Was Roe v. Wade correctly decided? No.

Thank you! You interpret my first argument correctly but your description of its impact is wrong. In several places throughout your argument, you write that my position would leave rights unprotected. The first in your parade of horribles is the right to vote. In your hypothetical, my position would prevent courts from keeping states from eliminating the right to vote because it is "not listed in the constitution." In fact, it is. The 15th Amendment reads "The right . . . to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . ." (emphasis added). Article IV also stipulates that the states have a republican form of government, a prerequisite to which is the right to vote. So if a state were to take away this right, it would be violating the text of the Constitution and the Supreme Court would rightly intervene. Next, you say that I would prevent our society from "progress[ing] morally." Nothing could be more wrong. Our society is perfectly free to evolve or change. In my argument, I stated numerous times that states could, if their citizens wished, legalize abortion. The only question is whether "progress" can be imposed on the people by an undemocratic branch of government instituting their political preferences with no accountability. My argument that Ninth Amendment rights be grounded in history or the intent of the Framers is simply to prevent the Justices from creating rights based on their political views. That would be tyranny by the judiciary. So to counterbalance your criticism of our ancestors, let me say a word in their praise: They left us free to change. They did not bind us to their mistakes. Thus, if our society sees their decisions as errors, it is free to change them through the democratic process. In your next alarming hypothetical, you speculate that a state could say that life begins at 18. Of course, if we let the Court decide when life begins, could it not say the same thing? These possibilities are equally unlikely. Your criticism of having the state decide this issue would apply equally to the Court. Indeed, nowhere in your argument do you justify, or even say, that the Court is better equipped to deal with this issue And if a state were to do such a thing, it would be violating the Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that citizenship begins at birth, so after that, one cannot violate their right to life without due process. However, just because someone is not a citizen does not mean they are not a person. Foreigners, for example, are not citizens but it is still illegal to kill them because they are still persons. The only relevant question, then, is whether "personhood" begins before birth (i.e. when does life begin). While you give a reason why a state should not have the power to answer this question, you don't actually argue that the Supreme Court should have that power. Clearly it should not. The Constitution does not say anything about when life begins, so it is something that our society can decide on its own without interference from the Court. On my fourth argument, you don't have much of a response. It is certainly true that many states allowed slavery etc., but that practice was definitively ended by the 13th Amendment. The argument I was making was that clearly the authors of the 14th Amendment were not granting a right to abortion because, if they were, why did abortion laws stay in place for a century? Clearly no one at the time, including its authors, thought that the 14th Amendment conferred such a right. When the American people adopted this Amendment, they adopted one that permitted restrictions on abortion. Only by morphing the words to fit their personal agenda, in complete contravention of the authors' explicit views on the matter, could the Justices justify their ruling. They essentially invented a new amendment that nobody voted for. This twisted method of judging represents a serious assault on democracy. Lastly, you say that civil liberties should not be voted on. Aside from the obvious criticism: that the whole debate is whether abortion is a civil liberty in the first place, or murder, your argument has a fatal flaw: We voted on the Constitution. When we enshrine rights in it, we are voting to do so. Civil liberties are always voted on. And while you are correct in an abstract sense, that, theoretically, rights are supposed above the democratic fray, it is simply a reality that, in a republic, rights are created by voting. They don't magically appear in the Constitution, our elected representatives voted to put them there. There you have it. There is not much of a substantive criticism of most of what I argued in Round 2, and I have addressed the argument's that were made. One last point: I do not have "disdain" for the Supreme Court when it is doing its job correctly. In fact, I only started this debate because I have such interest in the Court. However, it is foolish not to admit that some cases were wrongly decided, and that the Court should correct itself. Roe v. Wade is an example of such a case.