Supreme Court and Abortion

It seems to me that Harvard Law School professor McDowell is guilty of the same obfuscation he ascribes to those on both sides of the abortion issue. Of course the Supreme Court will not justify any decision affecting abortion rights on the individual justice’s perceived morality of abortion. And, in my view, neither will the court’s decisions derive from constitutional “principles of . . . federalism and separation of powers” as McDowell asserts.

It seems clear to me that any right a woman has to implement her own private decision regarding abortion comes directly from our Constitution. The Bill of Rights gives every individual freedom of choice as long as the actions do not infringe on the rights of others. And there’s the rub. All of us, including Supreme Court justices, have our own agenda when it comes to deciding whether or when an embryo has its own constitutionally protected rights. If you want to call that a moral decision, so be it. But neither judges nor law school professors are doing our society any good by avoiding the real issue.

SIMON BARNHART, Santa Barbara