Wade Park, Jefferson City
Dear Editor,
Is the Supreme Court the "Wrecking Crew?" Many decisions this term undermine our lives, with little respect for precedent, history, the Constitution and the trend toward justice for the past several centuries.
In "Dobbs" (which overturned Roe v. Wade), Justice Alito notes abortion isn't mentioned in the Constitution, as though it was excluded by the founders. "Corporations" also aren't mentioned, although they have plenty of rights now, mostly accumulated over the past century, with which he concurred.
That's incidental. Alito asserts: "An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973." That's nonsense. The "unbroken tradition" dating from antiquity (as far back as Aristotle) was "induced miscarriage" as a familiar and acceptable practice, with restrictions.
Before 'quickening' (fetal movement, about 13 weeks), it was commonplace and accepted. After "quickening," when the developing embryo was assumed to have a soul, it was discouraged. Aristotle, St. Augustine and the Catholic Church agreed this was the correct approach, so familiar and commonplace that Benjamin Franklin included an herbal recipe for miscarriage in "The Instructions," a comprehensive manual for all Americans.
Health care for women in the colonies and the states was provided almost entirely by female midwives. In the mid-1800s, male physicians attempting to establish their services as the sole source of obstetric care were the impetus for laws in many states to outlaw abortion, and other midwife services. Restrictions on women also were a reaction to the burgeoning suffrage movement. Whether technically illegal or not, induced miscarriage continued.
Alito notes "abortion" isn't an "enumerated" right, like "speech" and "press" so in Roe and subsequent cases it was fabricated as a privacy right. I worked in health care, and HIPAA is the most recent in a long history of customs, regulations and laws to protect personal health care decision-making. Not all rights are "enumerated," which the Ninth Amendment explains.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans agree abortion should be available for a reasonable period following conception, and it should be strongly discouraged at some point after "quickening" (or some metric for viability, which Roe attempted to approximate). An even greater majority agrees in cases of rape and incest, and threats to maternal health, abortion is in the public interest and should be available.
Let's identify a reasonable consensus approach and use the most democratic process available to Missourians: the initiative process.