Inroduction:

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I'm Ralph Groves, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Orange County.  I have been involved in the Right-to-movement since before the Roe  v. Wade decision of 1973.  In 1982, I ran for Congress on New York State's Conservative Party line with the endorsement of New York State's Right-to-Life Party.

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Presentation:

 

January is National Sanctity of Human Life Month.  This observance was made official by President Reagan's proclamation in January 1982, nearly coinciding with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

As we are Libertarians, we acknowledge the official platform of our party concerning abortion: "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration."  Further, "Libertarians also oppose the use of taxpayer funds or other government resources for abortion."

While our party's platform is indirectly pro-choice, without using that term, our party will have to face forthcoming restrictions on abortion in many states, including in Florida where we live.  Governor Ron DeSantis has indicated that he's open to a Mississippi-style 15-week abortion ban.  He said: "We have an opportunity to strengthen protections for the right to life, without which the other rights mean little."  This point has been articulated by Alveda King.  She also compared abortion to slavery as among the worst of inhumanities.

Presently, the Supreme Court is considering two major challenges to abortion restrictions in Mississippi and Texas.  One case is Dobbs v. Jackson Woman's Health Organization, which pertains to Mississippi's near total ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.  In Texas, there are two cases pertaining to a 6-week abortion ban, which features a novel enforcement method that doesn't involve state officials, allowing individuals to sue doctors who provide abortions.  These two cases  are United States States v. Texas and Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson.

In the Dobbs case, it is possible the Court will throw out the precedent established by Roe and find that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion.

Concerning precedents, broadly speaking, they can be overturned.  For example, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1898), the Court ruled that Southern states could enforce racial segregation as long as "separate but equal" facilities were in place for Blacks and Whites.  In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court revisited this ruling and declared that separate facilities were intrinsically unequal and unconstitutional.  Likewise, the precedents comprising the foundation of abortion jurisprudence (Doe v. Bolton, PP v. Casey, and Roe v. Wade could be viewed as wrongly decided, and, therefore, should not be adhered to as valid precedents.

In the two Texas cases, the Court will decide if a method of enforcement through private citizens' lawsuits is permissible and compatible with Roe -- if Roe is intact after the Court considers its status as a precedent.  Incidentally, other states also have restricted abortion, e.g. Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri.

We will know the Court's decision at the end of its current 2022 term in late June or early July.

All restrictions on abortion have prompted rage from the Left ("Progressives"), who uphold a supposed right to abortion inherent in the Constitution.  This Leftist view is a lie.  There is no right to abortion in the Constitution.  We are experiencing the bizarre spectacle that abortion is read into the Constitution where it doesn't exist, while explicit rights are questioned, particularly by the Left, e.g. the right to bear arms, the right to freedom of political speech, the right to retain property free from government seizure, freedom of religion.

Without a Constitutional right to abortion, the Court in the 1973 Roe decision relied on the precedent of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) about the right to marital privacy, and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972).  It also relied on the Fourth Amendment's protection of privacy, although the term "privacy" is not mentioned.  The Court extended privacy behond its legitimate purpose.

Legitimate rights to  privacy include relations of married couples, discussions between doctors and patients as well as between lawyers and clients, priests and penitants, and people engaged in business transactions.  There is no right to privacy to commit murder.  Indeed, conspirancy to commit murder is a crime.

In my opinion, the best way to determine whether or not an action should be legal is to gauge  its adherence to justice.  It is blatantly unjust, however, to disregard the rights of human beings in utero.

When the Court extended the right of privacy to include the killing of a third party -- a baby in utero -- it overrode state protections of human life.  In addition, the Court held a perverse view of the 14th Amendment, which was meant to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws.  (Due process is required to remove life, liberty, or property.)  The Court's view was that Texas had deprived Roe (Norma McCorvey) of personal privacy and liberty and, therefore, violated the 9th Amendment too.  However, the Court at the same time held the 14th  Amendment protections do not apply to babies in utero.

Further as to the specious constitutionality of abortion, two Harvard law professors (Mary Ann Glendon and O. Carter Snead) have opposed Roe v. Wade, as well as other cases: Doe v. Bolton (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which doubled down on Roe's freewheeling derivation of a Constitutional right that does not exist.

These cases of abortion jurisprudence are constitutionally unjustified and pernicious.  They prevent elected branches of government to address  the needs of mothers, children, and families.  Instead, mother and child are pitted against each other.

These Harvard law professors stated: "Despite these decades of attempts at post-hoc rationalization, there has never been a defensible connection between the putative right to abortion and the Constitution itself."  These professors concluded that the Court should overturn Roe because three factors [of stare decisis -- adherence to precendent] support overturning the precendent: 1. Roe is egregiously wrong; 2. it has caused negative juris-prudential consequences, and 3. it resulted in real-world consequences.  In a phrase: Roe must go!

In conclusion, the constitutionality of abortion is based on interpretative overreach.  Those of us who believe in the rule of law prefer close adherence to the text of the Constitution.

This year (2022), it is likely the Supreme Court will uphold states' restrictions on abortion and, thereby, overturn Roe, as Norma McCorvey herself called for.  We Libertarians, including those of us in Florida, will then be faced with a new legal and social context on the issue of abortion.

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