Land of the Free

Photo credit Unsplash

Freedom. The American ideal. The quality that perfectly epitomises the character of Americans domestically as well as abroad. With the Declaration of Independence, we founded a nation that was determined to create freedom from oppressive rulers. After the revolution, when it was necessary to form our own government, our founders wrote the Constitution. They understood, though, that to protect our individual rights from our own government, we needed to outline our freedoms and thus they included the Bill of Rights. Even with this grand intention, this absolute desire to protect our natural freedoms, which has been baked into our American blood from our founding, we still made mistakes. Most notably slavery which led to the Civil War. The mistake we made then, is a mistake we continue to make. We forget that our freedoms must be protected on a national level. Instead there is a desire to force the federal government to step back and allow states to determine the freedoms that they will enforce. This approach leads to division and inequality. Our inherent freedoms, our natural rights, should not be left to the whims of local politicians, who may find it easier to oppress the minority, than ensure the freedom of all people within local borders. Instead freedom is best protected by the federal government.

There is an argument that certain legislation is best left to states. In fact the 10th amendment to the Constitution reserves anything not mentioned in the Constitution to the States or the people. This is the basis that was used to overturn Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS decided that abortion was not mentioned in the Constitution, so was not protected by it, and instead would fall under the providence of the 10th Amendment. Thus, SCOTUS took away what had been a Constitutional right (the freedom of a woman to make her own appropriate healthcare decisions) and instead gave that power to the individual states. Since Roe was overturned, many states have implemented various abortion bans. The freedom that had existed under Roe has now been replaced with oppressive governmental interference at the state level. States are threatening our freedom. A freedom that had previously been protected at the federal level.

Lets look at other current constitutional freedoms, that could be potentially returned to the states and restricted. SCOTUS recently decided that same-sex marriage was protected by the 14th Amendment (Obergefell v. Hodges). However, the dissent in the case granting that constitutional right was very vocal in stating that again, same-sex marriage is not mentioned in the Constitution and thus should be left to the states to decide. Interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia) became a constitutional right as well upon reliance on the 14th Amendment, as did the right to use contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut), and the prohibition against anti-sodomy laws (Lawrence v. Texas). If SCOTUS decides to revisit any of these precedents, there is a good chance that they will overturn them under the same basis it used to overturn Roe. If this happens, these federal freedoms will again be subject to the various whims of local state politicians.

So what is the problem with this? The argument is that it is better, fairer, more democratic even, to let people decide laws at a more local level. For example, people in different states could have different priorities in say education or in public safety, and thus should be allowed to act accordingly. Thus the 10th amendment reserves those powers to the states in order to allow the states to act upon more localised priorities. However, when the issue pertains to an individual’s freedom, it makes more sense to have overarching federal rights guaranteeing that freedom for all people, instead of allowing for 50 different interpretations. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense that in one state a woman has a right to make her own healthcare decisions, but as soon as she crosses an invisible line into another state, she loses that right. If there is a freedom that an individual can have, it should not be arbitrarily enforced based on location. Federal protection of freedoms solves this problem and is more in line with our national ideal of freedom.

Now one might argue, well what is there to stop there just being unlimited freedom: freedom to do anything and everything under the sun regardless of consequences. Well, I addressed this concept in a previous blog post entitled “Responsible Freedom.” An individual’s freedom must be balanced against others’ freedoms. If your freedom negatively impacts another, then a balance must be struck, hence we must have responsible freedom. The court cases dealing with abortion (before the decision overturning Roe) were a good example of the system attempting to balance competing interests. The abortion cases gave women a constitutional right to an abortion, (the freedom to make personal healthcare decisions), however it balanced that right with regulations designed to protect the life of a fetus. Requiring the woman’s freedom to make her own healthcare decisions be dependent upon her physical location does nothing to actually balance her interests with the interests of the fetus. It instead arbitrarily distinguishes who gets to enjoy certain rights or freedoms based solely on physical location. One’s rights or freedoms should not be so easily disregarded.

To ensure the freedom of all people within our borders we had to fight against ourselves during the Civil War. We won. Freedom won. And with it the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were added to the Constitution to again protect the freedoms that were gained. Of course, we still are not perfect and there have been many more battles over the years to gain freedom for those still being oppressed within our country. Typically, these battles are waged locally because states continue to have oppressive power, however we should realize that our rights and our freedoms need to be protected federally. Our freedoms should never be left dependent upon the invisible state lines making up our country. We are all Americans and we should all have the same rights regardless of where we live.