The state you live in shouldn’t determine your rights.
The 14th Amendment guarantees this principle:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And yet, modern Republican legal arguments prioritize the right of each state to decide the rights of their citizens over federal protections for Americans.
Since 2020, the Supreme Court has held a 6-3 supermajority of Republican-appointed justices, and has ruled in accordance with this “states’ rights” doctrine. Most notably, the Court’s 2022 ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization effectively overturned Roe v. Wade, which, broadly, federalized the right to abortion — handing the power to regulate abortion back to the states.
The majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, justifies the decision not on the morality of abortion itself (despite recognition that “abortion presents a profound moral question”), but on delegating rulings of morality to the states and their citizens. “We should reconsider and overrule Roe and Casey and once again allow each State to regulate abortion as its citizens wish.”
If the Court so strongly feels that states should regulate abortion based on their respective citizens’ opinions, why not further extend that principle to individual counties? Cities? Households? Individuals?
Different states, of course, have different people, environments and industries, and thereby need different laws: There is no reason for Idaho to share fishing regulations with Alaska or for Wyoming to share border policy with Texas. But the nature of pregnancy and abortion does not change state-to-state. A person seeking an abortion is a person seeking an abortion — everywhere. No moral nuance is added by their state of residence.
If the Court believes that the morality of abortion is not to be determined nationally, the only level for it to be determined is personally.
