A Kentucky woman Friday filed an emergency class-action lawsuit, asking a Jefferson County judge to allow her to terminate her pregnancy. It’s the first lawsuit of its kind in Kentucky since the state banned nearly all abortions in 2022 and one of the only times nationwide since before Roe v. Wade in 1973 that an adult woman has asked a court to intervene on her behalf and allow her to get an abortion.
Bodily autonomy enshrined in a nation’s most important document? Yeah that sounds pretty good.
Enshrining it is fine. But taking a weak stance to link it to an amendment that never had it in mind, well, opens you up for its interpretation to get overturned.
It’s not weak. Originalism is weak. It basically asserts that the constitution and all amendments must have been written by psychics who could predict every situation that would arise in the future, forever.
Of course things written decades or centuries ago couldn’t predict what’s relevant today or five decades from now, so of course they should be open to interpretation as the needs of society change. It’s the difference between following the spirit or the letter of the law, and it’s why most laws aren’t merely prescriptive, but outline motivations and goals.
Not really. The constitution is a living document and was meant to grow with the times.
The problem is that it’s next to impossible to add amendments to the constitution now due to how divided the nation is. This means that in order for abortion to receive protection under the constitution, it would need to be tied to an existing amendment that was not drafted with abortion in mind.
That’s why it’s so crucial to make arguments like “abortion is bodily autonomy” rather than “abortion is a guaranteed right under the xth amendment.”
You are contradicting yourself all over the place in these comments.
Okay.
They were arguing against the term “originalist”. Guess you missed that bit.