[Sherman Logan]

The US Constitution, at least till the passage of the 14th amendment, and arguably thereafter, applies to federal law only. It was not (at least originally) intended to provide much restriction on state laws that did not affect interstate concerns.

I would agree that a federal law of this type would be unconstitutional, but this is a TX state law. It violates no specific provision of the US constitution. I have no knowledge of the TX constitution.

BTW, using your interpretation the justices wouldn’t have had to find “penumbras and emanations” to decide the Constitution provides a right to abortion. They would have just had to state such a right was one of the unwritten unalienable rights protected by the Constitution.

Do you really want the courts given this additional method for finding whatever they want in the Constitution? Why not “rights” to health care, a living wage, shelter, food, cable TV, etc.?

[aruanan]

This is true about state law. And states should be the preeminent lawmaking entities. Look what's happened since it's gone the other way.

If the judges in Roe v Wade had done this, it would have been a less tortured way to their end; however, the judges could just as easily have said that under the Constitution abortion, if it could ever be considered a right, must be, since it was not one of the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights, among those rights reserved to the states and to the people and, therefore, was one properly left to the regulation of the individual states. That would have been the most constitutional way of dealing with it--if they had really been interested in the Constitution.