The Constitution of the United States is an outline for a government that serves its people. It is designed to prevent tyranny by limiting the power of government, both federal and state.
No part of the Constitution was designed to be interpreted in isolation of the rest of the Constitution. The Constitution must always be interpreted in its entirety and its intent. The most obvious method to destroy the Constitution is for courts to repeatedly interpret only one part of the constitution in isolation from the rest. It does not take long for the Constitution to be dismantled in this manner, one decision at a time that become precedents for ignoring other parts of the Constitution.
There are moral and religious issues surrounding abortion. However, the single most important issue is the U.S. Constitution that determines the limitations of government. What is surprising in the political fervor about abortion is the lack of reference to the U.S. Constitution, which is the source of authority of all U.S. law.
The relevant laws in the U.S. Constitution are:
the 13th Amendment,
the 14th Amendment,
the 10th Amendment, and
Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
U.S. Constitution - The 13th Amendment Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. |
1. It is a fact that a woman is rendered dependent on others during part of her pregnancy. What she is forced to do in that time depends on her circumstances and the others’ whims.
Question #1: Is forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy a form of involuntary servitude?
Question #2: Is forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy a form of involuntary servitude imposed by an extra-judicial presumption of guilt of a non-existent crime of having sex?
Question #3: If the answer to either question above is yes, does Section 2 of the 13th Amendment (above) give congress (the federal government) the power to legislate regarding abortion rights?
U.S. Constitution - The 14th Amendment Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. |
2. It is a fact that men do not suffer pregnancy.
Question #4: Is a law prohibiting abortion for women unequal in its application to men?
Question #5: Can a law prohibiting abortion for women, be considered to apply equally if it also prohibits men from having abortions?
Question #6: Does the phrase “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;” mean that if an act is legal in one state, it cannot be made illegal in another state?
Note: The relevant court decisions about the 14th Amendment are the Slaughter-House cases (83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873)) that went through a tortured reasoning to conclude the 14th Amendment privileges and immunities only applied to the citizen's rights listed in the Constitution by presuming that the phrase "… citizens of the United States" meant the federal government, not the states. The Slaughter-House interpretation of the 14th Amendment runs counter to the 10th Amendment. Specifically, the 10th Amendment reinforces that the Constitution does not start from the position that federal or state governments have absolute power and the people must suffer what either government arbitrarily permits. Instead, the Constitution starts by limiting government power.
U.S. Constitution - The 10th Amendment The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. |
3. The states have the power to legislate for their citizen's health, safety, and welfare. Thus the states grant and revoke medical licenses, not the federal government.
4. The U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate medical procedures for safety. However, the Constitution does not grant the states tyrannical power. Instead, it also limits state government power.
Question #7: On what basis can a state ban a specific medical procedure that has less risk than others routinely performed?
Question #8: Does the Constitution give states the power to arbitrarily determine who must have or who cannot have a medical procedure?
Question #9: Or, is the decision of having, or not having, a medical procedure a power that belongs only to the people, not state or federal governments?
U.S. Constitution - Article IV Section 2: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime. No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. |
5. The Dormant Commerce Clause (U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3) applies to all state activity that might affect interstate commerce. It was written in full cognizance that states will try to manipulate trade to their advantage, at the expense of the citizens of other states. It prohibits states from gaining a trade advantage by imposing laws that affect trade goods differently than other states.
6. That same state self-interest did not magically disappear when Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 was written. It specifically does NOT read "… Privileges and Immunities listed in the Constitution".
Question #10: Is it likely that such a miss-wording would have slipped the minds of all the people who were writing the Constitution at the time?
Question #11: Does Clause 1 (the first sentence) of Article IV, Section 2 mean that acts legal in one state may not be made illegal in another?
Question #12: If not, does the assumption of deliberate state interference with individuals in other states through laws regarding trade goods also apply to intentional state interference with individuals through criminal and civil penalties in other states?
Question #13: If not, do you think that the U.S. Constitution’s authors intended to give trade goods more rights than people?
Question #14: Does Clause 1 of Article IV, Section 2 limit the acts states may make criminal to those acts that are illegal in all states, such as homicide, robbery, theft, embezzlement, assault, rape, kidnapping, arson?
7. Most, if not all, references to the “Privileges and Immunities” clause refer to the 14th Amendment, where the wording says “... the United States”. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 when the country was recovering from the Civil War, and the term “the United States” had the political purpose of unifying the states.
Question #15: Why would a reference to a descriptive plural “the United States” be interpreted differently from “the several states” that also referred to all the states then extant?
Question #16: Rather than get tangled up in language involving a growing number of states at times they were written, if the intent was to limit the rights of the people, why was the term “Privileges and Immunities listed in the Constitution” NOT used when both Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution and the 14th Amendment were written?
Question #17: Is there any indication that Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 was not intended to prevent the following hypothetical?
Connecticut law makes riding in a car without a seatbelt a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of a minimum of 1-year and a maximum of 5-years.
New York State has no such law.
Driver, a New York state resident, drives with his son from New York to Connecticut on a non-federal highway.
Driver's son has his seatbelt on but needs to reach in the back seat for the car charger for his cell phone.
Driver's son unbuckles his seatbelt and reaches in the back seat just as the car crosses into Connecticut.
A traffic camera snaps a photo of Driver and his son with the state border behind the car.
Driver receives a summons from Connecticut to appear in order to be arrested for the crime of Accessory to the crime of Driver's son.
Driver does not voluntarily go to Connecticut to be arrested and tried for something that is not illegal in New York, where Driver resides.
Driver is subsequently pulled over by New York state police and arrested because the state of Connecticut requested Driver's extradition from New York under Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
Driver is now held without bail in Connecticut, as he poses a flight risk, awaiting trial at which Driver faces 1 to 5 years in prison.
8. Recently a female professional basketball player was arrested and sentenced in Russia for possessing something that is legal in the United States. Permitting states to criminalize legal acts in other states effectively makes states different countries and imposes the attendant political issues and division that come from different countries.
Question 18: Are there any limitations on legal acts in one state, that another state may declare illegal within its borders and impose criminal and civil penalties?
Question 19: If so, what are the limitations?
Question 20: If not, how can ignoring Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 NOT foreseeably result in a growing division between states and the fragmentation of the United States?
Question 21: How can any federal action from any branch (executive, legislative or judicial) that foreseeably sets in motion the mechanism for the fragmentation of the United States NOT be giving aid and comfort* to the enemies of the United States?
*U.S. Constitution Article III, Section 3