As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Also, you can find the Roe v. Wade decision here.

Paragraph 3 of 5

Sentence 4 of 6

This feels like it’s covering the same ground as previous sentences, but it probably isn’t, which can just serve as a reminder to me about how little I really know about legal theory. Here’s the sentence:

“And a third path was that the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments played no role and that the right was simply a component of the ‘liberty’ protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

I’ve probably made a mistake by not dealing directly with the text of the Constitution as I go through this. I’ll try to start fixing that now. Here is Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

“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.”

This seems to be pretty straightforward—that citizens of the United States have certain rights and no state government can interfere with those rights. Applied to the sentence from Dobbs above, it seems to imply that no state may deprive a US citizen of liberty, and that includes the right to abortion. I know I’m missing pieces to this. I’ll reiterate: this project is as much for my education and mental health as it is a presentation of information to the public. I don’t mean to teach people anything so much as I intend to learn in public.

Anyway, the relevant quote from page 143 of Roe seems to be this one:

“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

So that lines up. This claim is true:

• “And a third path was that the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments played no role and that the right was simply a component of the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”