Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The SCOTUS found two different answers in the "text" of the constitution depending on who was appointed to it. Which is the risk of a pure legalistic approach; it's difficult for a right to survive against a majority that actively oppose it.

View on HN

Roe vs. Wade was not about abortion, so much as it was about PRIVACY; Namely between you and your doctor.

“Privacy” isn’t in the constitution either. Griswold all but admits that, asserting that the privacy right can be found in “penumbras” (I.e. that it’s manufactured out of thin air).

4: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

5: No person shall […] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

"Because you say so! …Is not good enough for me.

"Because you say so! …They take our liberty!

"Because you say so! …With guns to our heads!

"Because you say so! …They want patriots dead!"

-Right Arm of Wyoming https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YQVyesTRLWU

Or in this case a minority with the will to actually fight over it.

To be clear, a majority of people in the USA support access to abortion, its the fact that a minority court was packed with gerrymandered districts and a political party dead set on ending democracy that we got here.

You can support access to abortion and disagree that there is a constitutional protection for such right. These are two different matters.

I figured it was because the Democrats never bothered to make it a law.

That narrative turns the facts upside down. Was the Supreme Court wrong to ignore public opinion in 1973, when the citizens of every state banned abortion through their duly elected legislatures? Or is it wrong to ignore public opinion now?

In reality, the Supreme Court in 1973 subverted democracy by striking down abortion laws every state had adopted through the democratic process. In 2022, the Supreme Court restored the issue to the democratic process.

> In reality, the Supreme Court in 1973 subverted democracy by striking down abortion laws every state had adopted through the democratic process. In 2022, the Supreme Court restored the issue to the democratic process.

This is basically true, and a really serious indictment of democracy in America. All sorts of important rights, such as racial equality and equality of marriage (not just gay marriage, but interracial marriage!) had to be secured through legal action against a tyrannical and indifferent majority.

If the majority doesn’t think something is a “right” then how can it be a right? Where does it come from?

It in no way turns facts upside down, it simply responds to the word majority and the current events, it's the facts to say that the supreme court did the opposite in the 1970s.

If you think “democracy” matters, then the Supreme Court got it wrong in 1973 (by overturning laws that states adopted through the democratic process) and got it right in 2022 (by returning the issue to the democratic process).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com