According to Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, gun rights and abortion rights are in “many ways alike” due to the fact they are both constitutional rulings that limit the power of the states.
“There has been a constitutional decision, so they’ve both been constitutionalized, whether you like it or not,” Dershowitz went on to tell show host Carl Higbie on Newsmax’s “Saturday Report.” “It’s interesting that people on the right who support widespread gun rights don’t want to see restrictions, but people on the other side don’t want to see restrictions on abortion.”
via Newsmax:
His comments come after discussions on whether he thinks the Supreme Court will eventually overrule the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, and during talks about his opinions about a lawsuit from retailers in Connecticut who say a recent update to a statewide computer system is unduly delaying the sales of guns.
“I think that in Connecticut, probably the Supreme Court if they take the case will say (they have) gone too far in restricting gun rights,” the law professor emeritus said.
The Connecticut Citizens Defense League, which filed a lawsuit in 2020 after the state used the COVID pandemic to stop fingerprinting for gun sales, is back with a new lawsuit over gun sales, reports Hartford, Conn., CBS affiliate WFSB. A judge ordered that fingerprinting be immediately resumed, and the CCDL has returned to court over two new systems.
The group says a new fingerprinting system isn’t working because local police departments are having problems with the software and have not been trained on it. Another new rule requires retailers to call the state to get approval before selling a weapon, but the sellers say the call-in system is constantly offline.
“I think the court will uphold background checks, but background checks are being used to stop people from exercising their constitutional right to buy the guns,” Dershowitz stated.
“That’s the problem. The state won’t even do a background check and they can’t sell the guns. It would be like the state saying you have to have an ID for voting and then refusing to give out IDs. If you’re going to impose a restriction on a right, you have to make it easy to avoid that restriction. You cannot use the restriction as a way of undermining the right itself. That would be true of guns. That would be true of voting. That would be true of abortion,” he continued.
When it comes to the topic of abortion, Dershowitz stated that the Supreme Court doesn’t have the five votes necessary to overturn Roe V. Wade, going on to reiterate that he doesn’t really think Republicans want that to happen.
“I’m not saying that the political considerations will come into play, but Roe v Wade has been a godsend for the Republican Party,” Dershowitz added. “If abortion returns and becomes a political issue, the vast majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose, and so it will be the death knell for the current Republican Party.”
"*" indicates required fields
