A 1792 case reveals that key Founders saw abortion as a private matter

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Alito's only support for his opinion was a witch hunter who believed in/advocated for marital rape. Here is some authority that Alito was too stupid to find or use

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/19/1792-case-reveals-that-key-founders-saw-abortion-private-matter/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjM4MjMyODIzIiwicmVhc29uIjoiZ2lmdCIsIm5iZiI6MTY1ODU2MjA5NSwiaXNzIjoic3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ucyIsImV4cCI6MTY1OTc3MTY5NSwiaWF0IjoxNjU4NTYyMDk1LCJqdGkiOiI0MDZjNjg4ZC1hODI2LTQ0ZWMtOGQ2Zi0zNDAwMjI3NDhiNDAiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9ucG9zdC5jb20vbWFkZS1ieS1oaXN0b3J5LzIwMjIvMDcvMTkvMTc5Mi1jYXNlLXJldmVhbHMtdGhhdC1rZXktZm91bmRlcnMtc2F3LWFib3J0aW9uLXByaXZhdGUtbWF0dGVyLyJ9.3Oz4ziKkJBN2tEYVnpVZn6nAAc14004UAhTbvAbyhAM

A basic premise of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was that the Constitution can protect the right to abortion only if it is “deeply rooted in our history and traditions.” This statement complements Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concept of originalism, or the idea that the court should interpret the Constitution by trying to infer “the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it.”

Alito’s evidence that abortion was always considered a criminal act, and thus something the Constitution should not protect, consisted of a single criminal case that was prosecuted in 1652 in the (Catholic) colony of Maryland. He then jumped ahead to laws that states enacted, mostly in the mid-to-late-19th century, to criminalize abortion. This cursory survey of abortion in early America was hardly complete, especially because it ignored the history of abortion in the years in which the Constitution was drafted and ratified.....

Therefore, the more historically accurate conclusion is Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe v. Wade (1973), that “at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the majority of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect. Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today. ”

Though Marshall’s notes on Commonwealth v. Randolph are extensive, this episode is poorly documented in the county court records, and, thus, no formal case law was generated. Regardless, the episode begs examination as it involved key Founders who occupied vastly different positions on the political spectrum, both nationally and in Virginia. The Federalist Marshall believed in a strong national government. Jefferson mostly supported a decentralized system. Henry was a populist. Yet all three tacitly agreed that abortion in this case was a private matter, not a criminal act worthy of further investigation and prosecution. In a remarkable coda, Nancy went on to marry Gouverneur Morris of New York, an influential signer of the Constitution, who was well aware of her backstory.

If anything, the saga demonstrates that the concept of abortion as a private matter was “deeply rooted” in the minds of our nation’s Founders. As Americans consider their next move on the abortion issue at the state level, they should be mindful of the precedents followed by these early giants of our republic.

[Walleye]

1. Traditionally men didn't wanna have anything to do with "women's problems"

Mention ministration to them and they leave the room. Suddenly they are experts.

[Phoenix61]

2. Amazing how many joints fit in the cardboard tampon

applicator especially if you take the tampon out. I’ve heard there’s not a security guard out there who is going to rip into one of those. I have no idea. A friend told me that.

[Walleye]

3. That's funny. Exactly what I was talking about. Ingenuity

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. The Dobbs decision looks to history to rescind Roe

Again, Alito is a partisan hack who does not know history. Alito cited a witch hunter who was an advocate for marital rape as his authority to overturn Roe. Alito is both a partisan hack/bad lawyer and a bad historian

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/dobbs-decision-looks-history-rescind-roe/

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relies on history to rescind the constitutional right to a legal abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973. There’s just one problem: the history it relies on is not correct.

Writing for the majority in Dobbs, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argues that Roe disrupted “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment” that had “persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” But the real picture is far blurrier — and even once states began passing stricter abortion laws between the 1820s and 1880s, public sentiment did not follow. Few abortion providers were convicted under the new laws, indicating that most Americans didn’t see abortion as a crime.

Anglo-American common law initially guided the U.S. on abortion. Under common law, abortion was only punishable after “quickening,” defined as the moment the mother first felt fetal movement — typically between 16 to 22 weeks of gestation.

Alito contends, however, that pre-quickened abortions were always strongly condemned, as shown by the wave of statutes that states passed in the 19th century criminalizing abortion for the entire pregnancy. Yet, over a third of the states actually retained the imprint of quickening in these laws, assigning a distinctly lesser penalty for abortions that took place before quickening.

Even more importantly, there is scant evidence of public concern about fetal “personhood” or moral opprobrium prompting those new state laws in the 19th century, as Alito claims in Dobbs. In fact, there appears to have been no public pressure at all for tougher laws before 1845. All the statutes passed before 1845 were added during routine revisions of state criminal codes, probably meaning that most were enacted without actual debate.