OK, so you’re asking: how does one work abortion into the Second Amendment? Professor Mary Anne Franks has a piece in the Boston Globe in which she rewrites both the First and Second Amendments, and she reimagines the Second Amendment to be less about arms and militias and more about bodily autonomy, such as the right to not get shot and the right to an abortion.
https://twitter.com/holeinthehead2/status/1471485645780660226
Franks writes:
The Second Amendment’s idiosyncratic and anachronistic focus on militias and “arms” degrades the concept of self-defense. The right to safeguard one’s life should not be conflated with or reduced to the right to use a weapon, especially a weapon that is so much more likely to inflict injury and death than to avoid it. Far better would be an amendment that guarantees a meaningful right to bodily autonomy and obligates the government to implement reasonable measures to protect public health and safety:
All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.
Putting the government in complete charge of protecting the health and safety of the public — just what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. And we also like the qualifier, “reasonable measures” — and progressives claim the Second Amendment is too vague as it is.
She also rewrites the First Amendment to take into account abuse of free speech and the dignity of all persons:
Recommended
Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.
Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government. The government may not single out any religion for interference or endorsement, nor may it force any person to accept or adhere to any religious belief or practice.
That’s not quite as bad, but it’s bad.
In the Boston Globe, Professor Mary Anne Franks proposes that we rewrite the 1st amendment.
Her proposal is a total nightmare. A conceptual, procedural, and substantive nightmare.
Make anyone who bemoans the 1A spell out their alternative.https://t.co/QSA4fxsKFK pic.twitter.com/zT0Z5bxuyb
— alice (@AliceFromQueens) December 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/LewJamesMD/status/1471503052473389059
so true
— alice (@AliceFromQueens) December 16, 2021
"Subject to responsibility for abuses"
— STANTHECADDY019 (@STANTHECADDY019) December 16, 2021
The first paragraph reads like a campus speech and conduct code. Go figure. It's times like this I'm glad it's hard to actually change the Constitution.
— sometimes right (@seaman_bodine) December 16, 2021
Footage of Supreme Court case on dignity pic.twitter.com/DwYfEN6VDT
— fashionably late capitalism (@redplanning) December 16, 2021
Where’s the land acknowledgment?
— Center Left History Educator (@bkrugbytight) December 16, 2021
Good point.
It is the proposal of a person who does not in fact believe in free speech. Shun her.
— Terry Teachout (@TerryTeachout1) December 16, 2021
You'd think she'd at least acknowledge that the 1A is specifically written to constrain Congress ("shall make no law") and hers inverts it to constrain individuals ("responsibility for abuses"). It isn't so much a re-write, but an entirely different Bill of Rights framework.
— MCG (@MaxClayGibbons) December 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/mashariqK/status/1471511177725239306
https://twitter.com/hectorlecturer/status/1471509018527113216
She wants to give the state the power to decide on a case by case basis when the exercise of various basic freedoms goes too far. She must have had many good experiences with complaining to the manager.
— Enzo Rossi (@enzoreds) December 16, 2021
Yeah, let’s give two political parties at each other’s throats the ability to curtail speech even more. That will end well.
— Tsukkomi (@ljenkins314) December 16, 2021
The Boston globe is a total nightmare for this as well as entirely unrelated reasons
— Circus_picadiliensis (@picadiliensis) December 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/maxbaretta/status/1471502840593977347
We’d like to see as many people worked up about that rewrite of the Second Amendment. Would it at least bar the president from mandating vaccines?
Related:
'Embarrassing': FiveThirtyEight says the Second Amendment didn't protect your right to own a gun until 2008 https://t.co/pL3sUzt5wl
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 30, 2021
Join the conversation as a VIP Member