Legislative Update: What Happens If Roe Goes?

The pro-life movement has been working, praying, and waiting impatiently for the day Roe v. Wade would be relegated to the trash heap of history. On Jan. 22, 1973, seven of nine Supreme Court Justices created a brand new constitutional right known as a “woman’s right to privacy.” This mysterious right that is not mentioned anywhere in the wording of the Constitution apparently can be found in the “penumbras” (zones created in the spaces where certain amendments overlap) and therefore carry the same weight as the actual words on the page.

The legal groundwork for this unique and bizarre interpretation of the meaning of words based on shared space between amendments began in 1965 when the Supreme Court considered Griswold v. Connecticut. Justice William O. Douglas coined the phrase — and the Supreme Court officially left a world where words mean things based solely on their understood definitions and took into consideration the cumulative effect of the overlapping spaces surrounding those words. There is a Greek word for that … hogwashamai.

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