Abortion is protected by the constitution?  Huh?
What *is* protected by the constitution is a right to privacy --
 inferred from "right against unreasonable searches" [1st amend.], as well
 as "right not to testify against yourself" [5th amend], the right of 
 "due process"[4th and 14th admends; how does this apply, exactly?]
 and the explicit recognition that even if a right isn't explicitly listed
 in the constitution, if it's a basic individual right then it's still
 covered [9th amendment].

 What does right-to-privacy have to do with right-to-abortion?
 Well, right-to-privacy means you can't have laws against married
 people using contraceptives [Griswold vs Connecticut, 1965]: 
 such a law would intrude on "part of an intimate sphere of marital privacy",
 and is not the government's business, even aside from question of how
 to fairly enforce the law.  Similarly, this right to privacy
 doesn't depend on you being married; possession of contraceptives by
 any couple can't be outlawed [Eisenstadt v Baird, 1972].


"[T]he State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and
protecting the health of the pregnant woman ... and that it has still another
important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life."

 In Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court recognized two competing tensions:
 The state has an interest in protecting unborn children, yet couples
 (in particuar, expecting mothers) have a right to make private decisions
 about their intimate life.  They ruled for a compromise: in the first
 trimester, states cannot intrude on the individual's right;
 it is a private matter between a woman and her doctor, and has not yet
 entered the realm of state scrutiny.
 By the third trimester, they can regulate or outlaw abortion (subject to 
 rights of the mother, like risk-of-death).
 In between, during the second trimester, state laws can regulate abortion
 only in ways which are reasonably related to the mother's health
 [as the state has a compelling interest in the health of the mother].


 The ruling was 7-2, with justices White and Rehnquist vigorously
 dissenting, arguing that this ruling was over-extrapolating 
 the "right to privacy".

  


  Thanks to WikiPedia for references and thoughts:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade





A strict reading of constitution would make the Air Force illegal -- the
governement is only allowed to have an army and a navy.  Clearly, the framers
weren't opposed to the use of technology that was over a hundred years
from being invented.  No reasonable person minds that today we implicitly
read this additional bit into the Constitution.  Similarly, double
jeopardy applies only to "life and limb" -- if there's not corporal 
punishment for some crime, then a literal reading would allow a state to 
keep retrying somebody over and over for the same offense.
It is the duty of the courts to interpret what the constitution does
and doesn't mean in today's world.

  Things not actually in the constitution:
  http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html