OFF THE FENCE AND INTO THE FIRE!

By Edwin Cooney

I've never been completely comfortable with Roe v. Wade but I've favored it for three primary reasons. First, it limits the traditional coercive authority of narrow-minded males over their wives and daughters. (Note that the overwhelming number of state executives, legislators, judges and even lawyers are males with male predilections and interpretations.) Second, I believe in a living Constitution more than I believe in an interpreted Constitution. (That makes me a loose rather than a strict constructionist of the Constitution.) Third and most significant, my insistence on self-respect lies in the likelihood that I'd probably have been aborted had Roe v. Wade been in existence in 1945.

Roe v. Wade was decided on the basis that the 9th and the 14th Amendments were founded on implied references to human rights enumerated in those constitutional amendments.

Although no law can prevent a woman from ending her pregnancy if she's sufficiently determined, a woman's pregnancy is a moral question more than it is a legal question. Roe v. Wade, having been adjudicated rather than legislated, avoided all moral questions. Hence today, it's about to be adjudicated out of existence.

Moral questions unless written into the Constitution are inevitably vulnerable. In other words, the moral fabric of a nation is best legally and legislatively established when it is introduced from the hearts and minds of the nation's population. That’s a legislative act.

Therefore, I assert that Roe has run it's course. Roe v. Wade was decided on state prerogatives rather than on moral obligations or non obligations. As difficult as it may be, we the people have the capacity to draw distinctions between the moral and the practical and we ought to find common ground on the moral before we establish the practical. What a woman can do and ought not to do with her own body, I believe, depends on the circumstances of her relationship with other people — specifically her male sex partner. I know of a marriage that broke up because the wife got an abortion without consulting her husband. Many religious leaders insist that our individual bodies are not our own but are temples of our relationship with God. (For any religious interpretation on this topic, see your most trustworthy clergy person rather than this mere mortal!)

As for the political parades, they're coming. After all, liberals and conservatives agree on one thing: their political, social and especially their moral interpretations are absolute and ought not ever to be questioned!

As for settled law, I'd define that as law so fundamental that it ought never to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States. Only time will tell if 

Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and/or Amy Coney Barrett lied to the United States Senate by insisting that Roe v. Wade is settled law.

There are both dangers and opportunities in the debates and trials ahead. What will be the fates of same sex marriage, stem cell research, interracial marriage, and the fate of liberal voting rights as interpreted by those currently serving on the Supreme Court? Stay tuned!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY