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Do you ever consider returning to educational games? Less dubious ones?

General question: I've listened to Nina Totenberg's recounts of Supreme Court proceedings for a while, and I'm always a bit mystified by one particular type of reasoning that shows up here and there.

In my (admittedly naive) view, SCOTUS is responsible for interpreting the the constitutionality of different legal events or documents. Why, then, do they spend so much time asking about the possible repercussions of their finding on one side or another? Shouldn't they be making the judgment based on an interpretation of the constitution's actual contents?

In other words, why does it matter what effect the decision on prop 8 might have on traditional values or on the ideal of the institute of marriage? Analogously, why does it matter what effect the decision on Roe v Wade has on mortality rates of mothers or the real impact on impoverished communities? Why does the court even consider arguments about the upshot from Citizens United?

To be clear: I'm asking just about the line of reasoning. I'm fairly sure I don't have a strict constructionist position, because I've studied language for a long time and I'm not so naive as to assume that there is such a thing as the objective meaning of a sentence. My issue is that, where there are disagreements between the justices on the interpretation of the words on a page, shouldn't the debate be carried out by defending one interpretation or another, and nothing else?

This could obviously lead to some harmful and undesirable consequences, but doesn't that just mean that the constitution is broken in some way and needs to be amended?