Opinion

Will the Supreme Court let Texas’s latest assault on women’s rights proceed?

No constitutional right is absolute; the Constitution, we are told, is not a suicide pact. In a pandemic, otherwise sacrosanct rights must yield to the common good.

So, to prevent the spread of the virus, governors can order the cancellation of mass gatherings — even when those gatherings are religious services, so long as their edicts do not single out religion. Similarly, the Second Amendment right to bear arms would probably not prevent orders closing gun shops among other “non-essential” businesses during the pandemic, any more than the First Amendment would prohibit the shuttering of bookstores.