At the luncheon debate between U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-8) and his Democratic challenger Darcy Burner at the Meydenbauer Center in downtown Bellevue today, panelist C.R. Douglas asked what Congress’s response should be if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Darcy Burner fielded the question first. After telling the audience that she and her husband decided to go through with her difficult pregnancy after her doctor told her if she continued the pregnancy she “might not survive it,” she said: “But that decision belongs to us. There is no politician on the planet that has the right to make it for me. The idea that there are politicians that think they have the right to tell people fundamental choices about what happens with their bodies is absurd.”
Okay, cool. But a predictable enough response from a pro-choice, Democratic female candidate.
But then she went on: “And I would support not only codifying Roe v. Wade into law,” she said, “but ensuring that the Constitutional right to basic decisions about oneself and one’s privacy is in fact a Constitutional Amendment.”
The 14th Amendment (equal protection), the 9th (rights retained by the people not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution), and the 4th Amendment (no unlawful search and seizure) have all been used by the Supreme Court to protect Americans’ privacy. But Burner is right that an explicit “right to privacy” is missing. Roe v. Wade is based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
Guaranteeing the right to privacy in the Constitution is an unambiguous way to secure Roe v. Wade.
Her statement drew applause from the audience (a No No). The idea of a Constitutional Amendment may seem fanciful, but with polls indicating the Democrats might get up to 60 Senate seats after Election day, it could be a reality.
After the debate, I asked Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik why we hadn’t heard such a dramatic statement from Burner on this before. He said she really hadn’t been asked that direct question before.
Reichert told the audience: “I think everybody in this room knows where I stand on this issue.” In case they actually didn’t, he followed up by saying: “My religious belief is that life begins at conception. In this country we are all allowed to believe the way we want to believe. That’s why we call it a free country.”
He breezed over the obvious follow-up issue (should one person’s religious beliefs be allowed to determine the law for others?) and said simply, “My opponent wants to make this a major issue. When in fact, Congress has no say in Roe v. Wade.”
It was an interesting debate, covering everything from the $700 billion bailout (which Reichert voted against twice and Burner was also against—saying she disagreed with Sen. Obama on it), the federal budget, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Guantanamo, trade policy, global warming, immigration, education, and even sex ed. I’ll post a longer report tomorrow.
I will say: I ran into a Democratic operative after the debate, and he was crowing that when asked about the bailout bill, Reichert acknowledged that he wasn’t an economic expert. I expect the Burner campaign will jump on that.
You will still need 75% of the states to confirm it. That is still a huge stretch I think.
Sharuff Dave wasn’t any good at catching the Green River Killer, either, so this isn’t surprising.
I would think the wording would be key – a right to privacy doesn’t necessarily guarantee a right to an abortion, just as claiming “privacy” wouldn’t protect a parent who beats his kid in the privacy of his own home. The recorded debate over the wording would be used by future Courts in their interpretations, of course, but it seems like a strange way to get abortion legalized.
There’s no reason to be stealth about this. If abortion is the issue, I’d like to see the basic structure of Roe v Wade itself codified in the Constitution – first trimester abortion restrictions are illegal, third trimester abortions could be restricted, etc.
Did she call for the Dems to enforce any of the amendments we already have? How about asking her buddy Pelosi to enforce the constitution?
I’d like to see an amendment prohibiting governments condemning local property-owners’ lands and buildings so that motels and strip malls can be built in their places. The idea being that the government thinks that you should give up your property for a cheap price and unwillingly so that government can collect more taxes in the future.
There’s something wrong with a SCOTUS that votes in flavor of that kind of tyranny. I would like to see an amendment reaffirming private property and individual ownership of lands and buildings.
WOW!!!!
I would, however, express one caution. The right to privacy is a very bague term. Amendments need to be specific enough to be useful. Even the free speech clause .. not to mention the second amendment, gets into hard issues.
Thats said, if Darcy can put some meat on the bones I think such an amendment would easily pass.
Heres is a text just for argument:
Oh well. Jefferson, I am not.
This could be one of those occasions where something that sounds simple on the surface might drown in the details in its attempted implementation.
Personally, although I find abortion rather abhorrent (especially as a routine means of birth control) I feel the less the law sticks its grubby fingers into medical ethics, the better.
4
Ah, yes, another Republican who has no clue about basic civics. Let me ask you, in our tripartite form of government, which branch is charged with “enforcing” the Constitution?
I’m all for privacy, too: the government always wants to know what you’re doing, but they always want to hide what they’re doing. No double standards, please!
Sarah Palin said in the debate that she believed the Constitution already protects the right of privacy. If far rightwing loons like her already believe in such a right, selling an amendment should be easy.
4 They all are. When the Congress refuses to do their constitutional duty to impeach an out-of-control president like Bush, they are not enforcing the constitution. They are violating their oaths of office.
I’m guessing you’ll want to say the Exec. branch enforces the laws as they put it in 5th grade. But as many people have pointed out there are a number of things the Dems could have done to begin the impeachment process. They chose not to because they thought it would be better politically. In other words, they chose getting elected over their duty to the country.
I’m not a Republican, as I’ve stated on here many times.
Assuming “the law” includes the Constitution (which most of us think is basic, unless it’s really just a “God-damned piece of paper”) and the executive branch’s job is to enfoce “the law”, the last eight years have been the ultimate example of the cops becoming robbers.
@7 … we are soul mates on this.
If you note the text I offered, it really does not address abortion.
If I believed (as I once did) that the conceptus was equivalent to a person, then I would be close to the R2lifers since I think society MUST protect us from each other.
The problem I have is how to distinguish between different kinds of truth? If someone believes in RC dogma, then a conceptus is a person and abortion is a murder, flat and simple. The problem I see with that stand is nothing I know of in revelation by the Catholic religion, other than the claim of the Pope to supreme authority over reality, judtifies this belief. Similarly, even if someone’s religion tells them that the earth is flat, I would oppose laws based on this since it contradicts science.
Personally I am willing to live by laws that are limited by science. If something is undefinable, we ought not to have laws dependent on its existence. So, I can define life in terms of a certain level of neural development and say abortion can not be at the choice of the mother since the fetus has its own rights once that stage is passed.
If I start from this scientific point, then I think a right to privacy operates BUT the fetus has rights too.
Sorry for being long winded.
@3 “a right to privacy doesn’t necessarily guarantee a right to an abortion”
You know squat about Roe v. Wade, because that’s exactly what it says.
@4 That’s my problem with the idea, too. Republicans don’t respect the other Amendments so why would they respect this one? We need special prosecutors worse than we need more Amendments.
@6 How about,
Every individual shall have a right to privacy in his person, property, and personal information which shall not be infringed except upon a judicial warrant issued for just and sufficient cause.
Roger, I think this just about covers it:
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.
@17: except that the illegal wiretapping by the Bush administration directly contraverted the 4th amendment.
‘Burner calls for…….’
Funny, I called her to refill my cup of coffee. She did. She is qualified for that.
Minor correction: Roe vs. Wade is not based just upon the 14th Amendment.
It is a two-part analysis. The first question is whether there is a constitutional right involved. Griswold vs. Connecticut had previously held that there was a “right to privacy” inherent in the 4th Amendment (and others). In so ruling it said that Connecticut could not make it illegal to purchase contraceptives (yes, they really did have such a law back then).
But a recurring question has always existed about whether the Bill of Rights protected citizens only against actions by the Federal Government, or whether it protected them against actions by a state government as well. After all, the Bill of Rights begins with the phrase “Congress shall make no law….” The courts have therefore looked to whether the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment applied the right to privacy against State conduct as well as Federal conduct. This has traditionally been handled on a case-by-case approach.
In Roe vs. Wade, the court merely ruled that the 14th Amendment, combined with the inherent Right to Privacy as evidenced by 4th Amendment (and others), applied to the states’ regulation of abortion.
But the inquiry didn’t stop there, as the state could still show it had a “compelling state interest” which justified it’s efforts to regulate abortion. That’s where the analysis became somewhat tortured, as the court had to deal with the state’s interest in protecting an unborn fetus (or life, depending upon your philosophical/spiritual viewpoint). It basically struck a compromise, with the three-trimester approach, saying that the woman’s right to privacy was paramount in the first trimester, the state’s right to regulate the potential life was paramount in the third trimester, and the second trimester was somewhere in between.
Source: Constitutional Law 101 (actually, I think it was a junior-level undergraduate course). Of course, you can just read the opinion for yourself.