"Dave" wrote

So, Vito, perhaps you could point out to me where in the Constitution I
find the words "privacy" and "abortion."

First, please understand that the Constitution does NOT give us "rights", it
describes the construct of the government and assigns powers to it. It also
forbids the government any power not so delegated. Thus the absence of
"privacy" and "abortion" mean that the government has no authority to
regulate them.

Ever heard of the 9th amendment? It addressed that very issue by stating
that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." So the
absence of these words clearly does NOT mean rights do not exist, as the
lunatic fringe of some churches assert. Just the opposite! See
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/c...n/amendment09/

"Aside from contending that a bill of rights was unnecessary, the
Federalists responded to those opposing ratification of the Constitution
because of the lack of a declaration of fundamental rights by arguing that
inasmuch as it would be impossible to list all rights it would be dangerous
to list some because there would be those who would seize on the absence of
the omitted rights to assert that government was unrestrained as to those.
Madison adverted to this argument in presenting his proposed amendments to
the House of Representatives. ''It has been objected also against a bill of
rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it
would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and
it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled
out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government,
and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments
I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this
system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted
it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth
resolution.'' It is clear from its text and from Madison's statement that
the Amendment states a rule of construction, making clear that a Bill of
Rights might not by implication be taken to increase the powers of the
national government in areas not enumerated. .....
"The Ninth Amendment had been mentioned infrequently in decisions of the
Supreme Court until it became the subject of some exegesis by several of
the Justices in Griswold v. Connecticut. There a statute prohibiting use of
contraceptives was voided as an infringement of the right of marital
privacy. Justice Douglas, writing the opinion of the Court, asserted that
the ''specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by
emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.
Thus, while privacy is nowhere mentioned, it is one of the values served and
protected by the First Amendment, through its protection of associational
rights, and by the Third, the Fourth, and the Fifth Amendments as well. The
Justice recurred to the text of the Ninth Amendment to support the thought
that these penumbral rights are protected by one Amendment or a complex of
Amendments despite the absence of a specific reference. Justice Goldberg,
concurring, devoted several pages to the Amendment.


''The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of
the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights,
protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those
fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional
amendments. . . . To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so
deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be
infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first
eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to
give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this
fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not
mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or
elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment."

Please note that birth control, not abortion, was illegal in most states
until 1965, enforcing the religious idiocy that one should avoid sex except
to produce a baby. That's what the Jerry Falwell camp calls "the good old
days". People reaching puberty after 1965 cannot imagine what it was like
when even in "liberal" California a full 2/3 of brides came pregnant to the
alter and most families had unwanted children. Many refuse to believe
America was ever so stupid.