Alan Dershowitz: No Right to Abortion in Constitution

Alan Dershowitz, one of America’s most well-known Constitutional scholars, told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that there is no right to an abortion in the Constitution. The self-professed liberal told Kudlow:

I can’t find anything in the Constitution that says you prefer the life of the mother, or the convenience of the mother if it’s an abortion by choice, over the potential life of the fetus. Look, I think women if they’re required to not have abortions could die and could — so I favor a woman’s right to choose. But I can’t find it in the Constitution. And everything I favor I don’t think is necessarily constitutionally based.

Calvin Freiburger of LiveActionNews observed, however, that, despite Dershowitz’ keen objectivity, he is “tragically wrong” in that the fetus’ life is actual, not potential, and pro-life principles do not intend for women to continue truly life-threatening pregnancies.

Freiburger also notes that Dershowitz previously made the point that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in 2001:

Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore “represent opposite sides of the same currency of judicial activism in areas more appropriately left to the political processes… Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy)… [C]lear governing constitutional principles … are not present in either case.”

From Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (New York: Oxford) 2001, p. 194.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has also been critical of the high court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, describing it as an example of judicial activism and a decision made by “unelected old men.”