draft – work-n-progress 06-02-2023 — last edited on Friday @ 7:13 pm
word count 11,167
This is a very long unfinished draft, skipping for now as i move specific topics to stand-alone posts
~ Thinking Outside the Box ~
The 511 nouns that appear in the US Constitution and as a class have been identified by Justice Alito as legally defining the functional principles of our Constitution
Prepared by Faith Gibson
February 02, 2023 @ 12:57 pm
Intro:
The following essay is about our US Constitution, the legally-binding use of it by members of the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, and its 49-year old precedential decision, and the extremely detrimental and far-reaching consequences of the Dobbs Decision in regard to the rule of law and lives of people affected.
Obviously, the most negative effect falls on pregnant women and adolescent girls and their families. Unfortunately, one of the frequent “effects” of blocking access to safe and legal abortive drugs and services is preventable maternal death.
However, the stability and general welfare of society is also impacted in many unforeseeable ways by having become a post-Roe country under such punitive circumstances. The Dobbs Decision in combination with the total absence of any constitutional guardrails in regard to this issue allows states to not merely ban abortions en masse, but also be officially and viciously punitive to pregnant women as a class.
In addition, Dobbs is used as an excuse for threatening individuals who are only incidentally or peripherally involved — such as a friend or family member that drives a teenager or young woman to the clinic or a bus station — with criminal prosecution and ruination of their lives or careers.
As far as I know, America is the only country that make driving a pregnant friend to the bus station a felony punishable by a 10-year prison sentence!
Part 1~ Just the Facts Ma’am
I was an ER and OB nurse for more than a decade during the pre-Roe era (prior to 1973). After retiring from nursing I cross trained into midwifery and have been attending births as a community midwife for the last 30 years.
From this broad and very deep experience with childbearing in general and with pregnant girls as young as 12 and many adult women, I know in bones three relevant facts directly, personally and powerfully. And as much as i wish we could “wish away” this problem, I know that we can’t and it is the responsibility of every adult American to do something to stop the preventable maternal deaths that are a result of of lack of appropriate healthcare and necessary medical services relative to an untenable or abnormal pregnancy.
- It is morally wrong, and ultimately doomed to failure to attempt to police the inside of another person’s body. If the issue is “sanctity of life” the answer is not making access to pre-viable abortion services illegal. We just double the death toll, as both mother and fetus become mortality statistics.
- While the termination of any pregnancy for any reason is always difficult to accept for many reasons — religious, legal, or personal distress at the idea of terminating a pregnancy — nonetheless, it is, by orders of magnitude, less harmful than who happened when access to safe and legal abortion has been criminalized and the only option for a teenager or adult woman with an unplanned and untenable pregnancy is either a back-alley abortion or if she doesn’t have the money, to attempt to abort her self by consuming poisons or other acts desperation.
- Drastically increasing the number of maternal deaths is no answer to the actual issue of untenable and/or abnormal pregnancies, which are often economic for women who already have a family. For girls and very young women, it is either a matter of non-consensual sex or an irresponsible boy or man choose to have unprotected sex and ejaculate in her birth canal.Many of these young women feel so ashamed that they quite literally would rather die than be discovered by family and friends to being “knocked up”. But this sense of shame is misplaced and unwarranted. Obviously the specific “first cause” of their pregnancy was the man or boy who heed request that he stop and /or did not treat his sperm with the appropriate care by using a condom. Society has a responsibility to see that this effectively addressed before it results in the tragic death of a desperate young woman from suicide or a botched back-alley abortion.
A Useful Historical Perspective ~
Most people assume that the Catholic Church’s position on abortion — i.e. banned under all circumstance — has been its theological position ever since it was first founded more than 2000 years ago in the year 3 AD/CE.
However, the actual facts are very different. The Church’s modern, which is to say absolutist, position is only a 144 years old. That is less than 10% of time this historical religion has been in existence. In other words, for 90% of all Catholics — parishioners, priests, bishops, and pope — did not believe that abortion equated to ‘murder’.
During this almost two-thousand-year-long era, aborting a pre-viable pregnancy — usually defined as before the mother could feel movement or about 20 week — was not “illegal”, nor was a woman’s pregnancy considered to be part of the public domain. What women did in their homes in regard to getting or staying pregnant was family business and not part of the political process. Herbalism was considered to be part of a woman role in treating the illnesses in her own family. After her family was grown, some women began to help other women in regard to illnesses in their families and to help a woman-friend have a miscarriage rather than risk her health having a 12 or 13 baby
The list of herbs and other “abortifacts” historically used mostly contains substances that were either inert, poisonous, or marginally effective if taken very early in pregnancy. But ergot, which today is sold as the pharmaceutical drug “Methergine” causes powerful uterine contractions and was used to cause a miscarriage and to stop a potentially fatal hemorrhage in newly delivered mother. In 350 BC, the Parsees described “noxious grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and die in childbed.”[25]
Carl Linnaeus, the “father of modern botany”, listed five abortifacients in his 1749 Materia medica.[29]: 124 According to the historian of science Londa Schiebinger,
“many sources taken together – herbals, midwifery manuals, trial records, Pharmacopoeia, and Materia medica – reveal that physicians, midwives, and women themselves had an extensive knowledge of herbs that could induce abortion” in the 17th and 18th centuries [29]: 124–125
The historic position of the Catholic Church on pre-viable abortion is not at all what people think
For the first 16 of the last 20 centuries, the Roman Catholic Church did not have any formal “position” on abortion, with such matters being left to the conscious of each parishioner and the counsel of the local priest. That is a period of 1600 years.
During that time, Catholic teaching was that no homicide was involved if abortion took place before the fetus was infused with a soul. This was generally believed to occur at “quickening“, when the mother began to feel the baby move, which is 18 to 22 weeks for most mothers.
Then in 1591, Pope Gregory XIV banned all abortive efforts after 166 days of pregnancy or about 24 weeks. Biologically, this time-frame perfectly correlates with the stage of viability for a fetus — its ability to live separately from its mother’s body. That is still the current legal limit for abortion in the UK.
And in 1869, Pope Pius IX declared abortion at any stage of pregnancy to result excommunication from the Church. Since then, there has been no change in the Catholic Church’s theological position.
Reference on hx of Catholic teaching & abortion:
edit line ~
Note to self — not use this description belongs so close to the beginning ????
First, a tiny pre-viable embryo or fetus of less than 24 completed weeks of gestation is quite obviously important human tissue, like a thyroid or adrenal gland, but it has not yet developed into a human person. What it means to be a “person” in the legal sense is to have a consciousness of oneself and others, and able to live independently outside of its mother’s womb.
A pre-viable embryo or fetus has the genetic potential for living independently, but it cannot actually do any of those things at that point in its existence, which is to say, an embryo or non-viable fetuses is not yet “person” as defined by our historical system of jurisprudence which traces back to the English Magna Carta in 1205 and is presently ensconced in the 14th amendment to the Bill or Rights.
The 14th Amendment begins with the words:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States …”.
Apparently that small but important detail has so far escaped the Roberts Court!
News Flash: Twenty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
One out of every five pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. It’s a fact of life. Personally, I don’t believe that God makes “mistakes”, so for reasons we don’t understand, a pregnancy that does not advance to term is also a part of normal life down here on Planet Earth. The normal healthy reactions by parents and the extended family is to mourn the loss of that potential child. It normally takes a bucket of tears and week of Sundays before the grieving mother smiles again.
However, personal grief is not the end of the miscarriage story. Official hospital policy instructs L&D nurses to dispose of the non-viable tissue (less than 20 completed weeks of gestation) expelled by the mother’s uterus (i.e. “the products of conception”) by depositing it into a cardboard specimen cup with a lid. How the disposal is handled depends on the doctor’s instructions to either send the “tissue” to the hospital incinerator or to the pathology lab. If sent to the pathology department, some kind of visual and microscopic examination will be done and then the remaining “tissue” will be put into the hospital’s incinerator.
It should be noted that none of the medical personnel and other hospital employee are shocked by this straightforward disposal of human tissue. It is not experienced by any of us as the death of a ‘person’ or a situation that should occasion a funeral.
Viable fetuses (20-plus weeks of gestations), neonates, infants, children and adults of all ages have funerals; the non-viable products of conception, which is to say human tissue with the theoretical potential to become a person but not yet an actual human being (and all that entails) are not yet “persons” as defined by our Anglo-American judicial system.
Unfortunately, changing laws won’t change the facts – pre-viable fetal tissue is incapable of independent life and always will be. We can give the “products of conception” a formal funeral, but that doesn’t change anything. These are “butterfly souls” that touched down briefly (positive pregnancy test) and then returned to wince they came (Heaven?) a few weeks or a few months later.
Here on earth, they still are an extinguished spark of life, the products of conception that had the potential to become a ‘person’ but for thousands of possible reasons, they just didn’t. Families weep but I like to think that “GOD” (whatever that all-caps concept means to whoever is reading it) welcomes these butterfly souls back to the “Great Beyond” where all are happy and well-fed, get their own pony, and can try again later!
When families ask me how to cope with their loss, I say honor the lost one by grieving until you feel normal again, and then you will find yourself loving your family, friends and acquaintances again. “It may be dark in the night, but the light comes with the morning”. Eventually, you will be happy again and maybe even pregnant again, with another chance to have a baby that gets its full nine months of gestation and comes out with that lusty, full-volume wail I call the ever-so-healthy “put me back!” cry, guaranteed to keep you up many a night but resulting a lovely and healthy son or daughter!
To go where none have gone before, to speak the unspeakable word: A-b-o-r-t-i-o-n
As a “religious” person living in a democratic country that I generally experience as humane, I am convinced by direct experience that we must provide access to safe and legal abortion services. Without access to safe and sanitary abortions, desperate women and girls will do desperate and dangerous things to terminate a pre-viable pregnancy that they experience as absolutely “untenable”.
This describes a situation in which death is preferable to continuing an untenable pregnancy that would inevitably result in a baby they don’t want or can’t take care of. This is not because they hate children, but because they can’t have this baby at this time under these specific and obviously difficult circumstances. If this includes risking their own lives and their future ability to bear children, then so be it!
Unfortunately, many women who have “back-alley” abortions will never be able to have a baby of their own. This is the result of infection from dirty instruments or a torrential hemorrhage from a punctured uterus that required an emergency hysterectomy to save the mother’s life.
But even worse befalls pregnant women who can’t find anyone or any way to terminate their untenable pregnancy. I will spare the reader the grizzly details, but after you finish this essay, I encourage you to come back and click on the link to: “The Ruthless Rules of Reality ~ What can happen to a family when abortion is both illegal and unattainable ”.
This ultimate nightmare is not the mother’s story, but that of her 7-year old son and his little baby sister. It allows us to see the issue “in the round” – that the majority of abortions are obtained by women who already have several children. The issue for these women is their inability feed their family if pregnancy makes them too sick to work or have to stay home to care a newborn baby.
Banning abortion is actually not the answer to anyone’s problem; it only results in a widening circle of disaster and death that has intergenerational consequences and ruins the lives of family members for decades to come.
Constitutional nouns — present or absent – and Justice Alito’s conclusions that words matter more than principles
@@@@@@ begin introducing constitutional principles @@@@@
Part 2: A Short Primer on the US Constitution
The US Constitution is actually a blend of two documents written at different times, for different reasons, by different Founding Fathers and under different circumstances.
The first was the US Constitution, which contains 4,543 words. Drafting it was a joint venture by the 55 delegates (often referred to as our “Founding Fathers”) to the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia during the long and blistering hot summer months of 1787. The Constitution was signed by all but three of the 55 delegates and printed on September 17th, 1787. But it did not become the law of the land until a majority of the 13 colonies (nine out of 13) ratified it in 1789. However, the document we still use today is a word-for-word copy of what was published that Monday in 1787.
The second document is are amendments to the Constitution. Historically known as the Bill of Rights, they started out as 10 amendments that included freedom of religion, a free press, right to assemble, bear arms, due process, right to a speedy trial, legal counsel and impartial jury, excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment and other principles that protected personal freedoms. They were ratified by a majority of states on December 15th , 1791. But unlike our “written in stone” US Constitution, the Bill of Right is a living document that has grown through the years and now has 27 amendments and 587 words.
While democracy is often thought to mean rule by the majority, the Bill of Rights preserves the minority rights that are equally necessary to successful self-government.
However, we almost didn’t get a Bill of Rights as the part of our Constitution since many delegates and other political leaders thought the Constitution was already perfect. This was the position taken by the famous James Madison, who considered his work at crafting the Constitution so thorough that there was nothing left to amend, since Article I limited the Congress and Article II constrained the president. He insisted that a Bill of Rights would be “redundant at best and dangerous at worst”.
However, not everyone agreed. Several Founding Fathers were very unhappy with the lack of attention that the Constitution paid to the natural liberties and protection of ordinary citizens, as the document generally does not take the important rights individual into account. Three delegates, one of which was George Mason, were so concerned that they all refused to sign the Constitution in protest.
However, this liaze faire attitude changed a great deal when several of the Founding Fathers ran in the Congressional election of 1788. That is when the issue of a Bill of Rights become a hot campaign issue. Former delegates and other influential political figures had strong opinions both for and against a Bill of Rights.
Some worried that any explicit guarantee of rights by the federal government would be too limiting, while others feared the exact opposite. The structure of the new Constitution already placed specific limits on government, so the Founding Fathers were concerned that by listing some rights, the government would assume it had unlimited constitutional power to do anything it was not explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.
Finally Madison became convinced that many of the personal freedoms, liberties, and constitutional protections of ordinary citizens that weren’t included in the original US Constitution needed to be enumerated in as amendments to the Constitution.
“The Bill of Rights are important assertions of natural and civil rights of the individual, and the critical Ninth Amendment is a reminder that the people have other rights not listed in the first eight amendments,” (ref: <history.com> Tony Williams, senior teaching fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute
Madison, in drafting the language in the original Bill of Rights, addressed some of his concerns by including the Ninth Amendment. It states that our rights are not limited to just those enumerate (appearing in print) in the Constitution. He also wrote the 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to those specifically granted in the Constitution and its amendments.
Drawing on George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, Britain’s Magna Carta and other documents, Madison introduced the Bill of Rights in Congress on June 8, 1789, and it was ratified on December 15, 1791.
“The First Amendment right to free speech means that citizens can criticize their leaders without facing criminal punishment,” he says. “The right to assembly, also in the First Amendment, means citizens can protest government policies we disagree with.”
Other rights declared in the document ensure that citizens are not treated arbitrarily by the state. Under the Fifth Amendment, all citizens are guaranteed “due process” by the legal system. The Eighth Amendment bans “cruel and unusual” punishment, ensures that the government can’t use criminal law to “make citizens docile and afraid.” <Ref: Brettschneider, ibid>
Madison pointed to the very important functional difference between the Constitution, which creates, organizes, empowers and limits the federal government, and its amendment — the Bill of Rights, which identifies, as the objects of its protection, the right of persons and rights to own property in a 1829 speech, where he said it was:
“… obvious that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act … and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects for the protection of which Government was instituted.”
@@ ?? @@ Founding Fathers @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
As confirmed by legal scholars over the last 232 years – from 1791 to now — that the US Constitution as a legal document includes all of the amendments known as the Bill of Rights. All these amendments are as legally binding as the principles set forth in the Constitution itself.
However, the current majority of the Supreme Court, with Justice Alito in the least, publicly insisted that if the noun is not in the Constitution, that issue has no constitutional protection or power. When Justice Alito, as spokesman for the Court, says “in the Constitution” he is referring to the Constitution as a stand-along document separate from its amendments (i.e. Bill of Right).
This is an untested and frankly unconstitutional definition of what determines “constitutionality”, as the 9th Amendment in the Bill of Rights specifically says that the enumeration of ‘certain rights’ in the Constitution does not mean the abrogation of rights not mentioned. To translate this into “plain speech”, the fact a noun describing a right or power of some sort is not printed in the September 1787 publication of the Constitution does NOT meant those legal principles have no constitution standing.
In relation to the Dobbs Decision, it is an indisputable fact that word “abortion” is not one of the 4,543 words printed in the Constitution on September 1787, which was four years before the first 10 amendments — we know as the Bill of Rights –were amended to the Constitution. The Dobbs decision does ever so briefly mention the 14th amendment, but instantly dismiss it with a tone of derision as not having no application to the issue of abortion. After all the word “abortion” isn’t in the Bill of Rights either. tone
The Constitution contains 511 nouns, which are words that identifies a thing, place, person, idea, hypothesis, principle, value, concept, precept, etc, by naming it. You can click here to access the list of the 511 nouns that won the constitutional lottery.
NOTE_2_Self – According to the 14th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, you have to be born in order to have the rights of a person, which after the age of majority come with an equal set of responsibilities (paying taxes, being held criminally responsible if criminal actions, etc) you have to actually be a person (your dog can’t be a “person”). A person has to be born alive and be able to continue to live, even if that requires some temporary level of medical assistance.
NEW after emailing file to myself
Obviously, embryos and pre-viable fetuses don’t yet meet these conditions. They are still in the “human tissue” stage of development that has the potential to become a person, they have not yet “grown” into the legal status of a person by becoming “viable”. This means the ability to live independently outside their mother’s body.
Fetuses can’t vote, buy a house, serve on juries, join the military, run for elected office, or win an Oscar for best leading actress. First, they have to get to the stage of being live-born and staying alive thereafter. At that point, they have “personhood” with all its constitutional and legal rights, even when they have a serious illness or multiple handicaps.
The issue of whether or not the non-viable embryos and fetal tissue has a “soul”, and therefore the statement that abortion is murder, is a religiously-related concept. If implemented by law it would be unconstitutional based on the first amendment to the US Constitution, which forbids governments from establishing a religion. The first amendment also permits religious freedom, which is a concept that includes the right not have religiously predicted beliefs, not to have the religious belief of other people be used to limit you beliefs or actions.
The law recognizes a number of conditions in which a person is temporarily or permanently exempted due to being a child, mentally handicapped but that does not change the fact of their personhood, only that the usual set of responsibilities at least temporarily don’t apply since they are unable to carry them out.
Part 3 @?@ ~ Recently a majority of the US Supreme Court — Justice Alito and his five compatriots — insisted that if the noun commonly used to identify a specific thing, place, person, legal concept or precept (in this case is the word “abortion”) does not appear in the Constitution, then that issue, concept or precept does not have any constitutional “standing”. This means the powers of the Constitution to provide permission or protection simply do not apply to what we collectively or as individuals might see as our “rights”.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ end of new material @@@@@@@@@@@@@
This Supreme Court ruling permits states to legally ban access to abortive services and to criminally prosecute anyone who seeks, has, helps or provides abortion services. While the Dobbs Decision creates many extraordinary difficulties for women and adolescent girls in the clutches of an untenable pregnancy, the harm does not stop there. This same ruling does not put any limits on state laws, which became increasingly expansive and extremely punitive, even extending to people who are only incidentally associated with the pregnant woman.
These laws also criminalize anyone who attempts to help the pregnant women by providing information (often from the Internet) about the lawfully termination of pre-viable pregnancy in another jurisdiction or offering to drive the pregnant woman to her appointment.
as a stand-alone document in without having any reference to the amendments to the Constitution (commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights).
However, there
The question is whether or not that collection of facts and its legal consequences is ???? is constitutional
This exploration of nouns in relation to the Constitution – those that are present and those that show up as missing — is part of my effort to determine exactly what ideas and concepts members of the US Supreme Court consider to be “constitutional” based on the specific nouns that appear in the Constitution as it was printed on September 17th, 1787. That leads me to explore the decidedly peculiar and diffidently non-constitutional premise if a noun commonly used to identify something does not appear in the Constitution – in this case the noun “abortion”, then that something is constitutional “moot”, thus paving the way for a majority of the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the issue does not stop there, as there are lot more substantive nouns than the 511 that made the cut in 1787.
This ruling that permits states to legally ban access to abortive services and to criminally prosecute anyone who breaks that law by seeking, having or providing such services.
For Justice Alito and the other five justices that make up the majority voting block, the legal process of determining whether that is and isn’t be represented by the presence of noun in the Constitution – no noun, no constitutional intent, no legal standing, end of story.
The Brilliant Execution of a Terrible Idea
- This list of the five hundred and eleven nouns used in the Constitution are seen by
1 & 2. Becoming familiar with these 511 extraordinarily important nouns provides a Justice Alito-approved list of exactly what our constitutional rights can be easily-confirmed by the fact that they appear in the US Constitution.
1 as defined by the current majority of the US Supreme Court, constitutional vocabulary as one of the most critical issues, even more important than historical precedent. By a 6 to 3 margin, this majority legally concluded in the Dobbs Decision that the Constitutional rights of American are both defined by, and confined to, the 4,543 words printed in the Constitution as approved by the delegates Constitutional Convention signed by the 55 of these Founding Fathers in September of 1787.
- This means that vocabulary – nouns printed in the document – have precedence over the combined meaning of the Constitution’s four thousand-plus words when identifying the working principles of our representative government.
- When it comes to the constitutional issue of legal access to abortion, the 6-3 vote by Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts and Thomas decreed that the right of a pregnant women to determine whether or not she is physically able to bear and care for a child, whether the father is able and willing financially ab support a child for the next 18 years, is not a constitutionally protected right either as a power granted by the Constitution or specifically prohibits.
- Justices Alito, with the consent of the other five Justices, identified their interpretation of constitutional principles as being based on the fact that the word “abortion” does not appear in the Constitution. Prior to this, a majority of the justices had already concluded that only constitutionally enumerated concepts were legally valid for bestowing or protecting the “inalienable” rights of Americans.
However, this flies in the face of the 9th amendment to the Constitution, which states that states that enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not abrogation of rights not mentioned.
Justice Alito put all the Court’s eggs in one basket – a simple question of whether or not the US Constitution included the specific word “abortion”.
This six-justice majority interpreted this constitutional silence as voiding any constitutional protection or mitigating principles such as the natural liberty or
…. certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”
as included in the Declaration of Independence that would acknowledge a woman’s unalienable right to control her own body, including her right to manage her fertility, decide to become and to terminate a pre-viable pregnancy.
Origins and purpose of the US Constitution from a post-Roe perspective
The place to start this conversation about abortion is with the obvious fact – that abortion as a biological reality did not begin with the woman and therefore is not intrinsically not a “woman’s” problem, since the First Cause in any pregnancy is indisputably the fact that a male – adult man or adolescent boy — deposited his sperm in the birth canal of a woman who is ovulating. In far too many instances, the act of intercourse that left approximately 70 million sperm in the woman’s vagina occurred without her voluntary consent as an act of rape or non-consensual sex, including circumstances in which the woman is not conscious for various reasons.
Except for pregnant women with serious medical conditions, abortion a totally preventable situation, all that has to be done is for men and adolescent boys to NOT ejaculate in the birth canal unless they want, can care for and have the woman’s consent to have become pregnant and bear a child. The maximum, which applies directly to males of all ages and couldn’t be more simple:
“Don’t ejaculate in the birth canal if you don’t want to be responsible for raising a baby!”
Copy the voice text in Day One on 2 possible reasons why the word abortion does NOT appear in the Constitution
- As citizens, women generally consider their legal personhood as a citizen in a representative democracy to include their physical bodies as legally independent and physically inviolable. This meant no on could legally force you to have sex with them without your consent (i.e. rape) or force you to carry a rapist’s baby to term. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs decision allows states to overrule the previously inviolable physical status of a woman’s pregnant body.
- Prior to this, the only way the State could essentially take over the control of an adult’s physical body was be formally charge him or her with a crime and take that person into “custody” by arresting them. While states are not currently incarcerating pregnant women to force them to gestate a fetus, many states have assumed legal control over the pregnant woman’s fetus – the pre-birth version of in loco parentis – that forces women either to carry the pregnancy to term or be criminally prosecuted for not having done so. This extends to accusing women who spontaneously miscarry to prove that they didn’t “do” anything to cause it.
A particularly disturbing by-product of this nightmare scenario is the second-leval harm – the refusal of doctors, etc (cut and paste from assoc. documents)
- ???? maybe redundant >> move or delete ?? Even though pregnancy is a biological condition that occurs inside the body of the woman or adolescent girl, Dobbs empowered state and municipal government to legally require all pregnant women and girls, even those with a serious medical or mental problem that makes pregnancy a life-threatening condition and women who are financially unable to support a baby. Nonetheless, the State can and in many cases does force these women to carry these pregnancies to term, even when the fetus has a physical condition incompatible with life and will die after the mother’s nine months of pregnancy.
- The situation for women in their childbearing years in the United States could be describe as being an independent person from the waist up, with all the “normal” constitutionally-protected freedoms, while one’s body from the waist down now belongs to the state you live in and as soon as you become pregnant, to basically lose your right of self-determination.
As a result of the Dobbs decision, individual state legislatures, counties and municipalities now have a constitutionally-based right (i.e. a free pass to violate the rights of American citizens with worrying about being sued) to enact laws that ban access safe abortion services. This provides these states with a constitutionally-protected right (i.e. another free-pass to criminally prosecute and incarcerate persons who seek or procure an abortion and anyone who provides medical or surgical abortion services. They can also bring criminal charges against a person for “helping” a woman who is seeking an abortion, such as giving her information or driving her to the airport.
Based on such a sweeping concept, these states could bring legal action against taxis services, Uber, bus companies, trains, airplanes and Internet search engines for “aiding and abetting” the procurement of an abortion. (The Nazis already thought of this!)
At first glance, the Dobbs decision seems to be ‘tight as a tick’, since it points to the constitutional silence on the issue of abortion as proof that it lacks any form of constitutional protection. This perceived constitutional neutrality in relation to termination of pre-viable pregnancy is assumed to authorize states to pass laws that permit authorities to exert direct control over a pregnant woman’s body.
Obviously, the fact that the Constitution lacks the word “abortion”, or other vocabulary referring to purposeful termination of a pre-viable pregnancy, may cause some people to assume that the Constitutional is handicapped by its limited vocabulary. However, they would be wrong. The Constitutional functions just fine even though it lacks certain words that would be very helpful in the 21st century.
While much can be said about what is missing, but the Founding Fathers exercised considerable mastery in crafting constitutional principles that are timeless and, amazing as it seems, continue to provide guidance in our own time, even though it was written 234 years ago.
After an intense study of the Constitutions and all its current 26 Amendments, I concluded that the Constitution’s lack of the specific word ‘abortion’ is NOT the end of the story, and its absence does not authorize public officials to violate a woman’s bodily integrity by forcing her to carry an untenable pregnancy to term.
The word “rape” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, but is absence is not interpreted as authorizing men and boys to have non-consensual sex with young girls and women without their consent, nor is the word “inoculation” in the Constitution but that doesn’t mean that public officials can forcible vaccinate people who have not given their consent.
Many people censor pregnant women for seeking to terminate an untenable pregnancy, assuming that it is an act of blatant selfishness. But for many women, especially those already caring for one or more children, the reasons for terminating an unplanned pregnancy are both pragmatic and humanitarian – she can’t feed and house her kids unless she has a full time job, but can’t work full time since there is no one to look after her kids while she is earning a living. If she has to quit work to care for a newborn, the family will starve and they will be evicted from their home. Nothing about that is in the interest of her children.
There are many valid reasons why pregnancy is untenable as women instinctively know when they don’t have the necessary resources – mental, physical, or financial — to responsibly care for an infant, provide a loving home for child and maintain an expanded family. The reasons are legion — poor physical or mental health, inadequate housing, inability to feed and care for an expanded family, lack of participation and financial support by the children’s father. It is the ultimate insult and lack of compassion to see these pregnant women as villains and make criminals out of them.
There is a huge difference between “friendly persuasion” and the use of force. What Justice Alito and the Gang of six have done in the Dobbs Decision is to authorize states to use of gender-specific force as the new law of the land – to arrest, criminally prosecute and incarcerate women who need to terminate a pregnancy and those that provide help to a woman seeking abortion services.
I can’t think of any other aspect of jurisprudence or constitutional principles that would restrict the bodily integrity of an entire class of citizens based on gender and force them to bear a child against their will and better judgement. Who but the pregnant woman can say whether or not she is healthy enough and otherwise able to bear and raise a child? Who but the pregnant woman can say whether of net she is mentally and physically healthy enough to bear and care for a child and has the financial resource to provide a loving and stable home for a growing child over the span 18 or more years.
The Dobbs Decision singled out the adult female for aggressive interference by The State in the most intimate biology of a woman’s body, creating a form indentured servanthood that turns her in a uterine incubator for nine months. But the harm of forced pregnancy pale into insignificance when one considers magnitude of forced parenthood over the next 18 years of caring for, financially supporting, educating and socializing a child.
The Invisible Father
Equally if not even more egregious, the man who sperm is directly responsible for the pregnancy not only escapes responsibility for financially supporting the woman he impregnated but he isn’t even mentioned in any way. Dobbs reads as if all pregnancies are immaculate conceptions.
The man’s responsibility here is crystal clear and straight forward – if you don’t want to raise (also financially support!) a baby, don’t ejaculate in the birth canal, period, end of conversation. If you get a woman pregnant without her consent, then you belong in jail for each and every day of that pregnancy and are responsible for supporting both mother and baby for the next 18 years.
As for the Constitution’s relationship with the Supreme Court ruling, it is obvious to me that Dobbs et al is itself unconstitutional. First off, the Justices pinned their conclusion on the absence of the word “abortion” within the 4,543 words of Constitution itself, as if the US Constitution was a stand-along document with no amendments that are in fact a binding. That is itself an unconstitutional premise as the Bill of Rights, upon its ratification on December 15, 1791, legally amended the Constitution, becoming part and parcel of that document. One cannot cite the Constitution as one’s raison d’etre without including the principles set forth in the Bill of Rights.
As defined by the website “Britannica”, the Bill of Right is:
the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were adopted as a single unit on December 15, 1791, and which constitute a collection of *mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments.
The Bill of Rights derives from the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the colonial struggle against king and Parliament, and a gradually broadening concept of equality among the American people.
Virginia’s 1776 Declaration of Rights, drafted chiefly by George Mason, was a notable forerunner. Besides being axioms of government, *the guarantees in the Bill of Rights have binding legal force. Acts of Congress in conflict with them may be voided by the U.S. Supreme Court when the question of the constitutionality of such acts arises in litigation (see judicial review). (*emphasis added)
George Mason, and two other delegates to the Constitutional Convention, refused to sign the U.S. Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights, arguing against ratification of the document because of that omission. Several states only ratified it with the understanding that a bill of rights would be quickly added.
@@@ Bill of Rights @@
Historically, legally, and from the practical standpoint of “constitutional interpretation”, the US Constitution includes all language and the principles in the Bill of Rights. Bill of rights as a topic in its own right –
Except for the right of a jury trial in criminal cases, all the rights we think of as “constitutionally protected” – free speech, free press, right to bear arms, etc are NOT found in the 4,543 words of the constitution but the 538 words of the Constitution’s original 10 amendments, which were first called the “the Bill of Rights”.
They are directly responsible for nearly all the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of a democracy. These and constitutional amendments directly and in black letter law forbid the federal government from establish a government-sanctioned (i.e. national) religion or prohibiting the free exercise of anyone’s religion. The Bill of Rights amendments (not the Constitution!) establish the principle of free speech, freedom of the press, the right of peaceable assembly and constitutionally guaranteed right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And the constitutional freedom that seems to be most cherished by a lot of Americans — the much prized “right to of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” had second place in original Bill of Right. Isn’t it both odd and interesting that these six justices all agree that gun ownership is “constitutional” when the above words that actually make it “constitutional” do NOT appear in the Constitution itself.
??#?? Where are those “ambulance-chasing lawyers when you really need them? issues of massive number of individual violation of the legal duties of physicans and other health care provider to provide pregnancy-related care to because doctors and hospital administrators are afraid they might be accused of being ‘ complicit’ in regard to the termination of pregnancy.
As if Dobbs had not already wrecked enough havoc by forcing women to carry untenable pregnancies to term, this ruling also resulted in a ‘blow-back” that has the force of a Cat 3 hurricane. This is a second level Post-Roe devastation is the refusal of doctors and other healthcare providers to treat women who are having symptoms of miscarriage. This is because doctors and hospital administrators are afraid that they might get acqused (so far as I know this has not happened) of having supported termination by providing information for seeking it in another jurisdiction or by providing abortive drugs or procedures. Pharmacies are also refusing to fill prescriptions for vital drugs to treat various life-the and women who impossible to
Gender-based abuse of American women by some members of the US Supreme Court
In that context, the Bill of Right includes the philosophical underpinnings of the Preamble to the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America
Amendment #1, Bill of Right #1
Origins and purpose of the US Constitution from a post-Roe perspective
Justice Alito put all the Court’s eggs in one basket – the simple question of whether or not the US Constitution included the specific word “abortion”. Prior to this, the Gang of Five had already concluded that only constitutionally enumerated concepts can lawfully bestow the “inalienable” rights and protections of citizenship for Americans and legal residents.
01-23-23 This list of 511 nouns makes clear is what the US Constitution can and cannot be expected to do. Our American Constitution, as the founding document for a democratic republic, is a brilliant and highly regarded source of wisdom on the practical and effective configuration of a representative government. It is praised the world over for having created such a robust system, one that has generally served us so well as a country.
However, the 4,543 words in the US Constitution as a document in 1787 (aside from its amendments first added as the Bill of Rights in 1791) was it function as a specific blueprint for organizing democratic institutions to govern a democratic republic. Most Americans can easily list these basic institutions as the executive, legislative and judicial branches, conducing national elections and guaranteeing that all trials for a crime shall be by jury.
The Constitution also deals with a number of ‘lesser issues’ such as authorizing a naturalization process that grants citizenship to immigrants, creation of a military, ports of entry, levaning tariffs and collecting “duties” on imported goods, and . All of this are aspect of public goverance – they are “personal” and with rare exception (the right to a trial) never concern themselves with the nature of the “freedoms” in theory created and defended by a democratic form of government. We cannot look to the Constitution for guidance on any of wh
the issue of abortion, not because it does not contain the word “abortion”, but because the US Constitution was specifically designed to organize and give structure to a democratic system of government, which it did by creating the three branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial — and many other aspect of our federal government. This had absolutely nothing to do with the specific issues of bodily integrity – the right of American citizens as individual people to control their own body and determine for themselves where or not
It did that very well but it was so lacking in any definitions of and/or a protection of our personal freedom and rights that many among the Founding Fathers forces the Constitutional Congress to immediate write a second document that enumerated our rights as citizens to be protected from the excesses of government power and our rights as individuals to determine our own fate when it comes to our own lives, the sanctity of our own minds and physical bodies.
It must note here that the act of rape -– an adolescent boy or adult man forcing his penis into the vaginia of a girl or woman who did NOT consented to this invasion of her bodily integrity — is a criminal offense. While rape is not an exact analogy to forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, even though the pregnancy is making the mother extremely ill or psychologically distraught, this taking over of another person’s life – her body, her minute by minute experience of life for every minute of every day for nine months – share the physical intrusion on the mother’s identical in that it
??? Import from Attemtion Men and Adolesent Boys ~ “Don’t ejaculate in the birth canal if you don’t want to raise a baby!
???and to do all this without a word about the actual origin of the “problem” – the man’s sperm that caused the pregnancy. What is most reprehensible about the Dobbs Decision is that abortion is not actually a woman’s issue – all pregnancies begin with a man’s sperm – no sperm, no pregnancy, no problem!
Justice Alito’s based his ruling in the Dobbs Decision (which reversed Roe v. Wade), on his “originalist” interpretation of the US Constitution. He cited the lack of the word “abortion” in the Constitution as it was published September 17th, 1787 as the basis for concluding that the Constitution’s silence (i.e. it’s absence of the word “abortion”) equates to a constitutional rejection of natural and inherent right of physically and mentally-healthy adult women to determine whether or not they are physically and mentally healthy enough to carry a pregnancy to term, give birth safely, be willing and able to love and emotionally bond with their newborn; to cherish, defend, financially support, care for, house, feed, clothe, educate, and socialize a child for the next 18 years, and to do that even if her child is cognitively handicapped, becomes seriously physically or mentally ill, or is totally disabled.
In many cases, these mothers will have to raise their child without the financial and practical support of the baby’s father due to his death, serious physical or mental illness, or his inability or unwillingness to fulfill his role as a responsible parent.
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Vocabulary self-determination, autonomy,
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The Constitution’s Beginning with what isn’t in t
The Constitution, provides a constitutionally- happens within the physical body of an mentally, as a condition that is ultimately in the control of our legal system
based on the constitutional principle that .
Using the Constitution’s lack of the word “abortion” as the legal basis for Banning the termination of non-viable pregnancies is unconstitutional
The one obviously unanswered question is simply this:
Since the US Constitution does not include the word “abortion”, nor does it address in any of the theoretical issues or practical realities associated with the decision to terminate a non-viable pregnancy, nor does it address any of the acts involved in the volitional termination of a pre-viable pregnancy by medical or surgical means, or any of the hundreds of subsequent issues of abortion, how can anyone rationally site the Constitution – in Dobbs or any other judicial decision — as having the its “force of law” in regard to the specific issue of pre-viable pregnancy termination?
Secondly, the list of these words is a simple and straight forward way to establish that the Constitution, all by itself without the Bill of Rights — exactly what Justice Alito did — has almost nothing to do with the lives or freedoms of American as individuals.
Justice Alito repeatedly stated that because the word “abortion” was not printed in the Constitution, there was, in his opinion no constitutional ”right” that would prevent any legal jurisdiction – state, county, city, or federal – from banning legal access to abortion services. Legally denying women access to these services, even if terminate of a pre-viable pregnancy was necessary due to the mother’s physical or mental health, if the pregnancy would risk her life or the unborn baby was had medical condition that was incompatible with life after birth.
His reasoning on Dobbs explicitly excluded any text from the Bill of Rights. This is an extremely salient point, as virtually ALL our individual rights as citizens and legal resident originate from the Bill of Rights. Without these rights, the Constitution’s lack protection for people, including the right to live and other fundamental human freedoms as judged by the Founding Fathers was so glaring that several of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Conventions, men intimately involved in writing the Constitution, actually refused to sign there name on it specifically because it didn’t include guard the rights of individuals.
That’s because the focus of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention was never on establishing individual human rights, but about the very BIG job of establishing a democratic country from the 10,000 foot view, one that would be able to both endure and to thrive politically, commercially, while competing successfully with other countries and when necessary, defending itself militarily. They saw personal issues of all sorts, including but not restricted to pregnancy, as a personal or family issue, having nothing to do with the Constitution. This actually is a historically documented fact with contemporary published reference (see Planned Parenthood website)
We must remember that the official purpose of the Constitutional Convention was to rewrite or “repair” the dysfunction “Article of Confederation”. This also was a document that was all about the power of the states and a relatively restricted role of the federal government. For more information on this topic, read the Federalist Papers, which does a great job of making the important distinction between the big impersonal ideas of governance at the scale of the entire population of the American colonies, and the issue of individual citizens and personal freedoms.
Hundreds of Constitutional nouns, but none have anything to do with the granular level of individuals and their personal issues
No noun or object minted after 1787 – internal combustion engines, planes, moon rockets, radios, telephones, television, expensive Gutchi bags, computer chips and computers, Google, the rest of the Internet, organ transplants or any building taller than the Washington Monument, his compatriots decided that
Our Constitution does an excellent job of providing a practical structure for governance in the same context that corporate by-laws and administrative flow-charts enumerate the legal organizational structure of a legal company or corporation. However, the obvious goal for the Founding Fathers was to enumerate the organizational chart for a country based on the ideals of a democratic republic, so fact of having an organizational structure was neither new, nor restricted to just governmental institutions.
However the topic – representational government within a country that considered itself to be a democratic republic was, except for Athens in 500 BC, a new, never done before idea. As such it was an “adventure” in creating and designing a system that would do what they wanted – allow the fair and effective governance of the population in ways that promoted stability and the same time allowing for innovation in many arens of “the public good” – commerce, trade, military defence, and
The 55 Founding Fathers knew they faced a big, complex and incredibly important a job – nothing less than developing a working plan for citizen-led government and writing it down as an perpetual blueprint for a democratic republic. If for any reason it didn’t work, all the military and civilian causalities of the Revolutionary War would have been for nothing — the British would roar back to take over the colonies and extract retribution for ever having declared independence from the English Crown.
Officially, the delegates were supposedly to be rewriting Articles of Confederation” (predecessor to our Constitution) but they quickly concluded that the Articles were fatally flawed and set them aside. Then they started writing a brand new version from scratch, with only a vague idea of exactly what the end product would be.
For many reasons, this was really big and difficult undertaking. In addition to the obvious – citizens writing a “constitution” for an untried thing described as a “self-governing” government. Among the 55 Founding Fathers, there were enormous difference in their political, economic, religious backgrounds and the social status of their families. Their ages and life experience were different, as were the parts of the country they came from and whether they lived in urban areas or rural areas of the country. In particular, was the issue of whether or not they owned slaves, or at least were neutral about the issue.
something that required equally big ideas. These men were all very well-intentioned and high experienced in the politics of self-governance. It required a “mile high” perspective to do the job at hand and indeed, they did that job so incredibly well our US constitution is
According to Jefferson:
“[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse.” Thomas Jefferson, December 20, 1787
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
defining the three branches of government and specifying the type, size, and number of members for the Senate, House and Supreme Court.
It grants scripted authority to the Legislative Branch to:
Article I ~ Section 8: Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money, regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and Indian Tribes; establish Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on Bankruptcies
To coin Money, … fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; provide Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads; promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing limited Times to Authors and Inventors exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; To define and punish Piracies and Felonies on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District {ie. District of Columbia} (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings;
And To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Section 9: Powers Denied Congress
The Migration or Importation of such Persons {i.e. slaves} as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Section 10: Powers Denied to the States
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Article III ~ Section 1
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished …
Article III ~ Section 2
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed
Article II ~ Two
No Person held to Service or Labour (i.e. slaves) in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due (ie. slave owner).
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???? the how that includes trial by jury for ?????
If we, as individuals and as a democratic country, are depending on the vocabulary of the US Constitution to defend our freedoms and rights as citizens, we will utterly disappointed, find the we cannot to rely on the US Constitution or the currently seated US Supreme Court Justices to protect or promote the principles of democracy.
As citizens and legal residence of the United States, the model of government – a representative democratic republic — initially configured by the 55 delegates of the Constitutional Convention and ratified by the 13 colonies, has been dissolved into a political fiefdom under the control of partisan politicians who appointed partisan judiciary to the US Supreme Court.
A note on the happenstance of the English alphabet:
I discovered an interesting dispersal of alphabet letters. Five of letters of the alphabet – G, K, Q, X and Z — have few if any words associated with them. At the other end of the spectrum, the letters “C” and “P” are the apparent work horse of the English language. Who knew!
Copied and used earlier This list of the five hundred and eleven nouns used in the US Constitution are seen by Justice Alito as legally defining the actionable legal concepts and precepts that decide what is and is not “constitutional”.
Becoming familiar with all 511 of these extraordinarily important nouns is useful in many ways. First, it provides a Justice Alito-approved list of exactly what our constitutional rights are based on – the easily confirmed fact that they either do or do not appears in the US Constitution.
This is an extremely important topic under the current definition by these majority of the US Supreme Court that has legally concluded via the Dobbs Decision that the Constitutional rights of American are both defined by and confined to the 4,543 words actually printed in the document signed by the members of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787.
This puts vocabulary – nouns printed in the document – as having precedence over the principles of governance that would normally be extrapolated by readers of the document based on the combined meaning of all four thousand-plus words used in the text.
The 511 nouns and concept-words in the US Constitution, September 17, 1787
A ~ America, American, age, arrest, armies, ability, article, authors, account, adjourn, alliance, adoption, authority, attendance, affirmation, ambassadors, adjournment, appointments, amendments, appellate jurisdiction, Aid and Comfort, Advice and Consent {27}
B ~ bills, ballot, branch, bribery, behavior, bankruptcies, bill of attainder, breach of the peace {13}
C ~ Constitution, Congress, citizen, civil, choice, coin, class, cases, census, captures, concurrence, compensation, commerce, consent, credit, capitation, confederation, compact, control, claims, consequence, controversies, convention, compensation, commission, councils, commissions, Chief Justice, common defense, citizen classes, citizens & subjects, courts of law, cases of impeachment, cases of rebellion, consequences of appropriations, claims of the party, cessation of particular states, confession in open court, consent of the legislatures, citizen of the United States, commander in chief of the army and navy {77}
D ~ day, duty, delay, debts, death, desire, debate, duties, danger, district, dockyards, disability, discipline, discoveries, department, disagreement, domestic violence {18}
E ~ excises, exports, electors, enemies, election, execution, expiration,
engagements, enumeration, emoluments, establishment, expenditures, exclusive right, executive authority, executive departments, erection of fourths, ex post facto law, execution of his office {29}
F ~ felony, felonies, forfeiture, free persons, foreign nations, Full faith and credit {11}
G ~ general welfare {2}
H ~ honor, house, high seas, House of Representatives, Heads of Departments {10}
I ~ Indians, imposts, inventors, invasions, information, inhabitants, indictment, insurrection, impeachments, Indian tribes, inferior officers, inferior courts, intents and purposes, importation of persons, independence of the United States inability to discharge powers and duties {32}
J ~ Jury, justice, judgment, jurisdiction, judicial power, judicial proceedings, Judge of elections, judges of the Supreme Court {16}
K ~ King {1)
L ~ labor, land, land grants, law in fact, law in equity, law, Law of Nations, Laws of the Union legislature, Letters of Marquee, liberty, list, limitations {25}
M ~ miles, manor, money, manner, member, militia, meeting, motives, majority, members, migration, magazines, measures, maritime jurisdiction, meeting of the legislature {19}
N ~ nays, navy, names, natural born citizen, naval forces, nobility, needful buildings, numbers, number of electors, number of senators and representatives {20}
O ~ oath, oath or affirmation, objections, office of the President of the United States, offenses, officers, opinion, orders, other officers, other crimes and misdemeanors, ordain and establish compensation, overt acts {29}
P ~ part, paragraph, party, places, prince, person, persons, people, ports, profit, powers, purpose, piracies, posterity, proceedings, proportion, pursuance, punishment, post office, post roads, public records, public ministers, principal officer, progress of science, pardons for offenses, president pro-tem, president of the senate, power of impeachment, privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, property belonging to the United States, privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states (66)
Q ~ quorum, question, qualifications {3}
R ~ ratified, Ratification of the conventions return, recess, receipts, reconsideration, regulations, religious test, removal, representative, reprieves, reprisal, resident, resignation, resolution, returns and qualifications, revenue, rule of naturalization, rules for the government and regulation of land, republican form of government {38}
S ~ seats, seat of government certificates, seat of the government of the United States, secrecy, securities, Section for guaranty, Senate, speech, speaker, section, session, senators, ships of war, services, suffrage, standards, statement, subject, Supreme Court, states, state legislature, state of the union, supreme law of the land {46}
T ~ tax, taxes, term, term of years, territory, term of years, Times, time of adjournment, tinder, tonnage, title, title of nobility, tranquility, training, tribunals, trial, trial of all crimes, treason, treasury, treaties, treason against the United States, trees, troops, testimony, trust {40}
U ~ United States, Union, useful arts, unanimous consent {7}
V ~ value, vote, vessels, vacancies, vice president {6}
W ~ war, water, weights, writings, witnesses, writs of election {8}
X ~
Y ~ yeas, years, Year of our Lord {6}
Z ~
Total 511 words
Signed on the 17th day of September, the 12th witness thereof, here on to subscribed our names,
- Washington – PRESID and deputy from Virginia
Ratified by: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Providence plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
