
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said on Tuesday that she considers the question of abortion rights to be "settled law" and that there is a constitutional right to privacy. See here. Here is where we enter the murky world of judicial fabrication. In its infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court said that, "The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy...This right of privacy [which the Court said is implied, my note] whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty..or..in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." (For full text of Roe v. Wade go here). The paragraph cited may be found on page 5.
Now astute readers will note how the Court stated clearly that there is no explicit mention of "any right to privacy." Nevertheless, the Court insisted that there is an implied right to privacy, which they couldn't locate with any certainty - unsure whether it may be found in the Ninth or Fourteenth Amendment - and that this implied and hard-to-locate "right to privacy" was nevertheless "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" - in other words, whether or not to have her child murdered.
If that's what Sonia Sotomayor calls "settled law," God help her. And us.
Related reading here.