Abortion and Constitutional Legislation
By Robert Katz
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v
Wade and take away a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an
abortion, there’s been a lot of talk about Congress codifying abortion rights.
That is not politically possible at the moment. But it is a worthy objective to
anyone who believes that a woman’s constitutional entitlement to liberty should
not be limited by the prejudices of an earlier time when women were third class
citizens. In pursuing that objective, we have to break the habit of thinking
that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution means. It
isn’t.
Specifically, we need to revive the tradition, subscribed to
by Jefferson and Lincoln, of “departmentalism” – that each branch of the
government decides constitutional questions. As President Thomas Jefferson
wrote in response to Abigail Adams’ complaint about pardoning those who had
been convicted under the Sedition Act of 1798 for printing “foulest falsehoods”
about her husband: “You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on
the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given
them the right to decide for the executive, more than to the executive to
decide for them. Both magistrates are equally independent in the sphere of
action assigned to them. The judges, believing the law constitutional, had a
right to pass a sentence of fine and imprisonment; because the power was placed
in their hands by the Constitution. But the executive, believing the law to be
unconstitutional, were bound to remit the execution of it; because that power
has been confided to them by the Constitution.”
In cases like abortion, when the Supreme Court decides that
there is no constitutional right, or a restricted right, Congress must make
their own determination about what the Constitution requires. So Congress is
free to conclude that there is a constitutional right to abortion, and that it
is not only permitted but, as a co-equal branch, constitutionally obliged to
enact legislation to enforce that right.
If passage of abortion rights legislation is seen as a
constitutional obligation by Congress, reform of the Senate filibuster should
be viewed as a constitutional obligation as well. There is a strong argument
that the filibuster itself is unconstitutional, that the framers did not want a
legislative rule that would require a supermajority to pass legislation and
permit a minority veto. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist No. 54: “under
the proposed Constitution, the federal acts will take effect merely on the
majority of votes in the federal legislature,” and where the Constitution
requires a supermajority it says so explicitly, such as for impeachment of a
president or approval of constitutional amendments. If the majority in Congress
determined that passing national abortion legislation is not only permitted but
required by the Constitution, it cannot allow a Senate rule that is at
best not in the Constitution and at worst flat-out unconstitutional to stand in
its way. But the constitutionality of the filibuster is unlikely to ever be
tested in the courts, because the Constitution gives each house of Congress the
power to make its own rules. So a ruling on the constitutionality of the
filibuster can only come from the Senate itself. As departmentalist doctrine
teaches, the fact that the ruling does not come from the court but from a house
of Congress does not make it any less constitutional. It is a constitutional
imperative that the filibuster rule be at least modified to provide that
legislation designed to uphold constitutional rights can be enacted by a simple
majority. Abortion rights and voting rights would be covered by such a rule.
It is possible that if abortion legislation were passed by a
Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president, a reversal of that
legislation, and even a nationwide abortion ban, could be enacted by a
Republican Congress and a Republican president. But as with the repeal of the
Affordable Care Act, the GOP may be unable to garner the majority in Congress
to enact such a deeply unpopular piece of legislation. If they did, they would
have to pay the political price.
If Congress does enact national abortion legislation, it should
consider avoiding a maximalist approach. Several facts are of interest in this regard First, according to the CDC,
about 93 percent of all legal abortions take place within the first 13 weeks of
pregnancy and only one percent after 20 weeks. Second, according to a 2021
AP-NORC poll, although 61% of respondents approved of abortion in the first
trimester, that approval rate dropped to 34% in the second trimester. Congressional
abortion legislation, although a constitutional imperative, is still
legislation, and as such, has to be politically wise. The legislation should
take into account the public’s nuanced views on abortions and what abortion
protections enjoy strong political support.
It’s time to begin wresting from the Supreme Court the
exclusive prerogative about what the Constitution means, and to get the other
branches of government – and the people who elect them – into the act. The
Supreme Court’s abortion decision may be the catalyst that spurs that process
along.
Robert Katz served as a staff attorney and supervising
attorney at the California Supreme Court from 1993-2018. Before that he was in
private practice representing public agencies, and worked as a newspaper
reporter covering local government in Santa Cruz County.
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