Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Don't turn Constitution into watery prose

By Frank Stagnaro

Within two or three months, the odds are that the United States Supreme Court will decide to uphold state bans on physician-assisted suicide. This will infuriate advocates of the morally explosive procedure, who heatedly insist that terminally ill people have a contitutional right to enlist the aid of a doctor to send them on their journey to the big taco stand in the sky.

I really can't say I will disagree with the decision when it comes down. This doesn't necessarily mean I disagree with the argument that we mortals who want to split the scene on a permanent basis--with or without a gentle nudge from an attending sawbones--should be allowed to. As the title of a Richard Dreyfus movie went, "Whose life is it, anyway?"

The primary reason I'm reluctant to jump on the bandwagon of the right-to-die types who have petitioned the Supreme Court is that they, and others espousing socially creative causes, have been stretching the integrity of one of the finest monuments to individual freedom ever erected--the Constitution of the United States--to the breaking point. Over the years, this admittedly imperfect but still noble document has been twisted and turned to suit the political expediencies of the moment. At one time it was interpreted as accepting the convention of slavery. Indeed, as we all know, many of its most brilliant and influential contributors were slave owners. Of course, the Civil War settled that nagging issue once and for all, but it is not difficult to point to many other pivotal social controversies in which an interpretation of the Constitution was obviously devised in accordance with the winds of then-popular social convictions.

Last year, for example, the supposedly conservative (moderate constructionist) court invalidated a Colorado state law forbidding special treatment for homosexuals. This was in keeping with the tenor of the times and had precious little to do with constitutional law as it applies to civil liberty and equality of treatment under the law.

Then, of course, there was the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which held that a state may not prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy and that a state may regulate, but may not prohibit, abortions during the second trimester. Most objective scholars will concede, however reluctantly, that the U. S. Constitution simply does not contain the explicit or implicit legal verbiage or context necessary to sustain such a position. It's difficult to imagine that the subject of abortion was even considered by the most libertarian of the original framers. They were far more concerned with the freedom of religion and speech, the right to assemble, and all of the rest of that good fundamental stuff we inherited and luxuriate in and which makes us the marvel, envy and political model of the entire world.

However, because the majority of people living in the United States today believe that a woman has a right to control her own body, the U.S. Supreme Court huffed and puffed and somehow found a constitutional license for abortion.

Not that such a right does not exist.

As a former president with a countenance more at home on a used car lot than in the Oval Office used to say, "Let me be perfectly clear about this." The right of a woman to obtain an abortion on demand can be debated from a number of platforms, ranging from the purely practical to those stemming from the theological and religious. Women can argue that they cannot support children and that it would be immoral to bring them into the world, or they can say that the decision to have children or not is no one's business but theirs.

The point is that the Constitution of the United States is mute on the subject of abortion and should have been allowed to remain that way.

Just as it should not be compromised and corrupted to support the contention of the doctor-assisted suicide patrons.

Those who feel strongly about abortion, suicide, the right to smoke Mary Jane while making love in the bathtub or anything else would be better served by pursuing the statutory remedies guaranteed to us by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Of course, what this means to Californians is that if they are dissatisfied with the way Congress and the courts are handling the assisted-suicide question, they can light a fire under the good old boys and girls up in Sacramento via a referendum or the ballot box. It's not necessary to spin-doctor the United States Constitution so that it meets the needs of special interest groups. That approach could end up transfiguring a magnificent testimony to freedom into a watery piece of prose that panders to the whims of all people on all subjects.

Frank Stagnaro is a Los Gatos resident.