The fight over the next Supreme Court justice will revolve over Roe v Wade and abortion. While it is the immediate issue, it is not the most important. The important issue is what the Roe v Wade decision was based on. It directly descended from another case, Griswold v Connecticut where the Court first recognized the implied right of privacy. Yes, there is not right of privacy expressly delineated in the constitution, but it is implied by the fourteenth and mostly by the ninth amendment of the Bill of Rights:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Note that these rights are not left to individual States’ discretion but to the people. The right of privacy is just one of those “certain rights”. The ideological “strict” constructionists, the likes of Anthony Scalia, call the Griswold case loose reasoning but choose to ignore the ninth amendment, even though the founding fathers were quite concerned that not all rights could ever be enumerated in the constitution.
More than abortion is on the block here. It is the overarching right of privacy. With the overturning of Roe and the rejection of Griswold, the government can now come into your bedroom and insert itself into intimate relations. It can come into any part of your life, with the assertion of state interest. With the growing advocacy of judges in the unitary executive theory of the President who has complete control of the executive without oversight, we are headed down the path from which the founding fathers fought to free us: a monarchy. With Griswold and the right of privacy gone, the monarch can inject himself into any aspect of your personal life on an any arbitrary whim that is politically expedient.
Those that are cheering Trump’s potential third appointment to the Supreme Court — be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
