(Many do not understand this, but Common Core did not just include standards for Math and English classes. The Literacy standards are for English class, but even on the title page it is clear they are are also for “History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical” classes. Anywhere that one reads to learn information.)
Common Core’s (CCSS’s) sixth reading standard says, “Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.” This skill is applied to reading literacy works and to reading for information — and even to speaking and writing. Instruction in this skill begins in kindergarten and awareness of the author and that fact that author’s have a point of view begins in third grade. By high school exit, students should be able to, “Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.”
The Third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says, “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” The Bill of Rights only has ten amendments, and two proposed amendments were rejected. This issue of quartering soldiers was clearly very important to our Founding Fathers. The 9th Amendment says this is not an exhaustive list and there are other rights (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”), but they listed a whole bunch of particular rights that they wanted to specifically innumerate.
Why did the quartering of troops make that list when things like marriage or travel did not? Heck, voting is not even listed — not enumerated.
That important sixth CCSS standard is quite relevant here. As adults we should be able to consider the point of view and purpose of the authors of Bill of Rights when thinking about what was included and what was not.
The political leaders of the new states and nation had just gone through quite a trauma. That had particular grievances with their old king (e.g., “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us,” “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”) and wanted to make sure that the new central government did not repeat those offenses. They listed the issues that were on their minds, because they had just gone through something. They did not wish those offenses repeated.
And they knew there were others (i.e., see the Ninth Amendment, but they needed to make sure about that recent stuff not happening again.
******************************
There is a great quote of ambiguous meaning, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Many people take this to mean that women should not be concerned with being well behaved, as behaving well would prevent them from great accomplishments. That is a wonderful interpretation, and historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich applauds the sentiment.
However, when Dr. Ulrich first wrote those words, she was lamenting the difficulty of finding historical records of the lives of women who were not remarked upon for their misbehavior — unlike, say, “witches.”
It simply is difficult to find the concerns of well behaved women in all those written documents. Historians know that. Women had less access to power, to education, to quill and paper. Their letters were far fewer and their direct participation in matters of state was virtually nil.
******************************
Taken together, this should not be hard to understand.
Our Constitution and laws were focused on the concerns of men and they were focused on the recent offenses of their former colonial overlords. They certainly did not see any need to protect — or even address — the concerns and habits of the women around them who were engaged in the normal lives of society’s women.
Should we take the absence of a right to reproductive freedom by free white women in our founding documents as a sign that it did not exist? As a sign that pre-quickening abortion was rare or socially unacceptable? Or should we take it merely as an indicator that the issue was not threatened or on the minds of the holders of political power?
That’s not actually a hard question at all.