OPINION

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 | NORTHERNIOWAN.COM | VOLUME 119, ISSUE 4 Disclaimer: The following opinion articles featured do not reflect the opinion of the Northern Iowan newspaper or staff as a whole. A fight for our rights

With midterms just around the corner, it seems that abortion rights will be on the line for many Iowans

BAILEY KLINKHAMMER

Opinion Columnist

It’s been 122 days since

Politico published the leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It’s been 69 days since the opinion was handed down from the courts. Since then, 13 states have had trigger bans on abortion go into effect after the decision. There’s 213 pages of decision that goes into the Dobbs case. After sifting through the majority opinion, concurrences and the dissent, it’s incredibly clear how Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health stands as a precedent. Some may believe that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case is a lesson. But, in reality, the Dobbs case is a warning.

“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality.” Alito states in the first sentences of his majority opinion for the court. In Alito’s majority opinion, he stresses the moral and ethical dilemma that abortion presents to the court. Alito also stresses how the Constitution never mentions abortion, and that there is no inherent right to abortion. While Alito builds his arguement around the “moral dilemma” about abortion and the idea of the right to an abortion, he misses the key arguement that initally decided the case of Roe v. Wade. What was argued in Roe v. Wade was not the idea that there’s an explicit right to abortion baked into the Constitution, the idea that was argued was that the 14th Amendment and the inherent right to privacy protected abortion amongst other things. One of the larger arguements that Alito makes is that abortion is not deeply rooted in American history and therefore cannot be considered by the court. He writes, “Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the 14th Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy.” The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868. Alito’s draw to the laws around at that time is insane, considering the fact that a mere five years prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the Emancipation Proclimation was first enforced. It’s a grave mistake to compare the laws at that time to the constitutionality of the right to privacy considering the why the 14th amendment was ratified in the first place, which was to protect former slaves and place limits on state’s rights. But unfortunately, majority opinion writer Alito glosses over this fact.

Following Alito’s flawed and incoherent majority opinion are three concurrences made by Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts. As I wrote in May, if the court comes for Roe v. Wade, they will come for other civil rights that are protected under the 14th Amendment. Thomas states this very clearly in his concurrence. “For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ (Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. [2020]), we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents, (Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. [2019]). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.” What Thomas and Altio make incredibly known in their decisions is the fact that they want to essentially overturn the power of the 14th Amendment and deprive it of it’s ability to place boundaries on state’s rights when it comes to civil rights issues. The consequences of their actions and their decisions here could be immeasurable.

Justice Kavanaugh takes a different approach to his concurrence. “The issue before this Court, however, is not the policy or morality of abortion. The issue before this Court is what the Constitution says about abortion. The Constitution does not take sides on the issue of abortion. The text of the Constitution does not refer to or encompass abortion. To be sure, this Court has held that the Constitution protects unenumerated rights that are deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. But a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in American history and tradition, as the Court today thoroughly explains.” Thanks to Kavanaugh’s elementary and flimsy explaination, as a country, we can now understand this case beyond the scope of the oral arguements and Alito’s majority opinion,

 See FUTURE, page 5