ArtiFact #29: Abortion, Roe v. Wade, & The Constitution | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider

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Roe v. Wade was overturned June 2022 by way of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a decision that was decades in the making, yet little prepared-for. At Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing, she insisted that abortion is best viewed under the Equal Protection Clause rather than that of strict privacy, while in other contexts called Roe v. Wade a poorly argued decision bound to wither away. Despite this, little was done to formally ensure abortion rights.

In this video, Dan Schneider and Alex Sheremet discuss how Roe v. Wade was argued, what could have been added/subtracted, and analyze abortion rights from a holistic and constitutional lens. Dan Schneider also goes into detail about his experience with abortion prior to its legality and easy access, describing illicit medical procedures, medical harms, doctor/patient rape, and other forms of abuse which were rampant in the pre-Roe world.
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Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; why Alex believes Roe v. Wade helped in its own undoing

3:43 – Dan goes through the constitutional amendments which support abortion rights: the First Amendment: 1) establishment of religion clause; 2) genetic self-expression

8:41 – Alex: those against abortion *also* don’t seem to believe that a fetus is a person; why the total lack of desire for abortion-is-murder law enforcement?; infantilizing laws

11:55 why a fetus is “a human tissue” vs. “a human being”; why we might grant more “life” to praying mantises

13:28 – Amendment 4: the coming wave of “unreasonable searches and seizures” due to abortion restrictions; how Amendment 4 grounds “the body” in a right to bodily autonomy

18:14 – how the 9th Amendment guts originalism; denying unenumerated rights is radical right-wing judicial activism; 10th Amendment & all rights “to the people” – the individual is supreme

25:54 – Alex: Amendment 13 prohibits abusive limitations on one’s body; how religious arguments about “the objectification of women” paper over their own desire to objectify women by even worse means: sexual-biological demands, a demand to “perform” by way of the body

29:50 – Amendment 14: how the Due Process Clause & Equal Protection Clause protect abortion

32:20 – Alex: intuitive weaknesses in the privacy argument; Roe v. Wade didn’t make use of the best pro-abortion arguments, which the 14th Amendment also provides; Dan on Dartmouth College v. Woodward; Alex on Judith Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” providing an excellent framework for abortion rights; Dan on the Supreme Court

42:50 – kooky Great Replacement comment under our Christopher Langan video; mass dumbing down of culture & abortion politics

44:342 – uh-oh……………

49:00 – failures of the Democratic Party; *juicy* backtalk on Clarence Thomas; Democratic Party hypocrisy on abortion

01:02:00 – abortion & the Bible; do people become more right-wing as they age?

01:12:13 – Dan Schneider describes 1960/70s prostitution, illegal abortions during restricted access in New York; confronting anti-abortion protesters in the 1980s

01:35:02 – responding to Leah Libresco Sargeant’s New York Times article on classic abortion vs. ectopic pregnancy

Tags: #abortion, #roevwade, #constitution