Showing posts with label Roe v Wade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roe v Wade. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Vulnerable Women and "What the Constitution Means to Me"

I was recently in New York and, among other things, saw a much-discussed play on Broadway entitled "What the Constitution Means to Me."

In truth, it is more of a one-woman monologue than a play, although at the end, there is a brief debate between Heidi Schreck, the author and chief actor, and one of two school-age girls as to whether the Constitution should be kept or scraped.  Audience participation -- cheers or boos for the various points made -- are encouraged at that part of the show.

I mention this because Schreck focuses mainly on the 9th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, the latter of which in particular underpins the Supreme Court's decision that a person's right to privacy (unmentioned explicitly in the Constitution) allows a woman to get an abortion without government interference at least in the first trimester of her pregnancy.

This is a hot topic at the moment because various individual states have recently passed legislation would undermine or overrule that decision. Moreover, because of recent changes in the make-up of the Supreme Court, it is possible Row v Wade, the landmark ruling on abortion, will eventually be revisited.