Are There Rights After Dobbs?

I am not sure who said the following, but I do know that Martin Luther King Jr. said things that were similar sounding. What was said? That our ends do not exceed our means. That means that our ends cannot be any better than the means we used to accomplish the ends.

What did MLK say that sounded similar? He said the following:

in the long run of history, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends  (click here for the source)

  AND

Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek (click here for the source)

The idea of using the proper means to reach desired ends applies to the SCOTUS decision on the Dobbs case.  But it doesn't apply because those looking to overturn Roe v. Wade used immoral means. It applies because those seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade used the wrong means. In the SCOTUS decision, the conservative judges, who were also looking to overturn Roe v. Wade, denied a woman's right to abortion because they both denied the right to privacy and failed to find access to abortion to be an important part of American history. The latter finding was pertinent because the conservative judges were originalists who take into account the intention of the writers of The Constitution as well as what is rooted in American History as the basis for interpreting that document.

There are problems with taking such an approach. One problem is that the writers of the The Constitution may not have been aware of everything that could be logically implied by the concepts in that document nor could they be aware of what future issues would need to be addressed. That lack of awareness would make The Constitution an inflexible piece of law that must be amended each time an unforeseen situation by our founding fathers becomes a legal issue. 

Another problem is the above approach is that because of what is rooted in American History should make us shy to use that history as a basis for deciding what recognized as a right by The Constitution. After all, though America wasn't founded on slavery, it was founded on white supremacy, which made slavery a mainstay in America from its beginning to the mid 1860s, and the subjugation of women. And here we should note that white supremacy, though having been significantly reduced in more recent times,  is still significantly with us today. Thus we could say that white supremacy is well rooted in American History. Also, throughout most of American history, women have been made to play subservient to and dependent on roles to men. Thus, the treatment of women as being inferior and 2nd class citizens to men is also well rooted in American History. 

Finally, though America has never been a Christian country, almost all of its history has been played out during a time of Christendom in the West. And in Christendom, Christianity played a very prominent role in determining the laws of the state and the values accepted by society. Such is a contradiction with the Establishment Clause in the 1st Amendment because governments acted as if Christianity was being favored evidenced by the laws passed by those governments. And as a result, some groups, such as the LGBT community were marginalized because of that preference for Christianity. In addition, Blue Laws basically punished non-Christian businesses by favoring Christianity's Sabbath. And where many Christians interpreted the Bible as saying that whites were superior to blacks, blacks were also marginalized. From the beginning of the European discovery of America, Native Americans were treated as inferior and less deserving of their own land that white settlers were deserving of Native American land.

The above lists some of the problem areas with the grounds for the SCOTUS decision in the Dobbs case. So what does that have to do with how the ends were accomplished by the recent SCOTUS decision? As Justice Clarence Thomas stated, other SCOTUS court cases that, based on the right of privacy, could be reversed including the right to use contraceptives, the right to engage in the preferred kind of sexual intimacy by consenting adults, and the right to same-sex marriage. Those rights could be reversed by states that passed laws to prohibit what is currently protected by SCOTUS decisions in previous court cases. A new era of some degree of significant Christian rule over society could begin because of how Christianity is rooted in America's History.

But something else is amiss. The rights of the unborn are not guaranteed. Rather, the Dobbs case simply puts the issue of abortion in the hands of the states and what their elected leaders prefer. And in the states where Christians have the biggest say in determining those leaders, what Jefferson warned us against in his 1801 Inaugural Speech goes unheeded. For though he talked about how law is determined by majority opinion, he warned us that we must be careful not to let majority rule oppress minority groups. What the Dobbs case opens the door for is the Christian oppression of minority groups by its influence onf the state. 

As for the unborn, its status of being human life is not being used to secure its rights to life. In fact, the status of an unborn as being human life is currently being sidelined in the abortion debate. What takes the leading roles on the stage of the abortion debate are the dictates of religiously conservative Christianity vs the demand for what is still perceived to be a Constitutional Right of women. 

The prohibition of elective abortions should only be based on the human status of the unborn. Any other grounds used to prohibit abortion not only distracts us from the two conflicting and most basic sides of the abortion  issue, but, as hinted at above, will only produce ends that will hurt America more than it helps America.