OK, this had to happen sometime in the first few weeks.  I have to concede a point to you, Jay.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did defend the First Amendment free speech claims of a non-profit in the Wisconsin Right To Life case you cited.  I didn’t like all the reasoning in it, but I don’t like over-regulation of political ideas in the name of “good government”. Campaign finance “reform” got us PACs and then 527s and hasn’t noticeably improved the caliber of government.

Just a reminder: telling churches and charities with tax exemptions they can’t endorse candidates is fully appropriate regulation.

On the broader issue, you know that we can’t only use the Constitution to protect things the framers talked about, at least insofar as we even have complete records of that.  They didn’t discuss television, but surely the principle of free speech applies to televised images too.  Also, they made it clear in the Ninth Amendment that just because a right isn’t articulated specifically in the first eight amendments doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  Moreover, it might be held by “the people” or by “the states”–two different locales.  What you do about a fetus in my view is a right “we the people” as individuals make.

 I would remind a few of my critical commentators that abortion is never discussed in the Bible.  We do know that Jewish law didn’t even treat striking a woman and causing her to have a miscarriage as “murder”.  We also know that the early Christian Church did not believe that life begins at conception.  So this religious issue is one glommed onto by the Right today for its ideological purposes, not for theological ones.