Supreme court cases - Essay Example

Dissent opinions among the judges suggest potential existence of flaws and that the judgment could be wrong. This paper reviews the Supreme Court decision on the case of Roe v. Wade with the opinion that the court erred in its decision. The case involved decision on legality of abortion based Texas laws that prohibited abortion. The court ruled against state law and explained that a woman has a right to abortion. The Supreme Court further stated that this right was constitutional, derived from two amendments of the United States’ constitution.

“The Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments,” the court explained, provide for the right to “personal privacy,” and grants a woman the sole right to make decisions on reproductive issues (United States Confederation of Catholic Bishops 1). The court further explained that the fetus lacks personality and therefore does not have a right to life, an argument to the effect that abortion does not amount to any element of murder. The court however established a strategy for determining the rights of a woman and rights of the state regarding abortion in which the state has no right over abortion in the first three months of pregnancy.

The decision granted the state limited right to protecting the mother’s rights in the second trimester and right in the fetus’ life in the last three months of pregnancy (Gerber 181). . Interpreting the Tenth amendment together with the Ninth amendment grants states the power to make laws on abortion. The Ninth amendment is clear that recognized rights in the constitution shall not be interpreted to impair another right but the Texas law on abortion was not specifically based on a right. Even though the law prohibited abortion unless the mother’s life was in danger, secondary rights such as rights of the fetus were not primary to the law.

This means that the Ninth amendment that limits interpretations of some rights to disadvantage others should have not been applied against the abortion law and abortion laws, having not been provided for by the constitution, should fall within jurisdiction of states (Rechtschaffen and Markell 41). Provisions of the Fourteenth amendment also appear ambiguous to have warranted the Supreme Court’s decision to legalized abortion. While the amendment provides that states should not enact laws that infringe people’s rights, the amendment fails to recognize limits of people’s rights and unless interpreted will other laws, is repugnant to natural justice and other people’s rights.

If, for example, that a person’s right is a threat to other people then care must be taken to limit such a right. While this argument does not rely on possible rights of the fetus, it notes that independent reliance on the Fourteenth amendment’s provision for supremacy of constitutional rights was not the right basis. The Texas abortion law would fall under cases of misused Fourteenth amendment rights towards injustice (Miller and Jentz 9). The court’s decision is also contradictory because it reprimanded the Texas’ abortion law for infringing women’s rights but at