23 July—A ten-year-old Ohio rape victim had to be driven to Indiana to have an abortion. A ten-year-old pregnant!? Evidently, these days some white girls reach puberty as young as eight, black and Hispanic girls as young as seven-and-a-half. In 1950, the average age was 13. It was 10½ by 2010.

But the Ohio assholes whose inhumane, indefensible abortion prohibition made the poor little girl’s trip to Indiana necessary and the Indiana dickheads who want to amend their state’s law to make it as inhumane and reprehensible as Ohio’s certainly deserve to have their gonads removed forcibly and without anesthesia—as is commonly and inhumanely done with male livestock.

The Supreme Court super-majority that arbitrarily overturned Roe v. Wade rationalized their regressive, repressive ruling largely on the premise that abortion is not addressed by—enumerated in, as they say—the Constitution. Good point. Then again, neither is the right to privacy, as that nitwit Clarence Thomas (whose virago wife seems to have disappeared from the headlines of late) reminded us.

On the other hand, the Ninth Amendment clearly states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

So the question is, what are the “others retained by the people,” the so-called unenumerated rights? Through the years, SCOTUS has found that unenumerated rights have included the rights to travel, to vote, to keep personal matters private, and to make decisions about one’s own health or body.

But last month, SCOTUS’s arrogantly uncompromising anti-abortionists backtracked to the Dark Ages and in essence abrogated the rights to privacy and making decisions about our own bodies. I can see them doing the same to the right to travel—for abortions, say—and to vote. No kidding.

It may be mere coincidence that the six justices who voted to kill Roe are Catholics. Neil Gorsuch was raised a Catholic but told the confirmation hearing, “I attend an Episcopal church in Boulder with my family.” He never claimed to be a Protestant. And once a Catholic—not that there’s any substantive difference anyway.

Two Jews and a Catholic voted to keep Roe in place. (Six Protestants and a Catholic had put Roe in place in 1973, with two Protestants dissenting. SCOTUS was Jewless in 1973, as it’s been most of its life.)

Critics of the Supremes who killed Roe like to say the conservative justices lied when they assured the confirmation committees that they respected stare decisis, the principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent. Not at all. Respecting is not necessarily adhering to. It’s pretty safe to say that all potential and practicing lawyers and judges “respect” stare decisis. Yet it’s entirely possible to respect while disagreeing, ignoring, and even reversing.

Getting back to abortion, then, just as the Constitution doesn’t enumerate the right to privacy, among others we tend to take for granted, it doesn’t address childbirth or abortion. Nor does it even tread near the question of when life or so-called personhood begins . . .