> Weird because the courts striking down laws as unconstitutional is literally their job description.
"Unconstitutional" is never as straightforwardly defined as one would like. For example, protesting against the draft was ruled by the Holmes court as unprotected speech. Today, you can burn a flag with impunity.
> Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for constitutional protection of abortion.
While I'm supportive of the, for lack of a better term, "spirit" of Roe vs Wade, it was never premised on equal protection under the law. After all, men don't have an acknowledged right to avoid parenthood. The opinion itself only justifies abortion on a limited right to privacy and explicitly rejects the "my body, my choice" justification that it is mythologized to have:
"The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S.Ct. 358, 49 L.Ed. 643 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 47 S.Ct. 584, 71 L.Ed. 1000 (1927) (sterilization)."
> There are very few life threatening things that the law compels men to do.
Selective service and compelled paternity.
> Yet the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against her will?
The law can compel a man to support a child even if he man is not the biological father. It can compel one be vaccinated against his/her will. It can also compel sterilization if it determines that one is mentally defective.
Compelled paternity isn’t a matter of bodily autonomy
Child support isn’t a matter of bodily autonomy.
Both of those apply to both men and women.
The law can theoretically compel everyone to be vaccinated, not just men.
That’s equal protection under the law. It’s also only available in public health crises - not routine.
Again sterilization has been applied to men and women.
Selective service is maybe the only analog to forced birth, and even that has carve outs for religious and moral beliefs.
>Compelled paternity isn’t a matter of bodily autonomy
>Child support isn't a matter of bodily autonomy
A man can be ordered by a court to obtain a job to pay for the child or risk being thrown in prison for refusing to comply. Even terminating parental rights does not remove him from the obligation of paying child support. There has never been a case of compelled maternity (compulsion to mother a child) as every state, even the ones that will now be able to criminalize abortions, allow a mother to surrender her child within a period of at least 72 hours.
> The law can theoretically compel everyone to be vaccinated, not just men. That’s equal protection under the law. It’s also only available in public health crises - not routine.
Equal violation is not equal protection. Otherwise slavery would be OK as long as you could find a persuasive or compelling enough interest for it and found that it could be equally applied to men and women. That's not how rights work. They're inalienable. You either have them or you don't.
> Again sterilization has been applied to men and women.
Same as above.
> Selective service is maybe the only analog to forced birth, and even that has carve outs for religious and moral beliefs.
Carveouts and concessions only make the violation of a right palatable, not reasonable or justifiable. Several states that oppose abortions have carveouts for incest, rape, and/or threats to the health of the mother. In spite of these carveouts, I reject that states or even the federal government should have a say on what one does with one's body in the first place with "special" cases being negotiated after the fact.
Well then we mostly agree. I’ve just been trying to draw consistent lines through an inconsistent system. I believe the system should be consistent, and I believe that there is no consistent system that men could live with that would also include banned abortion.
Then you share my own interest. I would certainly enjoy a constitution that was consistently interpreted to acknowledge and protect negative rights from first principles. But anyone who's read case law will find the actual practice of law to be more disappointing.
"Unconstitutional" is never as straightforwardly defined as one would like. For example, protesting against the draft was ruled by the Holmes court as unprotected speech. Today, you can burn a flag with impunity.
> Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for constitutional protection of abortion.
While I'm supportive of the, for lack of a better term, "spirit" of Roe vs Wade, it was never premised on equal protection under the law. After all, men don't have an acknowledged right to avoid parenthood. The opinion itself only justifies abortion on a limited right to privacy and explicitly rejects the "my body, my choice" justification that it is mythologized to have:
"The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S.Ct. 358, 49 L.Ed. 643 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 47 S.Ct. 584, 71 L.Ed. 1000 (1927) (sterilization)."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113
> There are very few life threatening things that the law compels men to do.
Selective service and compelled paternity.
> Yet the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against her will?
The law can compel a man to support a child even if he man is not the biological father. It can compel one be vaccinated against his/her will. It can also compel sterilization if it determines that one is mentally defective.