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The Pros And Cons Of Abortion

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Separation of Powers In the 45th Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote, “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.” In 1973, the Roe v. Wade ruling legalized abortion based on the constitutional right to privacy. This ruling declared abortion a right protected by the federal government as dictated by the Supremacy clause in Article VI of the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court's assertion of unlimited access to abortion as a federal concern violates states’ rights as it was wrongfully justified. Evidence offered by the fourteenth amendment, various court cases pertaining to abortion, and several philosophical arguments from renowned professors support the shift of the decision from federal to state power. Medical necessity is the only exception in which an individual should be granted unrestricted access to abortion. The fourteenth amendment of the constitution does not constitute the right of the federal government to determine laws regarding abortion. The fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, was invoked to protect freed slaves from persecution and unlawful imprisonment, and to ensure they enjoyed equality under the law. The amendment contains no reference to the act of abortion, rather, it ensures that no individual be denied liberty without due process of law. The court declared abortion a federal right by interpreting the fourteenth amendment. Supreme Court Justices interpreted liberty to include a “right to privacy”. The constitution contains no such clause referring to this text, either. Therefore, the right to privacy includes the right to an abortion because childbearing is a private matter:

“Writing for the justices, Justice Harry Blackmun acknowledged that while ‘the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy,’ previous decisions found ‘a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy.’ This guarantee of privacy, Blackmun added, is grounded in several amendments within the Bill of Rights and in the fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of liberty, which taken together create zones of privacy in areas of society such as marriage,

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