The Ron Paul Beacon

I am an avid Ron Paul supporter. I am also pro-choice whereas he holds strong pro-life views, yet I agree with him completely on abortion. Confused yet? Read on–this is the exact misunderstanding of abortion that I want to eradicate–you can be pro-choice and against the terms of Roe v. Wade. How? Because Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, and Ron Paul recognizes this without a pro-life bias as I do without a pro-choice predisposition of my own.

To justify the terms of Roe v. Wade, a “constitutional right to privacy” is often referenced, but I challenge any reader of the Constitution to point out to me exactly where this supposed right to privacy is actually written–and how it possibly overrules the terms of the 10th Amendment, which specifically says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”

The supposed “Constitutional right to privacy” started with a Supreme Court case heard in 1965 called Griswold v. Connecticut. The facts of the case surround a Connecticut law that made it illegal for married couples to be counseled on the use of contraceptives. Absurd as the statute may have been, Constitutionally speaking, it shouldn’t have been struck down by the highest federal court, as it was a state issue. As the Supreme Court Justice I most admire, Judge Hugo Black (who never went anywhere without a Constitution in his pocket) puts it in his written dissent on this case:

I feel constrained to add that the law is every bit as offensive to me as it is to my Bretheren of the majority and my Brothers HARLAN, WHITE and GOLDBERG, who, reciting reasons why it is offensive to them, hold it unconstitutional. There is no single one of the graphic and eloquent strictures and criticisms fired at the policy of this Connecticut law either by the Court’s opinion or by those of my concurring Brethern to which I cannot subscribe - expect that their conclusion that the evil qualities they see in the law make it unconstitutional.

Taking a brave stance against activist judges, who characteristically bend the terms of the Constitution to justify their individual agendas, Justice Black sets aside his personal convictions to let the governmental process work as it was intended to, as Dr. Ron Paul would with abortion by revoking the privilege of making rather than interpreting law from the Supreme Court and restoring the specified Constitutional restraints on government. Abortion, as an infinitely complex scientific and moral issue, would then be left to the states - exactly what our Founding Fathers would have wanted, as they were as a whole quite weary of exactly what the federal government has become today: an uncontrollable and power driven centralized body of government with a disturbing disregard for state’s rights.

As a young female who has grown up in the typically “Blue State” of Massachusetts and recently spent two years at a very liberal private school in New York City, I’ve heard the feminist argument that it’s not the place of “nine men in robes to determine our fate.” Well ladies, you’re exactly right. What the nine judges did in Griswold and Roe is what I call “creating a shortcut to liberty”, because you may agree with their conclusions as a staunch pro-choice advocate, but the ruling is in effect violating your rights as an American citizen, because these judges were appointed to interpret law, not voted on to write legislation.

You vote for your representative in Congress as well as on a more local level, and that gives you a voice. Petition your city/town and state governments–vote, participate and if you’re pro-choice, don’t be a hypocrite and complain about these “old men” who know nothing about your body as a modern woman–because something tells me it would be these exact women who would be the first to become militant if Roe was to be revoked, yet it was the same “clueless old men” who set the terms of Roe into motion.

As my Dad puts it, democracy is cathartic to none other than we, the people, and as strongly as I believe a woman has a right to choose, another individual feels that life starts at conception and thusly that abortion is murder. Therefore, from a governmental standpoint, a moral issue such as abortion need be a battle between the people, and the dissenters in a specific state can admit defeat when local democracy works, not when a majority of Supreme Court judges bend the law to accomodate a “progressive” social agenda.

Knowing the complex medical and ethical details surrounding abortion is not the job of a Supreme Court judge, but understanding how our Constitutional Republic operates is; exactly why experts on local levels should be addressing abortion and any other issue not expressly discussed within the Constitution, not the federal government. In fact, Oyez.com, the fantastic website chock full of Supreme Court case information and MP3s of oral arguments that I generally use when referencing a case, states in a summary conclusion of Griswold v. Connecticut that “Though the Constitution does not explicity protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy.”

That right there is all the information I need as a strict constructionist to determine, as Judge Black did, that the Griswold ruling seems to be a manipulation of the Constitution by a group of federal judges following their instincts rather than what is written in the Constituiton. If the people of Conneticut felt offended by this law, they should have petitioned to their state government, which is Constitutionally given the power to deal with the local laws to protect people from an overzealous federal government.

The infamous Roe v. Wade case of 1973, based highly on the unconstitutional precedent set in Griswold, became part of an equally as destructive precedent of the Supreme Court acting as lawmakers rather than interpreters. Again, refferencing Oyez.com, an effect of Roe v. Wade was that, “The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court’s ruling.” Constitutionally speaking, the Supreme Court defining rather than interpreting seems a bit out of line to me, as I would assume it does to Dr. Paul - or to any advocate of the Constitutional rule of law!

I ended a paper on interpreting the Constitution that I wrote for a class entitled “Law and Justice in America” last semester with the following statement and question:

“Fundamentally, the idea of letting the Man alone is integral to the basic intent inherent in the Constitution. But if one is to employ an analysis of historical jurisprudence it must be noted that if the Supreme Court votes in a way that seems to allow for more expansive freedoms, parallel to the intent of the Framers, it is in effect violating the indispensable balance of power between the three branches of government that is purposefully outlined in the Constitution. It is blatantly not the Supreme Court’s place to restrict state power to the extent that it sometimes has in the name of ‘freedom’, because what freedom is there when the American people themselves have no voice?”

I now respectfully ask my current readers to ponder the same question and to consider the importance of keeping the federal government at bay on ethical issues such as abortion, which are best suited to be dealt with locally, not nationally. Despite the fact that I disagree with Ron Paul on his contention that life starts at conception, I agree completely with his call to make complicated social problems state issues. Why? Because I’ve read the Constitution.