In a question about their criteria for Supreme Court appointments, Joe Biden turned the question over Roe v. Wade back from a question over the legitimacy of the right to abortion as a legal principle to one about the right to privacy: the principle on which Roe is predicated. Every candidate then asserted their belief in the right to privacy, which is not spelled out specifically in the Bill of Rights. In fact, the privacy right is most commonly cited as part of the 14th Amendment. I have long advocated that if the Democrats wanted to make a decent fight over Constitutional principles, they would offer a Constitutional amendment that would explicitly spell out a right to privacy. Let the Republicans lead the fight against a right that most Americans already think they have. --Adele M. Stan
