 · Roe v. Wade and U.S. Constitution excerpts are in italics.
 · Bold is emphasis added
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The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to once again address the issue of abortion in its upcoming fall session. On the Supreme Court docket is a new Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks.
Despite the Roe v. Wade court decision in 1973 legalizing abortion prior to "viability" in a woman's pregnancy, Congress and various state legislatures in the past five decades have enacted 1,300 restrictions on access to pre-viability abortion. Many, but not all, have been challenged or revoked.
The text of the Roe decision is a remarkably well-researched document, with findings and conclusions written in straightforward language.
While agreeing with the original Roe decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lamented after the fact that the 14th Amendment's reference to life, liberty and equal protection formed a shaky foundation upon which the Court laid the validity of its decision.
I agree with Justice Ginsburg. But a simple reading of Roe itself suggests two other Constitutional rights that would form a sturdy three-legged tri-pod for that decision, and which would render moot all those 1,300 legal restrictions.
The second leg of that tripod is found in the first half of the first sentence in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; "1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted Dec. 15, 1791.
The third tripod leg is found in the 13th Amendment:
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted Dec. 6, 1865
In Roe, the Justices went to great lengths researching the historical, religious and cultural history of abortion across the ages, and came up with these findings:
Note 92: It should be sufficient to note briefly the wide divergence of thinking on this most sensitive and difficult question. There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth. This was the belief of the Stoics. It appears to be the predominant, though not the unanimous, attitude of the Jewish faith. It may be taken to represent also the position of a large segment of the Protestant community, insofar as that can be ascertained; organized groups that have taken a formal position on the abortion issue have generally regarded abortion as a matter for the conscience of the individual and her family.
Note 40: It is undisputed that at common law, abortion performed before 'quickening'--the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy--was not an indictable offense... There was agreement, however, that prior to this point the fetus was to be regarded as part of the mother, and its destruction, therefore, was not homicide.
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