The Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in the 8th District of Illinois, David McSweeny, has voiced his support for a constitutional ban prohibiting abortion in all instances. I oppose such a measure for two reasons; one substantive, the other structural.
On substantive grounds I oppose any statutory prohibition of abortion that does not contain exceptions for instances of rape, incest, and desideratum to the survival of the mother. I have elaborated why previously and will not superfluously plagiarize myself here.
Structurally, I believe it infelicitous to write substantive, policy-specific language into the constitution because such language does not belong there. The province of a constitution is to devise the structure and nature of a government. That government, so constituted, is responsible for devising specific law. Should you write policy-specific language into the constitution you controvert its very function and obfuscate the distinction between a constitution and the government it inaugurates. A constitution creates a government, that government creates law.
Moreover, the framers deliberately mandated super-majorities to amend the constitution because they did not want it to devolve into an inconsistent, un-prestigious, elementary reflection of fashionable policy persuasions held at any one point in time. They understood that for the constitution to be a durable document immune from the erosions of time it had to be limited to simply devising a framework under whose auspices the actual substantive determinations could be made by the people and future generations.
For these reasons it would be inappropriate to write policy, any form of it, into the constitution.
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