Why There Are No Women in the Constitution

[Ocelot II]

There is little mention of abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. This seems to be a surprise to Samuel Alito.

Within a matter of months, women in about half of the United States may be breaking the law if they decide to end a pregnancy. This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk. There is nothing in that document about women at all. Most consequentially, there is nothing in that document—or in the circumstances under which it was written—that suggests its authors imagined women as part of the political community embraced by the phrase “We the People.” There were no women among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were no women among the hundreds of people who participated in ratifying conventions in the states. There were no women judges. There were no women legislators. At the time, women could neither hold office nor run for office, and, except in New Jersey, and then only fleetingly, women could not vote. Legally, most women did not exist as persons.

.... Alito, shocked—shocked—to discover so little in the law books of the eighteen-sixties guaranteeing a right to abortion, has missed the point: hardly anything in the law books of the eighteen-sixties guaranteed women anything. Because, usually, they still weren’t persons. Nor, for that matter, were fetuses.

I don’t happen to think Roe was well argued. I agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s early analysis—that grounding the right in equality rather than privacy might have been a sounder approach. I’m not even a hard-liner on the question of abortion; I find it morally thorny. But, when Samuel Alito says that people who believe abortion is a constitutional right “have no persuasive answer to this historical evidence,” he displays nothing so much as the limits of his own evidence. “The page of history teems with woman’s wrongs,” as the nineteenth-century abolitionist Sarah Grimké once put it. It does not teem with women’s rights. To use a history of discrimination to deny people their constitutional rights is a perversion of logic and a betrayal of justice. Would the Court decide civil-rights cases regarding race by looking exclusively to laws and statutes written before emancipation?

At the close of the opinion, Alito congratulates both himself and the Court that, with this ruling, they are enfranchising women. “Our decision . . . allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office,” he writes. “Women are not without electoral or political power.” True, women are no longer without electoral power. But they were without it for almost the entirety of the history on which Alito grounds his analysis of the Constitution and its provisions. You don’t need a leaked document to learn that.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-there-are-no-women-in-the-constitution?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=spotlight-nl&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=thematic_spotlight_050422_1&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67c6a3f92a41245df6222&cndid=48170372&hasha=91c3898f05b26925073ecf4df0330823&hashb=5451fc9c0bee19ee367cf9496f4bf827ec373bc1&hashc=6584e26ff1bf32b3b03a4c6b427c194e004322ad3ee59055bc2a2e2590a458a1&esrc=FYL_SEG_APR18&sourcecode=thematic_spotlight&utm_term=Thematic_Spotlight

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Sam needs to find the right to see a psychiatrist in the Constitution and then go see one!

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Ocelot.

[Casady1]

3. Originalism

is horseshit. It has to be the most flawed theory of all time.

[WestMichRad]

9. Originalism as a "legal theory" is...

… simply a disguise for the radical right wingers’ objective of returning our society to one where white men have all the power. They simply want to undo 150+ years of societal progress, and it is the mechanism by which they strive to achieve it.

[IronLionZion]

4. There weren't many "Alitos" in America back then either

Conservatives are so maliciously stupid it's breathtaking.

[obamanut2012]

5. Abortion was legal back then, too

And, if he goes by the Bible, abortion is also mentioned in the Bible, and they didn't believe a fetus was a person.

[Warpy]

6. The Mohawks, especially, warned them about not including

"the grandmother lodge" in the decision making process in this country.

Stupid men didn't listen. Women had to grab our rights as citizens with our own bleeding hands.

If stupid men think we're just going to give any of those rights up, they're even stupider than the ones who didn't listen 243 years ago.

[wnylib]

13. I don't recall the man's name, but

I read that when a Cherokee man learned that women had no part in governmental decisions among White settlers, he was surprised and said, "How is this possible? Are not men born of women?"

[Warpy]

19. Ha! Sheela na Gig reminded men in the Middle Ages of that

They've found her in western European cathedrals and castles. If you don't know what she is, look her up, the photo would likely get me banned from DU.

Oh, she was usually tucked away in a dark corner, but she was there. Silly men thought she was a birthing talisman. Women always knew better.

I'd like to bring her back to all the halls of government, academia, and business. I want her right out front and not coyly smiling, like the mannerly interpretations I've seen in jewelry. I want her laughing out loud, like she is in a few photos I've seen.

[love_katz]

7. The founders did not follow the full advice of the Irriquois confederacy.

Check out talks by Orrin Lyons on YouTube. He is the spokesperson for the American Indian nation that the founders got most of their ideas from, for how to organize and run our government. He says his people asked the founders, " where are your women? Why are there no women in your government?". Listen to as many of his talks as you can. They are very eye opening. Our problem is that the founders who wrote the original documents were wealthy white men who owned both slaves and lots of land. They specifically left out women and people of color because of the threat to their special privileges if they acknowledged other people as their equals. As Mr. Lyons points out, that was a huge mistake. As Elie Mistal puts it, in his book, Let Me Rebut That with This: A Black Guy's Guide to The Constitution, " why should we allow these old rich white guy slave owners to dictate to people in 2022? The Constitution is not holy writ. He makes a great case for us to throw it out altogether and rewrite a new one, this time with everyone represented. I know that the political climate is too dangerous right now, to do that. But as h Mr. Mistal points out, it was meant to be a living document capable of adapting to new needs, not some dead thing, carved in stone. In edit: correcting a couple of errors: Oren Lyons, not Orrin. He is the faithkeeper for the Onondaga Nation. Elie Mystal, not Mistake. His bike is Let Me Retort: A Black Guys Guide to the Constitution.

[LiberalArkie]

8. Everyone knows there were no women in United States until many years later.

[SergeStorms]

14. Let me get that for you.

If you don't include the emoji lately, there's always someone who will take you literally.
Really.

[erronis]

17. Your comment is spot on. "Everyone knows" is usually the start of a con.

Just like "Lots of people are saying".

And I agree with SergeStorm that "some people" may not get the sarcasm. But few of those people inhabit DU except to irritate us.

[Martin Eden]

10. K&R for the glaring fault in Alito's opinion

Is he too stupid to realize it, or just willfully blind?

[Lonestarblue]

11. He is arrogant and willfully blind.

What an incredibly stupid argument.

[Claire Oh Nette]

12. In other words...

Alito is a republican.

Arrogant and incredibly, willfully stupid.

[wnylib]

15. In 1870, voting rights were extended to all

male citizens, but Blacks still have to fight voter suppression. In 1920, 2 years before my mother was born, women got the right to vote. In 1922, when my mother was 2 years old, citizenship was extended to Native Americans, making them eligible to vote.

[Red Pest]

16. All this is why the ERA needed to be and still needs to be passed

It is also why it has no chance of being reintroduced and passing the Senate or getting three quarters of the states to ratify.

[erronis]

18. Full article appears to be available without all of the tracking info. URL below.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-there-are-no-women-in-the-constitution

While I like to give the media the credit they actually deserve, I don't think they need to harvest so much personal tracking info every time a pasted link is clicked.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

20. Alito is an ass