24 June 2022
Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to regulate abortion (or other homicides), or larceny, or education, nor are such legislative prerogatives denied to the States.
By pitting the rights of mothers and their pre-born children to be secure in their persons, the Fourth Amendment cancels itself out on this question. Depriving a mother of her liberty without due process versus depriving the pre-born of life without due process defuses the Fifth Amendment defense. And the Ninth‘s protection of unspecified rights is too weak when attempting to counter the actual deprivation of life that every abortion necessarily entails.
addendum 220709 — upon reflection, it occurs to me that the Fifth also supports Dobbs, if life trumps liberty.
addendum 220904 — whereas the Third supports Roe, though tenuously, in its (admittedly more specific) prohibition of involuntary quartering and sheltering. I think many Rothbardians embrace this in spirit through their “Trespass Doctrine.” (I am rather less genteel than they and suggest instead that the rights of the host supersede the interests of the parasite.)