corroborate that abortion was a crime. See generally Dellapenna 215–228 (collecting cases). In Maryland in 1652, for example, an indictment charged that a man “Murtherously endeavoured to destroy or Murther the Child by him begotten in the Womb.” Proprietary v. Mitchell, 10 Md. Archives 80, 183 (1652) (W. Browne ed. 1891). And by the 19th century, courts frequently explained that the common law made abortion of a quick child a crime. See, e.g., Smith v. Gaffard, 31 Ala. 45, 51 (1857); Smith v. State, 33 Me. 48, 55 (1851); State v. Cooper, 22 N. J. L. 52, 52–55 (1849); Commonwealth v. Parker, 50 Mass. 263, 264–268 (1845).
Ben Franklin could publish what he liked; that didn't make it legal, or a right.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - 9th Amendment, in its entirety.
In other words: there is an entire Amendment specifically dedicated to refuting this argument. People have rights, even if they're not specifically written in the Constitution.
The 9th amendment says some rights aren't mentioned. But abortion couldn't be one of those rights because abortion was banned in some states.
Abortion was not, in fact, banned when that amendment was written. The first full ban was in New York in 1829. [1]
Besides, the legal issue is not whether abortion is one of those rights per se, but rather whether privacy is an implicit right (almost certainly), and whether family planning (abortion, yes, but also contraception & choice of sex partner) is a sufficiently private decision that the government is restrained from regulating it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#....
The right to potentially life saving treatment sounds an awful lot like those enumerated in the first amendment, and the right to not have the government force you to go through an potentially deadly and avoidable situation sounds in the spirit of the eighth amendment.
Wealthy republicans can just fly their teenage daughters to a blue state, while poor people will inevitably end up getting back-alley abortions.
The news here isn’t a Supreme Court overriding voters, but devolving the decision of abortion rights to voters in the states and their elected representatives.
He then goes on to say outright that Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell should be reconsidered. I take that to mean the majority reactionary court, who also do not believe in substantive due process, will overturn those. And it also implies a call to action for reactionaries to start building cases.