No rights yet recognized by the Constitution. The Constitution only protects "persons"...and the unborn aren't "persons" under the Constitution. (The Census requires all "persons" to be counted, but the unborn have never been counted. So they aren't persons.) I am in way over my legal head here, but don't both the concepts of unenumerated rights and the state's interests in protecting the weak rest in part on English Common Law precedent? Third trimester fetuses were on that basis found to be inside the boundaries of protectability by the individual states of the U.S. The other side of that coin is the intrusiveness of trying to criminalize abortion before the third trimester.
As Bork so famously said, we do not have a constitutional right to privacy. But neither do we need that right enumerated to have it, since the Constitution is not addressed to us - it is a list of "thou mays" and "thou shallt nots" addressed to the federal government.
"I am in way over my legal head here, but don't both the concepts of unenumerated rights and the state's interests in protecting the weak rest in part on English Common Law precedent?"
I'm way over my legal head here, but I don't see how that matters. I find it hard to believe that English Common Law ever considered rights of the unborn. And even if it did, I don't see how that would be relevant.
We had a period of "four score and seven" (plus) years where the United States Constitution specifically and clearly defined a right of one person to own human "property." NOT "persons."
Every one makes a big deal about the Dred Scot case, but from my reading of it, it is completely as the Constitution was then written. Slaves weren't "persons." They had absolutely no rights. That was certainly immoral...but it WAS The Law. In the United States. (English Common Law be
d@mned.)
It took a war, and 2 constitutional amendments to change that. For abortion, it shouldn't take a war. But it most certainly would take a constitutional amendment to LEGALLY provide *federal* protection to the unborn. (I happen to think that it would also take a Constitutional amendment to LEGALLY provide a "right to choose," also.)
"As Bork so famously said, we do not have a constitutional right to privacy."
I gotta admit, after reading "Slouching Towards Gemorrah" I have basically zero respect for Robert Bork's legal opinions/mind. I thought that, as a book by a legal "scholar," it was absolutely pathetic.
For example, he had almost half a chapter on the Vietnam "War," without once mentioning that it was completely unconstitutional.
And don't get me started on his desires to obliterate the First, Ninth, and Tenth amendments! :-/
"But neither do we need that right enumerated to have it, since the Constitution is not addressed to us - it is a list of "thou mays" and "thou shallt nots" addressed to the federal government."
Well, I guess I no longer have zero respect. Now it's a smidgeon. I completely agree with him, there.