How did the Supreme Court decide Roe v. Wade? On what parts of the Constitution did they base their decision?

The fourth amendment declares "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." The court has taken this and some more obscure phrases to construct what they call a "right to privacy" included in a "penumbra" of implied rights in the Constitution. In Roe v. Wade they ruled, in essence, that abortion is a privacy issue, not a medical or human rights issue. Yes, I know I have oversimplified, but I believe this is the essence of the Constitutional case.

This site has a lengthy treatment of the case history from a pro-life perspective. I assume the actual quotes and cites are real, but I have not verified them myself.
http://www.rightgrrl.com/carolyn/roe.html

The Oyez project presents this constitutional question and answer:

Q: Does the Constitution embrace a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?

A: The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling.

See http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/334/ for more information, including digital audio of the arguments in the case.

They didn't base it on anything in the Constitution.They admitted that the right to privacy is found nowhere in the Constitution.
The 9th Amendment was mentioned.
Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
So the rights of the people of Texas and the laws prohibiting abortion were overturned by one person.The amendment says people and not person.
It was founded on some ill defined right to privacy.
And if there were a right to privacy how does it follow as a conclusion that one has the right to an abortion?
Beats me!!

I just answered this question.The person who asked this question should know that the Supreme Court can reverse itself,Congress can overturn their ruling,and State legislatures can overturn this ruling but only for its state.Thus Roe vs Wade can be overturned by Congress or by the State legislatures.

1 Fourth, the Court refused to fairly examine the issue of when human life begins.
The Court claimed, “we need not resolve the difficult question of when life
begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy,
and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in
the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the
answer.”[internet]

Here the court does not even consider when life begins.It considers everyone ignorant with respect to this issue because they are ignorant and arrogant and unable.Since when would they ever allow theological or religious arguments with their notions of separation of Church and State? In 1972 the Court new there was a consensus and in the Congressional Subcommittee of 1981 this was all brought to light.I closed this page accidently and could not find it again.But they showed that the Court had all this information available to them.Of course if one uses the Bible and believes it to be true,there are many references to the fact that the conceptus is a person.
Biology has proven that the conceptus is alive,human,and has a human nature.How often do we ask "what is the nature of this thing,or entity,or being for everything that exists has being"?
If you have a solid philosophical background one can prove the conceptus is a person from the moment of conception just from knowing there is union of ovum and sperm.When this happens something completely new is conceived and is called a conceptus.It is obviously alive,explosive in activity,and human in origin.It is impossible to have a human life without a subject possessing it.The subject here must be a person.Like things generate like.The conceptus is generated by union of sperm and ovum.It is exactly like its parents once union occurs.
The Court claimed that no one could know when life began or anyone else so that left it open to make the decision they did.Of course the benefit of the doubt demanded that the conceptus be given living status.[mine]





Dissents

2 Byron White was the senior dissenting justice.Associate Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist wrote emphatic dissenting opinions in this case. Justice White wrote:

“ I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.[17] ”

White asserted that the Court "values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries." Despite White suggesting he "might agree" with the Court's values and priorities, he wrote that he saw "no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States." White criticized the Court for involving itself in this issue by creating "a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it." He would have left this issue, for the most part, "with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs."

Rehnquist elaborated upon several of White's points, by asserting that the Court's historical analysis was flawed:

“ To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today.[1] ”

From this historical record, Rehnquist concluded that, "There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted." Therefore, in his view, "the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter

These two Judges dissented.The other 49 states should have ignored this ruling.It didn't apply to them but only to the state of Texas and perhaps the federal district from which it was appealed.The original case had no standing.The Supreme Court may have final say on a case arising from a certain area of the country but by what authority and right do they have to apply that to all the uninvolved states.Furthermore the 49 states probably had many different and diversified arguments and reasons for their anti-abortion laws which were ignored by the Court.[internet]

Justiciability
An aspect of the decision that attracted comparatively little attention was the Court's disposition of the issues of standing and mootness. The Supreme Court does not issue advisory opinions (those stating what the law would be in some hypothetical circumstance). Instead, there must be an actual "case or controversy," which requires a plaintiff who is aggrieved and seeks relief. In the "Roe" case, "Jane Roe," who began the litigation in March 1970, had already given birth by the time the case was argued before the Supreme Court in December 1971. By the traditional rules, therefore, there was an argument that Roe's appeal was moot because she would not be affected by the ruling, and also that she lacked standing to assert the rights of pregnant women (other than herself) seeking an abortion. The Court concluded, however, that the case came within an established exception to the rule, one that allowed consideration of an issue that was "capable of repetition, yet evading review." Justice Blackmun's opinion noted that human pregnancy would normally conclude more quickly than an appellate process. "If that termination makes a case moot, pregnancy litigation seldom will survive much beyond the trial stage, and appellate review will be effectively denied." Such a ruling was critical to the Supreme Court's right to review the case, since the Supreme Court dismissed the physician James Hubert Hallford's intervention and affirmed the dismissal of John and Mary Doe.

Also, the Supreme Court was originally established by the Constitution for the purpose of resolving conflicts between states, not between individuals and states. The fourteenth amendment, passed with the justification of ensuring the rights of former slaves, became the doorway through which federal laws on social issues and corporations could be passed, thus eroding state sovereignty. Roe v. Wade is a good example of how the accumulation of law over time can be used to create a result opposite the intent of the founders.[internet]



3. Indisputable Medical Evidence - the Unborn baby is a Human Being

Time Magazine and Rand McNally's Altlas of the Body states, "In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilised single cell, the zygote, which is the start of a new individual." 7

The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the "Human Life Bill", summarised the issue this way: "Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."8

Everything that determines the individuality and originality of a person is established at conception. The first single cell contains the entire genetic blueprint in all its complexity.
From conception, the new person conceived is as deserving of the full protection of the law as any other person[internet]

4 There is no right to privacy found in the Constitution[majority decision]

5 The majority opinion argued that the right to abortion was also found in the 9th Amendment.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."[internet]
There was a statute or law that all the people were governed by in Texas with respect to abortion.So the Court really fashioned an opinion for one person and then applied it to the whole state of Texas and country.They actually took away the rights of the people as is amply demonstrated in the dissents of White and Rehnquist. Roe was not "the people" but a single individual citizen.[mine]

So why did these judges frame such a decision?They were not ignorant of the information available.They were activist and all guilty of intellectual pride.They obviously had no integrity.One wonders about a cospiracy of malevolence or at least I do.They were totally dismissive as seen in section 1.Not to reverse a bad or unjust law is perjury against the Constitution because these men have sworn to uphold the Constitution.This goes for any law.[mine]

6The conceptus has a human nature which is an intrinsic principle of motion and change in a subject.In this case the subject is a person.If you do not understand this let me put it another.The conceptus is an existing being.Movement and change can only occur if there is a subject of that change or there is an underlying subject of that change.In a dead non moving body there is no subject there to undergo change.Only substantial realities can undergo change and movement.
If it is a person from the moment of conception then it must have a soul which is the formal element of a complete substance.If you do not understand this write a question under philosophy asking "how and when does the conceptus receive a soul"
Aristotle proved the existence of God from the spiritual faculties of intellect and will.
In other words he proved these faculties are spiritual and belong to a spiritual soul which is immmortal.[mine and internet]

No where in the Constitution is there to be found any rational grounds for this decision[mine]