U.S. history buffs, has any group of citizens in this country

[CTyankee]

secured a constitutional right and then had it rescinded? I can't recall one in our history, altho I would guess some gun owners feel they "had" a right taken away from them.

Iknow that when Roe goes the issue will revert to the states, but the larger question is how this country feels about having a constitutional right stripped from half of its population. As I have often asked my prochoice Republican "abortion is not the only issue"
friends, "What contitutional right would YOU give up without a fight?"

[SaveElmer]

1. Well it depends on how you mean...

Certainly ex-slaves were guaranteed the right to vote by the 14th and 15th amendments...but Southern states were able to get around these during Jim Crow to effectively deny African Americans their rights.

[wryter2000]

2. Helpful talking point?

I've been wondering if it isn't possible that the same reasoning (no right to privacy) couldn't be used to force women to have abortions. The same sorts of people who don't want people having sex -- and antichoice is part of a larger anti-sex movement -- are the same people, imho, who don't want the "wrong" kind of people having children.

Can the issue be phrased that if the Court won't allow abortion today, it might decree them tomorrow? The issue really is choice, not abortion.

[CTyankee]

8. Yes, Sandra Day O'Connor said the same thing

in one of abortion cases (don't recall if it was Casey or another one). Her point was that if the government can force a woman to bear a child, what is to keep it from forcing a woman to have an abortion.

You will recall that under the Weimar Republic women were granted the right to an abortion. The Nazis of course took that away and forced white ARyan women to have babies and forced the "inferior" people to have abortions. Pretty horrible precendent there.

[imenja]

3. yes, African Americans

The 14th (citizenship and equal protection) and 15th (voting rights) amendments, passed in the late 1860s, were enforced for only a brief period. When Northern troops withdrew from the South and ended Reconstruction in the 1870s, they allowed Southern states to strip African Americans of voting rights and equal protection. The Supreme Court then codified that removal of rights under Plessy v Ferguson (1896). Only with the voting rights act of 1965 were those rights legally restored.

[getmeouttahere]

4. And 40 years later....

many blacks, and probably some other minorities, are being disenfranchised or at the very least made to wait in ridiculously long lines to attempt to discourage them casting their votes. I'm dissapointed that their hasn't been more outrage over this sort of thing.

[imenja]

6. very true

You'll notice I said legal rights rather than actual voting. I think forbidding felons from voting is also a civil rights issue, and perhaps in part racially motivated.

[TayTay]

7. Plessy Vs. Ferguson

Rights were enumerated in the Constitution that granted the vote and equal consideration to all races under the law. This was abandoned as the Civil War memory faded away.

See: http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/post-civilwar/plessy.html

[NoodleBoy]

5. the Alien and Sedition acts were a direct threat to American rights early

on. They made the waiting period for naturalised immigrants to vote 14 years instead of 7 to try to discourage them from participating at all, and they made some forms of criticism of the government treasonable offences.

Fortunately, they had a sunset, much like the current Patriot Act. We can only hope that there'll be many more Freedom Fries conversions in the next week to defeat that hoorid piece of legislation.