What College Students Think About Abortion
Categories: US Education News
The Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade and let the American people decide the matter of abortion. Justice Samuel Alito’s legal arguments in the draft decision are sound and laudable. He correctly recognizes that defending Roe based on adhering to precedent is untenable. Not only did Roe itself defy precedent with shameless audacity, but like Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision was “egregiously wrong from the start.” Roe’s constitutionality has been flimsy at best and inflamingly divisive at worse. Unfortunately, President Biden has attacked the leaked draft, characterizing it as a “radical decision.” Such so-called radicalism, however, is exactly what is needed from the court. Only the court can conclusively bookend the contentious jurisprudential chapter Roe inaugurated in 1973. The court’s apparent willingness to surrender a measure of power in the interest of constitutional principle is encouraging. Such a step would help it to “survive the stench,” to use Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s words, of constitutional adventurism. Overturning Roe on originalist grounds, however, would have serious implications for our society. If a decades-old precedent can be overturned by originalist arguments, others could be too. How are we supposed to know which rights we can depend on? And how are we supposed to believe in the legitimacy of our judicial system if trail-blazing cases can simply be overturned half a century later? This decision would weaken the importance of precedent and thereby create distrust in our judicial system, which violates the essence of originalism on which this decision itself is based. Fundamental rights cannot be left to states and must be protected by the Supreme Court. A living constitutionalist interpretation, such as the one Justice Stephen Breyer advances, marries the good aspects of originalism with a proper respect for current social mores. From this understanding, the Constitution actually protects women’s right to choose. We must urge the court to respect precedent and approach this case using living constitutionalism to conserve this indispensable right and retain public trust in our judiciary.