While the ostensive case has been made many times over for the fetus and the case for personhood identity, the much more deeply rooted case of the vast history of occidental absolutism in metaphysics has mostly escaped public perception. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 was based on privacy concerns of the individual. The anti-abortion claims are based on absolute claims of when a human life begins. Privacy claims are relativistic by nature as they are rooted in each individual’s determination. Absolute claims are universal as are claims of logic which historically has claimed the virtuous title of ‘Truth’. The Supreme Court in overturning Roe has once again opened Pandora’s Box which has violently haunted the West with its universal claims over and above the tumultuous suffering of people from oppression, slavery, and inevitable bloody revolutions. A cycle of force and violence is the only possible outcome when absolutism establishes itself in human history. The Supreme Court has declared that the decision of when life begins cannot be determined by Federalism but must be left to the states to decide. On the surface this has the simulacra of relative individualism. Thus, the political Right can cloak its true intensions in a pseudo-relativism by claiming that the decision is a case and point of democracy in action. This has always been the tactic of the metaphysics of absolutism. Since absolutism, in itself, makes no pretense for relativistic concern, its only answer must come in the history of violent revolution and human suffering. However, now marketing and technology has found a way to thwart this inevitable outcome to some degree by cloaking its essentialist claim in the phantasma of democracy. The Supreme Court’s latest decision only becomes the latest case and point of this obfuscation. However, the clay feet of this tactic are already becoming visible in the many state’s challenges to the Court’s heralded claims of neutrality.

Challenges are already being filed to the Court’s retreat from starie decises (to stand by things decided), or precedent, in favor of another particular universal claim – the authorized narrative of constitutional history. The accepted canonical version of the text that the U.S. Constitution does not mention abortion, justifies overturning the precedent of Roe v. Wade by favoring the contrary of expressio unius est exclusio alterius (the explicit mention of one (thing) is the exclusion of another)1 or the explicit non-mention of one thing is the exclusion of it. The U. S. Constitution never mentions women or slaves. Women and slaves are left to the margins of the text. Absentia, privation2 in Latin indicate absence and privation. In Portuguese there is also a word which scholars tell us is untranslatable, saudade3. Approximations to saudade are made in the phrase ‘presence of absence’. In the Latin determination, presence of absence is thought as absent in deprivation. History has taken this point of view as monstrous, Frankenstein, freakish and evil. Absence is not absolute as it can never be absolute. It is nonsense to think of nothingness or ‘absolutely absent’. It is a metaphysic and an impossibility of logic. Therefore, it cannot belong to the customary, the homeland. It must be relegated to the nether lands of Hades. It is uncanny, in-human, not-to-be. In the U.S Constitution, the absence of presence of women and Black people is not a positive assertion of simple non-determination in the virtue of the document as the Court would have us believe – rather, only relegated to the glaring margin of the text in which women and blacks cannot be endowed with the title of coming-to-be. They cannot be voters and landowners. No inalienable rights are explicitly granted to women and Black people. They must exist on the fringes of Constitutional history as sojourners, as not belonging to authorized history. Neutrality has become the more politically correct word for designating the indeterminates, those who cannot join the determinations of authorized history. However, in bestowing this ‘not-sense-obtaining’ presence on what clearly is human we have contradictio in adjecto or contradiction in terms. In this historic rush to insanity, we have authorized the illogic of ‘A is not A’ in the very notion of accepted universal logic. Logic in its absolute form no longer abides by its own rules but must of necessity contradict itself. Only in the ideal can logic achieve its unescapable truth. The U.S. Constitution determines in absence the plight of women and Black people and in so doing, also absolves itself from any responsibilities for the ‘detestables’. It is interesting to note that in strict historic conformity, only powder loaded muskets would be allowed as second amendment arms. Justice Thomas would be owned by a white plantation owner. Women could not be justices or own land or vote. Judicial neutrality based on historic convention would not make the current court possible or our current world possible. Abortions would still happen in silence as they have ever since we left the caves.

Practically, the Supreme Court in determining its non-absence of a determination has set itself up for massive repercussions in violence and tragic cases which will force them to make determinations about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They will inevitably be pressed for a determination of when life begins. Why? Because logic requires it. Now that privacy concerns have been wiped away due to neutrality, the states will be put into the position of untying the Gordian Knot of what is allowable and what is not allowed. If life begins at conception, and “babies are being murdered”, does this mean contraception is a crime against humanity? Can women be charged for murder for illegal abortions? Can miscarriages be scrutinized for some melliferous intentionality? The life of the fetus now trumps the life of the mother. The ‘baby’ must be innocent so therefore the mother is guilty. God punishes the mother for not giving birth to the already human from conception, the fetus. What would prohibit these ‘logical determinations’?

Furthermore, the absence of determination by the court paves the way for even more medieval atrocities. In nature, fetuses are naturally aborted many times just as for humans. If God made nature, how could he be opposed to abortion? Why wouldn’t God be the first and original ‘aborter’? Well, surely it must be the fall of man in the Garden of Eden which is to blame. And incidentally, it was the women who tempted the man to take a bite of the forbidden apple. In all this nonsense we embark on the desperate and futile quest for a determination which cannot be made which nevertheless does determine. It determines the authorized versions of history over the non-authorized versions of human suffering and oppression. Why have a ‘supreme’ court if neutrality becomes the standard for conspicuous persona non grata, persons unwelcome and unacceptable? The court in cloaking the glaring question of a women’s choice to become a mother has declared women not authorized to make a decision about their body – no matter how much they may protest the contrary. The states are now left to try to make that inevitable determination which can never be resolved. As the “Supreme” Court, all unresolvable questions of law must find their final resting place in the determination of the ‘supreme’. There is no telling how long this unresolvable question will fester in the states and how much violence and tragedy will be endured while this authorized chaos of neutrality will churn in the states. But one thing is certain: non-determination is a determination. Absolution of the Court’s founding charter is cowardice as the arbiters of truth. When historic absolutism has faced its inevitable contradiction in terms, it has never rested in its narrative. The inevitable question of contradiction in terms in human suffering must necessarily prevent a final resting place in the idealism of absolute certainty. Only the vernier of ‘neutrality’ must wither away in the storm of what can never be allowed to become present as “inalienable right”. The Supreme Court has declared itself as not-a-court, as what cannot be decided so therefore must be ignored. I have news for these justices – as ‘not determinate’ determination you have violated your right to be what you claim to be. You have become non-consequential, and the lower courts will only have to perpetually roll the boulder of Sisyphus’ abdication up the hill until once again we have justices which are capable of answering the call of contingent justice and not merely ‘fiddlers while Rome burns’.

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[1] Meriam-Webster, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, ex·​pres·​sio uni·​us est ex·​clu·​sio al·​ter·​i·​us | \ ik-ˈspre-shē-ō-yu̇-ˈnī-əs-ˌest-ik-ˈsklü-zē-ō-ȯl-ˈtir-ē-əs, ek-ˈspre-sē-ō-ü-ˈnē-u̇s-ˌest-ek-ˈsklü-sē-ō-äl-te-ˈrē-u̇s \

Legal Definition of expressio unius est exclusio alterius

: a principle in statutory construction: when one or more things of a class are expressly mentioned others of the same class are excluded

[2] Interesting Reading, Malum: A Theological Hermeneutics of Evil

[3] SAUDADE: THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE also Saudade: the untranslatable word for the presence of absence