Promote the General Welfare

Principle #6 from the Enacting Clause (Preamble) of the United States Constitution

Full Episode Transcript

With its Decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court has both enabled and facilitated clear Deprivations of Rights under the Color of Law. The Thirteenth Amendment, in Section 1 is unambiguous with the statement “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Title 18 of The United States Code in Chapter 77 at §1581 further underscores the Supreme folly with respect to forced labor. That statute reads: “Whoever holds or returns any person to a condition of peonage, or arrests any person with the intent of placing him in or returning him to a condition of peonage, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Women and girls that are not ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood, are routinely coerced into such forced labor conditions at the pleasure of the state. Malign state actors enjoy whispered impunities through a wide variety of unconstitutional immunities as they violate health privacy rights even while using the long arm of the law to seize women’s health records. Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) specifically exempts law enforcement investigations from adhering to such privacy requirements, if those investigations were conducted in bad faith, bad actors could and should be subject to fines of between fifty thousand to two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars and serve up to ten years in prison.

The witch trial jurisprudence employed by the majority in Dobbs reflects an abysmal ignorance, not only with respect to the Thirteenth Amendment, but also the Establishment Clause. While it was respecting one establishment of religion, the Court discounted the way Judaism prioritizes the health and welfare interests of the mother over the unborn. It fully vested its reputation with those fundamentalist Christian sects that have allowed their hop-skippety-jump interpretations of the Word made book to eclipse the actual teachings of the Word made flesh. When Jesus said “I stand at the door and knock,” he was demonstrating a profound respect for individual sovereignty. This particular lesson is apparently lost on those feigning reverence for small government.

Equal justice under law is no longer seen as an aspirational statement within the judicial monastery. Government of, by, and for the people has been undermined by decisions on voting rights, political and racial gerrymandering, the purging of voter roles without documentary evidence of death or relocation, and all the other self-serving sophistries dark money brings to bear in distorting the public discourse. Where are democracy’s true friends?