In this week's "It's Debatable" segment, Rick Rosen and Charles Moster debate whether the Supreme Court should have overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. Rosen is the Glenn D. West Endowed Research Professor of Law at the Texas Tech University School of Law and a retired U.S. Army colonel. Moster is founder of the Moster Law Firm based in Lubbock with seven offices including Austin, Dallas, and Houston.
ROSEN 1
Decided in 1973, Roe v. Wade held that women have a limited constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies. Over the next five decades, it became the Supreme Court’s most contentious case. Roe’s proponents saw the decision as ensuring the right of women to make fundamental decisions about their lives and bodies free from government interference, thereby enabling them to participate fully and equally in society. Roe’s opponents saw the decision as stripping “from the prenatal child the right to continue to live and grow, safe and free from intentional harm.” It denied “unborn children” the right to life. I do not doubt the sincerity or good intentions of those espousing either view or even the validity of their arguments. Nevertheless, the Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Home Healtherred in overruling Roe’s underlying holding.
I was never enamored with the Roe decision. The Court’s doctrinal basis for a right to abortion is essentially “whatever” — a one-sentence reference to two constitutional provisions seemingly having nothing to do with abortion. In 1992, the...
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