overbroadly infringing [the] plaintiff's ninth and fourteenth amendment rights." (Justice Blackmun) This excerpt from Justice Blackmun's address cites the ninth amendment and the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. "Amendment IX. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The due process clause of amendment XIV: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The use of these amendments in the ruling of the court says that abortion is a "fundamental" right which cannot be denied by the state without due process of the law. And that is what it legally became with the decision of the Court in Roe v. Wade. But the historical traditions of the American people do not support the view that the right to terminate one's pregnancy is "fundamental." The common law which we inherited from England made abortion after "quickening" (the moment a woman feels her child in her womb) an offense. From Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist's essay on the Court's ruling: "At the time of the adoption of the fourteenth Amendment, statutory prohibitions or restrictions on abortion were commonplace; in 1868, at least 28 of the then-37 States and 8 Territories had statutes banning or limiting abortion. By the turn of the century virtually every State had a law prohibiting or restricting abortion on its books. By the middle of the present century, a liberalization trend had set in. But 21 of the restrictive abortion laws in ef...
