2 weeks Ago By Rob Port
MINOT — Last week, district court Judge Bruce Romanick issued a ruling striking down North Dakota's very restrictive abortion law. His was a two-pronged argument. He ruled that the law was unconstitutionally vague and that there is a right to an abortion in the North Dakota Constitution.
I'll leave the former argument to the legal scholars, but the latter is ridiculous — an excessive exercise of judicial authority born of a judge's desire for a specific outcome rather than any plain reading of North Dakota's laws. ADVERTISEMENT There is no right to an abortion in our state constitution, nor did any author of the language in that document ever intend there to be one. Romanick cites language in the state constitution guaranteeing life, liberty and happiness as justifying his argument, but that's an absurd conclusion, and I'd ask you readers to set aside your feelings on the question of abortion to see it.
Romanick argues that "pregnant women have a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability exists under the enumerated and unenumerated interests protected by the North Dakota Constitution for all North Dakota citizens including women — specifically, but not necessarily limited to, the interests in life, liberty, safety, and happiness enumerated in article I, section 1 of the North Dakota Constitution." Currently, it is illegal, under North Dakota law, for you to sell your kidney to the highest bidder. Romanick's opinion, applied to that circumstance, holds that we would have a right to do so.
My body, my life, my choice, right? I'm not sure even noise ordinances could withstand scrutiny under Romanick's ridiculous standard. If blasting Ozzy Osbourne in the wee hours of the morning makes you happy, what right does the government have to tread on your liberty? Romanick's argument isn't coherent, but I'm not sure it was intended to be. It seems like so much happy talk justifying his decision to manufacture a law that the people of North Dakota haven't approved.
The proponents of legal access to abortion cheered Romanick's decision, but they shouldn't have. I had hoped they'd learned by now the lessons of the now-defunct Roe v. Wade decision, which is that reliance on the fickle opinions of the court is a fool's errand.
Not just because the courts can take as quickly as they give, as the Dobbs decision overturning Roe showed us, but because imposing sweeping, controversial new abortion policy on the public through judicial fiat is a good way to ensure that this issue is never really settled. I wish our pro-choice friends would stop with the lawyering and instead turn their attention toward building a political consensus around their preferred policies. Back legislation in Bismarck.
Sponsor a ballot measure. Persuade people. Build a consensus.
ADVERTISEMENT That's how law should be made in our society; not through the tortured legal interpretations of grandstanding and ideological judges, but by winning over a majority to your side of the argument. Some would say that abortion rights are too important to be subject to this process, but they're wrong. Every law in America is changeable, right up to and including sanctified, bedrock protections like the First Amendment.
Whatever some black-robed meddler might think, no law should be above the democratic process, including abortion..
