“During slavery black people's bodies were controlled by others and their reproductive autonomy was nonexistent,” writes the nyuniversity law professor. Challenging Roe v Wade is “without regard for the country’s post-Civil War history”, she argues
HIS MONTH, America’s Supreme Court is widely expected to reverse Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision holding that women have a constitutional right to terminate an early pregnancy. A leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, a case in which Roe is directly challenged, has generated understandable concern over the human and social effects of such a ruling.
The right of reproductive choice is not revealed by a literal reading of the constitution in its original form. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to find any right of personal or family freedom guaranteed by the terms of the original constitution. Importantly, this is explained in part by the founders’ choice to protect slavery: they could not have protected personal and familial freedoms while preserving the rights of some to ownership of the lives and labour of others.
In 1873 the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Slaughterhouse Cases interpreted the privileges and immunities of citizenship in an odd and much criticised way. Essentially it determined that the relevant clause in the 14th amendment referred only to unique attributes of national citizenship , but not to the full range of citizenship rights.
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