Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: DougMacG on September 14, 2008, 10:20:28 PM
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Respectfully answering a post that opposed Palin on issues and listed "choice" first, I thought it was time to open the unmentionable topic of abortion.
We avoid the issue IMO by just calling it "choice". I'm for choice... I favor choice in schools. trade, social security, health care, drilling, disaster relief, bridges to nowhere and putting men on the moon. Just not about respecting innocent human life.
Former President Clinton called abortion a constitutional right that should be safe, legal and rare. What other constitutional rights should be rare? Freedom of speech? Right to assemble? Freedom of religion? Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure? The right to vote? I can't think of another individual right that should be rare.
Sen. Kerry and others covered it by saying they are personally opposed to abortion but favor abortion rights. Again, what other great right would they be personally opposed to? I can't think of one.
Sen. Biden said a week ago on Meet the Press that he believes that life begins at conception, but that isn't relevant to public policy because it comes from his faith.
But it doesn't come only from faith. We know through science that that life begins at conception.
President Reagan said in the 1980s we know 3 things about a fetus:
1) The fetus (little one) is alive
2) It is of the human species, and
3) It has separate and distinct genetic code from the mother or father.
Are not all three of these true???
The discussion often comes back to incest, rape and the life of the mother, but most anti-abortion proposals include exceptions. I recall reading abortion reason statistics published by planned parenthood and concluding that about 98% of the abortions are for reasons I see as for convenience.
Like it or not, Americans are using abortion as a form of birth control.
What about men? They have a huge stake and have absolutely no say in the process. Equal protection? I don't think so.
To me it's also personal - my daughter is a survivor of abortion. By luck or miracle, she missed her appointment. Now 14, she is making her little impact on the world and the people she touches. When I look back I just can't see that she was only a potential human life.
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I think the judicial "penumbra" and "emanation" hocus pocus within Roe v. Wade ensured that abortion will remain a divisive issue for decades to come and am astounded that almost all those who can find an unenumerated right to privacy they then narrowly extrapolate to cover abortion and little else, can't find an enumerated right to keep and bear arms. I think the country would have been better served if the topic had been dealt with legislatively rather than by judicial sleight of hand and worry this sort of add water and stir result serves to ultimately undermine all civil protections.
With that said, as an off brand libertarian, I'm loathe to tell women that they are bound by law to let a creature grow inside of them. I could ruminate further, but it's been done far better than I can in a remarkable treatise by Judith Jarvis Thomson, which I'm appending below:
Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion
From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).
(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)
Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that the fetus is. or anyway that we had better say it is, a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called "slippery slope arguments"--the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory--and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically.
I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for "drawing a line" in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth. Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms and less, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. But I shall not discuss any of this. For it seems to me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, for the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Opponents of abortion commonly spend most of their time establishing that the fetus is a person, and hardly anytime explaining the step from there to the impermissibility of abortion. Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps instead they are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at birth; and why pay out more arguments than you have to? Whatever the explanation, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it.
I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.
It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didn't come into existence because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of a rape. And in fact the people who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape.
Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously enough, the pregnancy went on for nine years, or even the rest of the mother's life.
Some won't even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life, they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin: a number of points of interest come out in respect to it.
1.
Let us call the view that abortion is impermissible even to save the mother's life "the extreme view." I want to suggest first that it does not issue from the argument I mentioned earlier without the addition of some fairly powerful premises. Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns that she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term. What may be done for her? The fetus, being to life, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life. Presumably they have an equal right to life. How is it supposed to come out that an abortion may not be performed? If mother and child have an equal right to life, shouldn't we perhaps flip a coin? Or should we add to the mother's right to life her right to decide what happens in and to her body, which everybody seems to be ready to grant--the sum of her rights now outweighing the fetus's right to life?
The most familiar argument here is the following. We are told that performing the abortion would he directly killings the child, whereas doing nothing would not be killing the mother, but only letting her die. Moreover, in killing the child, one would be killing an innocent person, for the child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mother's death. And then there are a variety of ways in which this might be continued. (1) But as directly killing an innocent person is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (2) as directly killing an innocent person is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (3) as one's duty to refrain from directly killing an innocent person is more stringent than one's duty to keep a person from dying, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (4) if one's only options are directly killing an innocent person or letting a person die, one must prefer letting the person die, and thus an abortion may not be performed.
Some people seem to have thought that these are not further premises which must be added if the conclusion is to be reached, but that they follow from the very fact that an innocent person has a right to life. But this seems to me to be a mistake, and perhaps the simplest way to show this is to bring out that while we must certainly grant that innocent persons have a right to life, the theses in (1) through (4) are all false. Take (2), for example. If directly killing an innocent person is murder, and thus is impermissible, then the mother's directly killing the innocent person inside her is murder, and thus is impermissible. But it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion on herself to save her life. It cannot seriously be said that she must refrain, that she must sit passively by and wait for her death. Let us look again at the case of you and the violinist There you are, in bed with the violinist, and the director of the hospital says to you, "It's all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you'll be dead within the month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that's murder, and that's impermissible." If anything in the world is true, it is that you do not commit murder, you do not do what is impermissible, if you reach around to your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life.
The main focus of attention in writings on abortion has been on what a third party may or may not do in answer to a request from a woman for an abortion. This is in a way understandable. Things being as they are, there isn't much a woman can safely do to abort herself. So the question asked is what a third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, if deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may do. But it seems to me that to treat the matter in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus. For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do. Suppose you filed yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child--you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you'll be crushed to death. The child on the other hand won't be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he'll be hurt, but in the end he'll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. Now I could well understand it if a bystander were to say. "There's nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose between your life and his, we cannot be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene." But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life. However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death Perhaps a pregnant woman is vaguely felt to have the status of house, to which we don't allow the right of self-defense. But if the woman houses the child, it should be remembered that she is a person who houses it.
I should perhaps stop to say explicitly that I am not claiming that people have a right to do anything whatever to save their lives. I think, rather, that there are drastic limits to the right of self-defense. If someone threatens you with death unless you torture someone else to death, I think you have not the right, even to save your life, to do so. But the case under consideration here is very different. In our case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it. Both are innocent: the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot interfere. But the person threatened can.
In sum, a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unborn child, even if doing so involves its death. And this shows not merely that the theses in (1) through (4) are false; it shows also that the extreme view of abortion is false, and so we need not canvass any other possible ways of arriving at it from the argument I mentioned at the outset.
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2.
The extreme view could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mother's life, it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother herself. But this cannot be right either. For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by an unfortunate mistake, been rented to both: the mother owns the house. The fact that she does adds to the offensiveness of deducing that the mother can do nothing from the supposition that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this: it casts a bright light on the supposition that third parties can do nothing. Certainly it lets us see that a third party who says "I cannot choose between you" is fooling himself if he thinks this is impartiality. If Jones has found and fastened on a certain coat, which he needs to keep him from freezing, but which Smith also needs to keep him from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says "I cannot choose between you" when Smith owns the coat. Women have said again and again "This body is my body!" and they have reason to feel angry, reason to feel that it has been like shouting into the wind. Smith, after all, is hardly likely to bless us if we say to him, "Of course it's your coat, anybody would grant that it is. But no one may choose between you and Jones who is to have it."
We should really ask what it is that says "no one may choose" in the face of the fact that the body that houses the child is the mother's body. It may be simply a failure to appreciate this fact. But it may be something more interesting, namely the sense that one has a right to refuse to lay hands on people, even where it would be just and fair to do so, even where justice seems to require that somebody do so. Thus justice might call for somebody to get Smith's coat back from Jones, and yet you have a right to refuse to be the one to lay hands on Jones, a right to refuse to do physical violence to him. This, I think, must be granted. But then what should be said is not "no one may choose," but only "I cannot choose," and indeed not even this, but "I will not act," leaving it open that somebody else can or should, and in particular that anyone in a position of authority, with the job of securing people's rights, both can and should. So this is no difficulty. I have not been arguing that any given third party must accede to the mother's request that he perform an abortion to save her life, but only that he may.
I suppose that in some views of human life the mother's body is only on loan to her, the loan not being one which gives her any prior claim to it. One who held this view might well think it impartiality to say "I cannot choose." But I shall simply ignore this possibility. My own view is that if a human being has any just, prior claim to anything at all, he has a just, prior claim to his own body. And perhaps this needn't be argued for here anyway, since, as I mentioned, the arguments against abortion we are looking at do grant that the woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body. But although they do grant it, I have tried to show that they do not take seriously what is done in granting it. I suggest the same thing will reappear even more clearly when we turn away from cases in which the mother's life is at stake, and attend, as I propose we now do, to the vastly more common cases in which a woman wants an abortion for some less weighty reason than preserving her own life.
3.
Where the mother s life is not at stake, the argument I mentioned at the outset seems to have a much stronger pull. "Everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life." And isn't the child's right to life weightier than anything other than the mother's own right to life, which she might put forward as ground for an abortion?
This argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic. It is not, and this seems to me to be precisely the source of the mistake.
For we should now, at long last, ask what it comes to, to have a right to life. In some views having a right to life includes having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life. But suppose that what in fact IS the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. It would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide it. It would be less nice, though no doubt well meant, if my friends flew out to the West coast and brought Henry Fonda back with them. But I have no right at all against anybody that he should do this for me. Or again, to return to the story I told earlier, the fact that for continued life the violinist needs the continued use of your kidneys does not establish that he has a right to be given the continued use of your kidneys. He certainly has no right against you that you should give him continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys unless you give him this right--if you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due. Nor has he any right against anybody else that they should give him continued use of your kidneys. Certainly he had no right against the Society of Music Lovers that they should plug him into you in the first place. And if you now start to unplug yourself, having learned that you will otherwise have to spend nine years in bed with him, there is nobody in the world who must try to prevent you, in order to see to it that he is given some thing he has a right to be given.
Some people are rather stricter about the right to life. In their view, it does not include the right to be given anything, but amounts to, and only to, the right not to be killed by anybody. But here a related difficulty arises. If everybody is to refrain from killing that violinist, then everybody must refrain from doing a great many different sorts of things. Everybody must refrain from slitting his throat, everybody must refrain from shooting him--and everybody must refrain from unplugging you from him. But does he have a right against everybody that they shall refrain from unplugging you frolic him? To refrain from doing this is to allow him to continue to use your kidneys. It could be argued that he has a right against us that we should allow him to continue to use your kidneys. That is, while he had no right against us that we should give him the use of your kidneys, it might be argued that he anyway has a right against us that we shall not now intervene and deprive him Of the use of your kidneys. I shall come back to third-party interventions later. But certainly the violinist has no right against you that you shall allow him to continue to use your kidneys. As I said, if you do allow him to use them, it is a kindness on your part, and not something you owe him.
The difficulty I point to here is not peculiar to the right of life. It reappears in connection with all the other natural rights, and it is something which an adequate account of rights must deal with. For present purposes it is enough just to draw attention to it. But I would stress that I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life--quite to the contrary, it seems to me that the primary control we must place on the acceptability of an account of rights is that it should turn out in that account to be a truth that all persons have a right to life. I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person s body--even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would.
4.
There is another way to bring out the difficulty. In the most ordinary sort of case, to deprive someone of what he has a right to is to treat him unjustly. Suppose a boy and his small brother are jointly given a box of chocolates for Christmas. If the older boy takes the box and refuses to give his brother any of the chocolates, he is unjust to him, for the brother has been given a right to half of them. But suppose that, having learned that otherwise it means nine years in bed with that violinist, you unplug yourself from him. You surely are not being unjust to him, for you gave him no right to use your kidneys, and no one else can have given him any such right. But we have to notice that in unplugging yourself, you are killing him; and violinists, like everybody else, have a right to life, and thus in the view we were considering just now, the right not to be killed. So here you do what he supposedly has a right you shall not do, but you do not act unjustly to him in doing it.
The emendation which may be made at this point is this: the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly. This runs a risk of circularity, but never mind: it would enable us to square the fact that the violinist has a right to life with the fact that you do not act unjustly toward him in unplugging yourself, thereby killing him. For if you do not kill him unjustly, you do not violate his right to life, and so it is no wonder you do him no injustice.
But if this emendation is accepted, the gap in the argument against abortion stares us plainly in the face: it is by no means enough to show that the fetus is a person, and to remind us that all persons have a right to life--we need to be shown also that killing the fetus violates its right to life, i.e., that abortion is unjust killing. And is it?
I suppose we may take it as a datum that in a case of pregnancy due to rape the mother has not given the unborn person a right to the use of her body for food and shelter. Indeed, in what pregnancy could it be supposed that the mother has given the unborn person such a right? It is not as if there are unborn persons drifting about the world, to whom a woman who wants a child says I invite you in."
But it might be argued that there are other ways one can have acquired a right to the use of another person's body than by having been invited to use it by that person. Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and then she does become pregnant; is she not in part responsible for the presence, in fact the very existence, of the unborn person inside? No doubt she did not invite it in. But doesn't her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right to the use of her body? If so, then her aborting it would be more like the boys taking away the chocolates, and less like your unplugging yourself from the violinist--doing so would be depriving it of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice.
And then, too, it might be asked whether or not she can kill it even to save her own life: If she voluntarily called it into existence, how can she now kill it, even in self-defense?
The first thing to be said about this is that it is something new. Opponents of abortion have been so concerned to make out the independence of the fetus, in order to establish that it has a right to life, just as its mother does, that they have tended to overlook the possible support they might gain from making out that the fetus is dependent on the mother, in order to establish that she has a special kind of responsibility for it, a responsibility that gives it rights against her which are not possessed by any independent person--such as an ailing violinist who is a stranger to her.
On the other hand, this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mother's body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. It would leave out entirely the unborn person whose existence is due to rape. Pending the availability of some further argument, then, we would be left with the conclusion that unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers' bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving them of anything they have ~ right to and hence is not unjust killing.
And we should also notice that it is not at all plain that this argument really does go even as far as it purports to. For there are cases and cases, and the details make a difference. If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and a burglar climbs in, it would be absurd to say, "Ah, now he can stay, she's given him a right to the use of her house--for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.'' It would be still more absurd to say this if I had had bars installed outside my windows, precisely to prevent burglars from getting in, and a burglar got in only because of a defect in the bars. It remains equally absurd if we imagine it is not a burglar who climbs in, but an innocent person who blunders or falls in. Again, suppose it were like this: people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don't want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective, and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house? Surely not--despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective. Someone may argue that you are responsible for its rooting, that it does have a right to your house, because after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this won't do--for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a (reliable!) army.
It seems to me that the argument we are looking at can establish at most that there are some cases in which the unborn person has a right to the use of its mother's body, and therefore some cases in which abortion is unjust killing. There is room for much discussion and argument as to precisely which, if any. But I think we should sidestep this issue and leave it open, for at any rate the argument certainly does not establish that all abortion is unjust killing.
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5.
There is room for yet another argument here, however. We surely must all grant that there may be cases in which it would be morally indecent to detach a person from your body at the cost of his life. Suppose you learn that what the violinist needs is not nine years of your life, but only one hour: all you need do to save his life is to spend one hour in that bed with him. Suppose also that letting him use your kidneys for that one hour would not affect your health in the slightest. Admittedly you were kidnapped. Admittedly you did not give anyone permission to plug him into you. Nevertheless it seems to me plain you ought to allow him to use your kidneys for that hour--it would be indecent to refuse.
Again, suppose pregnancy lasted only an hour, and constituted no threat to life or health. And suppose that a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. Admittedly she did not voluntarily do anything to bring about the existence of a child. Admittedly she did nothing at all which would give the unborn person a right to the use of her body. All the same it might well be said, as in the newly amended violinist story, that she ought to allow it to remain for that hour--that it would be indecent of her to refuse.
Now some people are inclined to use the term "right" in such a way that it follows from the fact that you ought to allow a person to use your body for the hour he needs, that he has a right to use your body for the hour he needs, even though he has not been given that right by any person or act. They may say that it follows also that if you refuse, you act unjustly toward him. This use of the term is perhaps so common that it cannot be called wrong; nevertheless it seems to me to be an unfortunate loosening of what we would do better to keep a tight rein on. Suppose that box of chocolates I mentioned earlier had not been given to both boys jointly, but was given only to the older boy. There he sits stolidly eating his way through the box. his small brother watching enviously. Here we are likely to say, "You ought not to be so mean. You ought to give your brother some of those chocolates." My own view is that it just does not follow from the truth of this that the brother has any right to any of the chocolates. If the boy refuses to give his brother any he is greedy stingy. callous--but not unjust. I suppose that the people I have in mind will say it does follow that the brother has a right to some of the chocolates, and thus that the boy does act unjustly if he refuses to give his brother any. But the effect of saying, this is to obscure what we should keep distinct, namely the difference between the boy's refusal in this case and the boy's refusal in the earlier case, in which the box was given to both boys jointly, and in which the small brother thus had what was from any point of view clear title to half.
A further objection to so using the term "right" that from the fact that A ought to do a thing for B it follows that R has a right against A that A do it for him, is that it is going to make the question of whether or not a man has a right to a thing turn on how easy it is to provide him with it; and this seems not merely unfortunate, but morally unacceptable. Take the case of Henry Fonda again. I said earlier that I had no right to the touch of his cool hand on my fevered brow even though I needed it to save my life. I said it would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide me with it, but that I had no right against him that he should do so. But suppose he isn't on the West Coast. Suppose he has only to walk across the room, place a hand briefly on my brow--and lo, my life is saved. Then surely he ought to do it-it would be indecent to refuse. Is it to be said, "Ah, well, it follows that in this case she has a right to the touch of his hand on her brow, and so it would be an injustice in him to refuse"? So that I have a right to it when it is easy for him to provide it, though no right when it's hard? It's rather a shocking idea that anyone's rights should fade away and disappear as it gets harder and harder to accord them to him.
So my own view is that even though you ought to let the violinist use your kidneys for the one hour he needs, we should not conclude that he has a right to do so--we should say that if you refuse, you are, like the boy who owns all the chocolates and will give none away, self-centered and callous, indecent in fact, but not unjust. And similarly, that even supposing a case in which a woman pregnant due to rape ought to allow the unborn person to use her body for the hour he needs, we should not conclude that he has a right to do so; we should say that she is self-centered, callous, indecent, but not unjust, if she refuses. The complaints are no less grave; they are just different. However, there is no need to insist on this point. If anyone does wish to deduce "he has a right" from "you ought," then all the same he must surely grant that there are cases in which it is not morally required of you that you allow that violinist to use your kidneys, and in which he does not have a right to use them, and in which you do not do him an injustice if you refuse. And so also for mother and unborn child. Except in such cases as the unborn person has a right to demand it--and we were leaving open the possibility that there may be such cases--nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive.
6.
We have in fact to distinguish between two kinds of Samaritan: the Good Samaritan and what we might call the Minimally Decent Samaritan. The story of the Good Samaritan, you will remember, goes like this:
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him he had compassion on him.
And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, "Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee." (Luke 10:30-35)
The Good Samaritan went out of his way, at some cost to himself, to help one in need of it. We are not told what the options were, that is, whether or not the priest and the Levite could have helped by doing less than the Good Samaritan did, but assuming they could have, then the fact they did nothing at all shows they were not even Minimally Decent Samaritans, not because they were not Samaritans, but because they were not even minimally decent.
These things are a matter of degree, of course, but there is a difference, and it comes out perhaps most clearly in the story of Kitty Genovese, who, as you will remember, was murdered while thirty-eight people watched or listened, and did nothing at all to help her. A Good Samaritan would have rushed out to give direct assistance against the murderer. Or perhaps we had better allow that it would have been a Splendid Samaritan who did this, on the ground that it would have involved a risk of death for himself. But the thirty-eight not only did not do this, they did not even trouble to pick up a phone to call the police. Minimally Decent Samaritanism would call for doing at least that, and their not having done it was monstrous.
After telling the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus said, "Go, and do thou likewise." Perhaps he meant that we are morally required to act as the Good Samaritan did. Perhaps he was urging people to do more than is morally required of them. At all events it seems plain that it was not morally required of any of the thirty-eight that he rush out to give direct assistance at the risk of his own life, and that it is not morally required of anyone that he give long stretches of his life--nine years or nine months--to sustaining the life of a person who has no special right (we were leaving open the possibility of this) to demand it.
Indeed, with one rather striking class of exceptions, no one in any country in the world is legally required to do anywhere near as much as this for anyone else. The class of exceptions is obvious. My main concern here is not the state of the law in respect to abortion, but it is worth drawing attention to the fact that in no state in this country is any man compelled by law to be even a Minimally Recent Samaritan to any person; there is no law under which charges could be brought against the thirty eight who stood by while Kitty Genovese died. By contrast, in most states in this country women are compelled by law to be not merely Minimally Decent Samaritans, but Good Samaritans to unborn persons inside them. This doesn't by itself settle anything one way or the other, because it may well be argued that there should be laws in this country as there are in many European countries--compelling at least Minimally Decent Samaritanism. But it does show that there is a gross injustice in the existing state of the law. And it shows also that the groups currently working against liberalization of abortion laws, in fact working toward having it declared unconstitutional for a state to permit abortion, had better start working for the adoption of Good Samaritan laws generally, or earn the charge that they are acting in bad faith.
I should think, myself, that Minimally Decent Samaritan laws would be one thing, Good Samaritan laws quite another, and in fact highly improper. But we are not here concerned with the law. What we should ask is not whether anybody should be compelled by law to be a Good Samaritan, but whether we must accede to a situation in which somebody is being compelled--by nature, perhaps--to be a Good Samaritan. We have, in other words, to look now at third-party interventions. I have been arguing that no person is morally required to make large sacrifices to sustain the life of another who has no right to demand them, and this even where the sacrifices do not include life itself; we are not morally required to be Good Samaritans or anyway Very Good Samaritans to one another. But what if a man cannot extricate himself from such a situation? What if he appeals to us to extricate him? It seems to me plain that there are cases in which we can, cases in which a Good Samaritan would extricate him. There you are, you were kidnapped, and nine years in bed with that violinist lie ahead of you. You have your own life to lead. You are sorry, but you simply cannot see giving up so much of your life to the sustaining of his. You cannot extricate yourself, and ask us to do so. I should have thought that--in light of his having no right to the use of your body--it was obvious that we do not have to accede to your being forced to give up so much. We can do what you ask. There is no injustice to the violinist in our doing so.
7.
Following the lead of the opponents of abortion, I have throughout been speaking of the fetus merely as a person, and what I have been asking is whether or not the argument we began with, which proceeds only from the fetus's being a person, really does establish its conclusion. I have argued that it does not.
But of course there are arguments and arguments, and it may be said that I have simply fastened on the wrong one. It may be said that what is important is not merely the fact that the fetus is a person, but that it is a person for whom the woman has a special kind of responsibility issuing from the fact that she is its mother. And it might be argued that all my analogies are therefore irrelevant--for you do not have that special kind of responsibility for that violinist; Henry Fonda does not have that special kind of responsibility for me. And our attention might be drawn to the fact that men and women both are compelled by law to provide support for their children
I have in effect dealt (briefly) with this argument in section 4 above; but a (still briefer) recapitulation now may be in order. Surely we do not have any such "special responsibility" for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly. If a set of parents do not try to prevent pregnancy, do not obtain an abortion, but rather take it home with them, then they have assumed responsibility for it, they have given it rights, and they cannot now withdraw support from it at the cost of its life because they now find it difficult to go on providing for it. But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it. They may wish to assume responsibility for it, or they may not wish to. And I am suggesting that if assuming responsibility for it would require large sacrifices, then they may refuse. A Good Samaritan would not refuse--or anyway, a Splendid Samaritan, if the sacrifices that had to be made were enormous. But then so would a Good Samaritan assume responsibility for that violinist; so would Henry Fonda, if he is a Good Samaritan, fly in from the West Coast and assume responsibility for me.
8.
My argument will be found unsatisfactory on two counts by many of those who want to regard abortion as morally permissible. First, while I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible. There may well be cases in which carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard we must not fall below. I am inclined to think it a merit of my account precisely that it does not give a general yes or a general no. It allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad. The very fact that the arguments I have been drawing attention to treat all cases of abortion, or even all cases of abortion in which the mother's life is not at stake, as morally on a par ought to have made them suspect at the outset.
Second, while I am arguing for the permissibility of abortion in some cases, I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of the unborn child. It is easy to confuse these two things in that up to a certain point in the life of the fetus it is not able to survive outside the mother's body; hence removing it from her body guarantees its death. But they are importantly different. I have argued that you are not morally required to spend nine months in bed, sustaining the life of that violinist, but to say this is by no means to say that if, when you unplug yourself, there is a miracle and he survives, you then have a right to turn round and slit his throat. You may detach yourself even if this costs him his life; you have no right to be guaranteed his death, by some other means, if unplugging yourself does not kill him. There are some people who will feel dissatisfied by this feature of my argument. A woman may be utterly devastated by the thought of a child, a bit of herself, put out for adoption and never seen or heard of again. She may therefore want not merely that the child be detached from her, but more, that it die. Some opponents of abortion are inclined to regard this as beneath contempt--thereby showing insensitivity to what is surely a powerful source of despair. All the same, I agree that the desire for the child's death is not one which anybody may gratify, should it turn out to be possible to detach the child alive.
At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
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Rachel already started a topic that I didn't see because a keyword search of the word abortion didn't find it. I seems we are caught up in word games. I explained favoring choices especially better ones in most situations and I certainly support the right to reproduce assuming you have consenting parties.
I agree with Crafty on the legal issues. After it is returned to the states we still have an abortion rights debate. I was just writing one person's opinion about right and wrong. The legal issues and political process follow.
I didn't notice that Rachel addressed any point in my post, but fired back questions at me that I already addressed, so I guess we are working on two different topics. I found the questions to be condescending and diversionary which is your right and your choice. I already posted that nearly all pro-life proposals offer exceptions and that 98% of abortions in America are for convenience reasons and back comes a story about an 11 year old girl in a foreign land who actually did find her way to get abortion services.
If you are comfortable with a system where men have zero rights, where it is women not couples or humans or families that reproduce, where killing 49 million isn't one of your top ten concerns, where the fact that 48 million of those were for convenience reasons doesn't merit a mention even in reply, then I give up on looking for common ground or a beneficial exchange.
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Quoting BBG: "...as an off brand libertarian, I'm loathe to tell women that they are bound by law to let a creature grow inside of them" and similarly Rachel wrote: "Do I have control over my body or does someone else?"
I see your points and offer this reasonable and pragmatic compromise solution:
Recognize the woman's right to remove the unwanted tissue but not the right to have it killed. Leave viability issue in the hands of God, the survival strength of the fetus, the medics and the people who would adopt and love it.
Fair enough?
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Probably could have put this under founding fathers, lol:
“Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized - the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.” - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) 1971
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1193617
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Estimate that a little more than a million slaughtered since the last post here justifying abortion and maybe 3/4 million killed since the last on the Reproductive Issues thread insisting that a beating heart with unique fingerprints is a 'potential life'.
The women's rights argument should keep in mind that roughly half of the victims, who only want to be born, would otherwise grow up to be women - with rights - such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Update from the trenches: An 18 week pregnant abortionist describes terminating an 18 week fetus as she briefly contemplates the ongoing development of her own, soon to be, cute little pre-schooler. Be warned - you might not want to visualize this process over breakfast lunch etc. Photo is not actual; the fetus is removed in parts.
When I was a little over 18 weeks pregnant with my now pre-school child, I did a second trimester abortion for a patient who was also a little over 18 weeks pregnant. As I reviewed her chart I realized that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus.
I went about doing the procedure as usual, removed the laminaria I had placed earlier and confirmed I had adequate dilation. I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position – it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier.
With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen.
Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes – without me – meaning my conscious brain - even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling – a brutally visceral response – heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics.
It was one of the more raw moments in my life. Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/Unbornchild.jpg)
http://americanpapist.com/blog.html
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My triplets were born early enough to have been aborted in some states. But I remember them well... less than 2.5 pounds each with legs and arms like string beans and their entire torso fitting into the palm of my right hand with their little legs/arms sticking out over the sides of my hand. They moved around, made noise, we could comfort them with our touches and they expressed pain when pricked or prodded. When one of the triplets (Andrew) died after two days my wife and I bawled our eyes out because we didn't lose a fetus... it was our son who died. The surviving triplets (a boy and a girl, Riley and Gracie) are 12 years old now, doing great BTW, and they were not fetuses either.... they were small, under developed babies who lived for awhile in the womb until it was time to live in the open world. I have some good friends who disagree with me about when life starts and we remain good friends but I tend to be very dogmatic on this issue. Anyone who believes anything else is as uninformed as someone who believes 3+3=10. They may be innocently uninformed but they are uninformed none the less.
Any honest debate about abortion rights has to begin with the honest recognition that a baby is a baby whether living in the womb or living in the open world. I would at least feel intellectually honest about a debate that surrounded whether a person had a right to terminate a pregnancy because the pregnancy itself or the life that would be born would be too destructive to the mothers and/or father's lives and that they had the right to destroy the baby. I wouldn't agree with that argument, but at least THAT would be an example of what I would consider an honest debate.
h
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Thanks Howie for writing. Great post. With today's imagery or in your case seeing them born early and tiny, it is hard to deny what is real and in front of you. Last time this digressed into details about criminalization issues, that unique DNA isn't important because identical twins have same DNA, that sperm is alive so it isn't important that that a fetus is alive and whether or not someone personally thinks he/she is/isn't more moral than someone else. Before we decide what to do about abortion and separate from finding quirks of nature to confuse or undermine the point, separate from personalizing this to who is or is not more moral than someone else, can't we all look and see that the little one is a developing, live human being. It is alive, it is human, it has its own genetic code separate from the mother and the father, and it is too young to survive on its own - like a baby.
Before figuring out what to do about it, can't we agree that because it is a live, developing human being trying to grow, develop and survive, to kill it for convenience reasons - which fairly characterizes 98% of abortions in America - is wrong.
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From Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life", on Meet the Press apparently quoting Peggy Noonan: She said, you know, "If you ask the question when does life begin," she said, "any 16-year-old boy who's bought a condom knows when life begins."
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I have figured out what my decisions will be- before I get emotionally/ situationally compromised. I simply have given up any discussion on this topic because it it like playing god, who lives, who dies and playing triage in some ways. I simply have come up with my priciples and framework, and simply wish to be left alone to pracitce them without the government interfering with laws about "morality". a moral government is an oxymoron, and they are no more qualified to make the decision than I am.
I refuse to use force to make a woman have an unwanted child, but I will let my opinion be known to that individual privately, and why I have arrived at my conclusions. I will listen to the rebuttal, and that is about it. The accounting for the individual(s) will come later and it is not my job to decide where and whens.
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Hard to set policy right if we can't agree (or discuss) when life begins.
"wish to be left alone...without the government interfering with laws about morality"
Some feel that way about domestic abuse in the privacy of their own home. It depends on whether or not one believes a separate life worth protecting is involved.
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I too tend to avoid this can of worms as emotions run so high and feelings are so cast in concrete there is little likelihood of achieving reasoned discourse. I'm offended by tactics on both sides. Every time an anti shows me pictures of aborted fetuses I ask 'em what they had for breakfast; if it included a pork product ask if I showed them pictures of fetal pigs would they stop eating bacon and, if not, why they expect their appeal to emotion to be any more successful. As for the pros, the constitutional convolutions they embraced to take legislative options away from the states and give it to nine guys in robes hearing a very massaged version of Roe's story leaves me dumbstruck. If so dubious a process could be used to foist a "right" in this instance it can be used to enshrine or delete just about anything.
As that may be, like the Judith Jarvis Thompson piece I posted (and heard no comment on) posits acorns are not oak trees, nor is a fertilized egg a person. From there she goes on to make several compelling arguments as to why abortion should be allowed even if it's ceded that a fertilized egg is a person from the moment of conception, with her famous violinist argument being one of her most compelling. I won't bother to recapitulate further, but do think she makes a strong case for why abortions should be allowed in the case of rape and medical complications, and does a somewhat less compelling job for instances where contraception fails.
As for my feelings on the matter, I think abortion is a repugnant means of birth control rife with moral quandaries and as such is something most people would do well to avoid. As stated before, though, I am loathe to tell a woman that she is statutorily required to let a creature she does not want to support grow inside of her so I reluctantly come down on the side of access to abortions.
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Thanks Guinness,
Quoting: "Every time an anti shows me pictures of aborted fetuses I ask 'em what they had for breakfast; if it included a pork product ask if I showed them pictures of fetal pigs would they stop eating bacon and, if not, why they expect their appeal to emotion to be any more successful."
Disagree. The point to me of the fetal photo is an appeal to logic more than emotion. Logic, visuals, science etc. tell you the thing has 2 arms, 2 legs, a head, heartbeat, fingerprint etc, although kind of ugly - like a newborn.
Your pork comparison also works in reverse. We kill for self defense, war, food. Even good hunters and fisherman are committed to eat what they kill, not to waste one of God's creatures, even with 4 legs or scales and gills. A pig farmer does not kill and discard. Repugnant, but abortive 'mothers' might imagine that standard and think twice before shooting.
I read the Thompson piece and will be happy to comment as I offend more and more people here. An acorn is not an oak tree, true, but an oak tree is not a human being. We tear down an oak tree to build a house or a road in the best location. We hopefully don't do that indiscriminately but we do cut them down when we decide they are in our way. The real failure of the acorn analogy is that the tree develops its value gradually; it is not just an acorn or a mighty oak, but also a scrawny seedling along the way. The newborn, like a fetus, is also an undeveloped, two-bit seedling, totally unviable without assistance, with nothing invested in the real world and nothing to show for accomplishments. Environmental extremists don't protect a one inch tall sprouted acorn. Should the newborn's rights only develop gradually as it grows and proves its salt? They don't and no one says they should.
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I dunno Doug, every time I've been stopped by someone brandishing pictures of aborted fetuses there has been a lot of emotion involved on their side, particularly after I point out their fervent embrace of it. Claiming that these sorts of tactics aren't appeals to emotion, or stating you are merely trying to anthropomorphize the issue isn't likely to sway folks who prefer appeals to reason. And perhaps the reverse also works, but I'm not the one trying to make a sale with a glossy picture. If a heart rending glossy picture an informed argument makes then I guess we all ought to get laser printers and photo stock. If they don't try to make the sale then I don't have to point out why the method fails to do so when worn on other feet.
The acorn/oak tree analogy is both logically true and a jumping off point for Thompson as she then goes on to say "but, for the sake of argument let's pretend they are." As such I'm not going to belabor the point as she's already ceded it in her argument.
I'll close by saying I'm not far from being a fellow traveler where abortion is concerned but don't think criminalizing abortion services will work much better than criminalizing drug use has. I would much prefer an approach that mitigated unwanted pregnancy prior to conception. Though I understand your side sees abortion as the moral equivalent of death camps, this stark perspective prevents reasonable people on all sides of the issue from taking steps that could reduce the number of abortions here and now.
If reducing the number of abortions is your goal then I'd say grit your teeth and work to strengthen familial bonds, improve education in the non-NEA sense, and force government to end perverse incentives. If being really freaking self-righteous and strident is your goal then have fun at the margins alienating those you have to sway to accomplish anything at all.
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IMHO the fundamental tension on this issue has been exponentially increased by judicial liberal fascism imposing its personal opinion via Roe vs. Wade.
The correct solution is to let the democractic republican principle work it out in each of the 50 states.
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Amen, Crafty.
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amen.
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One add'l comment from the mind-boggling ending of NEJM about abortion funding over on Politics of Healthcare today:
"...social justice and equality between the sexes"
I would love to see this answered from a religious perspective, but is that really what we seek - what women seek, equality meaning identical-ness between the sexes? That a man can have unprotected sex with a stranger, pick up herpes and the rest, be shot by her husband,r pay child support the rest of his life, or be denied access to his children etc. etc. but he does not get pregnant... therefore a woman should be able to have unprotected recreation sex without consequence. Termination, it's all about 'me' and no one else is affected. Is that what God wanted designing the differences in the sexes? For us to undo His work with a fully funded and medically safe 'procedure'? Would that even make sense to an atheist who believes this amazing design is by accident?
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Hard to set policy right if we can't agree (or discuss) when life begins.
"wish to be left alone...without the government interfering with laws about morality"
Some feel that way about domestic abuse in the privacy of their own home. It depends on whether or not one believes a separate life worth protecting is involved.
Some peoples abuse is some peoples pleasure- go figure. I will do something when it comes to my attention (a running "discussion" in the front yard?), which means it has become something out of hand. Otherwise I leave well enough alone, I assume there is some sort of consent there. That may be a case of a$$, but you have to let adults be adults.
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To me, it is a very simple issue. I believe that murder is wrong, justified killing is not (i.e., self-defense, war). I believe that life begins at conception, and abortion is murder. Murder is wrong so abortion is wrong. The right to live trumps the right of the mother to make a "choice". Simple, IMO.
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From the Kagan thread, JDN wrote: "I personally am against partial birth abortion"
Sounds like something you have given good thought to. I ask you, if you don't mind, to expand on that. What is the procedure and why are you against it?
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From the Kagan thread, JDN wrote: "I personally am against partial birth abortion"
Sounds like something you have given good thought to. I ask you, if you don't mind, to expand on that. What is the procedure and why are you against it?
I think my quote was taken out of context; my entire sentence read,
"I personally am against partial birth abortion, however, that being said, if it would save my wife's life, I would definitely consider it. I think many would agree with me."
That was my point and the point of ACOG's change in wording. If the doctor told me I would lose my wife or lose my child; I would chose my wife. You may and others
may disagree, but that would be my choice. While I might get a second or third or even a fourth medical opinion, I would not risk losing my wife.
I am not qualified to explain what the procedure is.
I tried to find Rachel's posts; she was much more eloquent that I could ever be on this subject. Further, even she decided not to further discuss this matter; obviously she is also
a lot smarter than I am. :-)
However, you asked and so I will try to answer your question, "why am I against partial birth abortion". Try not to attack too hard! :-)
It's subjective; I guess I am against what I call late term abortion. For example, I was a preemie baby. The surgeon flew in to Milwaukee (friend of my Grandfather)
to do a 2nd time ever performed surgery (interestingly, later in life I met another surgeon who said that he saw the film of my surgery at his medical school). My point; through
God's help and a great surgeon I was able live. I guess to answer your question, I am against late abortion (with the mother's health caveat given above) if the baby is able to live
and function on it's own.
However, even with that being said, I'm not sure I like to wade into telling other families what to do about abortion. Nor do I want to discuss and define "function on it's own".
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JDN, I took your statement away the legal context intentionally because our personal views on the issue are interesting but not relevant to the legal and procedural questions of that thread. No intent to attack just trying to entice others to acknowledge some living value in the little one, to the point as you suggest that the unborn/almost born/partially born preemie is really one and the same today in science and medical terms as a born preemie. It HAS to be removed from the mother, one way or another. It doesn't HAVE to be killed. That is a choice.
We make the line call there like we do with a sports replay of the ball or puck crossing the goal line. Sometimes that call can cost you the game. If we kill it before it gets completely out and the cord is still intact, it is a beautiful free expression of a constitutional right - like to speak, meet, publish or be free from oppressive search and seizure. If we kill it a millisecond after it crosses that line it is murder in the first degree of the most innocent life among us, punishable by death in some jurisdictions. Yet the two acts are one and the same functionally and morally I would argue and ask others to recognize.
Like I said It has to be removed from the mother, one way or another. I'm no expert either but cesarean seems to be what the same group would recommend with acceptable risk ("cesarean birth involves risks. These problems occur in a small number of women and usually are easily treated") for circumstances where vaginal delivery poses unusual risk. http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp006.cfm Perhaps by killing it, deflating the head, crushing the shoulders if necessary and pulling it through carefully would be even lower impact, physically, on the "mother", but that assumes a fully developed preemie like yourself has not living value and I don't buy that. You may be grateful for your rescue now but at that crucial moment you had no say.
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You can look through Rachel posts but I doubt with her comparisons of fetus to sperm and embryo that she has written in support of partial birth killing and she made it extremely clear that she had no plans to jump back into the conversation.
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Looking through ACOG pamphlet on Cesarean, I see the same mis-speak as Justice Breyer and Rachel have made:
"Fetal Monitoring: A procedure in which instruments are used to check the heartbeat of the fetus and contractions of the mother's uterus during labor."
This should be corrected. A woman in labor without prior children is not a mother. She would be the mother of what?
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JDN rescued as a preemie and my daughter who didn't show up for her abortion appointment - turning sweet sixteen tomorrow - are both examples of what we already know through the magic of time travel, the fetus (Latin for little one) is the same person that we know later but at a less developed, rapidly developing stage. Killing it unnecessarily when you know that is not a morally neutral act.
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Pasting this from the Kagan thread here too:
BO voted for a remarkably extreme partial birth abortion law. Anyone have details at hand?"
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Just to the left of NARAL and Barbara Boxer, he voted against protecting the surviving babies of botched abortions. His reasons to oppose do not match the facts told by the people on his committee in IL.
The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) both in the Illinois and Federal legislatures was meant to make illegal death by neglect of born but unwanted infants. Or as Obama called it: Restrictive Choice legislation.
At the end of the hearing (IL Senate Health and Human Services Committee, 2003, Barack Obama, Chairman), according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek (video of RN Stanek below) for being “very clear and forthright,” but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested “doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.” He told her, “That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18647
Video of the testifying nurse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRpIf2F9NA
One mainstream reference from when Hillary was the frontrunner:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/17/politics/main2369157.shtml
SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Jan. 17, 2007
Obama Record May Be Gold Mine For Critics
(AP) Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may have a lot of explaining to do.
He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive.
Barbara Boxer voted for it when it passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate 98-0 and unanimously in the US House. She said: "(H)is amendment [Rick Santorum introducing BAIPA] certainly does not attack Roe in any way," said Boxer. "His amendment makes it very clear that nothing in this amendment gives any rights that are not yet afforded to a fetus. Therefore, I, as being a pro-choice senator on this side, representing my colleagues here, have no problem whatsoever with this amendment." - Barbara Boxer on the floor of the senate, 2001.
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If anyone admitted being offended by abortion, by partial birth abortion, or by the thought of a Doctor chasing a botched abortion newborn around the hospital room to fulfill her 'choice' , then maybe they could use this footage of Barbara Boxer equivocating on the senate floor some years ago against her now. George Will mentioned this video after being accused of taking her statement below out of context. What she did say is that a baby is born when the mom takes it home from the hospital. Pressed harder she said, it's born when the mom holds it in her arms. She clearly didn't like being asked if it had constitutional rights when all but a foot or a toe is delivered. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoTjb9rzyEo[/youtube]
Remember that our sinking Commander in Chief is just to the left of Barbara Boxer on this issue.
Will wrote: "when asked during a Senate debate whether the baby has a right to life if it slips entirely out of the birth canal before being killed, she replied that the baby acquires that right when it leaves the hospital: “When you bring your baby home.” Fiorina believes that science—the astonishing clarity of sonograms showing the moving fingers and beating hearts of fetuses; neonatal medicine improving the viability of very premature infants; the increasing abilities of medicine to treat ailing fetuses in utero—is changing Americans’ sensibilities and enlarging the portion of the public that describes itself as pro-life."
Maybe we will see just how pro-life the elusive Republican Hispanic vote is in this contest when forced to choose between basic values and massive government.
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http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/gruesome-pennsylvania-abortion-clinic-had-not-been-inspected-for-17-years
Why a Gruesome Pennsylvania Abortion Clinic Had Not Been Inspected for 17 Years
by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Jan. 21, 2011, 5:40 p.m.
A police car is seen posted outside the the Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia, on Jan. 20, 2011. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)
While this week's indictment involving a grisly abortion mill in Philadelphia has shocked many [1], the grand jury's nearly 300-page report also contains a surprising and little-noted revelation: In the mid-1990s, the administration of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, ended regular inspections of abortion clinics—a policy that continued until just last year.
According to the grand jury report [2][PDF] released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers.
The District Attorney’s office this week charged an abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell, with murder and infanticide. Nine other workers at the abortion clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, also face charges. According to the prosecutors, Gosnell and his associates not only broke state law by performing abortions after 24 weeks—they also killed live babies by stabbing them with scissors and cutting their spinal cords. Law enforcement officials found blood-stained furniture, unsterilized instruments and fetal remains scattered about the clinic. At least one woman, a refugee from Nepal, had died under Gosnell’s care after being given repeated injections of a dangerous sedative. Prosecutors said Gosnell made millions from treating and sometimes maiming his patients, who were mostly low-income, minority women [3].
But perhaps most frightening of all? The atrocities were discovered by accident [4], as the Philadelphia Inquirer points out. Warnings—from patients and their attorneys, a doctor at a Philadelphia hospital, women’s health groups, pro-choice groups, and even an employee of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health—failed to prompt state and local authorities to investigate or take action against the clinic.
The grand jury report said that one look at the place would have detected the problems, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the place since 1993. Here’s the grand jury report, in surprisingly strong language:
The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.
“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. "Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer."
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http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/01/22/the-brief-painful-lives-of-baby-boy-a-baby-c-and-baby-x/
Aborted.
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"Few things rile me more than demands that pro-lifers -- especially those motivated by their faith -- keep out of politics. Quite the contrary, many did just that, quietly going to church and reading their Bibles, until one day they awoke to learn the Supreme Court had passed Roe v. Wade ... and the hellacious assault was on. They entered pro-life activism reluctantly, as a reaction to what was thrust upon their culture and country. The last thing they wanted was to get involved in politics. The Death Culture came to them." --author and columnist Paul Kengor
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"This week, the Planned Parenthood abortion business was caught in the latest undercover video investigation -- this time helping two people representing themselves as sex-trafficking-ring operatives bent on getting abortions for the underage girls they victimize. ... It's one thing for pro-choice advocates to talk a good game about women's rights, but it's another for the day-to-day abortion activists to defend these videos to anyone watching as paid staffers help supposed sex-trafficking perpetrators secure abortions. Average Americans viewing the videos will be appalled to see supposed sex traffickers being shown how to get young, illegally imported girls back on the street to further the sex trade shortly after their abortions. They will be astonished to see how those acting as sex traffickers are directed by Planned Parenthood officials to another, shadier abortion center that will give them less grief about abortions on the young women. ... The power of the footage on-screen and the sick nature of the revelations the videos contain have the potential to continue to break the abortion debate wide open." --Steven Ertelt, editor of LifeNews.com
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In America, abortion hits black babies at a rate of more than 3 to 1 greater than whites.
In Asia, Mara Hvistendahl contends that selective abortion has resulted in 163 million fewer girls due to selective abortion in Unnatural Selection (estimate/allegation)
http://www.science20.com/cool-links/unnatural_selection_abortion_war_girls-80205
http://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selection-Choosing-Girls-Consequences/dp/1586488503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308713473&sr=1-1
Help needed, please complete the following sentence in light of points made below.
This is not analogous to other genocides because.........
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Let's see,
a) Two dozen times more deaths than the holocaust ?
b) All killings intentional and avoidable
c) Victims selected based on membership in a group
d) Targeted group considered to be of lower value/inferior to those not targeted
e) The rest of us are better off without them, scarce resources etc.
f) Millions turn the other way, pretend this isn't a major issue or it isn't really happening.
g) 100% of those who turn the other way now or find the issue minor, did not face this threat at that point in their life
h) How can one identify gender with certainty, while maintaining with a straight face it is not a living creature, identified as human, 100% genetically distinct from the mother and father?
i) Being silently offended does nothing to stop what is happening.
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Fetus, Latin for 'little one' - gender neutral, is not the correct word after gender is determined. People don't say they had a baby, they had a little baby boy or a little baby girl. At some point in the past, gender became knowable only at birth. Not true now. Some tests identify gender at 5-6 weeks, ultrasounds show gender starting at 16-20 weeks.
What inanimate object that one freely disposes has gender?
If people are allowing the 'little one' to grow into a 'little boy' or a 'little girl' before killing it selectively, what is the difference - morally - between doing that and killing it after birth? It looks like a similar act to me.
6th Commandment? Thou shalt not .... do what ??
Comments? Someone on the board who cares about women's rights and supports abortion rights should come out and explain how killing 163 million girls for gender reasons only is consistent with that. (Should be interesting!) Anyone who is pro-life but considers it to be a minor or single issue not tied to dignity, principles or respect for life otherwise should explain exactly how that is so. Which of the other commandments did God intend to be negotiable?
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Trying to keep up with all the interest here on this topic (sarcasm).
"The fact of the matter is that no horrors, no matter how often they are uncovered and documented, appear to be too great for the pro-abortion crowd to give up their core belief that a woman is entitled to abort her baby at any stage of pregnancy. "
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/a_right_to_kill.html
July 3, 2011
A Right to Kill
By Fay Voshell
The society that embraces the death of innocents as a solution to its problems will itself inevitably die. It may carry on for many decades after its fatal embrace of the Grim Reaper. But with the moral heart cut out of its body, it becomes a zombie civilization with only the appearance of life.
For death, once embraced, as Goya illustrated so well in his shockingly gruesome painting "Saturn Devouring One of his Sons," has a way of devouring even one's children, as its appetite is never satiated.
"More," Death demands. "That was delicious. I want more.
Wholesale carnage can even be sexually titillating, as individual torturers and creators of sadistic-masochistic porn films know well, and as Goya appears to have suggested by initially painting Saturn as having an erection. Later, it is said, shocked successors edited out the erect penis depicted on the hungry god.
Be that as it may, the sheer perverted joy of insatiable killing is a societal disorder not restricted to renegade individual serial killers. It's well known all human history is full of pathological societies which fully embraced death as a good thing, as a means of placating the gods, whoever they might be. For example, the blood-soaked, slippery-slidey steps of the Aztec pyramids and the racks of human skulls of the victims of sacrifice to the Sun god bore testimony to such pathology.
But blood sacrifice is not a thing of the past. The gods of death are just as richly fed today by innocent human blood as ever, but the justificatory framework for allowing the bloodshed has radically changed. The old gods needing placation by means of the death of innocents have largely vanished, but they have been replaced by a philosophical and abstract imperative -- a demand for an unassailable human "right" to kill.
It is a relatively new thing for Western civilization to regard death of innocents as a human right. It is a relatively new thing for mothers-to-be to have the virtually absolute right to put their own children to death before they are born. And it is a relatively new thing for Western jurisprudence, having at last put to end to the hideously distorted absolute "right" to own other human beings, to now consign an entire class of human beings to destruction at the sole discretion of their mothers.
Time was, some made-up infraction or some offering to the gods was deemed necessary in order to get prove the "guilt" and get rid of a person. No matter how trivial the accusation, "guilt" had to be established. For example, one of Goya's etchings depicts a priest about to be garroted merely for possessing a knife.
Even in ghoulish modern times, establishment of "guilt," even when guilt is established by a mere pretext, has usually been necessary for execution to occur, as was evidenced by the Stalinist show trials of the 1930's and by Mao Tze Tung's Red Guard excesses of the 70's. Enemies of the state must be killed or a vengeful god placated by human sacrifice.
Allowing the death of the voiceless and innocent as a "choice" and as an expression of personal "freedom" is a concept that is relatively new. The perverted and absolute "right" to kill unborn humans who by no stretch of the imagination have ever committed a crime was bound to warp the entire societal fabric. It also would produce revolting horrors those espousing and establishing the abstract "right" to kill did not foresee.
But once in a while, the veil of secrecy is rent and an entire populace is given a glimpse of the true horrors of the lucrative abortion industry, much as the horrors of slavery were revealed by photos such as this one of "Gordon," taken in 1863 and published in Harper's Weekly.
In less than a period of ten months, the US public has been afforded at least three such glimpses of the horrible realities of the abortion industry.
Case #1: On Good Friday of this year, a dog sniffing around a El Paso,Texas parking lot of Hilltop Family Planning Clinic, found the remains of a dismembered baby of about 12-15 weeks gestation. The tiny limbs were about the length of a dime. There is no report as to whether the dog ate some of the baby's remains, but not all the body parts were there. The person who discovered the grisly bits put them in a garbage bag. While the police were notified, no police action was taken because Texas law doesn't consider a fetus less than twenty weeks gestation to be human. There is no legal protection for him or her.
Case #2: Kermit Gosnell operated an abortion clinic in Philadelphia, killing at least two women and uncounted numbers of viable infants. Among the horrors: infanticide. According to the Grand Jury report, one incident involved a worker who played with a premature infant while it wiggled around on a counter for 20 minutes before the baby's neck was slit with a pair of scissors in order to sever his spinal cord, a process Gosnell described as "snipping." Grand Jury investigation photos of the horrors within the clinic included severed babies' feet in jars and trash bags of fetal remains stored in refrigerators. The grand jury had a few words for the regulatory agencies which were supposed to oversee the clinic:
"The grand jury also had a stern rebuke for regulatory organizations that looked the other way, giving their stamp of approval on his criminal practices. These people who saw the abuses yet stood idly by, or worse, encouraged the behavior that has now shocked the nation bear some responsibility for what happened in Philadelphia. In fact, they deserve criminal prosecution just as much as Gosnell and his cohorts because their silence not only enabled the crimes, but gave tacit consent to them."
Case #3: On August 12, 2010 in Elkton, MD, an 18 year old girl who had been 21 weeks pregnant was rushed to the hospital. Her uterus, bowel and vagina had been pierced by one Dr. Nicola Riley, who flew in from Utah every other week to do late term abortions. Not only did Riley lacerate the girl's organs, but the abortion was incomplete. The baby's head was detached and pushed through the uterine wall into the abdominal cavity.
The semi-conscious teen was dropped off at the hospital via rental car by Riley and fellow abortionist Steven Chase Brigham. Riley then left the bleeding patient to go perform another abortion. The girl herself was flown to John Hopkins hospital where doctors attempted to repair the damage done by the abortionists.
When police raided Brigham's Elkton "clinic," they found 32 late term fetuses-one of which was 35-36 weeks gestation--tossed in a freezer.
A great lesson is to be gained from the revolting examples given above; namely that there is a strict adherence to a pro-abortion ideology which demands the absolute "moral" principles of abortion on demand must be adhered to, no matter what. Rush Limbaugh has been much vilified for describing abortion as a sacrament of the deeply religious cult of the Left, but he is not far from the mark. The fact of the matter is that no horrors, no matter how often they are uncovered and documented, appear to be too great for the pro-abortion crowd to give up their core belief that a woman is entitled to abort her baby at any stage of pregnancy.
The radical feminist coat hanger wavers of the 1960's probably did not expect to see the day girl babies would be aborted at an astonishing rate merely for the crime of being female. Nonetheless, few radical feminists have spoken out strongly against the practice. They are committed to abortion on demand.
Nor did the advocates of granting abortions to minors anticipate the cases in which fathers; uncles and grandfathers would escort little girls they had seduced and impregnated to abortion clinics in order to get rid of condemning incestuous evidence. Abortion on demand must remain law of the land.
And scarcely ever has the pro-abortion crowd given credence to grief stricken fathers-to-be whose girlfriends and wives abort their children against their wishes. One such dad-to-be, consumed by grief and rage, put up a billboard announcing his anger, thus severely straining the concept of free speech, according to pro- abortionists. He and millions of other fathers are not a consideration to the abortion crowd.
All the above is to say nothing of the embryonic stem cell research of Pepsi designed to improve the flavor and "health" of its drinks, thus causing customers to literally have death run through their very veins. Nothing to see there, either. Move along.
In sum, absolutely nothing will deter those committed to abortion on demand to moderate or the question their absolutism, even if it were to transpire that lampshades were being made out of fetal skin.
Because of the distorted absolute imperative of abortion on demand, in spite of the fact the United States of America's Declaration of Independence guarantees "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," our country has long since eclipsed the killing rate of any country with the possible exception of China. Some 50,000,000 unborn babies have expired since the literally fatal Supreme Court decision "Roe vs. Wade" of 1973.
All of the killing has been justified by the aforementioned absolute, inalienable "moral right" of a woman's right to choose whether or not she wishes to carry her unborn child to term. No matter how gruesome the actualities of the mega-buck abortion industry are, no compromise by "pro-choice" advocates is accepted. Abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, a woman's inalienable and moral "right" is adhered to steadfastly, though the means of killing the pre-born may vary according to efficiency and assurance of result; namely, a dead baby.
But unrestrained mass killing is always the result when human beings create an absolute right to destroy other members of the human race, be it Jews or the unborn.
The Left loves to posture as the truly compassionate segment of humanity, constantly tarring the Right as hopeless ideologues whose rigid morality sacrifices the common good.
But as history shows and current events prove, leftists turn out to be the ones hopelessly and willfully bemired in absolutist thinking that results in absolute carnage.
The Left has committed itself to feeding insatiable Death, who devours all in his path, belches up the bones and says,
"That was yummy, but I want more.
By the way, YOU look tasty..."
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Doug:
Dang! Fay still wields a mean keyboard!
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I have often analyzed the flaw of Roe v. Wade as being that the right to privacy does not trump the right to life. One does not have the right to murder in the privacy of one's home. Therefore the question becomes one of when does life begin? In that the Constitution does not grant the power to determine that question to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is intellectual gibberish.
MI now appears to have picked up on this line of thought.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/personhood-amendments-would-ban-nearly-all-abortions.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23
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Crafty, previous post in this thread Oct. 2011: "I have often analyzed the flaw of Roe v. Wade as being that the right to privacy does not trump the right to life. One does not have the right to murder in the privacy of one's home. Therefore the question becomes one of when does life begin? In that the Constitution does not grant the power to determine that question to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is intellectual gibberish."
The answer to when when life begins has been enlightened quite a bit by science over the last several decades. Science tells us when the heart starts beating and when unique fingerprints begin forming. More obvious evidence would be how early the prematurely born can survive under medical care outside of fetus, if you don't buy the life begins with conception theory.
Posting a piece below that hits on constitutional and moral issues. My look at Planned Parenthood data caused me to believe that of the 60 million lives intentionally ended, 98% are performed for convenience reasons. Blurring that with what should be done about rape or life risk to the mother is obfuscation.
Our current President apparently doesn't know that one of the main criteria for fetus slaughtering elsewhere in the world is gender selection. In the US, the main discrimination is against black babies.
President Barack Obama says the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is the chance to recognize the “fundamental constitutional right” to abortion and to “continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”
My daughter would not have been empowered by being aborted some 17 years ago. What a bunch of anti-science, anti-constitution, anti-life, anti-reality BS.
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/01/23/the_unbearable_wrongness_of_roe_112866.html
January 23, 2012
The Unbearable Wrongness of Roe
By Michael Paulsen
39 years ago, the Supreme Court delivered a radical, legally untenable, immoral decision. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the people.
Today, thousands of people at the March for Life in Washington, D.C., are commemorating the thirty-ninth anniversary of a legal and moral monstrosity, Roe v. Wade, and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. The two cases, in combination, created an essentially unqualified constitutional right of pregnant women to abortion—the right to kill their children, gestating in their wombs, up to the point of birth. After nearly four decades, Roe’s human death toll stands at nearly sixty million human lives, a total exceeding the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined. Over the past forty years, one-sixth of the American population has been killed by abortion. One in four African-Americans is killed before birth. Abortion is the leading cause of (unnatural) death in America.
It is almost too much to contemplate: the prospect that we are living in the midst of, and accepting (to various degrees) one of the greatest human holocausts in history. And so we don’t contemplate it. Instead, we look for ways to deny this grim reality, minimize it, or explain away our complacency—or complicity.
It is important, however, to view reality with eyes wide open, focus clear, and gaze not averted. On this thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe and Doe, I would like simply to set forth what Roe and Doe held, in as clear-headed and straightforwardly descriptive legal terms as possible, and to lay out its human and moral consequences. My brief tour of Roe’s unbearable wrongness begins with Roe’s radicalism—its extreme holding creating a plenary right to obtain or commit abortion—proceeds with Roe’s legal untenability, and concludes with Roe’s immorality and the moral problem of our seeming passivity and quiescence in response to the greatest legal and moral wrongs of our age.
Roe’s Radicalism
Start with Roe’s radicalism, a radicalism that we may no longer grasp because it has become so familiar. Roe created a constitutional right to obtain or commit an abortion of a human life—that is, to terminate the life of a human embryo or fetus. It is important to be clear-sighted about this: abortion kills a living human embryo or fetus. What distinguishes “abortion” from (say) miscarriage is the specific intention to kill a living fetus. What was alive before has been deliberately killed. Abortion takes a life. Further, the life taken is human life. There is really no doubt about that as a matter of biology. The embryo or fetus belongs to the species homo sapiens. It is a separate, living human being that is killed by abortion.
To be sure, that human being is killed at an early stage in its life cycle, and for a substantial part of that time could not live without direct biological connection to his or her mother (the person in whom Roe vests the right to terminate that human life). But that does not make the human embryo any less alive, any less human, or any less a separate life from the mother. It just makes the unborn baby more vulnerable and dependent.
The right created by the Supreme Court in Roe is a constitutional right of some human beings to kill other human beings. I do not mean for my description to be provocative, but simply direct—blunt about facts. One need not presume that the human fetus has a right not to be killed in order to recognize that, as a descriptive matter, Roe creates a right for one class of human beings to kill other human beings.
Roe, coupled with Doe, creates a plenary right to kill the embryo or fetus for essentially any reason, at any time throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Distilled to its essence, Roe created a “trimester” framework for abortion. In roughly the first three months of pregnancy, the right of abortion is avowedly plenary: abortion may be had for any reason. In the second three months, government may regulate abortion to protect the life or health of the mother, but again the right to have an abortion remains plenary. In the final three months—after the point of “viability,” when the human fetus could live on his or her own outside the mother’s womb—Roe says that abortion can be restricted or prohibited . . . except where abortion is necessary to protect the “life or health” of the pregnant woman.
This is a big exception. And here is where Doe steps in. On its face, Roe might appear, to the unwary or uninitiated, “moderate”—its trimester-balancing framework a measured, reasonable-sounding, proportionate act of judicial legislation concerning abortion. It is Doe that does a lot of the work, through an indirect and ultimately disingenuous definition of the “health” reasons that always may justify a woman’s decision to have an abortion and trump any interest of society in protecting fetal human life, even when the child could survive outside the mother’s womb. Doe holds that relevant “health” considerations justifying late-term abortions include “all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” (Doe’s understanding of “the patient” did not include the fetus; Roe held elsewhere that the human fetus has no legal rights that any person is bound to respect.)
Roe then cross-referenced Doe’s stylized definition of health and incorporated it into the main holding. The result is that an abortion may be had, under Roe and Doe, for essentially any reason, throughout all nine months of pregnancy, up to the point of birth.
Nothing in any of the Court’s later abortion cases alters this definition of “health” or the right to abortion throughout pregnancy. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 case reaffirming Roe, tinkered slightly with the trimester framework and the point at which “viability” occurs but did not change Roe’s (and Doe’s) holding that abortion may be had for any reason, before viability, and for any “health” reason throughout pregnancy. The partial-birth abortion cases carried this understanding forward, holding that the state may not prohibit the abortion method of inducing birth and killing the fetus on the way out of the birth canal (Carhart I [2000]), unless an equally effective, equally “healthy” method of killing the fetus is available (Carhart II [2007]).
I suspect that if more people understood Roe’s and Doe’s actual holding fewer would support that constitutional regime. Roe was a truly extreme decision, creating an effectively unrestricted constitutional right to abort a living human being for any reason the mother might have, throughout pregnancy right up to the point of birth.
Roe’s Legal Untenability
This brings us to Roe’s utter indefensibility as a matter of constitutional law. If the U.S. Constitution actually protected such an extreme personal legal right to kill the human fetus, that would be troubling enough, but the trouble would be with the content of the Constitution. The further problem with Roe is that it has absolutely no basis in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution. No rule or principle of law fairly traceable to the text, discernible from its structure, or fairly derived from evidence of intention or historical understanding of an authoritative decision of the people, remotely supports the result reached in Roe. In terms of fair principles of constitutional interpretation, Roe is perhaps the least defensible major constitutional decision in the Supreme Court’s history.
Roe’s reasoning, distilled to its essentials, is that the Constitution creates a “privacy” right to abortion, on the premise that the right not “to bear” a child is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. No serious constitutional law scholar thinks this is a plausible reading of the Due Process Clause. That clause forbids government to “deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” Without due process of law are crucial words. The Due Process Clause does not say that government never may deprive a person of life, liberty or property. It only says that government may not do so “without due process of law”—that is, arbitrarily, lawlessly, not in conformity with duly enacted laws and accepted procedures for their application.
Many nonetheless support Roe’s holding as a policy matter and therefore seek to rationalize the holding some other way. Perhaps the goofiest is the suggestion advanced by a few law professors, in apparent seriousness, that abortion restrictions violate the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on slavery. Saner, but in the end still unsound as a legal matter, is the notion that abortion laws discriminate on the basis of sex and thus deny “equal protection of the laws.” The defect in this argument is that abortion laws do not classify on the basis of sex or gender and are not disguised attempts to do so. Rather, they aim at conduct—obtaining or committing an abortion—when engaged in by persons of either sex. Abortion restrictions do not restrict acts of women because they are women; they restrict acts committed by men or women because they kill human fetuses. Further, ask a “pro-choice” “feminist” whether abortion should be permitted for reasons of sex-selection—that is, because the unborn child is a girl—and the sex discrimination argument begins to turn back on itself. All but the most blindly pro-abortion ideologues abandon the argument that abortion rights are required for gender equality, if that means abortion can be chosen for gender-selection of boys over girls.
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court rested the right to abortion back where Roe purported to find it, in the Due Process Clause. Recognizing the embarrassments created by this view, Casey added another prop: the doctrine of precedent or “stare decisis,” which is essentially all that is left to support Roe. But Casey’s invocation of the doctrine was transparently disingenuous: Because the public expects the Court to adhere (usually) to its past decisions, because the Court had staked its authority on Roe, and because the Court might be viewed unfavorably by some of the public if it reversed itself in such a case, the Court said that it had decided to adhere to Roe “whether or not mistaken.” Thus, what Roe held to be required by substantive due process Casey held to be required by stare decisis, even assuming Roe to be wrong.
If Roe was radical, Casey was craven. A majority of the Supreme Court apparently believed that Roe was wrongly decided, fully understood the moral and human consequences of the decision, and deliberately adhered to it anyway. Stare decisis has never been thought required by the Constitution, before or since. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) famously repudiated Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) on the question of whether racial segregation was consistent with “equal protection of the laws.” The Court has overruled scores of its own precedents. Indeed, it overruled two cases in Casey. Casey’s reaffirmation of Roe, in the name of stare decisis, was a sham—perhaps the most transparently dishonest major judicial decision since Dred Scott.
Roe’s Immorality
Finally, there is Roe’s immorality—the abortion holocaust it unleashed—and the problem of our response to it. Roe is a radical decision and a legally indefensible one. But what really makes Roe unbearably wrong is its consequences. The result of Roe and Doe has been the legally authorized killing of nearly sixty million Americans since 1973. Roe v. Wade authorized unrestricted private violence against human life on an almost unimaginable scale, and did so, falsely, in the name of the Constitution.
It is hard to escape this conclusion, but not impossible—and many certainly try. I will not here belabor the question of whether the intentional killing of innocent, dependent, vulnerable human children is a grave moral wrong. My concluding point concerns the lengths to which we will go to deny the reality of this holocaust, because it is almost unbearable to contemplate and still go on living life as if nothing is terribly wrong. The cognitive dissonance is simply too great. And so we have become, in effect, a nation of holocaust deniers.
Here is the problem, undressed: If human embryonic life is morally worthy of protection, we have permitted sixty million murders under our watch. Faced with this prospect, many of us—maybe even most—flee from the facts. We deny that the living human embryo is “truly” or “fully” human life, adopt a view that whether the embryo or fetus is human “depends,” or can be judged in degrees, on a sliding scale over the course of pregnancy; or we proclaim uncertainty about the facts of human biology; or we proclaim moral agnosticism about the propriety of “imposing our views on others”; or we throw up our hands and give up because moral opposition to an entrenched, pervasive social practice is not worth the effort, discomfort, and social costs. The one position not on the table—the one possibility too hard to look at—is that abortion is a grave moral wrong on a par with the greatest human moral atrocities of all time and that we passively, almost willingly, accept it as such.
All of this should tell us a few more sobering things. It should tell us that, much as we would like to believe that human beings have become more morally conscious, more sensitive to injustice and intolerant of clear evil, it remains the case that we often either fail to recognize it in our midst, or refuse to respond to it decisively, out of self-interest or cowardice. It should tell us that, much as we would like to think that we surely would have stood bravely against slavery, even if embedded in a nineteenth-century society that tolerated and accepted it as a legal right, we might have acquiesced or been tepid in our condemnation. It should tell us that, much as we would like to think we would never have put up with what transpired in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s, the evidence of our lives in twenty-first century America is that we might have put up with quite a lot.
And it should tell us finally, that, as much as we may claim to admire our governmental and constitutional system, the decisions of the Supreme Court in the abortion cases expose the Court—at least on this matter of life, death, and law—as a lawless, rogue institution capable of the most monstrous of injustices in the name of law. The Court has, with its abortion decisions, surely forfeited its legal and moral legitimacy as an institution. It has forfeited its claimed authority to speak for the Constitution. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the people. Yet the docility of the American people with respect to Roe and abortion rivals the pliancy of the most cowardly, servile peoples toward ruinous, brutal, anti-democratic regimes throughout world history.
The Supreme Court is empowered by the Constitution to faithfully interpret the Constitution. But it is not alone in that power, and when it exceeds it and violates it, it is the responsibility of other actors in our system to check the abuse. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 49, “the several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.” Moreover, it is “the people themselves” who are “the grantors of the commission” and who “can alone declare its true meaning and enforce its observance.”
The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade should not be accepted as law, in any sense. It should be resisted by legislatures and it should be refused enforcement by executive officials because it is not the law. It should be resisted by all citizens, with all the resources at their disposal, and perhaps even with resources not (yet) at their disposal.
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I recently received an email from Sen. Paul making a point that I had missed previously. Apparently hiding in plain site in the Roe v. Wade decision is language addressing the matter of defining the beginning of life. In the passage he quotes, it seems to read rather clearly that the Congress could pass a law defining the beginning of life and were it to do so SCOTUS would defer to it.
Sen. Paul suggests that the Congress do exactly that (over partial-birth abortion fan Baraq's veto no doubt).
Powerful implications here , , ,
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"Apparently hiding in plain site in the Roe v. Wade decision is language addressing the matter of defining the beginning of life. In the passage he quotes, it seems to read rather clearly that the Congress could pass a law defining the beginning of life and were it to do so SCOTUS would defer to it."
VERY interesting. If one were to look back through the discussions here, Congress could take positions laid out by Rachel and from the science of beating hearts, fingerprints etc and define as human life the point where a fetus is more like born baby than like a sperm cell or an embryo. That still would allow women control over morning after type treatments of what is inside her own body. If you let it develop into a distinct recognizable human, civilized society is going to protect it.
Unlike other ways of addressing this, you would lose the distinction of keeping track of whether the origin came from rape or incest.
Obviously Roe v. Wade can be addressed also by amendment. What is lacking as with other contentious issues is the supermajority that would require. That is why I have tried to address it in this thread to challenge people to think of this in terms of right and wrong more so than in law. You need to change the thinking toward life before you can prohibit or criminalize what others find analogous to wart or cyst removal. As Pres. Reagan said (paraphrasing), a fetus is a) alive, b) of the human species, and c) of distinct genetic composition from anyone else including the father and the mother.
Even pro-abortion activists and justices refer accidentally to the woman carrying the fetus as the mother. The mother of what?
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If I recollect the position of Rachel (I take as an authority on Jewish law) was that until the day the child is born, it is considered part of the woman's body. Anotherwords, it is her choice.
"In principle, Judaism does not regard the fetus as a full human being. While deliberately killing a day old baby is murder, according to the Mishnah, a fetus is not covered by this homicide rule."
I'm ambivalent on the subject; but I tend to defer to women on the subject. I will say however that if there is any danger to the mother, I'm in favor of abortion.
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I too take Rachel as very well informed on things Jewish.
I do not agree that the Manson family did not murder that 8 month old something that was in Sharon Tate's uterus.
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"If I recollect the position of Rachel..."
Unless the posts were removed you do not have to recollect. That was not all she said before withdrawing from the conversation.
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For sale here:
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/dvds/science-and-space/in-the-womb-dvd
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0225_050225_tv_ultrasound.html
4-D Ultrasound Gives Video View of Fetuses in the Womb
Brian Handwerk
for the National Geographic Channel
and National Geographic News
February 25, 2005
The new generation of three- and four-dimensional ultrasound imagery provides striking views of fetuses inside the womb. Parents-to-be appreciate the lifelike pictures, and doctors gain an improved understanding of fetal development and behavior.
"It's almost a new science, in a way. It's taught us so much about how the fetus develops at an early stage," said Professor Stuart Campbell of the Create Health Clinic in London. Campbell, one of the world's leading experts in obstetrics, has been working with ultrasound technology since its earliest days and with so-called four-dimensional images since their debut about four years ago.
Four-dimensional imagery shows objects in 3-D moving in something close to real time. Doctors have long known that fetuses move, but the physical behavior revealed by 4-D scans is expanding that knowledge exponentially.
"We see the earliest movements at 8 weeks," Campbell said. "By 12 weeks or so they are seen yawning and performing individual finger movements that are often more complex than you'll see in a newborn," he said. "It may be due to the effects of gravity after birth."
The images reveal facial expressions, like smiling, at 20 weeks. Beyond 24 weeks fetuses may suck their thumbs, stick their tongues out (perhaps using newly developed taste buds to sample amniotic fluid imbued with the flavors of the mother's food), and make apparently emotional faces.
Many of the reflexes seem designed to help the fetus with tasks it will need after birth, such as opening its eyes and sucking.
Campbell believes that ever improving imagery—particularly the 4-D scans, which are inching ever closer to displaying real-time movement—represents the tip of the iceberg for fetal-behavior study.
"I think we ought to study the behavior of the fetus prenatally," he said. "For example, we don't understand why cerebral palsy occurs in 90 percent of the cases it does, but we believe it occurs in the uterus. I think the future lies in first-trimester diagnosis. I can see diagnosing abnormalities in the first 12 weeks."
Computer Advances Drive Improving Imagery
Ultrasound images are made by sending high-frequency sound waves into the mother's body, where they penetrate fluids but bounce back off solids. The rebounding waves are collected to produce an image, traditionally seen as a two-dimensional "slice."
"As computers have gotten faster it's possible for them to process many 2-D slices over a very short period of time and then stitch them together. That's how we got from 2-D to 3-D," said Carol Benson, a radiologist specializing in ultrasound at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
"With the 4-D, processing is fast enough that you can watch [movement] as it happens. When it gets faster it will eventually appear to be in real time."
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One nice thing I've observed about Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. As an example, at one time, the only source of insulin was from pigs. The ruling I know of basically said keeping kosher was important, but keeping diabetics alive was more important. Somehow, I doubt they'd look at 4D images of very young fetuses and rule that they were not human.
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Yes, Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. Like most people's thought. But a very young fetus, according to Jewish theological thought is not a "life" i.e."human" until it is born. Whether they look at 3D or 4D or 5D imaging.
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"Yes, Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. Like most people's thought."
Not for Obama or other creatures of the left.
"But a very young fetus, according to Jewish theological thought is not a "life" i.e."human" until it is born. Whether they look at 3D or 4D or 5D imaging."
Care to cite your source on this, Rebbe JDN?
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"Yes, Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. Like most people's thought."
"But a very young fetus, according to Jewish theological thought is not a "life" i.e."human" until it is born. Whether they look at 3D or 4D or 5D imaging."
Care to cite your source on this, Rebbe JDN?
Rachel..... :-)
and according to the Mishnah
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"Yes, Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. Like most people's thought."
"But a very young fetus, according to Jewish theological thought is not a "life" i.e."human" until it is born. Whether they look at 3D or 4D or 5D imaging."
Care to cite your source on this, Rebbe JDN?
Rachel..... :-)
and according to the Mishnah
Please link to the quote then.
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"In Jewish law, a baby becomes a human being when the head emerges from the womb."
I trust you can find the links. It's everywhere. Or just ask Rachel :-)
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While there is debate among the Rabbis whether abortion is a Biblical or Rabbinical prohibition, all agree on the fundamental concept that fundamentally, abortion is only permitted to protect the life of the mother or in other extraordinary situations. Jewish law does not sanction abortion on demand without a pressing reason.
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48954946.html
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"Several sources in the Talmud make it clear that a fetus is not legally seen as endowed with full personhood until the very moment that it (or at least its head) is delivered." It is clearly not considered murder - you are not taking a human life. It's similar to property. It's different than western thought.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20100106.html
GM; perhaps you should read what I said more carefully. I'll repeat; "In Jewish law, a baby becomes a human being when the head emerges from the womb." I did not nor do I intend to discuss abortion.
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"I did not nor do I intend to discuss abortion."
Good! But what thread do you think you are in?? Drifting from "human being" to "full personhood", do we argue over humans interpreting God's law or go to the source?
From JDN's link: "Jewish law suggests that abortion is wrong..." - but in the author's opinion, for different reasons, lol.
I don't know how this became about Jewish Law, but I quote and link what I know below. This is more about liberals denying science and denegrading human life. And it's about a logic string implied below that because they are going to do it anyway, let's make it legal. It's alive and human, not full personhood, but it is a human life. What are you to link to make that obvious reality go away?
The point in an abortion thread of discussing whether or not it is a human life is to discover what we think about KILLING it. Right? Go to your source and a) it is evil and b) it is against Jewish law.
Rachel said she wasn't going to discuss it further and so for the third time I suggest you could go back and read the ENTIRETY of what she wrote on the subject if she is your guide on this matter.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the facts established in science that a developing fetus is alive and human with the following "Jewish Law":
You shall not murder or You shall not kill, KJV Thou shalt not kill (LXX οὐ φονεύσεις, translating Hebrew לֹא תִּרְצָח lo tirṣaḥ), is a moral imperative included as one of the Ten Commandments in the Torah,[1]
References:
Exodus 20:13
Deuteronomy 5:17.
As GM points out, the life of the mother fits the distinction between kill and murder. Killing in self defense has never been considered a violation of the commandment. For the record, Rachel confirmed exactly what GM wrote here: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1678.msg21065#msg21065 "As a general rule, abortion in Judaism is permitted only if there is a direct threat to the life of the mother..."
In that post alone there are NINE references to the "mother". May I please ask again, the mother of WHAT?? ?? ?? (Obviously she is mother to a new, innocent, developing human life and it is evil and forbidden in religious law to kill it except to save your own life.)
98% of abortions are for convenience reasons. I fail to see how a commandment-following Jewish woman takes the innocent life of her own unborn baby for reasons other than saving her own life.
"Thou shalt not..." does not give a lot of wiggle room for justifications like that I need the money to continue my health club membership or prefer not finish my degree by extension. God's answer to that is Thou Shalt Not.
Rachel wanted out of this conversation so I did not want to selectively bring her words forward, but if you reference her posts but refuse to go back and read them I will post this:
"I just see legal abortion as a much less evil than illegal abortion"
I may disagree with that but is that not still saying abortion is evil?
A women's rights issue? Hardly:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html
The War Against Girls
Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons
What rights did those dead girls acquire?
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Doug, you are missing the logic, albeit I admit it's an emotional subject. According to Talmud, a fetus is not a human life until it is born, i.e. the "head is delivered". Therefore, "Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to abortion; the mother is not taking an innocent life because having not been born, by definition, it is not a life. Until you are "born" you have no rights. Those dead girls you reference according to Jewish faith had acquired no rights since they had not been born. In essence, you are taking property according to the Talmud. While it's not right to take property, property is different than taking a life.
As for me, as I said, I am ambivalent on the subject. Therefore I defer to women. It's their body; their choice IMHO.
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"Doug, you are missing the logic"
No JDN you are twisting a technicality ("not full personhood" under "Jewish Law") into a genocidally wrong conclusion. That you can say what is alive and human is not human life does not contain logic, it contains self deception assuming you even believe what you post. You refuse to acknowledge what was already posted by people you defer to and you misquoted what you linked. Trivializing 163 million dead does not put you in logical or moral equivalence with Rachel who I linked and quoted in effect called abortion evil (why would it be evil if you are not killing human life) and it is in direct contradiction to your own citation - why would it "frustrate the propagation of more people" (that is a tortured way of saying kill) if it does not end a human life. Your feigned logic is more akin to the writings and teachings of different time that would argue the justification of killing negro slaves, Jews or infidels where others have denied recognition for what is obviously human life. Jewish Law does NOT argue that there is nothing of value in the womb and no loss in killing it as you do. That is simply untrue.
We do not live in a theocracy (and you and I are not Jewish) so why would Jewish Law be controlling if you could get it right? The waste of time theme continues.
If you insist on refuting what Rachel posted, you might answer the question begging nine times in her post on the subject: The "mother" in the abortions is the mother of a WHAT?? If not a human life, is there a raccoon in there? A reptile? A rodent? What is it? It has has distinct DNA, fingerprints, and a beating heart and you say it is "property" - like a book? In a moral and a civilized society? With 21st century scientific evidence with ultrasound photography available? Even after we know it could live and grow outside the womb? A slave was property too, in the eye of those who justified that, not a human life. Killing a Jew was moral(?) in Nazi society because ..... why? No life of value was lost? FYI, they were wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Go ahead and continue to "not discuss" this. So far, I agree with you that you haven't.
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I'll try to "not discuss" this a little more since I know this subject is important to you. I think both sides have merit and an exchange of ideas is always useful. But I'm not refuting what Rachel posted, I'm merely confirming what Rachel posted.
I personally am not saying when life begins (I'm still wrestling with that issue); however the Talmud and therefore Rachel said that life begins when the head of the baby is delivered. That's rather clear; it's symmetrical, without ambiguity; I like that.
I am not trivializing 163 million so called dead, nor am I discussing how China should have solved their population explosion. I don't know the answer to that, but something drastic had to be done.
As for "evil" Rachel said and you quoted, "I just see legal abortion as a much less evil than illegal abortion". Rachel may disapprove of abortion for herself, but acknowledge the right of another woman to have an abortion. Further, done legally is superior and safer than done illegally. Also, theft is evil. But it is not the taking of a human life. The Talmud acknowledges that there is something of value in the womb and provides for civil recourse, similar to if I took your property. But it is not a human being according to the Talmud. Again, human life according to traditional Judaism by definition begins when the baby is born, i.e. the "head is delivered". Rachel pointed that out on this forum; a position different than yours. That's one of the reasons we have this forum; to debate different viewpoints.
I agree, there is absolutely no reason why Jewish Law needs to be controlling here in America. Nor am I suggesting that it be. However, before I entered this discussion, you introduced Rachel into the conversation, "Congress could take positions laid out by Rachel" and I was merely following up, pointing out that Rachel's position, and Judaism's position, quite different than yours, is that human life does not exist until the baby is born.
Further, if I recollect, Rachel thought, while acknowledging that it is a very difficult decision, it should be the choice of the woman. I tend to agree with Rachel on this matter.
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A longer version of repetition, still with falsehoods, still refuting nothing I wrote. I asked you to go back and read what she wrote in its entirety and you refuse. Then tell me I'm wrong about what she wrote. Great discussion (sarc.).
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No falsehoods, just fact.
But I'm happy to bow out of this discussion, just like Rachel bowed out.
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"One nice thing I've observed about Jewish theological thought is how human life trumps other things. As an example, at one time, the only source of insulin was from pigs. The ruling I know of basically said keeping kosher was important, but keeping diabetics alive was more important. Somehow, I doubt they'd look at 4D images of very young fetuses and rule that they were not human."
I think GM gets it exactly right.
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"Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go." (George Will below) First a quote from the previous posts in the thread with my comment:
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"...I doubt they'd look at 4D images of very young fetuses and rule that they were not human."
Besides images, we have the magic of time travel. We don't have to look at a developing growth inside the womb and wonder what it is or will become. We already know, it becomes it's own unique, alive, human family member. We all went through the process, living in the womb, minus the violent ending. (My own botched-abortion daughter now has over 740 facebook friends, was highly recruited for sports and music and is heading off to one of the top local small colleges on an academic merit scholarship, from a blob once scheduled for 'termination'.) It is NOT some mystery or controversy that what you see in the image is a developing family member in need of your protection.
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Linking from Parent Issues: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1438.msg62531#msg62531
George Will column honoring the 40th birthday of Jon Will.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jon-will-40-years-and-going-with-down-syndrome/2012/05/02/gIQAdGiNxT_story.html
Will: "This era has coincided, not just coincidentally, with the full, garish flowering of the baby boomers’ vast sense of entitlement, which encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature’s mishaps, and to a perfect baby. So today science enables what the ethos ratifies, the choice of killing children with Down syndrome before birth. That is what happens to 90 percent of those whose parents receive a Down syndrome diagnosis through prenatal testing.
Which is unfortunate, and not just for them. Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with limited understanding, and limited abilities to communicate misunderstanding, they, like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depend on the kindness of strangers. Judging by Jon’s experience, they almost always receive it.
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The same George Will piece above ran in our local paper and I noticed a letter to the editor later in follow up said that his joy and pride should not mean that the other 90% should be judged in the decisions they made to kill off these imperfect, innocent family members developing in the womb upon learning of their defects. My view: Yes, you will be judged for that.
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In other news, some states require in the abortion process a viewing of the ultrasound and a listening to the heart beat and a lady is donating iPods to the clinics to make that 'listening' less informing.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/03/abortion-backers-give-women-ipods-to-drown-out-ultrasound/
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As for the Texas Law, Doonesbury's comic strips says it best. You can click on days one through six and see all six.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/317-65/10541-the-banned-doonesbury-abortion-cartoon-part-1
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Perfect if straw is your only argument. We have a humor thread if you think that's funny.
Why wouldn't you want to hear it's heart beat before you kill it?
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Perfect if straw is your only argument. We have a humor thread if you think that's funny.
Why wouldn't you want to hear it's heart beat before you kill it?
Others post cartoons as political commentary; why not me? :-D
I think Doonesbury in this matter succinctly sums up mine and many others opinion of the absurd and invasive TX law.
It should be up to the woman and her physician. A decision that should be made in private. If you don't want to; well then don't. But it should be a woman's choice.
Further, I bet women who are intend upon having an abortion have no more interest in hearing a heart beat of an unborn fetus than I have an
interest in hearing Rap Music.
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Too bad Roe v. Wade's judicial imperialism imperiled the moral authority of the Supreme Court upon which so very much of our political culture and the American Creed rests.
Regardless of which way one comes down on the merits of the issue, it does not strike me as out of bounds to say that one must be conscious of what one is doing.
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Regardless of which way one comes down on the merits of the issue, it does not strike me as out of bounds to say that one must be conscious of what one is doing.
I entirely agree, but logically isn't that between the patient (woman) and her doctor?
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Are you saying there should be no regulations about doctors informing patients before a procedure or just not on this one- because killing a human heartbeat is shameful? I kind of like it your way, no government regulations whatsoever on doctors and medicine. We are all big kids now. We can do our own due diligence?
Wouldn't a woman with a conscience want to know forever that she got the fetus in early pregnancy removed before it had a heartbeat - verfied by sonagram?
Why would a woman without a conscience, like the one Doonesbury demeans, give a rat's ass if it had a heartbeat or not. If you have no conscience, no respect whatsoever for unborn life, there is no shame.
Does the 24 waiting period for the clinic procedure drive her instead to stabbing it in the back alley with the coat hanger? (The Court ruled that it does not.) That, you might recall, was a main objection of Rachel's to prohibiting abortion. They will abort, legal or not. Responsibility can not be taught or learned. (?)
Funny that when you agree with the court like legalized abortion, it is right because 'the Court ruled on it', but these reasonable restrictions on abortions were upheld by the same court. Yet you object and call it GOP (We The People) inflicting shame (sharing medical information).
With logic one might think that being fully informed would help to prevent the shame after the fact that so many experience. What do you think of THAT for a women's right, a law requiring women to be fully informed before killing their young. Ooops, you already answered it. You oppose it and show no deference for a ruling already made by the highest Court in the land on the matter, not the Texas GOP, the U.S Supreme Court.
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As an aside, the Democrat party controlled Texas for a hundred years up through the mid 1990s. The GOP doesn't control Texas or write the laws, the people do. Dems lost control, FYI, because the national party went nuts on issues like this one.
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"Regardless of which way one comes down on the merits of the issue, it does not strike me as out of bounds to say that one must be conscious of what one is doing."
"I entirely agree, but logically isn't that between the patient (woman) and her doctor? "
You are leaving someone/something out-- that which is being killed. The discomfort from the now legally required acknowledgement thereof speaks of the reality of that which is being killed.
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Are you saying there should be no regulations about doctors informing patients before a procedure or just not on this one- because killing a human heartbeat is shameful? I kind of like it your way, no government regulations whatsoever on doctors and medicine. We are all big kids now. We can do our own due diligence.
We disagree; I don't think it's "shameful". As for due diligence, I go back to my point; it's between the Doctor and Patient. IF the doctor/patient want a sonogram, fine. If they want to listen to a heartbeat, even make a recording thereof, fine. But after a simple discussion if both doctor and patient decide to proceed without a sonogram and/or needlessly listening to a heartbeat, that would seem fine to me too.
Wouldn't a woman with a conscience want to know forever that she got the fetus inearly pregnancy removed before it had a heartbeat - verfied by sonagram?
No - it should be her choice.
Why would a woman without a conscience, like the one Doonesbury demeans, give a rat's ass if it had a heartbeat or not. If you have no conscience, no respect whatsoever for unborn life, there is no shame. What's the problem?
The only "shame" involved is in the medically unnecessary insulting and invasive procedure. There is no "shame" in an abortion. I do not think any less of someone who has had an abortion nor should they think any less of themselves.
Funny that when you agree with the court like legalized abortion, it is right because 'the Court ruled on it', but these reasonable restrictions on abortions were upheld by the same court. Yet you object and call it GOP (We The People) inflicting shame (sharing medical information).
With logic one might think that being fully informed would help to prevent the shame after the fact that so many experience. What do you think of THAT for a women's right, a law requiring women to be fully informed before killing their young. Ooops, you already answered it. You oppose it and show no deference for a ruling already made by the highest Court in the land on the matter, not the Texas GOP, the U.S Supreme Court.
Citation please. To my knowledge the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule on the Texas matter. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals did referencing the following case. Further, I am entitled to disagree with the Court's ruling, as you do on other matters, but of course if I lived in TX I would adhere to it. That said, I find the law terribly insulting and intrusive. Doonesbury said it better.
http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-appeals-court-rules-texas-abortion-law-is-constitutional-20120110,0,5743908.story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey
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"nor should they [women who have had abortions] think any less of themselves." You write so freely and confidently about what you know nothing. You oughtta ask JANE ROE about her decision before driveling about who ought not feel what and who doesn't need accurate information to make life and death decisions. http://www.dailycampus.com/2.7440/once-a-champion-of-pro-choice-jane-roe-speaks-on-change-of-heart-1.1054507#.T6b7OtmIhdg (text below)
Yes I do in fact openly question and oppose MANY supreme court decisions. You OTOH often say or imply that because it was ruled, that is that. Settled law. Good that we are back to questioning, not acting like sheep. Texas drew up its law within the guidelines set up by the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. If you know otherwise, please cite.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/health/policy/texas-court-allows-sonogram-law-to-be-enforced.html
Chief Judge Edith H. Jones used her opinion to systematically dismantle the argument that the law infringes on the free speech rights of doctors and patients, the key argument against the law. “The required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information,” Judge Jones wrote.
"Doonesbury said it better." - No. Doonesbury said straw. They oppose their own caricature of the law, right out of hating Sarah Palin for what Tina Fey said. Now you have introduced shame into the discussion when the law was about making sure it is informed decision on such a grave matter. That is good straw, but the Chief Judge of the 5th Circuit said it better. It's "settled law" now.
You see no shame because you see no life there or think they don't see it. Or hear it. What other settled science do you deny?
Do you oppose the Obama rule, killing it out of the womb as long as you intended to kill it in the womb?
Why do proponents say "safe, legal and RARE? Why do they say 'I am personally opposed' but politically in favor of abortion rights? If there is no life, no killing, what is there to personally oppose? You don't even admit it should be rare or any personal qualms about it. That puts you WAY out in the extreme.
What about the Mac plan accepting both women's rights AND life. Allow her to have it removed but not allow her to kill it. It's not her baby if it's not a baby. Maybe someone else wants it.
No qualms even about killing black babies in America at 3 times the rate of white babies? No objections to the killings in Asia, not just China, for gender selection purposes? That is not Roe v. Wade, settled law, that is purely a matter of right vs. wrong and you say right. Unbelievable.
How about killing it for up to 9 months from conception even if born.
Which is more human, an 8.9 month baby in a womb killed legally or a 24 week born preemie that survives?
If you are GOD maybe you know the answer to that?
How do you feel about the choice your own mom made? If not your life, how about hers, that she was allowed to live. Not a shred of a feeling about that? Good grief.
As stated previously, if you can't accept reason and you won't accept science and we have no principles whatsoever in common, not even a base level, God fearing, even atheist level of respect for human life, why would we hope to find any common ground on any policy or candidate?
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http://www.dailycampus.com/2.7440/once-a-champion-of-pro-choice-jane-roe-speaks-on-change-of-heart-1.1054507#.T6b7OtmIhdg
Once A Champion Of Pro-Choice, 'Jane Roe' Speaks On Change Of Heart
By Diane Dauplaise
Published: Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Updated: Monday, January 18, 2010 16:01
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4-3 Roe by Erik.jpg
Norma McCorvey speaks in front of a packed house Wednesday at the Student Union Theatre.
In 1973 Norma McCorvey - better known as "Jane Roe" from Roe vs. Wade" - won the landmark case that legalized abortion in the United States. Wednesday night in the Student Union theatre, she spoke out on why she now feels that decision was a mistake. Brought to UConn to speak about her experiences by the UConn Pro-Life club, McCorvey, who had spent most of her life working in abortion clinics and championing a woman's right to choose, was clear that she felt she had made a mistake and was now a changed woman. She was heard by an audience that included students, community members and clergy members.
McCorvey took to the podium a bit uneasily but she warmed up the audience with her subtle dry wit, reminding them at times, "Its' ok to laugh."
Her story began the day an anti-abortion group called "The Rescuers" moved into the space next door to the fourth and final abortion clinic she worked at. She recounted traumatic tales from the clinic including trifles with the abortionist, nearly full-term women and girls as young as 14 seeking abortions.
McCorvey said that her mind was changed by one particular client who came in. The woman was nearly full-term and seeking an abortion when McCorvey questioned her as to why it had taken her so long to come to this decision. The woman replied that she was pregnant with a girl and had decided that she wanted a boy instead. McCorvey said that two weeks after the procedure, "I could feel she had some kind of torment, but I didn't know what it was called."
Missy Pfohl, a 7th-semester animal science major, said that "her personal accounts of working in the abortion clinic" was the most moving part of her the speech.
Going forward from those stories, McCorvey began to talk about her radical change of heart, which came with her beginning to consort with the anti-abortion group next door. She said she was moved by how open and content they always seemed and told a particular story of how one of the anti-abortion worker's daughters would come and watch "Jeopardy!" with her at the front desk of the abortion clinic. She then began attending church with that particular family and said that her heart was truly changed by scripture.
When discussing her conversion, she also made a reference to her years of alcohol and narcotic abuse as well as various suicide attempts that she said was a reaction to the "horrors" she witnessed in the abortion clinics, calling them "grim places." Also much of her emotional plight, she said came from the guilt of being "Jane Roe."
"It wasn't any fun being Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade," she said. "I've been shot at and threatened."
She said she was misled by her lawyers and did not know that her involvement in the case would result in a national law legalizing abortion.
"I'm glad she came," said Lauren Colello an 8th-semester molecular and cellular biology major. "She showed that it's important to keep questioning yourself and to be humble."
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While critics were saying I would jail doctors and moms and I maintained that I was just trying to change hearts and minds before changing laws, Gallup reports:
Pro-choice 41%
Pro-life 50%
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/Pro-Choice-Americans-Record-Low.aspx
How is that trending for Obama and the extremists going to swing state North Carolina for the Dem convention this September?
(http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/mbw4sjkxy0e3fqbcfd8eja.gif)
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Over at Politics Now, our David Lauter has a fascinating deconstruction of a Gallup poll showing that the share of Americans who call themselves “pro-choice” on abortion has hit a record low of 41% while 50% now call themselves “pro-life.” Lauter explains why that factoid (resultoid?) is not a sure guide to Americans' views about whether abortion should be legal in certain circumstances:
"On the issue of when abortions should be legal, Americans’ views have moved very little, Gallup’s numbers show. The share of Americans who believe that women should be able to legally obtain an abortion under at least some circumstances now is 77%. That figure has bounced more or less randomly between 76% and 84% over the past 12 years. Similarly, the percentage who believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances has fluctuated between 15% and 22% in Gallup polls since 2001. It now stands at 20%."
Now for the next question: Should people continue to refer to the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements? Over the years journalists have struggled over whether these terms are neutral placeholders for wordier formulations such as "pro-abortion rights" and "antiabortion." But in political discourse generally I think they have established themselves as pseudo-proper names, rather like Democrat or Republican.
Mention the "pro-life movement" and most everyone visualizes someone carrying a sign calling for life to be protected from the moment of conception, maybe even in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother's life. Likewise, the term "pro-choice movement" conjures up a spokeswoman for NARAL or Planned Parenthood, not someone who reluctantly endorses abortion in rare and extreme circumstances.
One reason I think these terms will survive as movement descriptors is that activists on both sides of the abortion issue tend to be purists (or extremists, if you prefer). It's hard to rally a crowd on behalf of a finely textured position such as "legal in the first trimester, illegal after that except for rape or incest or the likelihood of this birth defect but not that one."
The full Gallup poll results will be spun by both "pro-" groups as proof that one unnuanced view or the other is closer to majority status. No surprise there. The abortion wars have always included a war of words.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-abortion-gallup-poll-20120524,0,3440075.story
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"The share of Americans who believe that women should be able to legally obtain an abortion under at least some circumstances now is 77%."
Straw question answered. People aren't outraged about the number of medical procedures performed to save the life of the mother and no serious proposal lacks that exception, and others. There isn't a serious political movement to crack down on irresponsible choices of rape and incest victims.
Pro-life, FYI, means that some people are outraged about the 98% of abortions in the US that are committed for convenience reasons. People are outraged by the hundreds of millions killed off in Asia for gender choices. Some are actually offended that funded taxpayers abortions in the US to kill off black babies at more than 3 times the rate of white babies. Is that equal rights or affirmative action, in the morally bankrupt, abortion for any reason movement?
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"legally obtain an abortion under at least some circumstances now is 77%"
Straw question answered. People aren't outraged about medical procedures to save the life of the mother and no serious proposal is missing that exception. There isn't a serious political movement to crack down on irresponsible choices of rape and incest victims. Pro-life, FYI, means that some people are outraged about the 98% of abortions in the US that are committed for convenience reasons. People are outraged by the hundreds of millions killed off in Asia for gender choices. Some are actually offended that funded taxpayers abortions in the US to kill off black babies at more than 3 times the right of white babies. Is equal rights or affirmative action in the morally bankrupt, abortion for any reason movement.
Actually, the VALID question is answered. ""legal in the first trimester" is what most of that 77% are in favor of. You conveniently left out that part to which my posted article referred to.
An overwhelming number 90%+ of abortions are in the first trimester. Most of those are committed for "convenience reasons".
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html
As for gender choice in Asia, well China had to do something; it was a hard call, but doing nothing was worse; they would have imploded. Looking at their economic success, maybe they made the right decision. I'm not sure it's our place to tell China what to do about an internal matter.
As for black abortions, with no offense, most on site would argue as a group blacks are disproportionately on public assistance in some way. Do you really want that many more unwanted babies that you will have to support? And no one is "killing off" anyone. No one has been born yet. It's a voluntary procedure. Frankly, it's cost effective for everyone.
The first trimester, plus rape or incest, danger to the mother, some medical birth defect conditions, that is what the 77% in favor of abortion are talking about. That is also my position.
Valid fact: America is still overwhelming (77%) in favor of abortion.
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Although its good fun to point out that the abortion movement was founded in great part for eugenistic reasons (i.e. minimizing the number of black babies) I am not sympathetic to using the "disparate impact" argument that the Left loves so much-- though of course one may note hypocrisy that the Left does not note the disparate impact here.
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Crafty, Yes, I am pointing out the hypocrisy. That is not obviously not the core of the objection. The logic goes both ways. If this is such a good thing, black women are benefiting disproportionately, affirmative action at its best! The left amazingly worries that we execute too many black serial killers, but not killing too many black innocents.
(JDN) "As for gender choice in Asia, well China had to do something; it was a hard call, but doing nothing was worse; they would have imploded. Looking at their economic success, maybe they made the right decision."
- To kill off those least able to defend themselves. Your callousness is beyond my comprehension.
(JDN) "I'm not sure it's our place to tell China what to do about an internal matter."
- Yes, what business is it of me to COMMENT on the policies of the legitimately elected government of the Peoples Republic of China. Again, your values and mine are different if not opposite. I wasn't arguing jurisdiction Asia (always return with straw), I was writing about my free speech expression of the difference between RIGHT and WRONG and the outrage that a lot of other people showed. What you miss completely is the original post was about the momentum of public opinion away from your view. Rebuttal would be that it is an outlier poll, wrong in methodology or from a biased organization, Gallup??
(JDN) "As for black abortions, with no offense, most on site would argue as a group blacks are disproportionately on public assistance in some way. Do you really want that many more unwanted babies that you will have to support? And no one is "killing off" anyone. No one has been born yet. It's a voluntary procedure. Frankly, it's cost effective for everyone."
Unwanted babies? Voluntary procedure? Killing black babies at three times the rate of white babies is cost effective?? It is the adult not the unborn who is guilty of unwanting. It's the born parents that we have disproportionately screwed up with our culturally destructive policies, not innocent unborn life. There is no data to show that a black baby has any other disproportionate disadvantage prior to birth. I had a beer last night with one that turned pretty well. I find the view that we are better off without them, instead of having an obligation to fix what is wrong in the neighborhood, repugnant, and racist. The unborn 'little one', black, white, Down, or other, has the exact same instincts and desire for survival as any born human life or of any other species. Every day, not every trimester, the little one looks more and more like the mother and the father. Do you have scientific or medical information to the contrary. If so, please post.
I have no idea, after all that is discussed, how you have no awareness that there is another life involved.
(JDN) "The first trimester, plus rape or incest, danger to the mother, some medical birth defect conditions, that is what the 77% in favor of abortion are talking about. That is also my position."
'Trimesters' come from 1970s, science-denial thinking. Human life does not develop in trimesters. Why not compromise and instead set a standard such as the right to kill it off prior to something distinct and more rational like a detectable heart beat?
These would be good questions for state legislatures, if the people in their states, through their representatives, had the right to vote on life and death public policies. Have you ever answered Crafty's point that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided law?
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Yeah, but this "affirmative action" is saving money; you should be happy. And I'm not killing anyone; as Rachel pointed out, life begins at birth. Another "life" is not involved. As Rachel also pointed out, is the seed you plant a tree? I think the first trimester is very reasonable. Longer even in special circumstances. People ask when you were born, no one asks when were you conceived. And I too know some blacks who are doing very well, but the majority are not. Black do have a disadvantage from birth.
As for China, I think they made the right decision. They saved a country. You of course are welcome to disagree, but I notice America didn't offer to pick up the cost of alternative ideas.
As for public opinion, the momentum hasn't changed. Did you read my post? 77% don't have a problem with the first trimester. I agree, few people favor abortion in the last trimester except for unusual circumstances. I'm not a fan of the last trimester either. But nothing wrong with the first trimester IMHO. Even the Supreme Court has ruled that it's fine until the 22 week. That's more than 5 months... Until that time, the fetus has no rights.
I think I've answered that Roe vs. Wade was correctly decided IMHO.
Further, courts are now beginning to rule that mandatory ultrasound viewing is unreasonable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/abortion-oklahoma-ultrasound-fetus-judge
It is the woman's body; it should be the woman's choice; a decision between a woman and her physician.
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"I've answered that Roe vs. Wade was correctly decided IMHO."
Where in the Constitution is the power for SCOTUS to make the determination of when life begins? What is the Constitutional basis for the holding of Roe?
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"I've answered that Roe vs. Wade was correctly decided IMHO."
Where in the Constitution is the power for SCOTUS to make the determination of when life begins? What is the Constitutional basis for the holding of Roe?
While I will leave the legal arguments to you and Bigdog (I learn a lot) I'll take a stab at it.
"It is thus apparent that, at common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect. Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today. At least with respect to the early stage of pregnancy, and very possibly without such a limitation, the opportunity to make this choice was present in this country well into the 19th century. Even later, the law continued for some time to treat less punitively an abortion procured in early pregnancy."
"The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. at 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id. at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541-542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. at 453-454; id. at 460, 463-465 [p153] (WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944); and childrearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation."
"On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment"
"All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."
"It should be sufficient to note briefly the wide divergence of thinking on this most sensitive and difficult question. There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live' birth. This was the belief of the Stoics. It appears to be the predominant, though not the unanimous, attitude of the Jewish faith."
"It may be taken to represent also the position of a large segment of the Protestant community, insofar as that can be ascertained; organized groups that have taken a formal position on the abortion issue have generally regarded abortion as a matter for the conscience of the individual and her family." (as a disclaimer, I am protestant)
"It has generally been contingent upon live birth. In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."
"for the period of pregnancy prior to this "compelling" point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html
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I agree entirely that there is a right to privacy found in the 9th Amendment.
"On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Well, duh. The states had spoken through the elective branches of government. It is not for the courts to determine when life begins. Furthermore, what on earth is the logic of citing previous laws when the current laws said otherwise?
"All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."
The reasoning in this passage simply supports the proposition that abortion is morally permissable; it has nothing to do with whether it is Constitutionally compelled!
"In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."
So exactly what were the laws that the SCOTUS voided here saying?!?
What of the intriguing passage cited by Sen. Rand Paul to the effect that Congress was free to define the beginning of human life? (see Post #35 by me in this thread) Why is this respect not granted to the various states in question?
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Of course there is a right to privacy. Not an absolute right. Healthcare tromps all over it, as do most other government programs, like income taxation.
In the case of abortion, there is another life involved. The courts, the laws, the legislators need to balance that all out. Missing is where the USSC got jurisdiction. Missing in the Roe v Wade decision is what changes in trimesters. Is there a right, is there not a right, what interest are you balancing it against? Nothing? That false ambiguity demonstrates pretty easily that they were out of their realm in 'interpreting' law.
Rachel acknowledged it is alive and human, even JDN started to by introducing his qualifier in bold in his last post, 'not a person in the whole sense'.
A person yes, but not in the whole sense. Agreed. I could say that about quite a few people. :wink:
A fetus at its various points is certainly an underdeveloped-developing person. For whom is that not true?
The science is settled. Denying what is in there is alive and human is of no use.
FWIW, Roe changed her mind. Has anybody done a followup on the baby?
Norma McCorvey was arrested in May 2009 at a Notre Dame pro-life rally protesting President Obama's visit to the University. http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=33572 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2fC56Cw-Pw
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"In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."
So exactly what were the laws that the SCOTUS voided here saying?!?
Texas was trying to say that life begins at conception. SCOTUS said no; until the baby is viable, able to live outside the mother, it is not viable and therefore not a "person". As an interesting note, the Jewish faith takes this further and states that life is not a person until born (see reference below).
What of the intriguing passage cited by Sen. Rand Paul to the effect that Congress was free to define the beginning of human life? (see Post #35 by me in this thread) Why is this respect not granted to the various states in question?
I'm not the attorney in the room, but my guess is he is referring to Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution.
"SECTION 2.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."
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"Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. [p160] "
So instead the Court overrules the States and imposes its own answer?!? :roll: This makes absolutely no sense! :x
"What of the intriguing passage cited by Sen. Rand Paul to the effect that Congress was free to define the beginning of human life? (see Post #35 by me in this thread) Why is this respect not granted to the various states in question?
JDN: I'm not the attorney in the room, but my guess is he is referring to Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution
I really wish I had taken the time to paste from the RP newsletter in question, but IIRC he said there was langauge in Roe that allowed for Congress to define the beginning of human life. As I now quickly skim Roe however I can find no such language and so until I do I will drop this particular point.
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I tend to shy away from discussion of abortion, however some points about Roe:
1. Blackmun never said that the right to privacy (or abortion) was absolute. He said the right to privacy is fundamental. This has particular meaning in constitutional law.
2. Related to that, he states that only when the state has a "compelling" reason to limit a fundamental right can it do so. And, according to the trimester framework, which is based on the viability of the fetus, state interest does become compelling. So, there is a distinction with "changes in trimesters."
3. Blackmun goes to great lengths to discuss both the justiciablity of the SCOTUS to decide the case and the personhood of the fetus. You can believe or not, but ignoring it is disingenuous to a discuss of the case. (And, I would add that his discussion of the common law tradition is worth reading.)
4. I do not recall a point in which Bluckmon says that Congress plays a role, as Guro suggests that Rand Paul stated (implied?). I searched just now, and could not find a section either. However, it is late and I may be overlooking it.
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"1. Blackmun never said that the right to privacy (or abortion) was absolute. He said the right to privacy is fundamental. This has particular meaning in constitutional law."
AGREED. However, and I suspect we are all agreed on this too, one cannot kill simply because it is done privately. The question presented is two fold. When does human life begin? And who gets to make the determination? Where in the C. does it give the power to make this decision to SCOTUS?
"Related to that, he states that only when the state has a "compelling" reason to limit a fundamental right can it do so. And, according to the trimester framework, which is based on the viability of the fetus, state interest does become compelling. So, there is a distinction with "changes in trimesters.""
The fetus is "viable" unless it is killed. It receives nutrition and oxygen via the umbilical cord before birth and via nutrition via the breast after. If you cut if off from these things of course it dies. Heck, if you don't provide for a two year old, he dies.
"3. Blackmun goes to great lengths to discuss both the justiciablity of the SCOTUS to decide the case and the personhood of the fetus. You can believe or not, but ignoring it is disingenuous to a discuss of the case. (And, I would add that his discussion of the common law tradition is worth reading.)"
An interesting discussion no doubt as to why a legislature might pass a law along the lines of the criteria of Roe, but for me the question remains-- this is a matter for the states to determine through the democratically elected branches. IMO Roe is the beginning of the culture wars in this country. Regardless of how one stands on what one thinks the law should say on this subject, I think we should all agree that social conservatives are understandably enraged at this cheat via judicial imperialism. The way for this issue to be decided is through the democratic process and with Roe, SCOTUS sorely tested the social fabric's respect for law.
"4. I do not recall a point in which Bluckmon says that Congress plays a role, as Guro suggests that Rand Paul stated (implied?). I searched just now, and could not find a section either. However, it is late and I may be overlooking it."
Rand Paul's assertion (or whomever wrote the fundraising e-letter on his behalf) is so sideways to the general understanding that I was stunned when I read it. In that I have no idea how to find it, I hereby drop this point entirely-- though I would appreciate it if the group here were to keep an eye out for this notion that SCOTUS has said that Congress could define the beginning of human life.
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1. The first point was made to a prior post that stated that a right to abortion os absolute, or words to that effect. Again, I am not stating that the Constitution gives the power of this decision to the SCOTUS. I am reminding you that Blackmun takes great pains to answer the questions you pose. The viabilty question is medical, no matter how you word it. Not matter the availability of a breast for nutrition after birth, an 18 week fetus is not going to live. 23 weeks is exceedingly rare, and it will take much more care than simply an available breast. And I have watched this scenario play out, more closely than I would have liked.
2. "...with Roe, SCOTUS sorely tested the social fabric's respect for law (as it relates to the states' legislatures role on deciding abortion)." Only sort of. There are plenty of other cases in reaction to state laws related to abortion. As I often tell my students, when the USSC decides a case, it really only opens more questions. Look at the Court's decisions in Webster and Casey for example. In fact, whether you agree with him or not, by the time Casey was decided, Blackmun (the author of the Roe opinion, of course), felt like the Court had largely gutted his opinion. States retain a great deal of power in the abortion arena. States need not provide funding. States, as Roe explicitly notes, can outright ban abortions in the final trimester, and have increased power to do so anytime after 24 weeks. States have tried parental notification, spousal notification, waiting periods and many, many other restrictions. Several of those have been found to pass constitutional muster.
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These are great contributions by BD and CD.
"[Blackmun] ... said the right to privacy is fundamental."
I will agree to that. In the context of other applications of the right of privacy, I would be most appreciative of a written expression of what that right is.
"The viabilty question is medical, no matter how you word it."
Yes, but: a) the point underlying the question of viability is the acknowledge that the unborn is a distinct human life, and b) medical viability is perhaps a moving target unlike trimesters on a calendar. Pro-life extremists argue life begins at the instant of conception. Pro-choice extremists argue there is no life in there of any value or notice until the moment of birth. Blackmun is saying (my read on what is posted) that life begins at viability. That is as good of a political or logical compromise as any other, but if I read Crafty's question correctly, where did the Judicial Branch of the federal government derive the authority to make that determination and settle the matter for the states?
While 5 people including Blackmun looked at viability, I doubt in early 1970s imagery they were also able to look at the formation of arms legs and a beating heart at 6 weeks that also could influence what one thinks medically about when life begins.
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"The viabilty question is medical, no matter how you word it."
BD, allow me to take another stab at this. My point is that the embryo/fetus is viable if left where it belongs, which is in the mother. Taking it from there removes it from the umbilical cord, its proper source of sustenance (nutrition and oxygen) and the womb, its proper environment. Doing so kills it. Separating it from nutrition and oxygen at any age kills too, yet we do not use that to say that you or I are not viable.
Not only is "viability" as defined by Blackmun a standard that moves with technology (in contrast to the timeless concepts of the Constitution and Natural Law) it is a POLITICAL compromise.
"That is as good of a political or logical compromise as any other, but if I read Crafty's question correctly, where did the Judicial Branch of the federal government derive the authority to make that determination and settle the matter for the states?"
Exactly so!
Yes the murky penumbras of Roe left some determinations to the States, but the logic of the point is but an offering of political compromise. ALL of Roe's progeny are unnecessary and should be aborted :lol: -- the proper decision in Roe was to leave it all to the States. My challenge question remains: Where in the Constitution do the Federal Courts and/or SCOTUS get the right to determine the beginning of human life? Particularly so when the democratically elected branches of the sovereign states have spoken!
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I understand your point, and again urge you to look to the Blackmun opinion. He spent hundreds of words explaining why he felt the case was justiciable. I'm not trying to agree or disagree, I am only stating that the argument should focus there. So, for example, he looks to common law history. This is an idea that you (GC and DMG) tend to like. So, where, exactly, does Blackmun go wrong with this application? He moves beyond the right of a woman's "right to chose" and looks at the rights of the doctor. Do you not agree that doctors have rights? I only am trying to get you to address the Blackmun opinion, not directly argue with you.
"...viability" as defined by Blackmun a standard that moves with technology..." With this I agree completely, and is a source of my frustration with the decision in question.
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OK. :-)
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It's only going to get even more complicated.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/11/the-next-roe-v-wade-jennie-mccormack-s-abortion-battle.html
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Unmarried, unemployed and 3 kids already, the man who had impregnated her had just been sent to jail for robbery. She ought to have the freedom to kill off at least one of the others too. Aren't they all equally unwanted?
Morally equal and far more effective might be to kill off the mother before it happens again.
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:-) Agreed, "far more effective might be to kill off the mother before it happens again."
Other than the above, the article does raise some good points/questions as science moves ahead.
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"Unmarried, unemployed and 3 kids already, the man who had impregnated her had just been sent to jail for robbery."
Yeah, that caught my attention too, as did the somewhat snide comment about Mormons , , ,
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By Michael Kinsley
August 31, 2012
It's puzzling that people are shocked that, on abortion, the Republican platform contains no exceptions for rape or incest or to protect the health of a woman.
"The question of abortion is one of the most difficult and controversial of our time." That sweet reason is from the 1976 Republican platform, three years after Roe vs. Wade, which ruled that a woman's right to abortion is protected by the Constitution. The platform went on in the same moral-relativist vein. "There are those in our Party who favor complete support for the Supreme Court decision," and those who want that decision "changed by a constitutional amendment." Just to leave no one out, it went on to note that "others have yet to take a position" while others still fall somewhere in between.
It called for "public dialogue on abortion," and then, in a surprising and unexplained reversal, endorsed a "constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."
In 1980, the platform's abortion plank conceded "the complex nature of its various issues" and "differing views on this question among Americans in general." Nevertheless, "we affirm our support of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."
By 1984: "The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."
In addition, the 1984 platform called for "the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.
Ever since then, with various rhetorical flourishes, the platform has contained the same four elements: 1) the unborn child has a "fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed"; 2) endorsement of a "human life" constitutional amendment; 3) a call for judges who "respect human life"; and 4) new laws to "make clear" that the fetus is a "person" under the 14th Amendment. Paul Ryan has co-sponsored such legislation, declaring that the fetus is a "person."
So it's a bit puzzling that people are so shocked and dismayed that this year's GOP platform contains no exceptions for rape or incest or to protect the health — or even the life — of a woman. The anti-abortion plank of the Republican platform has never contained an explicit exception for any of these situations.
The Human Life Amendment could mean anything because it doesn't exist yet. It could contain exceptions for rape or to save a woman's life or some other reason. But the 14th Amendment is another matter. It is the constitutional provision that guarantees "equal protection of the laws." It was enacted after the Civil War for the benefit of the freed black slaves.
Courts have been struggling with it ever since. Almost everything the government (or anybody else, for that matter) does is a discrimination of some kind. What other groups does the Constitution protect? Obviously the laws cannot treat criminals equally with the innocent and must be able to discriminate between the old who collect Social Security and the young who pay into it. And so on.
If the 14th Amendment's protections apply to unborn children, this essentially means that the government cannot discriminate between the born and the unborn — that is, between you and a fetus. It certainly cannot allow a fetus to be killed just because it is the result of rape.
In fact, if a fetus is a "person" entitled to "equal protection of the laws," the state would have to prosecute a woman for obtaining an abortion exactly as it would prosecute a mother who murdered her young children. That's equal protection of the laws. States that allow capital punishment, in which a woman could be executed for procuring and paying money to hire a killer to murder her children, would have to follow the same policy regarding a woman who procured and paid for an abortion.
James Bopp, a Republican activist lawyer who wrote the 2012 platform's anti-abortion language, claims that it doesn't preclude exceptions for rape, etc. He says there are "numerous exceptions" to the right to life, even for people who have been born. For example, if a woman's life is in danger, "it's analytically close to self-defense" and self-defense can be justifiable homicide. Or you can be excused for shooting a fleeing felon, he notes.
Of course the fetus, if it is to be considered a person, is an innocent person, and there is no "justifiable" reason to kill an innocent person.
Does the Republican Party actually believe that women who have abortions should be treated like criminals, or at best as committing "justifiable homicide"? Of course not. But that, whether they like it or not, is the necessary implication of the obscure language in the party's platform.
Michael Kinsley, a former editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, is a Bloomberg View columnist.
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Actually that was a rather reasonable discussion by MK.
I would note that, IIRC, MR favors an exception for rape and incest (and mother's life in danger?) The Jon Stewart show had some fun interviewing delegates and tweaking them about the cognitive dissonance of it all.
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As one who has done decades of conventions I can tell you R. platforms are normally a consolation prize for the activists who just accepted endorsement of a RINO. It doesnt tell what future law will be or even what Republican votes will be. Republican platforms make nice fodder for people like Kinsley.
Banning abortion after rape ignores the fact that the woman did not in any consentual way take on the responsibility of carrying and caring for that life.
The tragedy of abortion is that 98% plus are being killed for no good reason. In the case of rape, another life, the rape victim has a competing right to not have the victimization continue.
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Some very wise words over on Power of The Word thread could be applied here IMO, unless one argues the little developing one is plant or inanimate. Earlier we determined that a fetus is a live human but of lower value than a born person.
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"What is the true test of a moral person? How do you know that someone is truly a good person, and not just preaching?
One test is to observe the way they treat subordinates. Someone who can show concern for those who are lower and more helpless than themselves is a person who is truly good.
...the ban on eating the limb of a live animal is a general law which commands us to be kind to animals. In fact, Jewish law prohibits inflicting unnecessary pain on animals.
...
There is a clear hierarchy here. We are not equal with G‑d, and animals are not equal to humans. The myth of equality is necessary only to protect the weak in a world devoid of morality. But moral beings with a clear code of ethics can recognize the innate inequality of nature without exploiting it. Being higher means being more responsible. Nature is here to serve us, but we are here to serve G‑d, and that means treating all His creatures, equal or not, with respect.
...
An additional reason mentioned by the Sages for human treatment of animals is that it cultivates humane conduct toward other people, while inhumane treatment of animals carries the danger of inculcating insensitivity toward others. (Research confirms a connection between people who torture animals as youngsters and those who are violent as adults, though there is no way to tell if there is a causal relationship.)
The Sefer Hachinuch (596) writes: "Among the motivations for this commandment is to accustom ourselves to delicate souls, choosing the straight path and adhering to it, and seeking mercy and kindness. Once we obtain this habit, then even toward animals, which were created to serve us, we will show concern."
And Nachmanides writes: "The reason for refraining [from taking the eggs in the presence of the mother] is to teach us the quality of mercy, and not to act cruelty. For cruelty [toward animals then] spreads into the soul of man [and expresses itself toward people as well]."
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Good points, Doug.
Some very wise words over on Power of The Word thread could be applied here IMO, unless one argues the little developing one is plant or inanimate. Earlier we determined that a fetus is a live human but of lower value than a born person.
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"What is the true test of a moral person? How do you know that someone is truly a good person, and not just preaching?
One test is to observe the way they treat subordinates. Someone who can show concern for those who are lower and more helpless than themselves is a person who is truly good.
...the ban on eating the limb of a live animal is a general law which commands us to be kind to animals. In fact, Jewish law prohibits inflicting unnecessary pain on animals.
...
There is a clear hierarchy here. We are not equal with G‑d, and animals are not equal to humans. The myth of equality is necessary only to protect the weak in a world devoid of morality. But moral beings with a clear code of ethics can recognize the innate inequality of nature without exploiting it. Being higher means being more responsible. Nature is here to serve us, but we are here to serve G‑d, and that means treating all His creatures, equal or not, with respect.
...
An additional reason mentioned by the Sages for human treatment of animals is that it cultivates humane conduct toward other people, while inhumane treatment of animals carries the danger of inculcating insensitivity toward others. (Research confirms a connection between people who torture animals as youngsters and those who are violent as adults, though there is no way to tell if there is a causal relationship.)
The Sefer Hachinuch (596) writes: "Among the motivations for this commandment is to accustom ourselves to delicate souls, choosing the straight path and adhering to it, and seeking mercy and kindness. Once we obtain this habit, then even toward animals, which were created to serve us, we will show concern."
And Nachmanides writes: "The reason for refraining [from taking the eggs in the presence of the mother] is to teach us the quality of mercy, and not to act cruelty. For cruelty [toward animals then] spreads into the soul of man [and expresses itself toward people as well]."
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Some follow up to points made elsewhere:
From the Presidential 2012 thread,
Bigdog questioned: "What does the fact that all of the "rape" congressional candidates lost (Mourdock and Akin, the latter decisively in an election that he once had 7-9% lead in)?"
BBG Wrote: "Will it drive unmarried women into the statist camp over abortion, or will it embrace liberty?" ...
"I entertain no illusions: most who oppose abortion will be unable to support a message of unadulterated liberty."
CCP: "What policies, stands, and attitudes are faulty? ... Because a few evangelicals made foolish political comments about abortion?"
Doug (me) from Media Issues: "What bill or constitutional amendment that might pass in the Senate would ban abortion for pregnancies resulting from rape? There are none." ... "Rape abortions make up about .05% of all abortions. The non-existent controversy makes a useful diversion from focusing on convenience abortions that comprise more than 98% of abortions"...
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What have we learned?
1) Gallup May 2012 (from further up the thread): Pro-choice 41%, Pro-life 50%. Speaking in general terms about respect for life including the unborn is not bad politics and did not cost Republicans the election. To BBG, pro-life conservatism defeats 'unadulterated liberty' by about 50-1 in the electoral marketplace. The question comes back to liberty for whom? Libertarians can choose which party generally supports more liberty. Pro-lifers don't give up that view over budget issues or political advantage. It is mostly hard-care liberals who fully deny any value to unborn life, while the politically successful ones utter things like personally opposed, safe, legal and RARE to satisfy their own constituents.
2) Crafty wrote in 2009, "The correct solution is to let the democratic republican principle work it out in each of the 50 states." Blackmun may not concur, but having conservatives, libertarians, Republicans and even independents agree that it is a matter best left to the states is a political compromise that can remove it from the unresolvable front page of our federal elections.
3) The tragedy of abortion is that millions of developing human beings are killed for no good reason; 98% for convenience-related reasons of the mother is what I have drawn out of published Planned Parenthood surveys. In the case of rape, 'no good reason' IS NOT TRUE. This should not require further explanation(!) but we try to make a crime victim whole which does not include a forced, lifelong link of parenting with her rapist. If a pro-life extremist does not understand or agree from a religious perspective, then understand it from a political perspective - or don't run for high office with major party endorsement.
4) If Roe were ever overturned (this election moved us a LONG way in the other direction), if the issue were ever returned to the states, or to the extent as Bigdog points out some of that power is already at the state level, Republicans screening their candidates from now on need to make sure and make it publicly known that abortion services will continue to be available in 50 states for rape, incest and life of the mother.
5) Pro-lifers should exercise their own right of privacy when you ponder the theoretical value of a human life conceived in rape. Doing so with reporters in a campaign is not how you advance a pro-life cause, save any unborn lives, win the women's vote or win any election in even a most conservative pro-life state.
6) Stupid things said by Republicans in one or two states are used to deflate and defeat Republicans who said no such thing in 48 or 49 other states. Also not how you advance your own cause. The story from the nice local reporter who caught you with your guard down will get enormous, national legs. Posted previously:
"The New York Times and Washington Post have both run nearly 100 pieces over the last 3 months mentioning the GOP and rape." http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/29/mainstream-media-twists-mourdock-comments-about-god-and-life-into-something/#ixzz2Ayo84LIc
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"4) If Roe were ever overturned (this election moved us a LONG way in the other direction), if the issue were ever returned to the states, or to the extent as Bigdog points out some of that power is already at the state level, Republicans screening their candidates from now on need to make sure and make it publicly known that abortion services will continue to be available in 50 states for rape, incest and life of the mother."
A two part question:
a) WHY do most of us include incest along with rape as a valid reason for abortion?
b) Is it not that incest leads to children with birth defects?
c) Therefore should we not be restating the standard as "rape and/or birth defects" to be logically consistent?
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Doug sez:
1) Gallup May 2012 (from further up the thread): Pro-choice 41%, Pro-life 50%. Speaking in general terms about respect for life including the unborn is not bad politics and did not cost Republicans the election. To BBG, pro-life conservatism defeats 'unadulterated liberty' by about 50-1 in the electoral marketplace. The question comes back to liberty for whom? Libertarians can choose which party generally supports more liberty. Pro-lifers don't give up that view over budget issues or political advantage. It is mostly hard-care liberals who fully deny any value to unborn life, while the politically successful ones utter things like personally opposed, safe, legal and RARE to satisfy their own constituents.
I'm assuming the "50-1" is a typo as it certainly isn't reflected in any polling I've encountered. And despite any national polling to the contrary, the "War on Women" meme--which was used as a placeholder for abortion--swung significant segments of some constituencies. As someone who lives in a swing state I can assure you that Romney's pronouncements on Planned Parenthood and abortion where a theme relentlessly hammered on the airwaves; I don't think the opposition would be doing so if they did not think it would bear fruit.
(An aside: correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Planned Parenthood a private organization that receives public monies? The Dem. campaign seemed to purposely elevate PP to some sort of entitlement status; the Repubs had no effective response. It galled me that all the PP vilification occurred in an unanswered vacuum).
With that said, 50/41 national polling data speaks to a simplistic view of the electoral process. Grass roots activists tend to nominate candidates that then have to swing to the middle to get elected. Though there is plenty of nuance here, broadly stated the Repubs tend to nominate folks the Dems can cast as right wing abortion zealots, and that ability costs elections. Do you imagine this dynamic will change in the future or had folks who want to send statists packing best game out solutions?
Indeed, here's where the game gets pretty grim from my perspective: much of what is wrong with this nation is the results of a decades long statist evolution that's becoming ever more entrenched, with the alternatives, if not being flat out statist lite, at least containing statist litmus tests at the activist/nomination level. Where abortion is concerned most who would make that a litmus test would require statist structure enough to then enforce the proscription. Where security hawks are concerned anything that does not include an internal statist security structure is a non-starter. For drug zealots, anything that does contain draconian statist prohibition strictures won't work. And so on. The net effect is that every electoral battle becomes one over the degree of statism, with the hard core statists seizing on statist lite aspects of the opposition and then thrashing 'em over it.
Perhaps the lame idealism I'm always trying to disavow is gumming up my thinking, but should today's statism really be that hard to fight? Described in all it's folly by folks unimpeded by statist lite banners it really shouldn't be difficult to provide stark contrasts. It took generations to get to the current statist mess, and will likely require a similar time frame to cast off statist vestiges, but if the fight is worth having it's worth beginning sooner rather than later, and if it's worth starting it's worth winning. I don't see a winning path that embraces statist lite impulses, as such I think statism needs to be rejected in all it's forms if we are to successfully move toward a national ethos the framers would recognize.
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AMEN.
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"A two part question:
a) WHY do most of us include incest along with rape as a valid reason for abortion?
b) Is it not that incest leads to children with birth defects?
c) Therefore should we not be restating the standard as "rape and/or birth defects" to be logically consistent?"
Crafty, I disagree; I think that was a 3-part question. :-D
a) I don't know, but to me it has something to do with that with incest like rape the pregnancy resulted from an inappropriate relationship.
b) That may be true, but my guess is what I described above. A kid born to parents who are brother/sister, mother/son etc. enters life with a host of problems beyond birth defects.
c) "Logically consistent" is what set up these pro-life candidates for the rape abortion political trap. I am not comfortable or informed enough to comment on abortion for birth defect reasons from a law-writing perspective. We are all defective so that would be tricky line to write in law as more and more testing is possible.
Your probing questions stand for others to address.
My main point over time on this thread is about the moral question ahead of the legal question. You don't ban abortions when 50% of the people think there is nothing wrong with killing an unborn no different than you or me at the same point in the womb. From my point of view you first try to change hearts and minds.
My main point in yesterday's post was that rape is for certain one of the exceptions that will be included if we ever do write meaningful restrictions. Unite on that point and unite on your point that it is a state right and move the most divisive of issues off of the front burner, so that we can build a better coalition on the other political issues.
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Doug: "pro-life conservatism defeats 'unadulterated liberty' by about 50-1 in the electoral marketplace."
BBG: "I'm assuming the "50-1" is a typo as it certainly isn't reflected in any polling I've encountered."
Mitt Romney 59 million, Gary Johnson 1 million, for one example, or almost any race, any state, any year. That's all I was saying there.
You didn't address my question, liberty for whom - meaning who protects the unborn, the most innocent among us.
Liberty to me is that freedom that runs wild through us - right up to the point where it starts to harm someone else.
If one takes the extreme pro-choice view that the unborn is nothing, then defining liberty is simple, abortion kills nothing. That is fine, but I doubt most Democrats or even Libertarians agree with that, much less Republicans.
"Repubs tend to nominate folks the Dems can cast as right wing abortion zealots, and that ability costs elections."
Republicans could learn from these mistakes and nominate pro-lifers who merely declare that belief like Romney, Bush and Reagan did, show proper revulsion toward rape and all its consequences and go on to address other issues.
Similar to what I wrote about Aiken and Mourdock not advancing their own cause, only in the wildest dreams of the statists should the pro-liberty and the pro-life factions split up.
"Isn't Planned Parenthood a private organization that receives public monies?"
Yes. At least ACORN never killed anyone.
"The Dem. campaign seemed to purposely elevate PP to some sort of entitlement status; the Repubs had no effective response."
An axiom of this election is that a lie (or a really bad idea) not immediately refuted is scored as a debate point won.
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Mitt Romney 59 million, Gary Johnson 1 million, for one example, or almost any race, any state, any year. That's all I was saying there.
Meh, apples and oranges where statist and statist lite suck up most the oxygen. Call it 100 to 1 once both sorts of statist are combined. Seeing as the statist market is cornered, perhaps another approach is in order assuming a different outcome is preferred?
You didn't address my question, liberty for whom - meaning who protects the unborn, the most innocent among us.
While you had little in the way of response to the Judith Jarvis Thompson piece I posted quite some time back that spoke to many of these distinctions far more eloquently than I will.
Be that as it may, I am intentionally avoiding getting into a "most innocent among us" argument because doing so feeds into the current dynamic. I'm asking instead what can shatter the current paradigm and lead to less statist outcomes? I don't see a way of getting from here to there with the abortion issue as the primary grail.
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"I'm asking instead what can shatter the current paradigm and lead to less statist outcomes?"
A most excellent question-- and one that will probably be better explored on threads other than this one :-D
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http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/27/planned-parenthood-rushes-woman-to-hospital-after-botched-abortion/
Planned Parenthood Rushes Woman to Hospital After Botched Abortion
by Steven Ertelt | St. Louis, MO | 11/27/12 1:35 PM
Another Planned Parenthood abortion clinic has been documented rushing a patient to a local hospital following a botched abortion that may have injured her and potentially claimed her life.
A St. Louis Planned Parenthood patient was rushed to a nearby hospital after suffering serious abortion complications the day before Thanksgiving. Paramedics arrived at the abortion clinic at approximately 2:45 p.m. on November 21, 2012, and removed the patient from the building with her face covered with a cloth.
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Was the woman (mother) told the procedure was safe, or if she was informed of similar previous disasters at the same clinic? http://www.lifenews.com/2011/02/14/failed-abortion-injures-woman-at-missouri-planned-parenthood/
If the mother's life is in danger BEFORE the procedure, should she go to a Planned Parenthood clinic for a procedure or wouldn't she gostraight to the hospital in the first place??!
(http://lifenews.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/stlouis2.jpg)
Safe, legal and rare was the elected, pro-choice mantra from 20 years ago. Looks like we got one out of three.
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http://www.mercatornet.com/sheila_liaugminas/view/11588
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http://www.mercatornet.com/sheila_liaugminas/view/11588
It takes a lot to shock me. Mission accomplished.
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http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/111368/the-rise-diy-abortions?page=0,0
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http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/roersquos-pro-life-legacy
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http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/roersquos-pro-life-legacy
Some valid points in there, but the progress is pretty pathetic, and tragic. The pro-life movement is not about having a movement, it is about changing outcomes. 40 million slaughtered isn't what anyone in the movement would point to as making progress.
I think the imaging processes and ability to detect heartbeats etc. make the biggest difference. That information would get right to the people through science and mainstream professional journalism anyway, with or without a pro-life movement. (Just kidding.)
Removing a divisive issue from the electorate may sound good but isn't that mostly what oppressive governments do?
We had a Chinese student with us for Christmas break. People asked her about life back home near Shanghai, things like do you have brothers and sisters? A little cultural ignorance was exposed there. If siblings were conceived, their outcomes were "removed from the political process".
From the title I thought it was about the real Roe - Norma McCorvey - and her conversion and advocacy for pro-life.
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http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/111368/the-rise-diy-abortions?page=0,0
Powerful piece BD! On the one hand, prosecuting mothers doesn't win anyone over to the movement. On the other hand, she sure showed signs of knowing she was killing someone:
"Following the instructions, she took the first pill right away and the others some hours later. That night, she started having cramps. The next morning, Christmas Eve, she delivered a dead fetus alone in her bathroom, along with the placenta and a great deal of blood.
The fetus was much bigger than she had expected. It was about a foot long, clearly female, with identifiable features and hair. McCormack wrapped the remains in a bag with the placenta. Then she put it in a box and hid it under her bed. That evening, she attended Christmas Eve dinner at her father’s place and dropped her daughter off with her ex-husband for an overnight visit. She wrapped the children’s presents, including new clothes she’d bought on layaway for her fashion-conscious daughter, and put them under the tree. She told no one about the abortion apart from her sister.
After about a week, the box began to emit an odor. McCormack wrapped it up in more bags and put it out on the back porch, on the shelf of a covered barbecue. It didn’t feel right to her to throw it away."... "what she wants most is a proper burial. “Just because of the circumstances doesn’t mean I’m heartless”
A five year felony seems so extreme. With facts just slightly different, born alive, killed, plotting trips, expenses, ordering supplies, across state lines, hiding the body etc, would look a lot like 1st degree murder. This one wasn't born alive, but it was a live little girl before she killed it. Having 2 kids already, she knew what it was.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/01/06/
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A Michigan abortion clinic has been shut down by the fire marshal over conditions the city described as potentially “dangerous to human life or the public welfare.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/graphic-the-conditions-at-this-mi-abortion-clinic-were-so-dangerous-disgusting-it-was-shut-down/
What next? Cattle slaughterhouse dangerous to cattle?
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Seven in 10 Americans believe Roe v. Wade should stand, according to new data from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, as the landmark Supreme Court abortion-rights ruling turns 40 on Tuesday.
Seven in 10 Americans believe Roe v. Wade should stand, the most since 1989, according to data from a WSJ/NBC News poll, as the landmark Supreme Court abortion-rights ruling turns 40 on Tuesday. WSJ's Louise Radnofsky reports. Photo: Getty Images.
That is the highest level of support for the decision, which established a woman's right to an abortion, since polls began tracking it in 1989. The shift is mostly the result of more Democrats backing the decision—particularly Hispanics and African-Americans—and a slight uptick in support from Republicans.
But the poll showed a consistent tension in Americans' attitudes toward the decision. Almost seven in 10 respondents say there are at least some circumstances in which they don't support abortion.
Some 31% of respondents in the poll said abortion should always be legal, and 9% believed it should be illegal without any exceptions. Between those two opinions are the 23% who thought it should be legal most of the time, but with some exceptions, and the 35% who felt it should be illegal except in circumstances of rape, incest and to save a woman's life.
Since those questions were first asked, a decade ago, more people generally support abortion rights. But the majority of voters whose views aren't absolute has forced activists on both sides of the issue to rethink their message.
Antiabortion campaigners who once sought a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision have instead pursued legislation in Congress and the states aimed at highlighting aspects of abortion that have the potential to make voters uneasy. Those include restricting abortions later in pregnancy or because of the sex of the fetus, both of which are rare but are seen as resonating with voters.
"You really need to start with the abortions that are most controversial and where you have the broadest consensus, even if they are not that common," said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' abortion and euthanasia campaigns. "All or nothing has produced nothing."
A 2011 Gallup poll found that especially large percentages of respondents were in favor of informed consent for women seeking abortions (86% of abortion-rights adults and 87% who are antiabortion) and making abortion illegal in the third trimester (79% of abortion-rights backers and 94% of those who are antiabortion).
The Long War
Both sides agree: The campaign over abortion has become a long one.
View Interactive
..
Opponents of abortion rights won passage of a record 92 measures restricting the procedure in 24 states in 2011, and an additional 43 in 19 states last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that favors abortion rights. Nine states have recently banned most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, although courts have kept two of the laws from taking effect.
This year, Texas, Indiana, and Missouri are set to consider restrictions on chemically induced abortions in the coming legislative session, and lawmakers in Indiana and South Carolina have sponsored bills adding regulations to clinics.
The new moves come after several states have passed bills in the past two years requiring abortion clinics to maintain certain staffing levels or install equipment such as ventilation systems that are typically in hospitals. The states describe those efforts as seeking to protect women's health, while abortion-rights backers say the aim is to increase costs and obstacles for abortion providers.
"I don't need a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, an antiabortion law firm that works with state groups on local legislation. "Clinic regulations do actually challenge Roe."
Supporters of abortion rights said they scored some electoral wins last year after a few Republican candidates made high-profile misstatements about abortion in cases of rape.
Now, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that works for the election of women who oppose abortion, said she would be training candidates to make sure they had an answer if they were asked why they opposed making exceptions for rape.
Kirsten Moore, until recently executive director of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said her abortion-rights group consulted with focus groups and experts on language, psychology and polling about incorporating Americans' mixed feelings about abortion into its messaging.
She said she concluded: "If we are willing to acknowledge the complexity of the issue…then we think we can have a conversation with the people in the middle and help them resolve that conflict in a pro-choice direction."
Supporters of abortion rights increasingly emphasize women's privacy, instead of focusing on broader rights, and frame having an abortion as a "decision" rather than a "choice." Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America released an online video signaling that new approach.
"For many people, it's not a black and white issue," the video says of abortion. "Pro-choice? Pro-life? The truth is these labels limit the conversation.…When it comes down to it, we just don't know a woman's specific situation. We're not in her shoes."
Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Ashby Jones at ashby.jones@wsj.com
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Isn't that about where we are right now politically? Separate from the merits and morals of slaughtering our young, wouldn't you say about 70% have no concept of states' rights and would prefer to have an assembled, benevolent politburo decide the toughest issues for us, as long as they get it right?
Pro-life groups should concede the politics of the moment and move the other direction - push legislation that gives the mom a reasonable time after birth to decide whether the child raising thing is really something she wants to tackle. The fetus is still not viable. Did she lose her right of privacy at childbirth? No prosecution for the mother or the doctor for killing the baby in the first 30 days after birth. In Illinois I believe they called something like that the Obama doctrine.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/01/06/
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Mother sues Planned Parenthood over forced, botched abortion
by Heidi Miller
February 20, 2013
When Ayanna Byer scheduled an appointment at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains to take an abortion pill to end her pregnancy, there was no way for her to foresee the horrors ahead of her. Earlier this month, Byer, through the assistance of the attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, brought a lawsuit to hold Planned Parenthood liable for the botched abortion that she did not consent to.
According to that complaint, when Byer arrived at the Planned Parenthood clinic, it was determined that her pregnancy was too far along to be terminated through the use of a pill, therefore a surgical abortion was recommended. Ms. Byer agreed upon the condition that she would receive IV anesthesia, for which she would be charged extra. Although the employees could not get the IV started, the doctor came to start the procedure anyway.
The complaint states:
At this time, Plaintiff immediately told the Planned Parenthood Doctor to stop and that she did not want to go through with the abortion procedure because she had not received any anesthetic. Plaintiff also informed Planned Parenthood Doctor and agents or employees of Planned Parenthood Defendants that she believed this to be a sign she should not go through with the abortion. The Planned Parenthood Doctor did not stop despite Plaintiff’s request, and assured Plaintiff the I.V. would be administered and the procedure would only take a few minutes.
At this time, the Planned Parenthood Doctor turned on the vacuum machines and told Plaintiff it was too late to stop.
Seven minutes later, due to Ms. Byer crying from pain, the procedure finally stopped. She received an apology and a prescription for a painkiller and antibiotics and was sent on her way. Planned Parenthood never followed up with her.
About two days later, Ms. Byer went to the hospital due to pain and bleeding, where it was found that part of the aborted baby was still inside her, resulting in an infection. She had to have emergency surgery.
Sources: NY Times, LA Times and Washington Post. Just kidding, maybe they will cover it tomorrow
http://liveactionnews.org/mother-sues-planned-parenthood-over-forced-botched-abortion/
http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ByerComplaint.pdf
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Mother sues Planned Parenthood over forced, botched abortion
by Heidi Miller
February 20, 2013
When Ayanna Byer scheduled an appointment at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains to take an abortion pill to end her pregnancy, there was no way for her to foresee the horrors ahead of her. Earlier this month, Byer, through the assistance of the attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, brought a lawsuit to hold Planned Parenthood liable for the botched abortion that she did not consent to.
According to that complaint, when Byer arrived at the Planned Parenthood clinic, it was determined that her pregnancy was too far along to be terminated through the use of a pill, therefore a surgical abortion was recommended. Ms. Byer agreed upon the condition that she would receive IV anesthesia, for which she would be charged extra. Although the employees could not get the IV started, the doctor came to start the procedure anyway.
The complaint states:
At this time, Plaintiff immediately told the Planned Parenthood Doctor to stop and that she did not want to go through with the abortion procedure because she had not received any anesthetic. Plaintiff also informed Planned Parenthood Doctor and agents or employees of Planned Parenthood Defendants that she believed this to be a sign she should not go through with the abortion. The Planned Parenthood Doctor did not stop despite Plaintiff’s request, and assured Plaintiff the I.V. would be administered and the procedure would only take a few minutes.
At this time, the Planned Parenthood Doctor turned on the vacuum machines and told Plaintiff it was too late to stop.
Seven minutes later, due to Ms. Byer crying from pain, the procedure finally stopped. She received an apology and a prescription for a painkiller and antibiotics and was sent on her way. Planned Parenthood never followed up with her.
About two days later, Ms. Byer went to the hospital due to pain and bleeding, where it was found that part of the aborted baby was still inside her, resulting in an infection. She had to have emergency surgery.
Sources: NY Times, LA Times and Washington Post. Just kidding, maybe they will cover it tomorrow
http://liveactionnews.org/mother-sues-planned-parenthood-over-forced-botched-abortion/
http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ByerComplaint.pdf
The left's war on women (and children) continues. Feminist outrage in 3....2....never
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What a clusterfcuk.
BTW I see that Gov. Cuomo of NY is seeking to expand late-term abortions. Anyone have details?
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"The left's war on women (and children) continues."
And war on religion. Also the left's war on science. By the time you detect a separate heartbeat it is pretty hard to argue this is no living thing.
"I see that Gov. Cuomo of NY is seeking to expand late-term abortions. Anyone have details?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/02/20/cuomos-logical-but-risky-late-term-abortion-push/
Andrew Cuomo’s late-term abortion push
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/nyregion/cuomo-bucks-tide-with-bill-to-lift-abortion-limits.html
guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.
I haven't read New York law but there is ALWAYS an exception for when the life of the mother is in danger. (Look for the iberals lie in the first sentence.) What child is "viable" when the mother is stabbing it or holding a plastic bag over its head?
We need legal abortion because we know many unwanting mothers will kill the baby anyway in what they used to call back alley abortions. Why not update the New York code for unwanted spouses. We know that a good number of them will be killed anyway. Why not facilitate that in a safer environment?
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Infanticide is practiced all over the globe as a method for family planning. Isn't it time it is taken out of the shadows and made safe, legal and rare?
If not, why not?
Isn't it just a mass of fetal tissue with a bit more time to develop?
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/5/judge-kills-age-restrictions-morning-after-pill/?page=all#pagebreak
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Reserved Press seating at the Gosnell trial:
(http://static.squarespace.com/static/4f34530ecb12e336a9dfe29c/t/51684635e4b02d086333b054/1365788214130/seats.jpg?format=500w)
Dead babies. Exploited women. Racism. Governmental failures. This should be a front page story!
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/why-dr-kermit-gosnells-trial-should-be-a-front-page-story/274944/
Even the journalist who showed up (and took this picture) had his story pulled:
Philly.com
What I saw at the Gosnell trial
phillyBurbs.com (blog) - 16 minutes ago
By J.D. Mullane ... “Big enough to walk me home,” joked Gosnell when he saw the child's remains, testified Ashly Baldwin, a clinic employee.
404 error Sorry, the page you requested could not be found.
"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."
http://redflagnews.com/headlines/pic-empty-reserved-media-seating-section-at-trial-for-abortion-doctor-kermitt-gosnell
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Hard to prosecute one flagrant killer when the whole aim is to kill. Hardly newsworthy after reporting constantly on the killing of 40+ million in American alone since Roe-Wade, with or without this disgusting abuse.
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I lost the URL, but apparently AG Holder's sister is a partner in an abortion clinic run by a guy with a history of medicare fraud or something like that , , ,
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A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ’super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.
A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”
Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578422883948238160.html
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Media Issues, Abortion and Cognitive Dissonance of the Left all in one...
Is that the proper Latin plural? And does 'little one' meaning 'little human' not really mean baby in the first place?
NYT runs a second story on Gosnell, on page A12. Did he kill more people than the Boston Marathon bomber(s) or didn't he?
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Today's New York Times story [April 16, 2013], like the one last month, refers to the infants Gosnell is accused of murdering as "fetuses," although it also refers to them as "babies." This is another fascinating slip. Abortion proponents resolutely adhere to the convention of calling unborn children "fetuses" so as to conceal the similarity between (at least late-term) abortion and infanticide. By using the terms interchangeably, the Times unwittingly defeats this pro-abortion obscurantism, revealing what it means to conceal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578426892205886784.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Leftist slipups are not uncommon on abortion due to the perverted twisting of logic necessary to endorse it. Noted previously in this thread is when Justice Breyer refers to the woman having an abortion as a mother. A mother of WHAT? Previous children??
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Gosnell's abortion atrocities no 'aberration':
Kirsten Powers April 29, 2013 USA Today
Closing arguments leave questions about clinics elsewhere in America.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/29/gosnells-abortion-atrocities-no-aberration-column/2122235/
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Read it at the link. The facts coming out of this trial are sickening and too gruesome for me to post. ("one of the severed feet found in jars at the clinic belonged to her aborted baby.") This creature of death and human carnage they call a doctor faces the death penalty for doing things that Illinois State Senator Barack Obama wanted to legalize. The difference between prosecutable 1st degree murder happening in the operating room in at least 4 provable cases and what these so called doctors and clinics do legally for a living is slight.
How do so many people, voters, media, health inspectors, religious leaders, advocates for women, girls, for the poor and minorities, pretend to be unaware, morally neutral, or stay silent about this whole industry?
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Doug:
You are on top of this issue. May we ask you to save us from having to look up (probably in this thread somewhere :lol: ) the specifics of the bills for which Obama voted while still in IL?
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Specifics of the bills to protect the born alive that Obama voted down while still in IL:
The 2001 bill: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/legisnet92/status/920SB1093.html
The 2002 bill http://ilga.gov/legislation/legisnet92/sbgroups/sb/920SB1662LV.html
... "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law."
His stated reason for opposing was that the bill would somehow jeopardize the whole Roe v Wade man-made right to abortion. http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf
Sen. Obama: "..it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."
[We elected this guy President? Twice?!]
Fact checkers at the Washington Post were partially snowed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-obama-vote-to-deny-rights-to-infant-abortion-survivors/2012/09/07/9852895a-f87d-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_blog.html
Still they write: "we could have awarded Four Pinocchios to the former Illinois senator for his comments to the Christian Broadcasting Network (denying the bill said what it said), but that interview is several years old now, and it’s not the focus of this particular column."
The US Senate (pre-Obama) passed essentially the same bill the same year (2002) at the federal level by unanimous consent, proving the obvious, that Barack Obama was furthest to the Nazi-Stalinist Left in the Senate even before he even arrived.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347657/abortion%E2%80%99s-underside
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The Atlantic, and everyone else in media it seems, is aghast that Jimmy Connors hinted that Chris Evert had an abortion during their engagement, in a year that both of them won Wimbledon. The outrage seems to hint that people might think she did something wrong. It is a book about his life, public and private. It's not like she killed his first kid - without even discussing it with him. Or is it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/jimmy-connors-shouldnt-be-talking-about-chris-everts-abortion/275809/
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Jumping back to the Gosnell case.
Some additional questions popped into mind for me:
If it is illegal to kill what comes out of the mother in the third trimester in PA because the law determines it to be a baby (and is that not the basis of this prosecution?) then why does the media refer to what happened here as babies that were born as a result of "botched abortions"?
By the logic of the law, is it not murder to kill the baby inside the mother as well?
And why are the mothers also not being prosecuted for their part in killing their babies as apparently "babies" are defined in PA law?
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Mentioned in CCP's post today and in Sean Trende's RCP Virginia Governor's race column, the (African American) new Republican nominee for Lt. Gov. in Virginia has made some politically controversial statements in his past. One example from both sources was Jackson declaring that Planned Parenthood had killed more African-Americans than the KKK. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/23/who_has_the_edge_in_the_va_governors_race_118528-2.html#ixzz2U8UOHVYx)
But is it true or is it false? If it is true and if there is nothing wrong with it, what is wrong with pointing it out?
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http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/14/the-grey-ladys-grudging-aborti
Or as the NY Times buried it:
“About 5 percent of the women, after they have had the baby, still wish they hadn’t. And the rest of them adjust.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/magazine/study-women-denied-abortions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
"S. (name withheld) ended up bonding with her baby."... "women rarely regret having a child"
Who knew?
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House approves bill banning most abortions after 20-week mark
The bill would affect 1.3 percent of the 1.2 million abortions per year in the US. 20 weeks is an estimate close to viability and of when the little ones begin to feel pain. [Liberals express more compassion for the elbow room of chickens raised for food.]
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Pres. Obama: "This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt for women's health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients' health care decisions, and the Constitution."
Ummm, Mr. President, Roe v. Wade is NOT in the constitution, half the abortions are girls killed, no doctor recommends waiting 20 weeks for an abortion, and the reasoning the Justices cited while creating artificial trimesters handled differently was based on some of the same reasoning of the House bill, but they were using medical information from 40 years ago.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/18/house-takes-up-bill-banning-most-abortions-after-20-week-mark/
http://wtaq.com/blogs/the-bader-blog/82/white-house-says-president-obama-will-veto-post-viability-abortion-restrictions/
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My Abortion, at 23 Weeks
By JUDY NICASTRO
Published: June 20, 2013 87 Comments
KIRKLAND, Wash. — I BELIEVE that parenthood starts before conception, at the moment you decide you want a child, and are ready and able to create a safe and loving home for her or him. I support abortion rights, but I reject the false distinction between the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” Here’s why.
A lawyer by training, I was 38 when I completed a term on the Seattle City Council. Two years later, I married my husband, who is five years younger. We wanted children, and started trying right away, but had trouble conceiving.
Using in vitro fertilization, we had our son, Matthew, now 4. When he was 2, after another round of I.V.F., we conceived again. I was six weeks pregnant when I learned I was carrying twins, a boy and a girl. We were elated.
But in my 20th week, during an ultrasound, the technician looked concerned, and we got the first hint that something might be wrong. The next day, a Friday, my obstetrician called to say that the technician had had a hard time seeing the heart of the male fetus. “It is probably just the position,” she reassured me. I wasn’t reassured.
On Monday, I had a second ultrasound and my husband and I spent two hours — it felt like an eternity — with a different doctor and technician. “It looks as if the boy has a herniated diaphragm,” they told us. “All the organs are in his chest and not developing.”
I began sobbing. What did that mean? Would the organs move? Was my baby “fixable”? The clinic staff members were reluctant to tell us how bad it was. They said I needed an M.R.I., which would provide more details.
My world stopped. I loved being pregnant with twins and trying to figure out which one was where in my uterus. Sometimes it felt like a party in there, with eight limbs moving. The thought of losing one child was unbearable.
The M.R.I., at Seattle Children’s Hospital, confirmed our fears: the organs were pushed up into our boy’s chest and not developing properly. We were in the 22nd week. In Washington State, abortion is legal until the 24th week.
After 10 more days of tests and meetings, we were in the 23rd week and had to make a decision. My husband is more conservative than I am. He also is a Catholic. I am an old-school liberal, and I am not religious. But from the start, and through this ordeal, we were in complete agreement. We desperately wanted this child and would do whatever we could to save him, if his hernia was fixable and he could have a good quality of life.
Once we had all the data, we met with a nurse, a surgeon and a pediatrician at the hospital. The surgeon said our boy had a hole in his diaphragm. Only one lung chamber had formed, and it was only 20 percent complete. If our boy survived birth, he would be on oxygen and other life supports for a long time. The thought of hearing him gasp for air and linger in pain was our nightmare.
The surgeon described interventions that would give our son the best chance of surviving birth. But the pediatrician could tell that we were looking for candid guidance. He cautioned that medical ethics constrained what he could say, then added, “Termination is a reasonable option, and a reasonable option that I can support.” The surgeon and nurse nodded in agreement. I burst out sobbing. My husband cried, too. But in a sense, the pediatrician’s words were a source of comfort and kindness. He said what we already knew. But we needed to hear it from professionals, who knew we were good parents who wanted what was best for our children.
The next day, at a clinic near my home, I felt my son’s budding life end as a doctor inserted a needle through my belly into his tiny heart. She had trouble finding it because of its abnormal position. As horrible as that moment was — it will live with me forever — I am grateful. We made sure our son was not born only to suffer. He died in a warm and loving place, inside me.
In having the abortion, we took a risk that my body would expel both fetuses, and that we would lose our daughter too. In fact, I asked if we could postpone the abortion until the third trimester, by which time my daughter would have been almost fully developed; my doctor pointed out that abortions after 24 weeks were illegal. Thankfully, Kaitlyn was born, healthy and beautiful, on March 2, 2011, and we love her to pieces. My little boy partially dissolved into me, and I like to think his soul is in his sister.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy, based on the disputed theory that fetuses at that stage are capable of feeling pain. The measure has no chance of passage in the Senate. But it is part of a trend toward restricting second- and even first-trimester abortions. Ten states have banned most abortions after 20 or 22 weeks; Arkansas, after 12; and North Dakota, after 6. Some of these laws are being challenged in court.
While some of these new restrictions allow exceptions for fetal genetic defects, second-trimester abortions must remain legal because, until a child is viable outside the womb, these decisions belong with the mother. I don’t know if Roe v. Wade will be overturned in my lifetime, but the chipping away of abortion rights is occurring at an astounding pace. I share my story in the hope that our leaders will be more responsible and compassionate when they weigh what it means to truly value the lives of women and children.
Judy Nicastro was a member of the Seattle City Council from 2000 through 2003.
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Great story. Twins with a catastrophic health defect in one may be one situation where 'abortion' could save the life of an unborn.
All serious abortion bills contain exceptions for things like life and health of the mother, incest rape, etc. This consideration should be added to those exceptions with the doctor's advice and the wishes of the FAMILY paramount. More than 98% of abortions, Planned Parenthood's own data, are for convenience reasons, all about killing, not saving human life. If this woman is so serious in caring for the unborn, she should get involved with crafting exceptions that cover these circumstances, as she has by publishing this story. That makes more sense than her conclusion that we should oppose any restrictions on reckless killing of viable, mid to late term babies with live heartbeats that can already feel pain.
Her experience and view fits closer into the mindset of people protecting life than it does with those who support the killings. MHO
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http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/03/classy-pro-abortion-protesters-drown-out-amazing-grace-with-chants-of-hail-satan/comment-page-1/#comments
At least they know who they are working for....
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Another story about a botched abortion, this one lived 5 years before dying:
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/07/02/baby-died-five-years-after-botched-abortion-injections-in-her-head-failed/
NYT has a story today about an abortion that went well. 20 year olds were able to keep their convenience, avoid consequence and avoid a stigma, complete masters degrees and then have a family. The would-be third oldest became the second oldest, the second oldest became the oldest and they all lived happily ever after, that is, except for that one that didn't.
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Watch this be the end of liberal support for legal abortion. If gayness is born and innate, not learned, eventually we will be able to test for it and give women their choice as is now the case with Down Syndrome. When then abort, will it be a hate crime?
...everything looks good, the doctor asks the beaming couple, “Now, would you like to know what you’re having?” When they say they would, the doctor replies, “You’re having a lesbian”
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2013/07/10/is-it-alright-to-abort-a-lesbian-baby-n1636769
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http://www.naturalnews.com/041398_post-birth_abortion_infanticide_Melissa_Harris-Perry.html
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http://www.naturalnews.com/041398_post-birth_abortion_infanticide_Melissa_Harris-Perry.html
Anything protecting the kid before reaching 18 is an infringement on the woman's right of reproductive freedom, why stop at 4th trimester?
It is so odd in this debate that it is conservatives who want to protect the weakest, most innocent and most vulnerable and unproductive among us and the liberals who stop and judge their value to society so harshly. What about age discrimination and hate crimes? They couldn't care less.
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http://www.naturalnews.com/041398_post-birth_abortion_infanticide_Melissa_Harris-Perry.html
Anything protecting the kid before reaching 18 is an infringement on the woman's right of reproductive freedom, why stop at 4th trimester?
It is so odd in this debate that it is conservatives who want to protect the weakest, most innocent and most vulnerable and unproductive among us and the liberals who stop and judge their value to society so harshly. What about age discrimination and hate crimes? They couldn't care less.
Anytime a leftist discusses some moral absolute, you know they are just posturing. The one thing they really believe in is power over others. Everything else is negotiable.
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Dear Friend,
For 40 years, nine unelected men and women on the Supreme Court have played God with innocent human life.
They have invented laws that condemned to painful deaths without trial more than 56 million babies for the crime of being "inconvenient."
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling forced abortion-on-demand down our nation's throat.
In the past, many in the pro-life movement have felt limited to protecting a life here and there -- passing some limited law to slightly control abortion in the more outrageous cases.
But some pro-lifers always seem to tiptoe around the Supreme Court, hoping they won't be offended.
Now the time to grovel before the Supreme Court is over.
Working from what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, pro-life lawmakers can pass a Life at Conception Act and end abortion using the Constitution instead of amending it.
That is why it's so urgent you sign the petition to your Senators and Congressman that I will link to in a moment.
You see, in the coming year it is vital every Member of Congress be put on record.
And your petition today will help do just that.
Signing the Life at Conception Act petition will help break through the opposition clinging to abortion-on-demand and get a vote on this life-saving bill to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A Life at Conception Act declares unborn children "persons" as defined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, entitled to legal protection.
This is the one thing the Supreme Court admitted in Roe v. Wade that would cause the case for legal abortion to "collapse."
When the Supreme Court handed down its now-infamous Roe v. Wade decision, it did so based on a new, previously undefined "right of privacy" which it "discovered" in so-called "emanations" of "penumbrae" of the Constitution.
Of course, as constitutional law it was a disaster.
But never once did the Supreme Court declare abortion itself to be a constitutional right.
Instead the Supreme Court said:
"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins . . . the judiciary at this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."
Then the High Court made a key admission:
"If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case [i.e., "Roe" who sought an abortion], of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."
The fact is, the 14th Amendment couldn't be clearer:
". . . nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law."
Furthermore, the 14th Amendment says:
"Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
That's exactly what a Life at Conception Act would do.
But this simple, logical and obviously right legislation will not become law without a fight.
And that's where your help is critical.
Please click here to sign your petition right away.
By turning up the heat on Congress in 2013 through a massive, national, grass-roots campaign, one of two things will happen.
If you and other pro-life activists pour on enough pressure, pro-lifers can force politicians from both parties who were elected on pro-life platforms to make good on their promises and ultimately win passage of this bill.
But even if a Life at Conception Act doesn't pass immediately, the public attention will set the stage to defeat radical abortionists in the next election.
Either way, the unborn win . . . unless you do nothing.
That's why the National Pro-Life Alliance is contacting hundreds of thousands of Americans just like you to mobilize a grass-roots army to pass a Life at Conception Act. The first thing you must do is sign your petition by clicking here.
They are the key ingredient in the National Pro-Life Alliance's plan to pass a Life at Conception Act. They'll also organize:
... Hard-hitting TV, radio and newspaper ads to be run just before each vote, detailing the horrors of abortion and mobilizing the American people.
... Extensive personal lobbying of key members of Congress by rank and file National Pro-Life Alliance members and staff.
... A series of newspaper columns to be distributed free to all 1,437 daily newspapers now published in the United States.
... An extensive email, direct mail and telephone campaign to generate at least one million petitions to Congress like the one linked to in this letter.
Of course, to do all this will take a lot of money.
Just to email and mail the letters necessary to produce one million petitions will cost at least $460,000.
Newspaper, TV and radio are even more expensive.
But I'm sure you'll agree pro-lifers cannot just sit by watching the slaughter continue.
The National Pro-Life Alliance's goal is to deliver one million petitions to the House and Senate in support of a Life at Conception Act.
When the bill comes up for a vote in Congress, it is crucial to have the full weight of an informed public backing the pro-life position.
I feel confident that the folks at National Pro-Life Alliance can gather those one million petitions.
But even though many Americans who receive this email will sign the petition, many won't be able to contribute. That's why it's vital you give $10, $25, $50, $100, or even more if you can.
Without your help the National Pro-Life Alliance will be unable to gather the one million petitions and mount the full-scale national campaign necessary to pass a Life at Conception Act.
A sacrificial gift of $35 or even $100 or $500 now could spare literally millions of innocent babies in years to come. But if that's too much, please consider chipping in with a donation of $10.
So please respond right away with your signed petition.
And please help with a contribution of at least $25 or $35. Some people have already given as much as $500. Others have given $50 and $100.
But no matter how much you give, whether it's chipping in with $10 or a larger contribution of $150, I guarantee your contribution is urgently needed and will be deeply appreciated.
That's why I hope and pray that you will not delay a moment to make a contribution of $1000, $500, $100, $50, $25, or even $10 if you can.
Your contribution to the National Pro-Life Alliance and your signed petition will be the first steps toward reversing Roe v. Wade and waking up the politicians about where our barbarous pro-abortion policy is taking us.
Sincerely,
Rand Paul,
United States Senator
P.S. The Supreme Court itself admitted -- if Congress declares unborn children "persons" under the law, the constitutional case for abortion-on-demand "collapses."
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Rand Paul agrees with Crafty's theory that Roe allows for congress to define when life begins.
The post sounds like the bill has no exceptions. I have argued that there is no serious bill that doesn't make exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother, etc. A bill without exceptions is pandering to the right, not a serious attempt to win the center and change law IMO.
In this recent interview with Wolf Blitzer, Rand Paul says there will need to be "thousands of exceptions":
http://theiowarepublican.com/2013/rand-paul-thousands-of-exceptions-to-life-at-conception-bill/
"Well, there’s going to be, like I say, thousands of extraneous situations where the life of the mother is involved and other things that are involved.
So, I would say that each individual case would have to be addressed and even if there were eventually a change in the law, let’s say, the people came more to my way of thinking, it’s still be a lot of complicated things that the law may not ultimately be able to address in the early stages of pregnancy that would have to be part of what occurs between the physician and the woman and the family.”
Slightly up the thread is a rare situation where an abortion could save the life the life of the other unborn twin. We can't agree on 20 weeks but we suddenly will pass a bill for no abortions, no exceptions? There is a moral case to be made before a major law change. That argument won't be won without thoughtful provision for necessary exceptions.
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Agreed!
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Anyone have a citation or two on the eugenics driven origins of Planned Parenthood/the abortion movement?
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Anyone have a citation or two on the eugenics driven origins of Planned Parenthood/the abortion movement?
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/06/28/margaret-sangers-eugenic-legacy-abortion-and-planned-parenthood/
http://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Sangers-Eugenic-Legacy-Fertility/dp/0786420111
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0786420111/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc/192-6431976-5627362?ie=UTF8&p=S008#reader-link
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Thank you. Anything specific to it being aimed against non-whites in particular?
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Do a search on Sanger at discover the networks.
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Do a search on Sanger at discover the networks.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1816
Margaret Higgins Sanger was a radical feminist, eugenicist, Marxist, and the founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
...
According to her New York Times obituary, she sought to encourage birth control and/or abortion among “subnormal children.”
...
(1939) Sanger turned her attention specifically to the reproductive practices of black Americans. She selected former ABCL director Clarence J. Gamble (of the Procter and Gamble company) to become BCFA's southern regional director. That November, Gamble drew up a memorandum titled "Suggestion for Negro Project," whose ultimate aim was to decrease the black birth rate significantly. Anticipating that black leaders would be suspicious of anyone exhorting African Americans to have fewer children, Gamble suggested that BCFA place black leaders in high positions within the organization, so as to give the appearance that they were in charge of the group's agendas. BCFA presented birth control as a vehicle for the upward economic mobility of blacks.
---------------------------------------
More relevant today than racism in the previous century is the way abortion hits black babies now, killing them at a rate three times that of the white ones. Imagine if that was a Republican policy! What liberal over at Planned Parenthood or DNC or MSM has ever expressed concern much less outrage over that?
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http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_24355935/attorneys-apple-valley-man-charged-killing-wife-unborn?source=hottopics
Attorneys for Apple Valley man argue fetus' death was an abortion
10/21/2013
When an Apple Valley woman died in March, her 15-week-old fetus, too young to survive outside the womb, died with her.
Margorie Holland's husband, Roger Holland, is charged with murder in the deaths. But with his trial scheduled for Monday, his attorneys are making a novel argument: The death of the fetus was an abortion, not a murder, and the only person whose rights that such an act could have violated -- the mother -- already was dead.
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It seems to me that the longer you wait and the more you need to mull the decision over as the fetus develops, the more you admit there is another life involved. At some point this goes from women's rights, rape victim, mistake etc. to ending an innocent life. Can we all at least agree on that?
The answer, according to the Supreme Court and this NY Times editorial, is NO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/abortion-rights-a-good-ruling-stands.html?ref=opinion&_r=1
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Thanks to the judicial imperialism of SCOTUS in 1973, this issue has been dividing America ever since. 20 weeks seems quite a reasonable legal compromise to me. That after all this time and societal turmoil SCOTUS cannot agree to even 20 weeks is profoundly discouraging. The standard of survivability makes no sense at all because the point of reference changes as technology improves. Surely even by the logic of the Choicers' argument the standard must have reference to the state of development of the zygote/fetus/baby?
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http://www.equip.org/articles/peter-singers-bold-defense-of-infanticide/#christian-books-2
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http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_slow_slog_toward_success
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/teasing_out_the_facts_in_the_latest_abortion_report
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It's called the 'Roe effect'. A lot of the women that would be likely to abort at this point in time were themselves aborted under the rights established in the Roe decision.
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OUCH!!!
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/04/24/aborted-babies-incinerated-as-part-of-waste-to-energy-plant-in-the-united-states/
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http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/13/kermit-gosnell-anniversary-late-term-abortion/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell
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Imagine this with the politics reversed and you would have a story. What if liberals cared about protecting the weakest and most innocent among us. What if tea partiers supported widespread use of a procedure that was killing off African-American unborn at 3 times the rate of that for Caucasian-Americans. What if the Koch brothers were caught paying $1.2 Billion, financing the equivalent of 2.7 million abortions, killing the unborn of the poor and non-white disproportionately. And what if the Supreme Court wouldn't let even a majority of good caring liberals stop them, in any state, for any reason...
"... liberal billionaire Warren Buffett has donated more than $1.2 billion to abortion organizations from 2001 to 2012. That’s equal to the cost of roughly 2.7 million first-trimester abortions – more than twice the number of abortions that occur in an entire year in the United States.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/13/warren-buffet-donates-12-billion-to-abortion-groups/
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http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/13/kermit-gosnell-anniversary-late-term-abortion/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell
Note to the bloody Dr. Gosnell, former Speaker of the House Nanacy Pelosi and former State Senator from Iliinois, Barack Obama: If the baby is flopping on the table, it isn't a late term abortion that you are performing, NO MATTER the wishes of the mother.
From Crafty's link: "Poll after poll shows the majority of Americans support [a limit on abortions after 20 weeks] and women are more in favor of a 20-week limit than men."
Note to all current and future tea party candidates: There isn't a political possibility of forcing rape victims to carry pregnancy to full term. If you oppose abortion, then focus on what is politically possible - where we have wide and deep political agreement - which is to place a limit on late term abortions, the most human-like of all the fetuses.
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My wife was reading a Chinese website and saw an article on how some Chinese were eating late term aborted fetuses. I wish I could unsee the photos from the article.
Horror.
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http://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-wait-and-the-reward-anna-bain.html
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Seen on a bumper sticker yesterday:
"If it isn't a baby, you aren't pregnant."
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Liberal groups push poor women and black women into abortion.
Gender selection abortions are killing girls by the tens of millions.
12 out of 12 recent studies link Abortion to Breast Cancer.
But Republicans are prosecuting a war on women by trying to slow all of that.
http://www.presentation-r2l.org/twelve-out-of-twelve-recent-studies-show-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer/
Abortion box score: one dead, one injured.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Gender selection abortions are not just in Asia!
"...among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
No wonder Asian American women vote Democrat. You wouldn't want to lose a woman's right to gender select by killing off your own baby girls. It's legal if you make that choice early enough. And this offends no one?
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/this-alabama-judge-has-figured-out-how-to-dismantle-roe-v-wade/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04-l2cm1oQ&index=33&list=UUvC6KqMFj7ifnd-JH7hYtQA
Please see if this link works. Very powerful video. A nice woman apparently has a hidden camera and asks the clinic staff a lot of innocent questions about what is happening in a late term abortion.
What is human?
By the end, one might ask, what is inhuman? Merriam-webster.com says, inhuman is a: lacking pity, kindness, or mercy : savage <an inhuman tyrant> b : cold, impersonal. Sound more like the abortionist than the fetus.
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http://www.lifenews.com/2015/03/25/new-york-house-passes-bill-allowing-shooting-babies-through-the-heart-with-poison-to-kill-them/
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Big story, Planned Parenthood has been selling fetal organs.
This goes also have under cognitive dissonance of the left.
The left and the media would have us believe the problem with this is the profit motive. Capitalism is what's wrong they say, not the cutting up of innocent life.
But that misses the point. The problem is this proves that blob of unviable matter has organs. Usable, functional HUMAN organs. Who f'ing knew? Everyone knew. It's a baby growing in the there. This changes everything.
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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/black-lives-matter-so-its-time-to-outlaw-abortion/&ved=0CCgQFjADahUKEwiznKPlr-bGAhVIkg0KHd6KCjM&usg=AFQjCNG4eujenzm8VluBc2RrU_SWg20r5w
So outlaw abortion.
I'm sure professional journalist Martha Raddatz will be sure to ask all the dems about this topic.
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Doug's point about the selling of fetus organs is correct.
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"So outlaw abortion."
Like banning guns, that oughtta stop it. (?)
No. Before you pass laws against the will of the people, you must change minds and mindsets. Can't we get consensus of 98% of scientists (like we hear on other matters) that it is alive and identified as belonging to the human species.
Secondly, you would need a newfound respect for human life, even for helpless, innocent ones, even for black babies - slaughtered at more than 3 times the rate of white babies.
That new acknowledgement and respect would have to reach all the way over to atheists and liberals, against all they've been taught.
Instead of the above, outlaw the most obvious and egregious where people already agree, late term and 'abortions'.
Then define late term to match the 'settled science' recognizing basic things like feeling pain or having functional, marketable organs and tissue.
Let the left fight against this slippery slope they so fear.
There doesn't need to be an endgame of banning all abortions.
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Actually I was just pointing out another obvious bit of leftist hypocrisy. Abortion is the left's holy sacrament. Black lives only matter to the left when they can use them to advance their agenda.
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Agree. The left's silence on the disparate impact of abortion promotion on black families is deafening.
Another aspect is that legal abortion requires only the consent of the mother, not from the one being killed, sliced up into parts and sold. I'm sorry but that logic is analogous to slave trading being legal with the consent only of the slave owner. But this is worse (killing and butchering versus mistreatment and depriving of liberty) and we and sending taxpayer money into black neighborhoods specifically to promote how good it is.
Somebody on our side ought to be able to make the case that those policies along with greater than 50% dropout and unemployment rates should not earn 98% of the votes.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421352/planned-parenthood-body-parts
Choice.
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Williamson also uses the term butcher, pretty descriptive. Also harvest but that sounds more like cutting up a plant.
It is not really a choice if you are the baby, the father, or the taxpayer.
In China they kill little girls after they are gender identified. I remember Hillary fighting against this mysogynal genocide as First Lady and as Sec of State. Wait, I guess she never did.
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Williamson also uses the term butcher, pretty descriptive. Also harvest but that sounds more like cutting up a plant.
It is not really a choice if you are the baby, the father, or the taxpayer.
In China they kill little girls after they are gender identified. I remember Hillary fighting against this mysogynal genocide as First Lady and as Sec of State. Wait, I guess she never did.
If she ever mentioned it, I'm sure a quick donation to the Clinton crime family slush fund could make it go away.
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https://www.facebook.com/JoeJudt/posts/10153526426739516
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We've been through this before and I'm surprised and disappointed that Rachel doesn't jump back in with the topic front and center.
The fetus (Latin for 'little one') is:
a) alive
b). of the human species
...and a crucial point so often ignored by abortion advocates and apologists,
c). the fetus has UNIQUE DNA, distinct from the mother (and from the father and from everyone else.)
Choice and women's rights are great cliches and misnomers, but whose choice is it? The mother has separate DNA, is very directly related, is in close proximity, is presumed to be looking out for the best interests of her baby, and has complete control only when she acting in that role and capacity. She has no more right to kill her daughter than Adrian Peterson has to whoop his son.
It is a separate and distinct being. Make no mistake, the science is settled.
Liberals including our own express more concern for the comfort of a chicken raised in captivity for food than they do for the most vulnerable and innocent human life.
On Mother's Day, we are thankful for all the things she did for us. Among them, what was more valuable and irreplaceable than struggling through a successful pregnancy and giving live birth?
Was there a life inside the mother before live birth or not? Science knows; certain political factions deny. But then they get caught selling live, functional organs and tissue from that live, human, distinct being.
These body parts are used for research and someday will save lives... ?
If stranded on an island with no food, and help is too far away, would you kill, cut up and eat your friends? Worst case, I hope you would say, only if you had to. 98% of these killings are out of convenience, not due to the mainvreasons they argue, rape, incest or a threat to the mother's life.
Do the research some other way.
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122355/many-manipulations-planned-parenthood-attack-videos
Ah, this is how you are wrong, Doug. These people aren't trading in baby body parts, it is tissue from products of Conception.
Because science!
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As we have a serious problem with hunger in this country, despite the awesome economiç recovery of the last 6.5 years, can we use the "products of conception" to make food for the poor?
If not, why not?
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122355/many-manipulations-planned-parenthood-attack-videos
Ah, this is how you are wrong, Doug. These people aren't trading in baby body parts, it is tissue from products of Conception.
Because science!
Gallows humor but funny to see them squirm.
Fetus isn't a born baby obviously, it is the "little one". Yes, one day after conception it doesn't look like a baby and one day before birth it does.
"a ten to twelve week fetus looks nothing like a term baby—and is medically incorrect."
That being their view, maybe we can all agree to ban abortion after 10-12 weeks rather than growing them out for harvesting and profits.
How about this, try telling a late term pregnant woman with a knife in her hand that it's not a baby in there and see who gets hurt.
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http://ace.mu.nu/Windows-Live-Writer/1b78eef04737_10182/tumblr_ns43bhO02u1qz4s6ho1_1280_2.jpg
(http://ace.mu.nu/Windows-Live-Writer/1b78eef04737_10182/tumblr_ns43bhO02u1qz4s6ho1_1280_2.jpg)
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http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/07/30/guilt-as-power/#undefined
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On a billboard I saw in Brainerd MN this weekend:
Abortion
Would it bother us more
if they used guns
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/pulse/breaking-blocked-stem-express-videos-may-prove-babies-were-born-alive-befor
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/pulse/breaking-blocked-stem-express-videos-may-prove-babies-were-born-alive-befor
It is revealing that even the strongest abortion supporters recognize there is only a small, technical point of difference between late term abortion and first degree murder.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/10/i-don-t-know-if-i-m-pro-choice-anymore.html
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/19/planned-parenthood-cut-through-babys-face-to-get-his-intact-brain/?utm_source=e_breitbart_com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+August+19%2C+2015&utm_campaign=20150819_m127011017_Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+August+19%2C+2015&utm_term=More
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/29/graphic-content-carly-fiorina-was-right-group-releases-full-abortion-video-mentioned-in-gop-debate/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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The whole abortion issue is just pure manipulation by each side to keep the people divided. Here is why I say that:
1. Roe v Wade settled the issue once and for all. It will never be overturned. And there will never be a constitutional amendment barring it.
2. Pro abortion forces can use the threat of Roe v Wade being overturned so as to generate fund raising and to enhance their own bank accounts.
3. Pro Life forces use Planned Parenthood and other issues to generate fund raising as well.
Meanwhile, it keeps the focus off the other things that government does that is much more important for worrying about.
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The whole abortion issue is just pure manipulation by each side to keep the people divided. Here is why I say that:
1. Roe v Wade settled the issue once and for all. It will never be overturned. And there will never be a constitutional amendment barring it.
2. Pro abortion forces can use the threat of Roe v Wade being overturned so as to generate fund raising and to enhance their own bank accounts.
3. Pro Life forces use Planned Parenthood and other issues to generate fund raising as well.
Meanwhile, it keeps the focus off the other things that government does that is much more important for worrying about.
Murder is kind of a big deal.
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My point was simply that Abortion will never be banned, and that the government uses it to divide and conquer.
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My point was simply that Abortion will never be banned, and that the government uses it to divide and conquer.
I agree with the second part. Did you view the recent PP sting videos? Did they not make you sick to your very core?
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."- Thomas Jefferson
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I can see ever tighter outer limits on birth control (20 weeks, to 16 weeks, etc) and if we win the White House getting to a 5 or 6 man majority in the SCOTUS.
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I saw the videos, but what I said still holds............abortion will never be banned in the US.
SCOTUS screwed up because Roe v Wade should have been a State's Rights decision. SCOTUS overstepped its bounds. Of course, you run into the situation where abortion may be unlawful in one state, but just across the state border, legal in the next state. Kansas City, KS and MO reflect this issue.
There can be some actions taken to limit abortions......a ban on Partial Birth or Late Term abortions, but beyond that, nothing will happen otherwise.
Just another divide and conquer method while the opposing sides reap the monetary benefits.
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Yes GM, an innocent life is involved. My personal stories on abortion in case anyone wants to hear them:
At my first political convention I sat next to a guy and at one point asked him about this abortion thing. He told me that when his wife got pregnant a decade earlier, they weren't ready to have children and so she planned to have an abortion. But they didn't and now he has this wonderful daughter. Abortion would have taken her life, but he didn't know that then because he didn't know her. To me, a 32 year old bachelor at the time, that story flew mostly over my head, just words from a guy telling his story sitting next to me. Then just a bit later his wife and daughter walked in and this beautiful little girl ran past me, leaped up and gave her daddy big hug and I melted as his story came to life. That wasn't a growth on the mother; it was a kid!
My own daughter Maya was scheduled to be an abortion statistic. We were unmarried, her mom suffered from ... difficulties, and at one point she was scheduled to be terminated. Had she been terminated my life changing problem of telling my family about an 'illegitimate' child (oxymoron) would have instantly gone away. Instead a baby was born, I won custody, both families came together and 21 years later she has already achieved amazing things, a concert viola player, singing in weddings, straight A student, math major, all conference college tennis player, a truly wonderful and loving, great kid.
My point is that with a little personal experience you can easily know this isn't some convenience issue for the mother the left would have you believe. A life is involved. If you let the life live you will find out that out. The mom who would kill off her own for convenience isn't the more valuable of the two IMHO.
Maya and I in Ireland a year ago:
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/1dc314be-ccf1-4e61-8752-0bcac511a067_zpsftzmq6av.jpg)
Now that we know she was alive, human and had separate DNA from the mother and father (didn't we know that then?), is it right or wrong to abort?
Whether or not the issue has touched you, rest assured it has touched a million families a year since 1973. Maybe the ones who survived can tell the story.
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This nation is crumbling before us. The embrace of evil by mainstream society shocks me.
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Doug,
A beautiful young lady. Congrats...............you made a wise decision.
The subject of abortion is such a personal issue that most discussions become highly charged and emotion. Add to that the "conflict" between government, religion, morality and science, and there is no ready answer.
With the availability of many different contraception devices today, abortions should be greatly reduced. However, so many people decry the use of contraception especially on religious grounds, it remains a problem.
What defines life? When does it begin? When the egg is fertilized, when it attaches to the wall, at a specific time period of development, or when it becomes a viable living entity outside of the womb? Everyone has a different opinion and science or law cannot answer that question yet. So the "conflict" will continue.
As to Planned Parenthood, yesterday proved my point on abortion never being banned. Overwhelmingly, Congress approved continued funding for PP. The consequences of defunding PP was too much for even the Pubbies to consider.
Abortion funding for PP is barred by law. But this is such a joke. One simply changes bookkeeping entries showing that the abortion costs came from sources other than the government, and everything is fine. The politicians know this, but they don't care.
Unfortunately, the abortion divide will continue............and both advocating sides will profit from it.
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This nation is crumbling before us. The embrace of evil by mainstream society shocks me.
They would have us believe it is not a living thing at the front door while selling body parts from it out the back door.
It's not only legal; it's taxpayer funded - even while they run it at a profit and give money back to the politicians who support them.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/planned-parenthood-pours-cash-to-clinton/
What could be more evil and corrupt?
55,772,015 57,762,169 slaughtered since 1973. You should be able to watch the number going up just like the debt clock.
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PP: "you made a wise decision."
- No. Men have no say in it whatsoever. Nor does the life to be 'terminated' and sold off for parts.
"What defines life? When does it begin? When the egg is fertilized, when it attaches to the wall, at a specific time period of development, or when it becomes a viable living entity outside of the womb? "
- The closer science looks at it, the closer to conception we get with that answer. Certainly all honest observers can agree that by the time that the 'body parts' are removable and marketable, there is a separate and distinct human being involved. Thinking life begins at birth is sun-revolves-around-the-earth era science. It just isn't so.
Even if it isn't one conservative's issue, Reagan understood it is part of the winning coalition. There is plenty of room to narrow the legality in terms of states and stage of development.
Roe v Wade has no foundation in the constitution. What's wrong with having the regulation and political debate of this go back to the states and have the federal work on things like the powers granted to it in the constitution?
The issue doesn't go away by funding it. And the issue doesn't go away by selling off the useful parts.
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Good point that you make on the life issue with the selling of viable body parts. I had not considered that.
I agree that it is a States Rights issue. But the damage has already been done by Scotus and the DC powers have no desire or incentive to revisit that question in a legislative manner. It is like the Gay Marriage issue. California voted to ban it, but SCOTUS said otherwise.
I am just looking at all of this from a pragmatic view. What can or could be accomplished? I don't see anything coming soon either way since the will in DC does not exist.
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"I am just looking at all of this from a pragmatic view. What can or could be accomplished? I don't see anything coming soon either way since the will in DC does not exist."
As a pragmatic matter, the President appoints Justices and Senators confirm them. Roe v Wade a wrongly decided case for anyone reading the constitution for what it says. The issue will go back to the states someday if conservatives ever win elections and govern accordingly. States then will choose different levels of restrictions. The issue shouldn't be the center of this election except to know where everyone stands on it.
Further on the politics is the idea of a conservative coalition. At the end of the current battle for the nomination, the various groups need to come together to win. If you want secure borders, sitting out or voting Dem won't get that done. If a pro-lifer wants to advance that cause, electing Dems won't do that. If you want a freer economy, sitting out or voting Dem doesn't get you there. For those who want a return to constitutional principles, same. If you are in any of these groups, you need to know who your friends and enemies are.
Pro-life is not a losing issue. Gallup says 54% want abortion either banned completely or banned in all but a few circumstances (generally understood to mean rape, incest and life of the mother). 29% want abortion legal in all circumstances. Most notably, only 2% don't have an opinion! (The remainder want looser restrictions.)
http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/kumnfvvm1eydfzllqmittw.png
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I love this:
"As a pragmatic matter, the President appoints Justices and Senators confirm them. Roe v Wade a wrongly decided case for anyone reading the constitution for what it says. The issue will go back to the states someday if conservatives ever win elections and govern accordingly. States then will choose different levels of restrictions. The issue shouldn't be the center of this election except to know where everyone stands on it.
Further on the politics is the idea of a conservative coalition. At the end of the current battle for the nomination, the various groups need to come together to win. If you want secure borders, sitting out or voting Dem won't get that done. If a pro-lifer wants to advance that cause, electing Dems won't do that. If you want a freer economy, sitting out or voting Dem doesn't get you there. For those who want a return to constitutional principles, same. If you are in any of these groups, you need to know who your friends and enemies are."
Rather an optimist aren't you? Does the name Souter or Kennedy mean anything? They were thought to be conservative. And as to the Pubbies, they don't care about the base. Look at Boehner and McConnell, plus all the others. Look how they treat the Tea Party and Ted Cruz.
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Doug,
A beautiful young lady. Congrats...............you made a wise decision.
The subject of abortion is such a personal issue that most discussions become highly charged and emotion. Add to that the "conflict" between government, religion, morality and science, and there is no ready answer.
With the availability of many different contraception devices today, abortions should be greatly reduced. However, so many people decry the use of contraception especially on religious grounds, it remains a problem.
What defines life? When does it begin? When the egg is fertilized, when it attaches to the wall, at a specific time period of development, or when it becomes a viable living entity outside of the womb? Everyone has a different opinion and science or law cannot answer that question yet. So the "conflict" will continue.
As to Planned Parenthood, yesterday proved my point on abortion never being banned. Overwhelmingly, Congress approved continued funding for PP. The consequences of defunding PP was too much for even the Pubbies to consider.
Abortion funding for PP is barred by law. But this is such a joke. One simply changes bookkeeping entries showing that the abortion costs came from sources other than the government, and everything is fine. The politicians know this, but they don't care.
Unfortunately, the abortion divide will continue............and both advocating sides will profit from it.
I think we can agree that when body parts are harvested, it is well beyond a "clump of cells".
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I will agree to that.
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On abortion I would concede that laws won't be changed radically anytime soon. First you charge hearts and change minds which takes time and requires taking an honest look at the facts. It isn't murder with criminal intent if people don't even know they are doing something wrong. My intent with many posts here is to draw attention and logic to what is happening and see if people can see that convenience abortions (98% of abortions) are wrong.
Planned Parenthood proved my point by selling body parts.
Women already have control over their own bodies, except in the context of rape.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz-CaZn4CvE
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First a small footnote, 200,000 abortions 'performed' since the last post in this thread 2 months ago, with black children three times as likely to be killed as white children. Black lives matter, whatever, I digress...
It was interesting to catch Justice Breyer a few years back calling the woman involved in an abortion a "mother', begging the question, mother of what?
Now we have Pres Obama's administration referring to the unborn as a child - when it involves increased federal spending on social programs. (There is a human in there!)
This should go under cognitive dissonance of the left but I will keep it in its subject thread.
Same President previously called a fetus that survives an abortion a child and corrected himself, it is a "fetus living outside the womb". Good grief.
If you call them children, no one would be allowed to kill them, and that is the religion of the left. Science, photography, DNA and common sense be damned.
Whoever proofread the new White House paper on food stamps must not have been briefed on this argument.
The paper says women are "mothers" while still only pregnant. And one of the paper's key points -- printed in bold in the executive summary -- is: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's "positive impact on children begins even before birth and lasts well beyond their childhood years." (Who knew?!!)
The paper elaborates: "Recent research focusing on the rollout of the Food Stamp Program in the 1960s and 1970s shows the benefits begin even before a child is born: mothers who receive Food Stamps during pregnancy have a reduced incidence of low-birth weight babies by between 5 and 12 percent." (Mother of what? It's a baby in there??!!)
http://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2015/12/23/white-house-inadvertently-admits-that-a-child-is-a-child-even-before-birth-n2096482/page/full
If we had more free food assistance, we would have healthier body parts for the taxpayer funded industry of growing and harvesting small humans for profit. Maybe we can balance the budget and fix healthcare with higher quality and healthier, aborted fetus organs...
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Mrs. Clinton, just a few questions:
A new Marist poll shows that 81% of Americans support some restrictions on abortion. Do you disagree with 81% of Americans on this issue? If not, what restrictions on abortion would you support?
The same poll found that 66% of pro-choice Americans would restrict abortion to the first three months of pregnancy. Do you stand with the majority of pro-choice Americans on this issue?
Your husband famously said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
If you agree that abortion should be safe, would you support legislation that would require abortion clinics to meet minimum standards for patient safety and sanitary conditions?
Why should abortion be rare?
Do you condemn China’s policy of forced abortion as a violation of a woman’s right to choose?
The movie Gosnell comes out later this year. As you know, Kermit Gosnell was convicted of the first degree murder of three babies. The Grand Jury report alleged that Gosnell killed hundreds of infants by sticking scissors into their necks. Do you support Kermit Gosnell’s actions? Why not?
Would you support legislation that protects a woman’s right to post-birth abortion?
https://catholicvote.org/8-abortion-questions-that-hillary-needs-to-be-asked/
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Trump stepped in it big time suggesting penalties for women having abortions, if it was illegal, after being pressed by a Hillary Clinton surrogate into answering a hypothetical. There are a number of problems with Trump's answer on this.
George H.W. Bush had a similar exchange in a debate, 1988. A 70 year old student of the Presidential pursuit might have known this and have learned from it. http://debates.org/index.php?page=september-25-1988-debate-transcript
[What other recently acquired viewpoints has Trump not thought through?]
If abortion law was returned to the states, the penalty (or not) would be a state issue. Is he running for South Dakota State Assembly? A simpler answer might have been that a pro-abortion mother (oxymoron?) could drive across state lines and have the procedure done legally and safely (at least from the point of view of the mother).
He knew it was a gotcha question when he stepped into it. He tried not to, then caved when pressed. (I wonder if Chris Matthews is tougher than Putin, Xi or the Ayatollah?) Besides showing a lack of wisdom, this is not the kind of strength and control he claims to possess.
What is the right answer, or a better answer, if you are pro-life and trying to advance that cause? Try this:
Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund.
“Being pro-life means wanting what is best for the mother and the baby. Women who choose abortion often do so in desperation and then deeply regret such a decision. No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.”
In simpler math: Abortion = 1 dead + 1 injured
You must change hearts and minds before you change laws. There is a moral case to be made for life before there is a legal case for protecting it. Right now the highest moral value at stake is protecting is the convenience of the mother.
Trump had a personal encounter with an abortion / non-abortion outcome that ended up with a beautiful life being born that touched him personally, as did I. A person having one of these experiences discovers what should be obvious to anyone - that is a life in there - as valuable as ours and much innocent.
Every woman having an abortion today grew up post Roe v Wade, and likely taught her whole life that her choice of convenience is paramount, not the survival of the rapidly developing life inside of her. There are some steps missing in between going from a wrongly decided constitutional right to a crime.
Instead of Trump backtracking to tell his personal story (that may not have happened), he followed his opponent's henchman down into the abyss, hurting himself and hurting the cause.
While the lives of hundreds of millions of baby girls ended in the pursuit of gender selection against females, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html, Hillary Clinton's proxy, Chris Matthews, set up the useful idiot Trump to extend the life of the fable that pro-life conservatives are anti-woman.
Which side is anti-female? The enablers of gender-cide? Or those who want to protect the least powerful and most innocent among us?
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Copying this over from Hillbillary thread. I would add that 'person' is a legal term and Hillary is hinting that she would like to guarantee government healthcare to the unborn - if not for the abortion interest. I think she hit her head pretty hard on the fall...
Let's see who else picks up on this. HRC on Meet the Press, I think it was, this morning screwed up for pro-choice worse than DT screwed up for pro-life. I can add the transcript later.
Sec. Clinton kept referring to the pregnant woman deserving choice as a "mother carrying a child". She also referred to "the unborn person".
...
I did not know that it is an unborn "child" or "person" inside a pro-choice "mother". It was called "unviable tissue mass" inside a "woman". Important distinction!
This changes everything. You terminate tissue. You don't terminate a child. ...
Yes, this was noticed by others! At least on the right...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/3/hillary-clinton-unborn-person-has-no-constitutiona/print/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3522101/Hillary-Clinton-says-unborn-person-doesn-t-constitutional-rights-explains-stance-abortion.html
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/04/03/hillary-clinton-unborn-person-doesnt-constitutional-rights/
http://www.lifenews.com/2016/04/03/hillary-clinton-on-abortion-the-unborn-person-doesnt-have-constitutional-rights/
http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/03/hillary-unborn-babies-do-not-have-rights-video/
Video Clip of the exchange:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/03/chuck_todd_to_hillary_clinton_when_or_if_does_an_unborn_child_have_constitutional_rights.html
Good for Chuck Todd for asking one tough, relevant question. She usually doesn't go on shows that do that - I believe she has never appeared on Fox News Sunday. Todd introduced the subject by ripping Trump for taking 5 positions in one week on abortion. Hillary got her guard down, was ready to jump in and pile on, but instead he gave her an open ended opportunity to state her view on abortion. She went right into Roe v Wade, that she agrees with it and so on, and it allows for some restrictions. Then Todd bluntly asked her when and if an unborn child has constitutional rights. And she stumbled badly.
The left thrives off of owning the language of the issues. Spending going up is a budget cut. Temporary spending is permanent. Affordable housing is not affordable but requires subsidy, hence a government policy. Affordable healthcare, same thing, makes it unaffordable, requiring a massive federal program with mandates that all would not be needed if it was affordable as the term used to mean. Eliminating racial differences means putting more focus on race. Marriage is no longer husband-wife, and so on. The left owns the language when they are winning on issues, and they pull it off by having monopoly control of the messages around us, from k-12 curriculum, to teachers unions, colleges, elite universities and the media.
Nowhere is language more crucial than abortion. Rachel meant well, especially on moral issues but would only post about abortion by starting a separate thread called 'reproductive issues'. Abortion isn't reproduction; it's the opposite. But you don't call it killing a baby and then ask people what they think about it.
Hillary has been so deeply entrenched in this kind of leftism that her blunder was outrageous. ccp might know, but it could be a symptom of age or brain injury that such an expert on the topic would make such a beginner leftist type of error after all these years in the leftist bubble. Otherwise she got sloppy after recently experiencing a real, grandmother-grandbaby love when she should have been reviewing Saul Alinsky manuals for her upcoming run.
You don't call 'it' a 'person' while talking about it having no rights, okay to kill. You don't call the woman a mother and you don't call the fetus a child. If you begin to admit, as Reagan put it, that it [a fetus] is 1) alive, 2) human, and 3) and has separate, distinct DNA from the mother (and father), then you are pro-life, not pro-choice. Abortion becomes a killing of a child, not a procedure on a woman.
In the middle of the same sentence, she used proper leftist language, that it is the woman's "decision". A sentence that ends without saying it is the woman's decision to do what, kill / end the life of the 'child', 'person', 'tissue mass', whatever you want to call what is alive and being killed and removed.
The science in this case is not on the side of the life deniers, so adhering to a very careful and strict choice of words is the only way to defend this barbaric, 21st century, 1st world practice that in 98% of the cases is done for convenience reasons.
Muslim genitalia mutilation at birth is abhorrent behavior to us, but killing the same baby one moment earlier isn't - only because of a strict choice of words and framing of the issue.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/04/05/california-authorities-raid-home-of-anti-planned-parenthood-videographer/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_plannedparenthood-1040pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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I saw this too. By a Democrat Prosecutor .
If this is not an example of a police state then I don't know what is.
We won't hear much from the MSM.
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http://www.salon.com/2016/04/07/camille_paglia_feminists_have_abortion_wrong_trump_and_hillary_miscues_highlight_a_frozen_national_debate/
Like stumbling twin mastodons, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fell into the abortion tar pit this past week. Trump blundered his way through a manic inquisition about abortion by MSNBC’s resident woodpecker, Chris Matthews, while Hillary committed an unforced error on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where she referred to the fetus as an “unborn person,” scandalizing the vast pro-choice lobby, who treat all attempts to “humanize” the fetus as a diabolical threat to reproductive rights.
While the Hillary flap was merely a blip, given the consistency of her pro-choice views over time, Trump’s clumsy performance was a fiasco, exposing in his fiat that women should face “some sort of punishment” for illegal abortions how little he had thought about one of the major issues in American public life over the past 40 years. Following his supercilious mishandling of the controversy over his campaign manager’s crude yanking of a woman reporter’s arm, Trump’s MSNBC flame-out was a big fat gift to Democratic strategists, who love to tub-thump about the Republican “war on women”—a tired cliché that is as substance-less as a druggy mirage but that the inept GOP has never been able to counter.
Then this week Hillary raised eyebrows when she was asked by conservative co-host Candace Bure on ABC’s “The View” if she believes someone can be both a feminist and against abortion. “Absolutely,” Hillary replied, possibly not realizing the implications of what she was saying: “Of course you can be a feminist and be pro-life.” Was this an election-year pivot toward conservative women, like Hillary’s fantastical praise of Nancy Reagan as an AIDS activist? If it was rooted in genuine conviction, why have we not heard a word about it before? Hillary is usually wedded cheek-by-jowl with the old-guard feminist establishment.
The real issue is that U.S. politics have been entangled and strangled for far too long by the rote histrionics of the abortion wars, which have raged since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that defined abortion as a woman’s constitutional right under the 14th Amendment. While I am firmly pro-choice and support unrestricted access to abortion, I have been disturbed and repelled for decades by the way reproductive rights have become an ideological tool ruthlessly exploited by my own party, the Democrats, to inflame passions, raise money, and drive voting.
This mercenary process began with the Senate confirmation hearings for three Supreme Court candidates nominated by Republican presidents: Robert Bork in 1987, David Souter in 1990, and Clarence Thomas in 1991. (Bork was rejected, while Souter and Thomas were approved.) Those hearings became freak shows of feminist fanaticism, culminating in the elevation to martyr status of Anita Hill, whose charges of sexual harassment against Thomas still seem to me flimsy and overblown (and effectively neutralized by Hill’s following Thomas to another job). Abortion was the not-so-hidden motivation of the Democratic operatives who pushed a reluctant Hill forward and fanned the flames in the then monochromatically liberal mainstream media. It was that flagrant abuse of the Senate confirmation process that sparked the meteoric rise of conservative talk radio, led by Rush Limbaugh, who provided an alternative voice in what was then (pre-Web) a homogenized media universe.
Abortion has been central to the agenda of second-wave feminism since the 1972 issue of Ms. Magazine, which contained a splashy declaration, “We have had abortions,” signed by 53 prominent American women. A recurrent rubric of contemporary feminism is Gloria Steinem’s snide jibe (which she claims to have heard from an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston), “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” But Steinem herself can be credited or blamed for having turned abortion into a sacrament, promoted with the same religiosity that she and her colleagues condemn in their devoutly Christian opponents.
First-wave feminism, born in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York, was focused on property rights and on winning the vote, achieved by ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Abortion entered the feminist canon with Margaret Sanger’s bold campaign for birth control, a violation of the repressive Comstock Act for which she was arrested in 1914. Her organization, the American Birth Control League, founded in 1921, later became Planned Parenthood, which remains a lightning-rod for controversy because of its lavish federal funding. Sanger remains a heroine to many feminists, including me, despite her troubling association with eugenics, a program (also adopted by the Nazis) of now discredited techniques like sterilization to purify and strengthen the human gene pool. It was partly because of Sanger’s pioneering precedent that I joined Planned Parenthood and contributed to it for many years—until I realized, to my disillusion, how it had become a covert arm of the Democratic party.
My position on abortion is contained in my manifesto, “No Law in the Arena,” from my second essay collection, “Vamps & Tramps” (1994): “Women’s modern liberation is inextricably linked to their ability to control reproduction, which has enslaved them from the origin of the species.” However, I argue that our real oppressor is not men or society but nature—the biological imperative that second-wave feminism and campus gender studies still refuse to acknowledge. Sex is nature’s way—coercive, prankish, and pleasurable–of ensuring survival of the species. But in eras of overpopulation, those pleasures spill into a multitude of directions to slow or halt procreation—which is why I maintain that homosexuality is not a violation of natural law but its fulfillment, when history wills it.
Despite my pro-abortion stance (I call the term pro-choice “a cowardly euphemism”), I profoundly respect the pro-life viewpoint, which I think has the moral high ground. I wrote in “No Law in the Arena”: “We career women are arguing from expedience: it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless.” The silence from second-wave feminists about the ethical ambiguities in their pro-choice belief system has been deafening. The one exception is Naomi Wolf, with whom I have disagreed about many issues. But Wolf showed admirable courage in questioning abortion in her 1995 essay, “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” which was reprinted at the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by the New Statesman in London three years ago.
That a pro-life wing of feminism is possible is proved by this thoughtful letter recently sent to me at Salon by Katherine Carlson in Calgary, Canada:
Many women like myself (a gay liberal) are deeply upset over the abortion issue. Ultrasound technology has allowed us to see into the womb like never before, and the obvious face of humanity is clear. I totally respected your take on abortion precisely because you never tried to dehumanize the preborn vulnerable. You were clearly pro-choice but made the harsh reality of the decision very clear.
I was thrilled when they took down Gloria Steinem’s interview on Lands’ End. To me, she is someone who tried to normalize abortion, and I despise her for it. The Democrats have become callous and extreme on the issue, and I feel completely shut out. And obviously, I am no right-winger. I have listened to the testimony of phenomenal women who have survived abortion attempts and were left to die (were saved only because some took their Hippocratic oath seriously).
I am tired of being bullied by women who equate women’s equality with abortion on demand. I know some women who use abortion as a method of sex selection and it rattles me to my core.
If you ever decide to write a piece on silenced women like myself, I would be entirely grateful.
I totally agree with Carlson that pro-choice Democrats have become “callous and extreme” about abortion. There is a moral hollowness at the core of Western careerist feminism, a bourgeois secular code that sees children as an obstruction to self-realization or as a management problem to be farmed out to working-class nannies.
Liberals routinely delude themselves with shrill propaganda about the motivation of “anti-woman” pro-life supporters. Hillary deals in those smears as her stock in trade: for example, while campaigning last week, she said in the context of Trump’s comments on abortion, “Women’s health is under assault in America”—as if difficulty in obtaining an abortion is more of an assault than the grisly intervention required for surgical termination of a pregnancy. Who is the real victim here?
Or we have Gail Collins, former editorial page head at the New York Times, asserting last week in her column, “Trump, Truth, and Abortion,” “In reality, the anti-abortion movement is grounded on the idea that sex outside of marriage is a sin….It’s the sex, at bottom, that they oppose.” I saw red: where the hell were these middlebrow Steinem feminists of the prestige Manhattan media during the pro-sex insurgency of my rebel wing of feminism during the 1990s? Suddenly, two decades later, Collins is waving the sex flag? Give me a break!
To project sex phobia onto all pro-lifers is vulgar. Although I am an atheist who worships only great nature, I recognize the superior moral beauty of religious doctrine that defends the sanctity of life. The quality of idea and language in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, exceeds anything in grimly utilitarian feminism. In regard to the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” the Catechism says: “Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God….God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being” (#2258). Or this: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person—among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (#2270).
Which embodies the more authentic humanism in this area—the Catholic Catechism or pro-choice feminism? If the latter, then we have much work to do to develop feminism philosophically. In “No Law in the Arena,” I argued from the point of view of pre-Christian paganism, when abortion was accepted and widespread: “My code of modern Amazonism says that nature’s fascist scheme of menstruation and procreation should be defied, as a gross infringement of woman’s free will….As a libertarian, I support unrestricted access to abortion because I have reasoned that my absolute right to my body takes precedence over the brute claims of mother nature, who wants to reduce women to their animal function as breeders.”
There are abundant contradictions in a liberal feminism that supports abortion yet opposes capital punishment. The violence intrinsic to abortion cannot be wished away by magical thinking. As I wrote: “Abortion pits the stronger against the weaker, and only one survives.” My program is more ideologically consistent, because I vigorously support abortion but also call for the death penalty for horrific crimes such as political assassination or serial rape-murder. However, the ultimate issue in the abortion debate is that, in a modern democracy, law and government must remain neutral toward religion, which cannot impose its expectations or values on non-believers.
In an in-depth piece in the Boston Globe two years ago, Ruth Graham summarizes one view of the controversial emerging concept of fetal rights in cases where a pregnant woman has been attacked or killed: “It is progressives who have historically pushed to expand civil rights, yet who now find themselves concerned about the expansion of rights to fetuses.” Progressives need to do some soul-searching about their reflex rhetoric in demeaning the pro-life cause. A liberal credo that is variously anti-war, anti-fur, vegan, and committed to environmental protection of endangered species like the sage grouse or spotted owl should not be so stridently withholding its imagination and compassion from the unborn.
Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jszkPtsFH-k
Candidate Obama March 2008, if his daughters made a "mistake" he would not want them "punished with a baby".
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If Zika virus causes permanent damage to the unborn, even death, shouldn't it be a constitutional right?
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I wonder if leftists who write anti-bullying laws are careful enough to exclude they most obvious violation of the stronger harming the weak and most vulnerable among us, abortion.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/29/dear-dnc-abortion-isnt-empowering-it-turns-women-into-bullies/
Is this a hate crime?
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/cal-state-san-marcos-students-hysteria-when-confronted-with-reality-of-killing-babies/
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http://www.dailywire.com/news/5285/flash-light-occurs-moment-conception-james-barrett
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http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/326595-pence-breaks-tie-allowing-senate-to-revoke-obama-order
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/327542-ivanka-trump-met-secretly-with-planned-parenthood-head-report
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I had missed this. Recently a patient said he had read this in the NYT:
https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/what-do-artificial-wombs-mean-for-humanity-and-our-pre-born
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https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/kevin-williamson-thought-criminal/
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http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/12/i-was-a-disney-princess-i-had-an-abortion-and-it-almost-ruined-my-life/
Recently, Planned Parenthood tweeted, ‘We Need a Disney Princess Who Had an Abortion.’
No, we do not.
A very sad story about what liberators call, "empowering women".
Politically, it reminds me of Tina Smith Goes to Washington. Al Franken's mistreatment of women resulted in Minnesota sending a woman to replace him who built her career around empowering women to "terminate" their young as head of Planned Parenthood for the upper midwest. Nice job, Tina.
From the article: "I had an abortion on a Friday. I immediately regretted it. I curled up in the fetal position in my bed sobbing through the entire weekend. I Just Wanted to Die, Too. Dave [boyfriend] had friends over and played video games in the room adjacent to mine, seeming to party in relief as I tried to silence my louder cries in a pillow."
Who does abortion empower?
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http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/390325-delayed-abortion-case-fuels-intrigue-at-supreme-court?userid=188403
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/390525-court-sides-with-trump-administration-but-doesnt-punish-attorneys-in?userid=188403
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/gosnell-movie-depicts-reality-of-abortion/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-10-12&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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http://michellemalkin.com/2018/10/10/the-most-important-movie-youve-never-heard-of-gosnell/
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"we have to stop making it so easy for those who want to harm the innocent..."
- Barack Obama Tweet yesterday
Oops. He was talking about taking away a constitutional right, not curtailing the mass slaughtering of our young via abortion.
https://twitter.com/barackobama
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/30/roe-exception-challenge-needed-after-fetal-homicid/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20171227&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=morning&bt_ee=nnanrmZBQUU5HvGaX2Bf3b4nQNbZ32HWFsf0B6jbJ0CpRlIi1h3GFIwP8Lf05KNs&bt_ts=1540982182351
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Dear Marc F.,
For 45 years, a few unelected men and women on the Supreme Court have played God with innocent human life.
They have invented laws that condemned to painful deaths without trial more than 61 million babies for the crime of being "inconvenient."
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling forced abortion-on-demand down our nation's throat.
In the past, many in the pro-life movement have felt limited to protecting a life here and there -- passing some limited law to slightly control abortion in the more outrageous cases.
But some pro-lifers always seem to tiptoe around the Supreme Court, hoping they won't be offended.
Now the time to grovel before the Supreme Court is over.
Working from what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, pro-life lawmakers can pass a Life at Conception Act and end abortion using the Constitution instead of amending it.
That is why it's so urgent you sign the petition to your Senators and Congressman that I will link to in a moment.
Thanks to the results of the last election, you and I are in a better than ever position to force an up-or-down roll call vote on the Life at Conception Act.
And your petition will help do just that.
Signing the Life at Conception Act petition will help break through the opposition clinging to abortion-on-demand and ultimately win a vote on this life-saving bill to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A Life at Conception Act declares unborn children "persons" as defined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, entitled to legal protection.
This is the one thing the Supreme Court admitted in Roe v. Wade that would cause the case for legal abortion to "collapse."
When the Supreme Court handed down its now-infamous Roe v. Wade decision, it did so based on a new, previously undefined "right of privacy" which it "discovered" in so-called "emanations" of "penumbrae" of the Constitution.
Of course, as constitutional law, it was a disaster.
But never once did the Supreme Court declare abortion itself to be a constitutional right.
Instead, the Supreme Court said:
"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins... the judiciary at this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."
Then the High Court made a key admission:
"If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case [i.e., "Roe" who sought an abortion], of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."
The fact is, the 14th Amendment couldn't be clearer:
"... nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law."
Furthermore, the 14th Amendment says:
"Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
That's exactly what a Life at Conception Act would do.
But this simple, logical and obviously right legislation will not become law without a fight.
And that's where your help is critical.
You see, it will be a tough fight, but I believe with your signed petition it is one we can win.
=================================
https://nationalprolifealliance.com/laca_petition.aspx?pid=sfl1809a&npla=EP18
=====================================
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Great idea to call the real question for science deniers, is a fetus alive?
38 states have fetal homicide laws: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
What are these states protecting?
Homocide from ther dictionary: "the killing of another person," early 13c., from Old French homicide , from Latin homicidium "manslaughter," from homo "man" (see homunculus) + -cidium "act of killing" (see -cide). The meaning "person who kills another" (late 14c.) also is from French, from Latin homicida "a murderer," from -cida "killer."
What can you kill that isn't alive?
When does life begin? For humans, not at birth and everyone knows it.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/andrew-cuomo-new-york-abortion-law/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202019-01-26&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_and_abortion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_abortion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion
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The banality of evil , , ,
https://virginiahouse.gop/prolife-pledge-6/?fbclid=IwAR2qOSpEq6_dQr2wNPTp3OFatzzLHhf7QUSyJ9l4YW0ula7y-6ZLZqDLdqY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkTopSKo1xs&fbclid=IwAR2m7r2V9nrE-G8IjlZVypTzp-F64NTWypWpO0P1mqOVtF8I0pDamRvFXpw
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The banality of evil , , ,
https://virginiahouse.gop/prolife-pledge-6/?fbclid=IwAR2qOSpEq6_dQr2wNPTp3OFatzzLHhf7QUSyJ9l4YW0ula7y-6ZLZqDLdqY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkTopSKo1xs&fbclid=IwAR2m7r2V9nrE-G8IjlZVypTzp-F64NTWypWpO0P1mqOVtF8I0pDamRvFXpw
If western civ survives, someday people will look back at abortion the way we look back at slavery.
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https://www.operationrescue.org/archives/judge-orders-planned-parenthood-to-answer-questions-about-fetal-tissue-business/
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/ex-abortionist-shares-horrifying-story-led-quit-23rd-abortion/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2019-01-31
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https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c5b02c5e4b09293b20a8263?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000037&utm_source=parents_fb
A moving story about a late-term abortion. Spinal cord fully exposed etc. Why do they conflate survival issue of the fetus with emotional well being of the mother?
These kinds of circumstances account for roughly 0.0% of all abortions including late term.
Didn't the same ultrasound imagery also determine but nearly all these fetuses are alive?
Today we can gender select. Tomorrow we can gender preference select. Eliminate gay or hetero as you choose. No limit in law.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/disturbing-video-surfaces-shows-ny-abortion-clinic-assuring-woman-baby-will-killed-born-alive/?utm_source=push&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2019-02-20&utm_campaign=manualpost
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/disturbing-video-surfaces-shows-ny-abortion-clinic-assuring-woman-baby-will-killed-born-alive/?utm_source=push&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2019-02-20&utm_campaign=manualpost
Not at all shocking or offensive, unlike wearing a MAGA hat.
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https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718546468/opponents-fight-efforts-to-protect-late-term-abortion-rights?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3kDDx9WUU1kmQZ0nm4zxNkuzr7QbmXqgJvpykD0HriY_KfMqsyq7Ja9BU
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making abortion illegal is certainly not going to help the GOP at the polls:
https://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
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https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/285130/abortion-daf-yomi-272?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=42e5465e24-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_23_09_35&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-42e5465e24-207194629
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https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/285130/abortion-daf-yomi-272?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=42e5465e24-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_23_09_35&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-42e5465e24-207194629
Thou shalt not kill?
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Science keeps messing with the pro abortion argument, it's only a blob of cells not a human in there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_surgery
Fetal surgery also known as fetal reconstructive surgery, antenatal surgery, prenatal surgery, is a growing branch of maternal-fetal medicine that covers any of a broad range of surgical techniques that are used to treat birth defects in fetuses who are still in the pregnant uterus.
Doctors are performing surgery, saving lives on an unborn? How can you save a life when you haven't admitted it is a life?
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Doug,
How are we going to finally get our socialist eutopia if we are afraid of killing millions of innocents?
Besides, once the baby is dead, he/she/xir can potentially vote democrat forever. It's like a form of immortality!
Science keeps messing with the pro abortion argument, it's only a blob of cells not a human in there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_surgery
Fetal surgery also known as fetal reconstructive surgery, antenatal surgery, prenatal surgery, is a growing branch of maternal-fetal medicine that covers any of a broad range of surgical techniques that are used to treat birth defects in fetuses who are still in the pregnant uterus.
Doctors are performing surgery, saving lives on an unborn? How can you save a life when you haven't admitted it is a life?
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https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/choosing-down-syndrome/
Good article.
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I need a citation on what % of Planned Parenthood's budget goes to abortion.
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https://www.who.int/health-topics/abortion#tab=tab_1
https://www.lifenews.com/2019/12/31/abortion-was-the-leading-cause-of-death-worldwide-in-2019-killing-42-million-people/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/preventing-unsafe-abortion
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I need a citation on what % of Planned Parenthood's budget goes to abortion.
Not easy to determine. They include abortion under "Medical services", the largest one of the 63% of the budget. The main part of "Non-medical program services" (18%) is the promotion of abortion.
I don't think you will be able to separate abortion from the rest of what they do; it is a big part of all of it. They are the nation's largest provider of "abortion services". They gave up federal funding rather than giving up abortion when given the choice.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/facts-figures
2015 (the latest year data is available):
Medical services (63%)
The essential health care services Planned Parenthood provides, like: STD testing and treatment, birth control, well-woman exams, cancer screening and prevention, abortion, hormone therapy, infertility services, and general health care.
Non-medical program services (18%) ...
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https://i.imgur.com/6iSrTTN.jpg
(https://i.imgur.com/6iSrTTN.jpg)
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Besides the intended analogy, the proposals are perfectly valid.
The correct analogy (IMO) of guns to abortion would to legalize the shooting of immediate family for any reason, not just the owning of the gun for self protection.
My mom believed in the mother's right to choose until the child reaches age 18. It's a more informed and thought through decision than aborting before birth.
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Awesome meme!
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https://www.operationrescue.org/archives/video-bucket-of-babies-so-full-lid-wont-close-schlepped-out-of-planned-parenthood/
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/24/california-judge-orders-video-journalists-to-pay-13-6-m-to-planned-parenthood/
I find the successful prosecution of this case incomprehensible. In legal terms, what the hell happened?
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are only sacred "patriots"
if they work for the Democrat party
I hope they can appeal
here is the abortion judge :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Orrick_III
guess who appointed him
of course
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png)
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-major-abortion-case/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=23869585
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/overturn-roe/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-05-18&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/overturn-roe/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-05-18&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
Heartbeat 18 days from conception. Can feel pain, same. Either it's a life or it's denial of science.
States can regulate when an animal can be killed but not an unborn human? Which article says that?
Tennessee law bans abortions after 15 weeks except “in a medical emergency or in case of a severe fetal abnormality.” Seems like a generous compromise, pro-choice the first 15 weeks.
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https://patriotpost.us/opinion/80082-which-party-gains-if-roe-goes-down-2021-05-24
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"All the same, a post-Roe world is apt to be less congenial to the GOP that craves it, and not nearly as challenging to the Democratic Party that doesn’t."
This seems like obvious conclusion
Pew research
survey
( I don't trust most surveys anymore but)
https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
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Conservatives have known all along, it is not for political gain that you end the right of liberals to slaughter their young.
On the other side of it, if the world was suddenly ruled by personal responsibility, who would that favor?
From the article: "...the issue of abortion is not about politics but about right and wrong."
That is the heart of it, no pun intended.
The Kentucky law allows abortions up to 15 weeks, meaning a woman(?) has been carrying a different person's beating heart in her for over 3 months. Sounds like a pro-choice law to me, if a woman really does have control over her own body.
The Left is afraid of incrementalism or slippery slope. If they lose this one, they fear losing more and more. They ought to know; they wrote the book on rights eroded by incrementalism.
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Roe v Wade is not about whether abortion should be legal or illegal. It is about whether states have a right to determine that.
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Exactly so.
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just saying
this won't likely be popular overall
and may hurt Republicans more the crats
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Good point. Middle East peace and widespread American prosperity weren't very issues for us either, with such bad messaging. The point, I think, with abortion is to work on the right or wrong question ahead of the legal question. You don't make illegal or murder what half the people think is fine.
Imagine the sides reversed on abortion. The most innocent are the victims, Black babies killed at 5 times the rate of white babies and R's favor and fund it, support it as the be-all, end-all, and had a history in wanting to stop all these unwanted black births on racial grounds. What would be the politics of it then?
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/04/is-grafting-dead-babies-scalps-onto-lab-rats-any-better-than-child-sacrifice/
Same motivation. Same intent.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/mississippis-case-against-roe/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=24529745
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/mississippis-case-against-roe/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=24529745
GOP lawmakers, 44 senators and 184 House members, argued in an amicus brief that the landmark 1973 decision in Roe and related rulings represent “a vise grip on abortion politics.”
“Congress and the States have shown that they are ready and able to address the issue in ways that reflect Americans’ varying viewpoints and are grounded in the science of fetal development and maternal health,” wrote the lawmakers, who represent 40 states.
Among the signatories were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other Republican leadership members.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/565446-228-republican-lawmakers-urge-supreme-court-to-overrule-roe-v-wade?rl=1
[Doug] LET THE STATES HANDLE IT.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/supreme-court-gets-it-right-on-texas-abortion-law/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-09-02&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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America is back fighting its endless legal war over abortion. A new front opened late Wednesday when five Justices issued an unsigned opinion declining to block a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks. Cue the hysterics about the end of abortion rights. But this law is a misfire even if you oppose abortion, and neither side should be confident the law will be upheld.
For starters, the Texas statute clearly violates the Court’s Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey (1992) precedents by making abortion illegal during the first trimester without exceptions for rape or incest—and it does so in a slippery way to duck federal judicial review.
Most laws delegate enforcement to public officials. This one delegates exclusive enforcement to private citizens, who are authorized to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. Citizens who prevail in their civil lawsuits are entitled to at least $10,000 per abortion along with legal costs.
The law sets an awful precedent that conservatives should hate. Could California allow private citizens to sue individuals for hate speech? Or New York deputize private lawsuits against gun owners?
Texas argues that abortion providers don’t have standing to challenge the law because the state isn’t enforcing it and neither at this point is any private citizen. Thus there is no case or controversy, which is what courts are supposed to settle. This is technically correct and it is why the five Justices declined to enjoin the law.
“Federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves,” says their unsigned opinion, citing the Court’s recent decision in California v. Texas (2021). In that case a 7-2 majority dismissed Texas’s ObamaCare challenge after finding the Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case since the feds weren’t enforcing the individual mandate.
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch wrote in a fierce dissent that the Court—read Chief Justice John Roberts —had applied standing principles selectively. They’re right. And some conservative Justices may now enjoy hoisting the Chief on his own standing petard. But their unsigned opinion suggests they also have doubts about the Texas law.
Abortion providers have “raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden,” the five Justices write. “We stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit” and the Court’s order “is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law.” Texas state courts may also have a say, the Justices add.
The Chief writes in a dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, that he would grant the providers “preliminary relief” to “preserve the status quo ante” so “the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.” But the dissenting Justices acknowledge that Texas may be correct that “existing doctrines preclude judicial intervention.”
What they want is to issue what is essentially an advisory opinion in the form of an injunction. This is not the role of the courts. In any case, a provider who gets sued under the Texas law will undoubtedly seek to dismiss the lawsuit under the Court’s abortion precedents. Then the law will be properly enjoined.
Meantime, Texas Republicans have handed Democrats a political grenade to hurt the anti-abortion cause. Pro-life groups have spent nearly 50 years arguing that abortion is a political question to be settled in the states by public debate. Yet now in Texas they want to use the courts via civil litigation to limit abortion.
Democrats are already having a field day with the Texas law. “This law is so extreme it does not even allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest,” President Biden said in a statement. Look for Democrats to raise the political pressure even higher on the Supreme Court this coming term when it hears a Mississippi case that bans abortion after 15 weeks. The Justices could uphold the Mississippi law by narrowing Casey’s “undue burden” standard. But the left will flog the Texas law and proclaim that upholding the Mississippi law is a fast track to overturning Roe.
Sometimes we wonder if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a progressive plant. His ill-conceived legal attack against ObamaCare backfired on Republicans in last year’s election and lost at the Supreme Court. Now he and his Texas mates are leading with their chins on abortion. How about thinking first?
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Good article. Bad law. Unforced error of epic proportions, losing the moral high ground on abortion to Democrats. They are the ones killing their young. I have argued no one in any position of power wants to ban abortions for rape and incest which constitute roughly 0.0% of abortions. I've argued you have to win the moral argument before you make something illegal. The civil penalty is a strange approach as well.
98% of abortions are for convenience reasons. There is no reason to group that with what a rape victim is going through and doing so is to shoot yourself politically with major spillover into other issues. The damage to the Republican brand and distrust of Republicans governing explains why we are facing the Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer disaster today. Don't add truth to their argument.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395519.php
This is where we are.
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Apparently this figured into SCOTUS's decision not to hear the Texas case.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-11/
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xi/interps/133
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https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1435583670727946247
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png)
https://notthebee.com/article/so-it-seems-the-left-is-now-turning-to-satan-to-try-to-keep-abortion-legal
Ephesians 6:12
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg)
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invisible-ink-could-reveal-whether-kids-have-been-vaccinated/#
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg)
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https://rumble.com/vmnevo-fitton-documents-show-obama-fda-buying-fetal-heads-fresh-never-frozen.html?mref=6zof&mc=dgip3&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One+America+News+Network&ep=2
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-passes-bill-to-codify-roe-v-wade/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=25136453
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https://notthebee.com/article/what-the-democrats-just-did-is-horrifyingyet-helpful?utm_source=jeeng
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https://notthebee.com/article/what-the-democrats-just-did-is-horrifyingyet-helpful?utm_source=jeeng
I read the title wrong, I thought it was my mom's proposal, a woman's right to choose until the kid turns 18.
A woman can abort because she is bigger, stronger and in control of the fetus. Isn't that (also) the definition of domestic abuse?
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/084/512/605/original/3b60276278fb5cd1.jpeg)
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/breaking-project-veritas-pfizer-whistleblower-reveals-internal-emails-discussing-covid-vax-want-avoid-info-fetal-cells-floating/
Weird. They’ve been so open and transparent about the clotshot otherwise….
:roll:
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https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a24_8759.pdf
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The Obsolete Science Behind Roe v. Wade
My youngest patients are unborn babies, and today’s ultrasounds show they are fully alive and human.
By Grazie Pozo Christie
Oct. 28, 2021 5:59 pm ET
The Supreme Court will soon reconsider the decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which made abortion legal in America through all nine months of pregnancy. At that “point in the development of man’s knowledge,” as Justice Harry Blackmun put it in Roe, there was simply no consensus about when life begins. In other words, the fetus could not be said with any certainty to be alive and therefore wasn’t worthy of legal protection.
As a diagnostic radiologist—whose youngest patients are fetuses, who are very much alive—I submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization urging the justices to rethink Roe, a case premised on a claim about science. I was joined by two other female physicians, a neonatologist and an obstetrician, who also value their youngest patients, believing that whether inside their mothers or born, premature or full-term, they are worthy of respect and protection.
Ultrasound technology was in its infancy in the 1970s, when there was much more uncertainty about life before birth. The first ultrasound machines, introduced in 1958, were enormous, and the images were rudimentary. It was only in the later 1970s that fetal ultrasound became widely available, with increasingly detailed images of recognizably human babies. Black-and-white ultrasound images are now found on refrigerators of expectant parents across America. New three-dimensional images have put a human face on the person once dehumanized as a mere clump of cells.
Perfectly apparent now, to the justices sitting on today’s court as well as the public, are the liveliness and humanity of babies at 15 weeks of gestation—the age at which Mississippi proposes to protect them from elective termination.
Nestled within their mothers, these fetuses on average are 6.4 inches long and weigh 4.1 ounces. They have the proportions of a newborn—seemingly all head and rounded belly. The major organs are formed and functioning, and although the child receives nutrients and oxygen through the mother’s umbilical cord, the fetal digestive, urinary and respiratory systems are practicing for life outside the womb. The sex of the child is easy to discern by this point. The baby swallows and even breathes, filling the lungs with amniotic fluid and expelling it. The heart is fully formed, its four chambers working hard, with the delicate valves opening and closing.
A healthy baby at 15 weeks is an active baby. Unless the child is asleep, kicking and arm-waving are commonly seen during ultrasound evaluations. The fetal spine is a marvel of intricacy, and it is most often gently curved as the fetus rests against the mother’s uterine wall. Often, I watch as babies plant their feet against the uterine wall and stretch vigorously. Sometimes a delicate hand—with all five fingers—approaches the face and appears to scratch an itch. Fingernails aren’t visible, but they are present. We can see how the bones of the leg meet the tiny ankles and the many-boned feet.
At 15 weeks, the brain’s frontal lobes, ventricles, and thalamus fill the oval-shaped skull. The baby’s profile is endearing in its petite perfection: gently sloping nose, distinct upper and lower lips, eyes that open and close. With the advent of 3D ultrasound, we can now see the fetal face in all its detail.
These are the patients I encounter daily in my work as a radiologist. Clearly human, clearly alive, no longer mysteriously hidden from the eyes and knowledge of man, they ask us to consider them not disposable nonhumans but valuable members of our human family.
Yes, our understanding was different in 1973. But in Roe’s own terms, we have arrived at a much different “point in the development of man’s knowledge” about life in utero. The Supreme Court’s judgement should reflect that advancement and put an end to the casual cruelty of unfettered abortion.
Dr. Christie is a diagnostic radiologist and a policy adviser for the Catholic Association.
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The cruelty and horror are what makes it sacred to the left.
The Obsolete Science Behind Roe v. Wade
My youngest patients are unborn babies, and today’s ultrasounds show they are fully alive and human.
By Grazie Pozo Christie
Oct. 28, 2021 5:59 pm ET
The Supreme Court will soon reconsider the decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which made abortion legal in America through all nine months of pregnancy. At that “point in the development of man’s knowledge,” as Justice Harry Blackmun put it in Roe, there was simply no consensus about when life begins. In other words, the fetus could not be said with any certainty to be alive and therefore wasn’t worthy of legal protection.
As a diagnostic radiologist—whose youngest patients are fetuses, who are very much alive—I submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization urging the justices to rethink Roe, a case premised on a claim about science. I was joined by two other female physicians, a neonatologist and an obstetrician, who also value their youngest patients, believing that whether inside their mothers or born, premature or full-term, they are worthy of respect and protection.
Ultrasound technology was in its infancy in the 1970s, when there was much more uncertainty about life before birth. The first ultrasound machines, introduced in 1958, were enormous, and the images were rudimentary. It was only in the later 1970s that fetal ultrasound became widely available, with increasingly detailed images of recognizably human babies. Black-and-white ultrasound images are now found on refrigerators of expectant parents across America. New three-dimensional images have put a human face on the person once dehumanized as a mere clump of cells.
Perfectly apparent now, to the justices sitting on today’s court as well as the public, are the liveliness and humanity of babies at 15 weeks of gestation—the age at which Mississippi proposes to protect them from elective termination.
Nestled within their mothers, these fetuses on average are 6.4 inches long and weigh 4.1 ounces. They have the proportions of a newborn—seemingly all head and rounded belly. The major organs are formed and functioning, and although the child receives nutrients and oxygen through the mother’s umbilical cord, the fetal digestive, urinary and respiratory systems are practicing for life outside the womb. The sex of the child is easy to discern by this point. The baby swallows and even breathes, filling the lungs with amniotic fluid and expelling it. The heart is fully formed, its four chambers working hard, with the delicate valves opening and closing.
A healthy baby at 15 weeks is an active baby. Unless the child is asleep, kicking and arm-waving are commonly seen during ultrasound evaluations. The fetal spine is a marvel of intricacy, and it is most often gently curved as the fetus rests against the mother’s uterine wall. Often, I watch as babies plant their feet against the uterine wall and stretch vigorously. Sometimes a delicate hand—with all five fingers—approaches the face and appears to scratch an itch. Fingernails aren’t visible, but they are present. We can see how the bones of the leg meet the tiny ankles and the many-boned feet.
At 15 weeks, the brain’s frontal lobes, ventricles, and thalamus fill the oval-shaped skull. The baby’s profile is endearing in its petite perfection: gently sloping nose, distinct upper and lower lips, eyes that open and close. With the advent of 3D ultrasound, we can now see the fetal face in all its detail.
These are the patients I encounter daily in my work as a radiologist. Clearly human, clearly alive, no longer mysteriously hidden from the eyes and knowledge of man, they ask us to consider them not disposable nonhumans but valuable members of our human family.
Yes, our understanding was different in 1973. But in Roe’s own terms, we have arrived at a much different “point in the development of man’s knowledge” about life in utero. The Supreme Court’s judgement should reflect that advancement and put an end to the casual cruelty of unfettered abortion.
Dr. Christie is a diagnostic radiologist and a policy adviser for the Catholic Association.
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The Texas Abortion Case That Isn’t
The Supreme Court isn’t hearing a challenge to Roe v. Wade.
By The Editorial Board
Oct. 31, 2021 6:20 pm ET
Amid criticism for deciding too many cases on its “shadow docket,” the Supreme Court nonetheless agreed to hear two lawsuits on Monday challenging Texas’s ban on abortions after six weeks. The Justices are generous to grant the plaintiffs expedited review, but neither legal challenge belongs in federal court.
Despite what you read in the press, abortion rights aren’t directly at issue in either case. The Court rejected Texas’s request to discuss the law’s merits on abortion. Instead, the Court will consider in Whole Woman’s Health v. Austin Reeve Jackson whether Texas can dodge federal court review by outsourcing enforcement to private parties. The question in U.S. v. Texas is whether the Justice Department can seek an injunction in federal court against the state.
The Texas law prohibits enforcement by state officials, instead authorizing private citizens to sue anyone who performs, aids or intends to perform or aid an abortion after a heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks. Citizens who prevail are entitled to at least $10,000 in damages and legal fees.
The law in our view is clearly unconstitutional under the Court’s abortion precedents. But here’s the rub: Federal courts don’t have jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit by the abortion providers or the Justice Department. Full stop. Federal courts only decide cases and controversies between parties, and both plaintiffs lack legal standing to sue.
The Justice case is the easiest to dispense with. Justice says it sued because the law precludes pre-enforcement challenges by other plaintiffs. But the federal government hasn’t suffered a “concrete” and “particularized” injury—two requirements for standing. Justice says federal agencies that help arrange abortions could be harmed, but the federal government isn’t an abortion provider. In any case, federal officials have said in depositions that they are unaware of any harm or disruption to federal programs from the law.
Even if the Texas law is “unprecedented,” as Justice claims, the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause doesn’t grant the feds the freewheeling power to sue states whenever it believes they are abridging the constitutional rights of citizens. If that were the case, a GOP Justice Department could sue to enjoin Democratic state gun-control laws. Federal courts would then be dragged into arbitrating myriad political fights.
Justice also claims it can sue to vindicate the interests of the federal government under the “canonical precedent” In re Debs (1895). In that case, the U.S. sought a federal court injunction against the Pullman railroad strike, which was interfering with interstate commerce and mail delivery. The Texas law doesn’t interfere with U.S. sovereign powers or interests.
The problem for the abortion providers is that they have no one to sue. State officials aren’t enforcing the law, so the providers can’t sue them. The press is full of stories that the number of abortions has fallen in Texas since the law passed, but clinics can still perform abortions—albeit at the risk of a lawsuit.
But the minute a suit is filed, an abortion provider’s lawyer can move to dismiss on grounds that the law violates Roe v. Wade. Then there would be a proper case or controversy in state court. Texas courts could uphold the law, but such a decision by the state’s highest court would be reviewable by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Abortion providers say it could take months or years of litigation before the law is enjoined. But an immediate injunction is also possible given the threat to a constitutional right as long as the Supreme Court’s abortion precedents haven’t been overturned.
One mystery is why the Court agreed to take these cases. Five conservative Justices were criticized, including by their colleagues on the bench, for declining to enjoin the Texas law in September. Perhaps they want to elaborate beyond the language of that terse order so the public can better understand the legal principles at stake.
The Texas law will almost certainly be struck down in due course as long as Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. But upholding the Supreme Court’s standing principles is also crucial to the rule of law, as Chief Justice John Roberts in particular has long held. In dismissing the importance of legal standing, progressives sound like Donald Trump when he derides the Court for refusing to hear his challenges to the 2020 election results. A bad Texas law doesn’t justify setting a bad judicial precedent.
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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/29/medical-ethicists-propose-after-birth-abortion-law_n_1309985.html
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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/29/medical-ethicists-propose-after-birth-abortion-law_n_1309985.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/merriam-webster-dictionary-adds-fourth-trimester-describe-newborns-fetus-like-baby-like/
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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/29/medical-ethicists-propose-after-birth-abortion-law_n_1309985.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/merriam-webster-dictionary-adds-fourth-trimester-describe-newborns-fetus-like-baby-like/
Blurring the line between fetus and baby does not favor the politics of the Left.
"The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has added the term “fourth trimester” to describe the first months of a newborn’s life, which they say is “more fetus-like than baby-like.” "
A baby is more fetus-like than baby-like? WHAT??!! A newborn IS a baby and a late term fetus IS baby-like.
Hey look! A SECOND trimester fetus lived outside the womb:
https://news.yahoo.com/alabama-boy-makes-record-worlds-163538677.html
Just the opposite of the (lack of) reasoning in the Roe v Wade decision.
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Is there any overlap between the age you can be aborted and the age you can decide you are transgender?
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/11/29/actually-happen-roe-overturned/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=recaps&tpcc%3D=recaps&pnespid=t_U.Ci8XaKIF1P3LujGuCZmS4RK1S8t4Jubi2ep4pQ9magazBxhd9l9cRyuaNGEmAYO1K00c
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/phony-abortion-history-returns-to-the-supreme-court/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-12-06&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-texas-56fe96917e21b53b581005cb30db66e0
AP : "Five conservative justices, including three appointed by former President Donald Trump, formed a majority to limit who can be sued by the clinics, a result that both sides said probably will prevent federal courts from effectively blocking the law."
notice they don't mention those who are Bamster appointees!
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https://www.courthousenews.com/abortion-providers-get-supreme-court-backing-to-fight-texas-ban/
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abortion law not blocked
but now (Tx) law can be contested
https://www.courthousenews.com/abortion-providers-get-supreme-court-backing-to-fight-texas-ban/
we will quibble for eternity or the end of the human race......
:-o
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https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064598531/the-fda-could-permanently-lift-some-restrictions-on-abortion-pills
without in person office visit .
My personal opinion is this is outrageous
I have sent a note to my directors requesting some sort of policy
I do not want to have women calling me requesting a pregnancy termination medicine
as simply as if they are calling for a headache pill
I already had one young lady telling me how offended she was because I refused the morning after pill ( it is over the counter available without prescription anyway)
So far they have left things to the doctor's "preference"
but my preference for this is I can't do it .
now we have. a WOKE FDA too.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/republicans-roev-wade-abortion-supremecourt/2021/12/28/id/1050260/
I am afraid so as I have posted
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Obvious once stated, but it had not occurred to me.
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https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/11/30/how-americans-really-feel-about-abortion-the-sometimes-surprising-poll-results-as-supreme-court-weighs-overturning-roe-v-wade/?sh=106b8f8836c9
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases/
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-11-17/americans-support-the-right-to-abortion
I understand there are moral , practical , and political implications of abortion
With regard to political , if the Republicans are looking for a way to change a winning political strategy to a losing one
THIS IS THE WAY
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HOW MUCH THIS WILL DRAW OUT THE BABE VOTE !
DO NOT.
Morally the strategy is correct.
At least to limit abortion .
but politically this is a huge mistake.
Here we go again .....
:-o
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How was slavery polling in the antebellum south? How was the final solution looking in 1930’s Germany?
How does abortion poll with the majority of dead dem voters and 4AM vote counters?
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GM
not sure what point you are making;
you can ask many questions
like how is Trump polling in Massachusetts or in DC , or how does Gay marriage poll in Montana etc ......
you think this will not give the Dems a rallying cry in '22 or '24?
This will be the # 1 issue for many babes
just the reality of the situation
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GM
not sure what point you are making;
you can ask many questions
like how is Trump polling in Massachusetts or in DC , or how does Gay marriage poll in Montana etc ......
you think this will not give the Dems a rallying cry in '22 or '24?
This will be the # 1 issue for many babes
just the reality of the situation
People tend to assert that they would have stood up to various historical injustices. Someday, people will look at the atrocities of abortion the way slavery or the Holocaust is looked at now.
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".People tend to assert that they would have stood up to various historical injustices. Someday, people will look at the atrocities of abortion the way slavery or the Holocaust is looked at now."
Maybe,
but I think we are heading in the opposite direction.
In the future people will be able to pick and choose what kind of babies they have down to the genes.
More over the counter abortion , pregnancy termination meds etc.
Who said you can make abortion illegal but not unpopular?
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/republicans-roev-wade-abortion-supremecourt/2021/12/28/id/1050260/
I am afraid so as I have posted
In the first place, this starts with a great legal mind giving a political opinion. The question for Deshowitz is, is this a wrongly decided case? Are we deciding Supreme Court cases now by what the political consequences will be? If so, most likely your party is Democrat.
They cite polling data that is all over the map, mostly pro choice. For one thing, these STATE issues won't be decided by a national popular poll on an intentionally vague question.
Yes, overturning Roe v Wade involves a lot of political risk for Republicans, number one, overplaying their hand, like trying to restrict abortions in the case of rape. It's not a good argument to tell rape victims to be more careful who you have sex with. Second, many of those aborted would have grown up to be Democrats.
The two extreme choices that won't fly politically in swing states after Roe is overturned, banning all abortions and banning all restrictions on abortions. The issue will be a test for compromise on both sides.
What happens when you push-poll abortion instead of just asking vague questions:
Knowing that black unborn babies are consistently being killed at five times the rate of white babies, do you fully support doing that?
Knowing that an unborn has a full functioning heartbeat, can feel pain, has DNA totally separate and distinct from the mother, do you still support the right to end this life at any time for any reason?
Do you support the current law that the father has absolutely no say whatsoever in killing what is at least partly his own offspring?
After this watching time lapse video of the fetus growing gradually into a baby narrated with milestones of when different organs are functioning, with that process interrupted by the brutal killing by the abortion doctor on video, are you still fully in support with no reservations?
Knowing that abortions are done 99% for convenience reasons by Planned Parenthood's own numbers, do you still believe no restrictions on killing the unborn can be allowed?
Knowing that very likely we will soon be able to identify gay unborn for "choice" or elimination, not just Down syndrome, do you still favor the unrestricted ability to do that?
And so on. The issue is brought into the campaign, not just voted on.
I agree with G M. This horribly brutal practice will someday make the past acceptability of slavery look reasonable and humane in comparison.
Do political opinions ever change and change rapidly? Barack Obama ran for President believing (he said) that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Wow, that fell fast. He would kicked off social media today, since he was somewhere to the right of Dick Cheney.
The science and imagery has come a long way since the last time we fought over abortion.
How about we just do the right thing and let the politics take care of itself?
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"How about we just do the right thing and let the politics take care of itself?"
THIS.
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"How about we just do the right thing and let the politics take care of itself?"
THIS."
noble yes
political mistake - we will see
I hope not
" The two extreme choices that won't fly politically in swing states after Roe is overturned, banning all abortions and banning all restrictions on abortions. The issue will be a test for compromise on both sides."
I can see the jockeying on these points up to our necks prior to the elections
after will be too. late... I fear
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/094/931/988/original/313cb5bc74f816c4.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/094/931/988/original/313cb5bc74f816c4.png)
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/09/bidens-nih-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-university-of-pittsburgh-experiments-on-aborted-babies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bidens-nih-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-university-of-pittsburgh-experiments-on-aborted-babies&utm_term=2022-03-09
What Mengele-esque horrors would they be willing to do In someplace like Ukraine?
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/09/bidens-nih-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-university-of-pittsburgh-experiments-on-aborted-babies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bidens-nih-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-university-of-pittsburgh-experiments-on-aborted-babies&utm_term=2022-03-09
What Mengele-esque horrors would they be willing to do In someplace like Ukraine?
“This report fails to address our concerns that Pitt’s research may have involved fetal tissue harvested from babies who were born alive or where the abortion methods were altered. This type of research is not only unethical and completely repulsive, but contrary to federal law. We need answers.”
What sort of monster looks down at baby struggling for life, picks up a scalpel and starts “harvesting tissue”? In my professional career, I have dealt with violent sociopaths/psychopaths. I wonder how many of them would be able to do that.
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Solicitor General defending Roe Wade and trying to strike down Mississippi law under questioning by Justice Thomas:
"The right is grounded in the liberty component of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Thomas," she said, "but I think it promotes interest in autonomy, bodily integrity, liberty, and equality. And I do think that it is specifically the right to abortion here, the right of a woman to be able to control, without the state forcing her to continue a pregnancy, whether to carry that baby to term."
- Carry that WHAT??!!
https://cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/slip-tongue-supreme-court
-----
Justice Breyer famously slipped, called the woman a mother. Mother of what? Previous children?
It takes amazing discipline to speak the language of the Left and not slip and mention the truth in front of you.
Or the truth inside of you in this case. It's alive. It's a life. Its a developing human. Science can identify the species is (same as) human if logic doesn't work for you. And this life has separate and distinct DNA from the mother and the father. If it is not a "person" under the 14th amendment, entitled to life, liberty and equal protection under the law, then it still most certainly is a competing life interest, worthy of legislative protection in state statute.
Read at the link for full context.
A dog isn't a person either but the state regulates what you cannot do to it.
To the Left, a "fetus" ranks beneath a dog and a chicken. Even though the ones we kill are 5 times more likely to be Black.
Small aside, I thought Justice Thomas didn't ask questions. Someone got blindsided.
If the politics were reversed on this, the practice would be called genocide and we would be destroyed.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/14/kentucky-legislature-overrides-democrat-governors-veto-passes-15-week-abortion-ban/
how bout the unions teach their children
ages 13 and up this !
rather then wokism.
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https://wfin.com/local-news/ohio-lawmaker-calls-pregnancy-from-rape-an-opportunity/
we do not need this on our side
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https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
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Very bad juju that this got leaked.
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Very bad juju that this got leaked.
How else can the left get it’s state sanctioned paramilitaries mobilized to intimidate the court into reversal?
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Very bad juju that this got leaked.
Yes. One more great institution infiltrated.
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https://theancestory.com/who-is-amit-jain/
had ties to Gerstein and Politico
he is raising 2.8 billion fund for a company he is CEO something India
so if he is disbarred he won't give a hoot
will have every lib in the country donating to his fund
(my theory from what I can deduce)
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-supreme-court-insurrection_n_6270a449e4b01131b1261631
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https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
update, fixing my subject line.
The case "Casey" paradoxically honored the principle of stare decisis to uphold Roe in part and simultaneously over-ruled it - in part.
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Based on polling, it was the opinion of many that returning this issue to the states and our divided politics will favor the Democrats.
I beg to differ.
Also, it is widely presumed that the leaker wants to sabotage the decision, energize the Left and especially to break the bad news cycle that the Democrats currently face. To the contrary, this will be an old news story by the time it come out July 3 or so and on election day.. It does nothing to change the reality that gas prices more than doubled, inflation is worst in 40 years, interest rates are increasing, food and other supply shortages are widening, the economy is stagnating or shrinking and real wages are declining - at a record pace.
Against all that, a red-state liberal with an unwanted pregnancy might have to exercise her
constitutionally protected right of travel in order to legally kill and remove her unborn.
It's a good thing we still have a constitution.
On the Dem Left side of it, this politically undesirable decision was made possible by the un-democratic Senate and Electoral College, both strange, undesirable relics of our racist, outdated constitution.
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Very bad juju that this got leaked.
How else can the left get it’s state sanctioned paramilitaries mobilized to intimidate the court into reversal?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/burn-democrats-leftists-call-violence-following-leaked-scotus-abortion-ruling/
Why? Because they face no penalty.
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"based on polling, it was the opinion of many that returning this issue to the states and our divided politics will favor the Democrats.
I beg to differ.
Also, it is widely presumed that the leaker wants to sabotage the decision, energize the Left and especially to break the bad news cycle that the Democrats currently face. To the contrary, this will be an old news story by the time it come out July 3 or so and on election day.. It does nothing to change the reality that gas prices more than doubled, inflation is worst in 40 years, interest rates are increasing, food and other supply shortages are widening, the economy is stagnating or shrinking and real wages are declining - at a record pace."
I AM NOT SO SURE:
my suspicions is this WILL knock off some of the crossover independents.
Polls will be out, but of course as GM points out, we have to wait for the few that are not manipulated
such as Trafalgar I think is most accurate and does not fudge the data to the LEFT agenda
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Polling is all over the map because many don't understand the Supreme Court role in it and many are deceived. I wonder how many think Roe struck down means no one can get an abortion for any reason. 65 percent of Americans said they oppose reversing Roe. Same survey found that respondents were perfectly split on whether abortion should be legal, tied at 49 percent.
Less than one third of DEMOCRATS agree abortion should be legal at any time in pregnancy for any reason.
More polling data:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-americans-really-think-about-abortion/
Only 28 percent of Americans favor allowing abortion in the second trimester, and only 13 percent of Americans favor allowing it in the last three months of pregnancy — compared to 60 percent who would allow it in the first trimester.
[Different poll] Nearly three-quarters of Americans would allow abortion only in the first trimester or in the so-called hard cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, if they would permit abortion at all. A mere 17 percent of respondents told Marist abortion should be legal at any time in pregnancy for any reason, and less than a third of Democrats agreed.
These are complicated issues of life and death. In America, a constitutional republic, should people in robes [49 years ago] lay down vague arbitrary rules or should the people today through their elected representatives sort it out?
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Thanks for clarification from latest polls
understanding the complexities of the issues
and how polls can be manipulated by the way questions are asked etc
hope you right
we all want to smash the Dems coming November
Trump candidates all won
in primaries I read - impressive
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-leaker/2022/05/03/id/1068352/
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-leaker/2022/05/03/id/1068352/
Only because it was a leftist operative that did it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1503
The release was clearly done with the intent to influence the court in this case.
We know that the leftist legal standard will be applied.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-leaker/2022/05/03/id/1068352/
Only because it was a leftist operative that did it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1503
The release was clearly done with the intent to influence the court in this case.
We know that the leftist legal standard will be applied.
(https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Resized_img3068.jpeg)
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Caitlin Flanagan:
What I can’t face about abortion is the reality of it: that these are human beings, the most vulnerable among us, and we have no care for them. How terrible to know that in the space of an hour, a baby could be alive—his heart beating, his kidneys creating the urine that becomes the amniotic fluid of his safe home—and then be dead, his heart stopped, his body soon to be discarded.
The argument for abortion, if made honestly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire consequences to women of making a very simple medical procedure illegal. The argument against it doesn’t take even a single word. The argument against it is a picture. (Source: theatlantic.com)
-----------------
(Doug)
Picture shows image of the small human in the "fetal position". Hard to deny what it is.
Science knows what it is. Religion knows what it is. Common sense knows what it is.
The procedure used past a certain number of weeks is known as barbaric. 98% of abortions are for convenience reasons. Even an atheist knows that once it becomes an alive, 'independent existence, killing it is morally wrong. What the law should say about it is up to the people and their representatives.
I hope Republicans in all states don't overplay their hand. Exceptions can be made, rape, incest, life of the mother and even for very early term.
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which could be used to make the leak criminal:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/05/03/former-ag-bill-barr-suggests-special-counsel-and-grand-jury-to-probe-scotus-leak-n2606716
time leakers are held to account
for once
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which could be used to make the leak criminal:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/05/03/former-ag-bill-barr-suggests-special-counsel-and-grand-jury-to-probe-scotus-leak-n2606716
time leakers are held to account
for once
See my post from above that states the applicable federal statute.
Nothing will happen.
-
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6127592-biden94letter.html
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/why-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-disapproved-of-roe-v-wade?fbclid=IwAR3EakuDg_X1jnm2xW0bg49G0KgeL-ldQZhqjflDLzMbh-fQu-dRNKze8NI
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/why-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-disapproved-of-roe-v-wade?fbclid=IwAR3EakuDg_X1jnm2xW0bg49G0KgeL-ldQZhqjflDLzMbh-fQu-dRNKze8NI
Excellent to see truth. It was a badly and wrongly decided case, no matter how you feel about abortion. Same is true with Casey, 1992, which attempted to cure the flaws in Roe.
-
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6127592-biden94letter.html
Joe in 1994, 'I voted 50 times against taxpayers funding abortions'.
Why?
-
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6305624710112#sp=show-clips
-
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6127592-biden94letter.html
Joe in 1994, 'I voted 50 times against taxpayers funding abortions'.
Why?
He has no idea.
Joe has always been at war with eastasia!
-
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6127592-biden94letter.html
When he was more coherent, 1973, he spoke out against Roe v Wade as a new senator.
“I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” - Sen Joe Biden, 1973
He voted against Roe v Wade, 1982. He signed a constitutional amendment that would allow individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade and make their own decisions about abortions, as the current expected ruling would do.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/04/biden-once-voted-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/
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Very bad juju that this got leaked.
How else can the left get it’s state sanctioned paramilitaries mobilized to intimidate the court into reversal?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/burn-democrats-leftists-call-violence-following-leaked-scotus-abortion-ruling/
Why? Because they face no penalty.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/399014.php
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/05/democrats-white-supremacy-gender-oppression-abortion-womens-health-protection-act/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2906&pnespid=qrxuCy9IKvMcyqXRuiS7H5GXphOpV4R9KLO2z.UwtRRmvuDA3F86bE0aWkb.Eo_IW3mRxTkV
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About 11% of the country that believes the Supreme Court should be setting abortion policy. - YouGov latest poll
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/alitos-ruling-is-what-most-americans-want-on-abortion
------------------
Of the 44% who thinks the federal govt should set abortion policy, 24% of those thought the judicial branch was the best one to do it.
5 guys in robes that all went to the same law school, or let the people decide, tough choice - if you're an authoritarian.
-
Nice to see the actual data assessed.
-
Nice to see the actual data assessed.
More polling, this one CNN. It's all in how you ask the questions and who you ask. In summary, people are more pro-choice than pro-life by 58-42 and msm polls can be off in bias by 10-18%, cf Wisconsin 2016, 2020.
More importantly, generic Congressional midterm polling:
"Republicans hold a narrow edge over Democrats on the generic ballot test, 49% to 42% among registered voters, a slight improvement for Republicans compared with the poll conducted immediately before the ruling."
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/06/politics/cnn-poll-abortion-midterms-roe-v-wade/index.html
49-42 isn't a narrow edge; in this case it's insurmountable. Republicans break even on these polls at -5 and they're up +7. Registered voter polls skew Dem and CNN tilts Dem, so that lead is a big deal.
But the BIG, buried story is that the R lead increased after the ruling. (And this is CNN.) Who knew??!!
Let's see. It costs a hundred bucks to fill your tank and go to the lake or to the ocean, to the store and to work and drive the kids. Mortgage rates doubled if you're buying or selling a house. Electricity up, heat costs up, food costs through the roof, and now states might tweak the already complicated rules ("due and undue burdens") about when you can or cannot kill your unborn. So much for a voter to ponder.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/alitos-opinion-is-brilliant-and-shrewd/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202022-05-06&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/scalia-was-right-again/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202022-05-06&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/105/922/856/original/61936d0a5f57dbc7.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/105/922/856/original/61936d0a5f57dbc7.png)
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it was a conservative who leaked the draft
says Jewish Democrat jurnolister who is going to cash in with a book about knowing Ginsberg for 50 yrs:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nprs-nina-totenberg-leading-theory-is-conservative-clerk-leaked-abortion-opinion
only a shyster can come up with this theory with the add on :
"it is the only explanation that makes sense "
[Democrats till death - which to me makes NO SENSE - on TOH she gets to call herself a mench]
as for NPR (14% of revenue from Universities ( in other words NPR is one of their propaganda outlets:
In 2010, NPR revenues totaled $180 million, with the bulk of revenues coming from programming fees, grants from foundations or business entities, contributions and sponsorships.[25] According to the 2009 financial statement, about 50% of NPR revenues come from the fees it charges member stations for programming and distribution charges.[25] Typically, NPR member stations receive funds through on-air pledge drives, corporate underwriting, state and local governments, educational institutions, and the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from federal, state and local government funding, 10% of their revenue from CPB grants, and 14% of their revenue from universities.[25][43] While NPR does not receive any direct federal funding, it does receive a small number of competitive grants from CPB and federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. This funding amounts to approximately 2% of NPR's overall revenues.[25]
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/07/justice-samuel-alito-moved-undisclosed-location/
no surprise
white supremacists are known to be the big terrorist threat in the US :roll: :|
as per jurnolisters, deep staters (FBI etc.) , and Democrat shysterslisters
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/08/abortion-tate-reeves-mississippi-contraception/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F36cb67a%2F62793770956121755a6ee36c%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F28%2F72%2F62793770956121755a6ee36c
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png)
https://notthebee.com/article/so-it-seems-the-left-is-now-turning-to-satan-to-try-to-keep-abortion-legal
Ephesians 6:12
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/satanic-temple-will-argue-abortion-religious-ritual-legal-challenges/
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https://rumble.com/v148qk8-tim-scott-delivers-stunning-rebuke-to-janet-yellens-soulless-abortion-claim.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab&fbclid=IwAR0I06uAA9bZMIE77RU0uuH59TyfgnIQXC90-ommXmu_sSFk8IfYW63Aso0
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-supreme-court-contraception_n_627ab11fe4b046ad0d829a0a
Oh God.
here we go..
Like Doug said he hopes they don't "overplay their hand"
of course the zealots will......
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No.
Huffpohysteria.
:roll:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-supreme-court-contraception_n_627ab11fe4b046ad0d829a0a
Oh God.
here we go..
Like Doug said he hopes they don't "overplay their hand"
of course the zealots will......
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https://ace.mu.nu/archives/Abortion%20justice.jpg
(https://ace.mu.nu/archives/Abortion%20justice.jpg)
-
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/Abortion%20justice.jpg
(https://ace.mu.nu/archives/Abortion%20justice.jpg)
https://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx
Address lookup
canonical name jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org.
aliases
addresses 198.185.159.144
198.185.159.145
198.49.23.144
198.49.23.145
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DNS query for 144.159.185.198.in-addr.arpa returned an error from the server: NameError
name class type data time to live
jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org IN HINFO
CPU: RFC8482
OS:
3600s (01:00:00)
jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org IN NS dns4.p05.nsone.net 3600s (01:00:00)
jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org IN NS dns1.p05.nsone.net 3600s (01:00:00)
jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org IN NS dns2.p05.nsone.net 3600s (01:00:00)
jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org IN NS dns3.p05.nsone.net 3600s (01:00:00)
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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rape-victims-forced-rapist-baby-190834342.html
with this we lose the suburban moms yet again
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How are we doing with the Mules and Dominion Voting machines?
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rape-victims-forced-rapist-baby-190834342.html
with this we lose the suburban moms yet again
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-banning-abortion-from-moment-of-fertilization/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=27770387
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I wonder if even the morning after pill is not going to be allowed
"What is ella?
****ella is an emergency contraceptive. It works by stopping or delaying the release of an egg from an ovary. Ulipristal may also make it harder for a fertilized egg to attach to the uterus.
ella is used to prevent pregnancy after having sex without using a condom or other effective birth control method. It is also used to prevent pregnancy after a regular form of birth control has failed. This medicine is not to be used as a regular form of daily, weekly, or monthly birth control.****
I can tell you now this will piss a LOT of women off
and some men too
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Seriously stupid.
-
Seriously stupid.
Are values supposed to matter, or is it all about political gamesmenship?
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Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Politics is the Art of the Possible and this standard will gravely damage our shot at the landslide election that we need.
Why on earth do they need to say this now? Hard to think of something more likely to drive Dem turnout, not only in OK, but also nationwide.
I respect the Life begins at conception POV, but as a matter of putting the fifty years of culture war over this to bed, I'm thinking a twelve-week standard is something that could work.
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Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Politics is the Art of the Possible and this standard will gravely damage our shot at the landslide election that we need.
Why on earth do they need to say this now? Hard to think of something more likely to drive Dem turnout, not only in OK, but also nationwide.
I respect the Life begins at conception POV, but as a matter of putting the fifty years of culture war over this to bed, I'm thinking a twelve-week standard is something that could work.
OK politicians are doing what the large majority of OK voters want.
Just like in California, the population is fine with stabbing a full term baby in the brain with a pair of scissors, so the law will reflect that there.
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I get that and fair enough-- but wish they would have waited until after the elections. This is going to drive Dem turnout out across the fifty states.
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"I respect the Life begins at conception POV, but as a matter of putting the fifty years of culture war over this to bed, I'm thinking a twelve-week standard is something that could work"
I have thought about abortion for 40+ yrs
and could never come to any personal conclusion until recently
I agree with the above after considering the moral ethical medical monetary practical and political concerns
I think this is what Justice Roberts was hoping to get as a compromise
this is not late term murder - sucking the brain out of a fetus' soft skull.
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Most Okies are pro life
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/new-oklahoma-abortion-ban-a-tipping-point-in-the-fight-against-roe-v-wade
but not clear to me if they mean from conception if asked specifically
like the girl, Artz 23 yo who grew up strict Catholic and was anti abortion then went to college felt out of place (and likely started fucking around) and then became pro choice.
I just remember in the 80's when some Republicans would say "this abortion thing is killing us".
we shall see
inflation problems may trump abortion , for now........ for '22......
-
Most Okies are pro life
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/new-oklahoma-abortion-ban-a-tipping-point-in-the-fight-against-roe-v-wade
but not clear to me if they mean from conception if asked specifically
like the girl, Artz 23 yo who grew up strict Catholic and was anti abortion then went to college felt out of place (and likely started fucking around) and then became pro choice.
I just remember in the 80's when some Republicans would say "this abortion thing is killing us".
we shall see
inflation problems may trump abortion , for now........ for '22......
What does the science say? It's a life once the egg is fertilized.
A society that doesn't respect human life is headed down a dark path we have seen many times in history.
-
Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Politics is the Art of the Possible and this standard will gravely damage our shot at the landslide election that we need.
Why on earth do they need to say this now? Hard to think of something more likely to drive Dem turnout, not only in OK, but also nationwide.
I respect the Life begins at conception POV, but as a matter of putting the fifty years of culture war over this to bed, I'm thinking a twelve-week standard is something that could work.
A landslide of failure theater RINOs? Is abortion going to motivate the vote mules and dominion machines?
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".A landslide of failure theater RINOs? Is abortion going to motivate the vote mules and dominion machines?"
no they are already motivated to make extra cash
it is the suburban
and college girls who may now be more motivated to turn out in droves
maybe ....
-
The next pandemic will force more voting by mail, funny enough the dems will not be crushed...
".A landslide of failure theater RINOs? Is abortion going to motivate the vote mules and dominion machines?"
no they are already motivated to make extra cash
it is the suburban
and college girls who may now be more motivated to turn out in droves
maybe ....
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https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2022/05/31/what-the-early-church-said-about-abortion-n2607992
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/open-season-pro-abortion-terrorist-group-vows-to-ramp-up-violence-against-pro-life-pregnancy-centers/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=28069068
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/open-season-pro-abortion-terrorist-group-vows-to-ramp-up-violence-against-pro-life-pregnancy-centers/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=28069068
The FBI will stop this, right?
Right?
-
Perhaps well-armed Lifers will , , ,
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-asdf-right-abortion
Time to release the violent leftist paramilitaries!
-
"Time to release the violent leftist paramilitaries!"
perhaps there is one silver lining in all this
this might get rid of 1/6/21
off the news now the LEFT has something else they can scream about.......
pro choice centers better secure the hatches and arm up....
will be an interesting summer watching unattractive young people protest.....
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-asdf-right-abortion
Time to release the violent leftist paramilitaries!
Elections have consequences!
If you are not impressed with today's ruling, you are probably not a black baby fetus on death row.
One hell of a lot of election work and victories over an extended period went into this small step toward restoring the meaning of the constitution.
Roe v Wade has
been aborted in the 198th trimester.
https://babylonbee.com/news/roe-v-wade-aborted-in-198th-trimester?utm_source=The+Babylon+Bee+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db0c7319f8-Sponsored_Newsletter_6%2F24%2F22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62f636e998-db0c7319f8-39963636&mc_cid=db0c7319f8
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I am glad about the ruling, and
I know it is blasphemy here on this board, but personally I think the Roberts compromise was reasonable.
I never minded being an outlier
FWIW
we better not overplay our hand with contraception
now
that is nuts!
sorry I am not on board with that.
addendum
I am not on board with going back on gay marriage
I have accepted it
we need gays on our side
not alienate all of them.
-
(ccp) "We better not overplay our hand with contraception
that is nuts!"
- Yes. Just a left wing invented straw man - until some activist gives it credibility.
There ARE unenumerated rights. Killing your young wasn't one of them.
(ccp) "I am not on board with going back on gay marriage".
- Agree. That ship sailed.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/109/602/987/original/860cd80083dc0512.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/109/602/987/original/860cd80083dc0512.png)
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If you are impressed with this ruling, you don't understand that this is just a re-sorting of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-asdf-right-abortion
Time to release the violent leftist paramilitaries!
Elections have consequences!
If you are not impressed with today's ruling, you are probably not a black baby fetus on death row.
One hell of a lot of election work and victories over an extended period went into this small step toward restoring the meaning of the constitution.
Roe v Wade has
been aborted in the 198th trimester.
https://babylonbee.com/news/roe-v-wade-aborted-in-198th-trimester?utm_source=The+Babylon+Bee+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db0c7319f8-Sponsored_Newsletter_6%2F24%2F22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62f636e998-db0c7319f8-39963636&mc_cid=db0c7319f8
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https://media.gab.com/system/preview_cards/images/027/317/134/original/496ad3de2e58c972.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/system/preview_cards/images/027/317/134/original/496ad3de2e58c972.jpeg)
If you are impressed with this ruling, you don't understand that this is just a re-sorting of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-asdf-right-abortion
Time to release the violent leftist paramilitaries!
Elections have consequences!
If you are not impressed with today's ruling, you are probably not a black baby fetus on death row.
One hell of a lot of election work and victories over an extended period went into this small step toward restoring the meaning of the constitution.
Roe v Wade has
been aborted in the 198th trimester.
https://babylonbee.com/news/roe-v-wade-aborted-in-198th-trimester?utm_source=The+Babylon+Bee+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db0c7319f8-Sponsored_Newsletter_6%2F24%2F22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62f636e998-db0c7319f8-39963636&mc_cid=db0c7319f8
-
(ccp) "We better not overplay our hand with contraception
that is nuts!"
- Yes. Just a left wing invented straw man - until some activist gives it credibility.
There ARE unenumerated rights. Killing your young wasn't one of them.
(ccp) "I am not on board with going back on gay marriage".
- Agree. That ship sailed.
Is it true that Justice Thomas said we should revisit this ?
If he did he just awake the entire LEFT to total mass media blitz of this till the election and after
Sorry, I love Justice Thomas as much as anyone here , but of all the dumb shit things.....
-
Yes, we should cower before the left.
(ccp) "We better not overplay our hand with contraception
that is nuts!"
- Yes. Just a left wing invented straw man - until some activist gives it credibility.
There ARE unenumerated rights. Killing your young wasn't one of them.
(ccp) "I am not on board with going back on gay marriage".
- Agree. That ship sailed.
Is it true that Justice Thomas said we should revisit this ?
If he did he just awake the entire LEFT to total mass media blitz of this till the election and after
Sorry, I love Justice Thomas as much as anyone here , but of all the dumb shit things.....
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ccp, I do not believe Justice Thomas said that. I am open to being proven wrong on that. I'm traveling now but I read the entire draft opinion. There are words in there specifically saying this does not apply to other issues. This is about abortion and the jurisdiction of the Court versus the states and the legislatures.
To regulate preconception is an issue with a woman and her body. Abortion has a recognized competing interest involved. Big difference.
-
then he needs to come out and say "I did not say that and am not thinking that"
why remain silent if not true?
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/roe-was-never-law/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%20New%202022-06-25&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
Roe Was Never Law
Pro-life campaigners celebrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., June 24, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Gett Images)
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By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
June 25, 2022 6:30 AM
A controversial subject that should never have been wrested from the people in the states has now been returned to them.
There is no mincing words: The Supreme Court’s historic Dobbs ruling made Friday a great day for life.
A great day for the restoration of American constitutional law, too. And a great day for democracy in our republic. It marks a high moment for the United States Supreme Court, which has been tested as never before. It stood firm and yet restrained, acknowledging that the great public-policy decisions in our society are to be made by free, self-determining people, not unelected judges.
Barack Obama, perhaps the nation’s most solipsistic politician and ideologue, took only moments after the issuance of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion to wail that the Supreme Court had relegated the most “intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues.” If you’re keeping score, yes, this would be the same Barack Obama whose signature presidential “achievement” was radically expanded government control over the health sector, leaving more and more intensely personal decisions — decisions about actual health care, as opposed to the taking of unborn life under the guise of health care — at the whim of partisan Democrats and progressive bureaucrats.
The main point here, though, is not hypocrisy. It is hard-edged politics. The former president went directly to politics because, for abortion crusaders, there has never been anything else.
In Roe, seven willful politicians in robes usurped the power of the putatively sovereign states to regulate abortion. Unless a constitutional right was at stake, the federal judiciary had no business intruding on the internal governance of the states, particularly over matters of health and safety that are the traditional domain of the states. But the Constitution does not speak to abortion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Dobbs concurrence reminds us of Justice Antonin Scalia’s bracing but inarguable point in Casey: the “States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” Permit it on demand, forbid it entirely, or implement some regulatory regime between those two polar opposites. It is simply not a constitutional question. Ergo, a judicial edict on it, Roe, has always been a usurpation of authority under the guise of law, not an authoritative explication of the law.
You would know that if you had perused the briefs and weighed the argument in Dobbs. Or, indeed, if you have followed a half century of the house of cards that has been abortion jurisprudence. As Justice Alito recounts in Dobbs, the eminent liberal legal scholar John Hart Ely memorably described the salient feature of the Roe excrescence when it first appeared: The decision is not merely “bad constitutional law”; rather “it is not constitutional law and gives no sense of an obligation to try to be.”
It was never law at all. The very able lawyers who have defended Roe over the decades have eschewed arguments rooted in the Constitution. Roe has been defended as precedent: The decision commanded deference because it happened, not because it was compelling — or even coherent. It could never be justified on its own terms as linear, logical, legitimately rooted law.
Progressives have thus made a talisman of stare decisis, the doctrine of respect for precedent. They would have you believe, at least when it’s a precedent they like, that stare decisis is Latin for “don’t you dare touch this settled law.” Like the rest of the Roe bag of tricks, that’s laughable as a legal argument — we’ve all noticed that Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu, and other precedents in the Court’s lowlight reel were reversed by the Court. More to the point, though, stare decisis has never been a mandate to uphold precedent; it is a multipart test to assess which precedents should be retained.
It’s a test that Roe was particularly ill-suited to survive.
We haven’t been under Roe for, now, 30 years. The ruling was so unstable and indefensible that, in Casey (1992), a reluctant, razor-thin majority of the Court could save it only by gutting its rickety foundation while maintaining its bottom-line holding — again, in the manner of “because I say so” diktat, not legal reasoning.
And what did Casey replace Roe with? A newfangled “undue burden” test — essentially asking: Does a regulation so burden resort to the abortion “right” as to render it illusory? Notice, however, that it is the nature of such a test to invite regulation and therefore to invite constant streams of challenges.
If we could keep abortion out of it for a moment, then, and think of this as a straight, legal stare decisis question, you had a ruling that was so galactically wrong that it had to be completely overhauled in less than 20 years. A ruling that was so unstable that it was subject to constant regulatory and legal challenge, and thus could not reasonably be relied on. And that’s just the legal landscape, before you ever get to the court of public opinion — the cultural and political arena in which Roe/Casey was never broadly accepted and was always the target of passionate dissent by much of the country.
Roe was not law and could never be defended as such. It has thus been defended by extortion, by the mob. It still is: The Court’s opinion was not even published before the “Night of Rage” planning was under way. The Left tried to prevent the ruling from issuing by an unprecedented leak of a draft opinion, patently intended to intimidate the justices — just as the Left destroyed the judicial-confirmation process over abortion with the intent of intimidating justices. In the weeks since the leak, we have had illegal protests against which a leftist administration has refused to enforce the laws (Roe having corrupted the Justice Department the same way it corrupted the law), and finally the attempted murder of Justice Kavanaugh — an utterly predictable event incited (to borrow the Left’s promiscuous use of that word) by the likes of the Senate’s Democratic Party leader.
Thanks to the courage of the justices, the intimidation campaign not only did not work, it was counterproductive. Dobbs did not hit on Friday like a bolt from the blue. It was issued almost two months after a leak that has enabled constitutional conservatives to make inroads with the public, to edify Americans who might otherwise have fallen for the Left’s shock-and-awe demagogy that, no, the Alito opinion would not actually outlaw abortion; and, no, it would not criminalize women who seek to avail themselves of the sordid procedure.
The fringe promised rage in the darkness, but the country rises this morning to find that the sky has not fallen. All that has happened is that a controversial subject that should never have been wrested from the people in the states has now been returned to them. After a long half-century, the people have been re-empowered to decide for themselves how abortion should be regulated — no longer dictated to by barbaric extremists who refuse to concede any limitation on the right to end a baby’s life, up to the moment of delivery.
Fidelity to the law has finally driven the extortionists out of the courts. Now we’ll see how their radical politics fares in the political arena. Life won big on Friday. But far from a final victory, it is more like a new beginning: the joining of the battle in the place where it should always have been fought.
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Now that we have had the end of the beginning, now we begin the beginning of the end game
https://www.nrlc.org/wp-content/uploads/NRLC-Post-Roe-Model-Abortion-Law-FINAL-1.pdf
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https://reason.com/2022/06/27/enforcing-abortion-bans-is-much-harder-than-winning-in-court/
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https://www.newsmax.com/politics/colleges-abortion-supreme-court-mental-health/2022/06/29/id/1076604/
:roll:
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https://www.newsmax.com/politics/colleges-abortion-supreme-court-mental-health/2022/06/29/id/1076604/
:roll:
These people think they'll beat us in CW2.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-backs-filibuster-change-to-restore-abortion-rights/ar-AAZ2lby?ocid=uxbndlbing
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Dave Portnoy and the ‘Bro-Choice’ Crisis
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy at SiriusXM Studios in New York City in 2017. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
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By MADELEINE KEARNS
June 30, 2022 6:30 AM
For decades, women have been duped into devaluing the price of their intimacy. Now selfish men are getting their comeuppance.
Last week, Dave Portnoy, founder of the Barstool Sports blog, released an “emergency press conference” on Twitter in response to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. He lamented that without guaranteed abortion access, the country is “going backwards.” He said he sees no other choice but “to vote for a moron like Biden because the Right is gonna put Supreme Court people in who are just ruining this country, taking basic rights away.”
I’ll leave it to one of my colleagues to settle the question whether Portnoy represents the “future of the conservative movement” (as has been suggested). What’s of more immediate interest is that the overturning of Roe could facilitate something of a crisis for the bro-choice movement.
Portnoy’s strong feelings about abortion are representative of men who pursue commitment-free sex and are thus beneficiaries of Roe. And some women seem to share these feelings. The other day, Vice President Kamala Harris said on CNN, “If you are a parent of sons, do think about what this means for the life of your son and what that will mean in terms of the choices he will have.”
Yes, do think. It’s long overdue.
The first time Portnoy appeared on my radar was in relation to his unfortunate MeToo episode. After Business Insider published a story in which women he’d slept with accused the blogger of becoming violent during sex, choking them, and filming them without permission, Portnoy posted a video on Twitter offering his side of the story. He denies any violence and says that everything that happened was “100 percent consensual.”
After examining the evidence, the nicest thing I have to say about Portnoy is that he isn’t a rapist.
Every Abortion Law in America Protects Women with Ectopic Pregnancies
That, of course, is a very low bar to clear. But Portnoy’s indignation went beyond countering accusations of criminality. It was clear he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. He complained he was being “painted as a sexual deviant.” The word “deviant” simply means “departing from the usual or accepted standards.” It would be far better for everyone, including Dave Portnoy, if the behavior he so shamelessly recounted was considered deviant.
Matthew Walther, in describing the rise of Portnoyism and why it’s such a popular kind of politics, points to some of the causes it embraces, such as “the rights of male undergraduates to engage in fornication while intoxicated without fear of the Title IX mafia.” The Title IX mafia are indeed a menace, trampling on the due-process rights that everyone — including actual criminals — is entitled to. However, defending due-process rights ought not to be conflated with moral approval of particular behaviors. Men are not entitled to sex without “fear” of consequences. And not least because all sex has consequences — if not physical, then emotional and spiritual. Selfishness ought to be shameful.
The truth is that fear of unwanted responsibilities and social pressure are far more effective deterrents to sexual misbehavior than any kangaroo court or campaign of personal or political vindictiveness. The reason is that, per Kamala Harris, it requires thinking — the anticipation of mutual responsibility.
Biden Calls for Filibuster ‘Exception’ to Codify Roe after ‘Outrageous’ Supreme Court Decision
Consider the alternative we’ve lived with since the sexual revolution. In his posthumous Netflix special, Nothing Special, Norm Macdonald said ironically: “I remember telling the fellas in high school, ‘Guys, I think we’re making a big mistake by shaming the sluts. You see, here’s what is my concern. I feel if we shame them too much, they might stop becoming sluts.’”
Shame acted as a safeguard against behaviors that are both individually and socially destructive. This applied to both sexes. In addition to “slut-shaming,” there was also cad-shaming. Before the sexual revolution, the minimum offer required by society for a man to secure sex with a woman outside of wedlock was commitment. When sex resulted in pregnancy, society expected him to rise to the occasion and marry her. Her family would demand it — hence the term “shotgun wedding.” A man who failed to meet this expectation would be considered unmanly and immoral.
For decades, women have been duped into devaluing the price of their intimacy. Once, the default was to deny sex until a woman’s long-term interests had been guaranteed; then the default became to go along with it, bearing the full weight of the associated risks and responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, that has suited many men just fine. Now some women are reconsidering. Insider reports that, in response to the overturning of Roe, “some in Gen Z [are] reevaluating their relationship to sex, intimacy, and hookup culture.” Good.
We were told that a sexual ethic reliant on easily accessible contraception and abortion as a backstop would liberate women. What it’s done instead is liberate several generations of Portnoys. Now, the bro-choice movement is getting its comeuppance.
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https://sci-hub.se/http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/14767059209161911?fbclid=IwAR28_m26IfnBTQCXylEZdEfSHJByBZGh9LgaFLYmcAxP3X-t4ShbkA8nxC8
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/27/pro-abortion-demonstrators-unleash-weekend-of-arson-vandalism-and-insurrection-after-dobbs/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Extremist%20Roundup%202022-06-30%20SIB&utm_medium=email
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No Dem Bounce from Roe Repeal: Emerson Poll
Voters continue to disapprove of Biden and favor Republicans.
https://spectator.org/no-dem-bounce-from-roe-repeal-emerson-poll/
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This is not what I was told would happen.
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For 58% of U.S. women who had induced abortions in 2019, it was the first time they had ever had one, according to the CDC. For nearly a quarter (24%), it was their second abortion. For 11% of women, it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher.
Think… Somewhere between 80 thousand and 100 thousand abortions in 2019 were had by women, for whom it was their 4th (or higher) abortion… Really think about it.
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Nobody needs a high capacity abortion!
For 58% of U.S. women who had induced abortions in 2019, it was the first time they had ever had one, according to the CDC. For nearly a quarter (24%), it was their second abortion. For 11% of women, it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher.
Think… Somewhere between 80 thousand and 100 thousand abortions in 2019 were had by women, for whom it was their 4th (or higher) abortion… Really think about it.
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Nobody needs a high capacity abortion!
For 58% of U.S. women who had induced abortions in 2019, it was the first time they had ever had one, according to the CDC. For nearly a quarter (24%), it was their second abortion. For 11% of women, it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher.
Think… Somewhere between 80 thousand and 100 thousand abortions in 2019 were had by women, for whom it was their 4th (or higher) abortion… Really think about it.
I wonder if these high capacity abortion pregnancy people were getting a cut of the action on the body parts Planned Parenthood was caught selling, or just got screwed, so to speak.
https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2020/05/planned-parenthood-testimony-on-selling-baby-parts-unsealed-new-videos-released/
Kind of a contradiction that it is 'nothing to see here' that they are aborting, yet the parts are sold as living, functional organs and tissue.
I wonder why the 20 gestational week 'fetus' squirms when you puncture it, and why extreme 'liberals' have more compassion for a chicken in a chicken coop than they do for a developing human. Kind of blows the theory that liberals care more about others while conservatives risk everything, with nothing to gain personally or politically, standing up for the most innocent and vulnerable among us.
Supreme Court decision could lead to the end of hookup culture.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/women-tiktok-hookup-culture-absolutely-062100891.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/29/relationships-post-roe/
What says love and commitment like knowing you can kill your unwanted consequences of your hookup?
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https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/t/thomasjefferson/157225/thomasjefferson1-2x.jpg
(https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/t/thomasjefferson/157225/thomasjefferson1-2x.jpg)
Nobody needs a high capacity abortion!
For 58% of U.S. women who had induced abortions in 2019, it was the first time they had ever had one, according to the CDC. For nearly a quarter (24%), it was their second abortion. For 11% of women, it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher.
Think… Somewhere between 80 thousand and 100 thousand abortions in 2019 were had by women, for whom it was their 4th (or higher) abortion… Really think about it.
I wonder if these high capacity abortion pregnancy people were getting a cut of the action on the body parts Planned Parenthood was caught selling, or just got screwed, so to speak.
https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2020/05/planned-parenthood-testimony-on-selling-baby-parts-unsealed-new-videos-released/
Kind of a contradiction that it is 'nothing to see here' that they are aborting, yet the parts are sold as living, functional organs and tissue.
I wonder why the 20 gestational week 'fetus' squirms when you puncture it, and why extreme 'liberals' have more compassion for a chicken in a chicken coop than they do for a developing human. Kind of blows the theory that liberals care more about others while conservatives risk everything, with nothing to gain personally or politically, standing up for the most innocent and vulnerable among us.
Supreme Court decision could lead to the end of hookup culture.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/women-tiktok-hookup-culture-absolutely-062100891.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/29/relationships-post-roe/
What says love and commitment like knowing you can kill your unwanted consequences of your hookup?
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see # 4
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-sneak-peek-9d3308e1-19c3-41e0-85ae-b3989e18fa7b.html?chunk=3&utm_term=emshare#story3
also # 5
G7 need to get into our business about abortion ! :-(
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Hidden Camera VIDEO: Nurse at Abortion Clinic ‘House of Horrors’ Reveals Chilling Truth to Undercover Investigator
By Michael Wing July 5, 2022
An undercover investigator has obtained hidden camera footage from an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., that raises grave ethical concerns.
The candid video, taken by a 28-week-pregnant woman, reveals a nurse saying that the babies they abort do not receive digoxin — a lethal injection given to infants in utero during an abortion to ensure the baby is not born alive during the procedure. This increases the chances of a baby being born alive and possibly being illegally killed after birth.
The nurse also told the patient she may deliver the deceased child in her hotel room after the procedure; and furthermore that the doctor would not speak to her until she took Xanax, a mind-altering drug, prescribed by the clinic. This raises ethical concerns about how the clinic obtains proper consent. The patient has since filed a formal medical complaint.
Watch the undercover footage from the D.C. abortion clinic:
“The undercover footage released today shows that the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility is forcing mothers to take mind-altering medications before meeting with the abortionist and giving final consent. This is a likely violation of basic medical ethics, and so the patient has filed a complaint with the D.C. medical board,” said Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, in a June 23 press release. Live Action is a leading prolife organization in the United States.
Rose continued, “The footage also provides first-hand testimony that the Washington Surgi-Clinic may kill later-term babies without using a feticidal drug, increasing the chance that the babies would be born alive and then brutally and illegally killed. Whether or not this drug is used, this facility is ending innocent lives through violence. Tragically, this footage also shows the nurse relaying the reality that the patient may be left to deliver her dead child alone in her hotel room.”
The investigator is heard asking the nurse what to expect during the procedure.
Nurse: No. We don’t do the — a lot of people do the injection through the heart and all that. We don’t do that here.
Patient: Okay. I didn’t even know.
Nurse: Yeah. She’ll be alive when you go to sleep, but she will definitely have passed before he does anything.
Abortionist Cesare Santangelo, who runs the Surgi-Clinic, has been under scrutiny in recent months after prolife activists found five late-term aborted babies being disposed of as medical waste from the clinic. Some were deemed by medical experts to have likely been viable births.
Live Action shared the experts’ conclusions: An incision behind the neck of one baby girl, between 28–30 weeks’ gestation, indicated she was possibly killed via the federally banned D&X abortion procedure, more commonly known as partial-birth abortion. Her neck was cut and brain removed. An intact baby boy, who may have been nearly full-term, may have been the victim of infanticide. Another baby, found in her gestational sac, may have been born alive and left to die; while two other children, a boy and a girl, about 22 weeks and 28 weeks respectively, were found brutally dismembered, indicating D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortions.
Epoch Times Photo
(Courtesy of Live Action)
The video continued:
Patient: This is the possibility of labor, basically?
Nurse: Yeah. Spontaneous abortion.
Patient: I’m sorry, that means …
Nurse: You may go into premature labor and deliver the fetus in your hotel.
Patient: Right. What do you tell me to do when that happens?
Nurse: That depends on what happens.
Patient: Do you guys come and like —
Nurse: He could come and help you take care of it. We could just tell you what to do with the remains. It just depends on what happens.
“This footage also shows the unethical and coerced administration of Xanax prior to seeing the abortionists,” Rose added. “Xanax is a substance that medical experts attest impairs a patient’s ability to give truly informed consent, particularly when a patient is not used to taking the drug.”
Patient: Does the Xanax effect, like —
Nurse: — The fetus?
Patient: No, not the fetus, just my clarity of thinking.
Nurse: It shouldn’t. I mean, you might be a little sleepy, but other than that …
Patient: I would really — I don’t mind if I have to stay longer, I would really rather talk to him first.
Nurse: Um …
Patient: Is that not usually how you guys do it?
Nurse: Yeah, that’s unfortunately — cause like I said, we have to make sure that’s in your system before you talk to the doctor. He’s not going to be able to speak with you until he is ready to do it.
Epoch Times Photo
(Courtesy of Live Action)
The patient has now filed a medical complaint, calling on the D.C. medical board to investigate the apparent unethical activity, Live Action reported.
Experts reviewed the footage and shared their opinions, including Dr. Christina Francis OBGYN CEO-elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who said: “Xanax is a substance that, in a patient who is not used to taking it, would most definitely impair her judgment and therefore her ability to give truly informed consent. There is no reason a medication like this should be routinely given to a patient prior to her meeting with a physician and going through the consent process. Often times patients are not allowed to drive or operate heavy machinery for up to 24 hours after even minor procedures due to sedating medications they have received that impair their competence to make complex decisions. Xanax is a clear sedative, especially in a patient naïve to that medication.”
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, ethicist and former Graves Chair of Moral Philosophy at Union University, also studied the video.
“The footage I viewed indicates a likely ethical violation and could warrant further inquiry due to it demonstrating that patients were required to ingest Xanax before a full medical consultation could occur,” he said. “Being a physician entails profound ethical responsibilities and professional duties to the patient to inform, treat, and care. The physician himself or herself is ultimately responsible to ensure informed consent, in which the patient understands the diagnosis, treatment options, potential outcomes, and possible complications of a procedure or medication. That means being available to the patient to answer any questions the patient has about his or her care. Failure to do so is a dereliction of duty.”
Rose is now calling for the D.C. government, including the mayor, medical examiner, and chief of police, to investigate Santangelo and his facility.
“They are not only killing children through abortion, but they may be committing illegal infanticide, as well as other federal crimes such as partial-birth abortion,” she added. “We demand justice for these babies, and the closure of D.C.’s House of Horrors, the Washington Surgi-Clinic.”
Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
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should change their name to
American College of Democrat Physicians:
https://www.acponline.org/advocacy/acp-advocate/archive/july-8-2022/acp-advocacy-for-reproductive-health-care-rights-to-focus-on-the-states?utm_campaign=FY22-23_NEWS_ACPADVOCATE_070822_EML&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
Notice how never is mentioned that abortion should be restricted to early term even
Only that it is needed for "reproductive health"
(you know , like "prostate health" or "breast health")
and "limiting access to care"
as i posted before I do not recall ever seeing any health care journal publication that advocated
for "pro life"
in close to 40 yrs .
Something very odd about that if you ask me.
is terminating a baby in keeping with the hippocratic oath?
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/mortons-flooded-phone-calls-fake-195706339.html
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https://i0.wp.com/politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tweet-employer-pay-female-kill-baby-more-dystopian-handmades-tale.jpg?resize=520%2C365&ssl=1
(https://i0.wp.com/politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tweet-employer-pay-female-kill-baby-more-dystopian-handmades-tale.jpg?resize=520%2C365&ssl=1)
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dicks-sporting-goods-hit-with-civil-rights-complaint-for-funding-employee-abortions-not-childcare/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=28376645
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/07/14/poll-young-people-willing-move-change-sexual-habits-based-state-abortion-laws/
but no worries
it will not effect '22
:-o
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This is good.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/07/14/poll-young-people-willing-move-change-sexual-habits-based-state-abortion-laws/
but no worries
it will not effect '22
:-o
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/pregnancy-childbirth-bodies-young-girls-175017137.html
NYT
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
:roll:
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/pregnancy-childbirth-bodies-young-girls-175017137.html
NYT
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
:roll:
Not mentioned:
What illegal alien rape does to the minds and bodies of young girls.
Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world.
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https://populistpress.com/michigan-gov-removes-pro-life-programs-from-state-budget/
can we please get her booted out in '22?
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What Pro-Lifers Should Learn From Kansas
They asked for too much because they failed to prepare for the debate over abortion after Roe v. Wade.
Peggy Noonan hedcutBy Peggy NoonanFollow
Aug. 4, 2022 6:55 pm ET
I found myself unshocked by the abortion vote in Kansas, and I don’t understand the shock of others. America has come to poll consistently in favor of abortion in the first trimester with support declining in the second and cratering in the third. The people of Kansas were asked if they’d like to remove any right to abortion from their state constitution and allow their legislators to fashion new laws and limits. They said no by 59% to 41%.
That margin in a conservative state might have been surprising, but not the outcome. The proposal would have looked to voters radical and extreme: We’re going to sweep it away, immediately? It’s all or nothing? And we’re going to hand all our trust to legislators in hopes they’ll be wise? I have never met an American who confused his state representative with a philosopher king.
In Kansas, pro-lifers asked for too much. People don’t like big swerves and lurches, there’s enough anxiety in life. They want to absorb, find a way to trust. Dobbs was decided only six weeks ago.
And those six weeks have been confusing and chaotic. Nationally, the pro-life movement spent 50 years fighting for something and then, once it won, its leaders seemed to go silent or sound defensive. It’s possible they were attempting to be tactful as opposed to triumphalist, but it left a void and foolish people filled it.
No compelling leader has emerged as a new voice. National energies haven’t been scaled down to state activity. Pro-choice forces, galvanized when the Dobbs draft leaked in May, raised money, spent it shrewdly, drew in talent and were pushed by a Democratic Party that thought it finally had a game-changing issue. Pro-lifers didn’t have an overarching strategy. But everything we know about abortion tells us that when you turn it into a question of all or nothing, you’ll likely get nothing. Thoughtful, humane legislation has to be crafted in the states, put forward, argued for.
The pro-life advocates who filled the rhetorical void competed over who could be most hard-line: There should be no exceptions for rape, if it even was rape. There should be no exceptions for the life of the mother, that gives dishonest doctors room to make false claims. Maybe we can jail women for getting abortions.
It was gross, ignorant and extreme. It excited their followers but hurt the cause they supposedly care about. There was an air of misogyny, of hostility to women. It was, unlike the most thoughtful pro-life arguments of the past 50 years, unloving, unprotective and punitive.
People heard it and thought: No, that’s not what we want.
Moderate, reasoned, balanced approaches will appeal to the vast middle. Arguments over whether women should be prosecuted for crossing state lines to get an abortion won’t.
The public face of the pro-life movement looks at the moment loony and vicious. Last Saturday in Florida, Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman and famous idiot, spoke at a student event and said overweight and unappealing women don’t need to fear pregnancy: “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.” A 19-year-old pro-choice activist then drew his mockery by responding on Twitter, and NPR reports that she cannily used the confrontation to raise more than $700,000 for pro-choice causes.
We live in a democracy. The pro-life side rightly asked for a democratic solution to a gnawing national problem. To succeed, they need baseline political skills. You persuade people as to the rightness of your vision. You act and speak in good faith so they trust you. You anticipate mischievous and dishonest representations of where you stand. You highlight them and face them. There has in fact been a lot of misrepresentation of where pro-lifers stand and why, and what their proposals will achieve. You have to clear the air. You can win a lot with candor and good faith. You can impress by being prepared and ready.
Most important, there is a political tradition in democracy that consists of these words: “That’s asking too much.” Don’t ask people for more than they can give. Don’t go too far, don’t lose by asking for a sweeping decision when people will be willing to go step by step. Ask for as much as they can give, pull them toward your vision, but don’t be afraid of going slow and steady, be afraid of overloading the grid. That’s part of what happened in Kansas: They were asked to take a step they thought extreme, and they don’t like extreme.
You have to be clear in explaining how society will arrange itself if you get the measure you asked for. In this case, the pro-life cause, conservatives and the Republican Party have the chance to speak of, laud and increase state and private help for women bearing children in difficult circumstances. The antiabortion movement will never really succeed unless it is paired in the public mind with compassion for the struggling. The Republican Party had the chance to align itself with women. Has it taken it? Or is it too busy talking about “impregnating” those you find unattractive?
Finally, if you are going to be in politics you had better know what your own people are thinking. NBC’s Steve Kornacki noted the morning after the vote that turnout in Kansas was high—276,000 Democrats, 464,000 Republicans and 169,000 unaffiliated voters. The number of votes against the abortion amendment was more than 543,000. That means a lot of Republicans voted no. A lot who identify as conservative and live in deep red areas voted no. You have to know where your own people are and build policy and strategy around it.
Because this is a democracy. Policy is decided by votes. Every loss contains the seeds of victory, every victory the seeds of loss. Nothing is permanent.
This is America working it out. Some states will be extreme in one direction, some in the other. It’s going to be ugly for a while. Sweet reason has seldom been a dominant characteristic of combatants in this fight. Too bad, because in the vast middle there’s a lot of it.
A lot of state decisions will likely come down along lines of where national polling has been—15-week bans, exceptions for rape and the mother’s life. In the end we may wind up where Chief Justice John Roberts would have put us. The idea in his concurring opinion in Dobbs was to maintain a federal right to abortion while finally granting states broad authority in establishing laws and limits that had previously been prohibited by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This approach may have restrained the worst excesses of both sides, removed a sense of alarm and helped ease the country into fewer abortions in a post-Roe, post-Casey world.
The Dobbs decision, though, requires something more immediate: true adults in legislatures of all levels, and activists who are serious and have a sense of democratic give. All who fight for life must think about this and be our best selves. Or we will wind up having won all, and lost all.
-
Left wing media =>
Kansas vote is a win for pro abortionists!
( https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/03/politics/kansas-abortion-midterm-election-what-matters/index.html)
Right wing media =>
Kansas vote bans abortion !
( https://populistpress.com/first-state-bans-abortion/)
:-o
The truth is a compromise
some abortion with strict limits
Like Justice Roberts was thinking - and another well known genius - me
:-D
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https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=2f726169bc03298f4aa43ba2e1039b2c_62f50368_6d25b5f&selDate=20220811&goTo=A01&artid=4&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=washingtontimes-E-Editions&utm_source=washingtontimes&utm_content=Read-Button
But wait! Things are not as they seem!
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/08/09/stories-on-facebook-chats-used-to-prosecute-women-for-the-crime-of-abortion-leave-out-some-gruesome-details/
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Three more GOP-led states join move to restrict abortion
Judge grants motion for injunction in North Dakota
BY KIMBERLEE KRUESI ASSOCIATED PRESS NASHVILLE, TENN. | Three more Republican-led states will ban almost all abortions this week as yet another slate of laws severely limiting the procedure takes effect following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
To date, 13 states have passed so-called “trigger laws” that were designed to outlaw most abortions if the high court threw out the constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The majority of those states began enforcing their bans soon after the June 24 decision, but Idaho, Tennessee and Texas had to wait 30 days beyond when the justices formally entered the judgment, which happened several weeks after the ruling was announced.
That deadline expired Thursday.
North Dakota’s trigger law was scheduled to take effect Friday, but a district judge in Burleigh County granted a motion for a preliminary injunction as he weighs arguments from the state’s lone abortion clinic that the law violates the state constitution.
Judge Bruce Romanick granted the motion as part of a lawsuit brought by the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo.
The changes in Idaho, Texas and Tennessee will not be dramatic. All states already had antiabortion laws in place that largely blocked patients from accessing the procedure. And the majority of the clinics that provided abortions in those areas have either stopped offering those services or moved to other states where abortion remains legal.
Texas, the country’s secondlargest state, has banned most abortions once fetal cardiac activity has been detected, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. The ban has been in place for almost a year, since courts refused to stop the law last September.
While clinics were severely limited in the services they could provide during that time, they offi cially stopped offering abortions on the day of the Supreme Court ruling. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that state laws that banned abortion before Roe v. Wade could be enforced ahead of the implementation of the trigger law.
Much like Texas’ current abortion ban, the trigger law does not include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Instead it has a provision allowing abortions if a woman’s life or health is in danger.
The political response to the change was swift: Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke chose Thursday to unveil the first TV ads in his campaign against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed off on the statute.
Meanwhile, Texas has challenged a legal interpretation put forth by the federal government that was aimed at requiring Texas hospitals to provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the government from enforcing that interpretation.
Texas argued that the federal guidance would have required hospitals to provide abortions before the mother’s life is clearly at risk, which would have violated the state’s trigger law.
In Tennessee, just two of the six clinics that provide abortions continued to offer the service after Roe was overturned. They did so even as Tennessee enacted a “heartbeat law” similar to the one passed in Texas. Under both the new trigger law and the previous heartbeat law, doctors who violate the law risk felony convictions and up to 15 years in prison.
Operating after the high court’s abortion ruling has been at times a “painful” experience, said Melissa Grant, chief operations officer of Carafem, which has had a Nashville clinic since 2019. The legal environment has required difficult conversations between staffers and patients who may be unaware how early in pregnancy cardiac activity can be detected.
“When we find that we do ultimately have to turn somebody away, whether it’s the first visit, the second visit, the conversations can be very emotional. Primarily anger, fear, grief, sometimes disbelief, and it’s difficult for the staff,” she said.
In Idaho, the federal government argued that Medicaid-funded hospitals must provide “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies despite its trigger law.
Much of Idaho’s law went into effect Thursday, but due to the federal judge’s ruling Wednesday, the state cannot prosecute anyone who is performing an abortion in a medical emergency.
Most abortions in Idaho were effectively banned on Aug. 12, when the Idaho Supreme Court allowed a different law to go into effect allowing potential relatives of an embryo or fetus to sue abortion providers
===================================================
GOP won over Roe, but is losing abortion debate
Republicans need to go on the offense (and compromise)
By Steve Levy
Republican commentators are in a quandary as to why Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a New York swing seat contest for Congress. Or how Democrats are leading in key U.S. Senate races for the midterm election, despite the fact that the country is wallowing in Democratic-caused hyperinflation, open borders and record-breaking crime waves.
The answer? To paraphrase former Bill Clinton operative James Carville: It’s abortion, stupid. (We can also couple in the impact that multiple Trump investigations have had on distracting the focus from these Democratic liabilities.) There have been two seminal political moments in the Biden administration that have altered the trajectory of public opinion. The first was the botched Afghanistan withdrawal last August, which combined gross incompetence with horrific policy. The debacle made Mr. Biden look feeble, illogical and out of touch. It marked the end of his honeymoon and a clear dive toward the polling dumpster.
Additional polls followed showing that Americans favored Republicans in generic matchups as to who should run the country. But over the last few months, Democrats
B3
have gained ground and now are even ahead by four points in a Politico Morning Consultant poll.
The change correlates closely to the leaking of the Supreme Court decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which now places abortion in play in elections on the state and national levels.
Republicans have traditionally been on the losing side of the abortion argument, given that most agree with the policy baked into the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
In May of 2021, Gallup polls showed Americans’ support for abortion in all or most cases at 80%, while the Pew Research Center finds 59% of adults believe abortion should be legal.
An NPR/PBS poll showed that this year, two-thirds of the American public opposed Roe’s reversal.
That concept was confirmed just last month in a Kansas referendum which surprised many political observers but shouldn’t have. Yes, even conservative Midwesterners (when they got in the polling booth) didn’t want the government removing options in the first trimester.
It’s simply hard to fathom how a party can maintain dominance nationwide promoting ending abortion choice in the early months when the public is seemingly demanding it.
While polls show abortion landing far below inflation as a top issue, one should not underestimate the passion it stirs in voters. Fifty-five percent of Americans said in a post-Dobbs poll that abortion now ranks as an important issue to them in the upcoming election, with 56% opposing the Dobbs decision.
Since Dobbs, money has been flowing into Democratic coffers and advocacy groups such as Planned Parenthood, which will be crucial in generating get-out-the-vote campaigns. Dems are crushing Republicans in money raised, having brought in over $80 million through June after word got out about the court decision.
Important demographics, including single women and independents, are impacted markedly by Dobbs.
Lesser informed voters might not be sold on the fact that the Democrats caused the massive rise in crime (which they indeed did), but it’s very easy to distinguish how your local candidate will vote on an upcoming abortion bill.
A recent AP/NORC poll shows that 60% of Americans want Congress to pass legislation making access to some abortions a national right. Given that 60 votes in the Senate would be needed to effectuate such a change, the Senate races will logically be more impacted by the Dobbs decision, which may explain why Democrat Senate candidates are pulling ahead of their Republican rivals.
Republicans would be wise to strike a compromise position that is in line with the electorate and actually winds up limiting abortions. Just as voters want to maintain choice in the first trimester, only 28% support abortions in the last trimester.
Yet, the Democratic platform continues to espouse the radical view that abortion should be a matter of choice, even as a baby is exiting the birth canal.
The GOP should announce that they will agree not to alter present access in the first trimester if Democrats will support bans in the third.
This isn’t only a wise political move, but it would also wind up actually lessening abortions, which is the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement. Pushing too hard on bans in the first trimester will likely lead to larger Democratic majorities and, thus, more abortions.
Polls show that the public trusts Republicans more than Democrats on important issues such as the economy, the border and crime.
The GOP even shifted public opinion toward their favor on the issue of education, a longtime centerpiece of the Democratic platform.
Still, Republicans have faired very poorly with single women and the younger generation, in large part due to a perception of not being flexible enough on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion (though a majority of even Republicans now are copasetic with the former.)
The average American thinks much more like a Republican than a progressive on most issues. By striking a compromise on the abortion front, Republicans could seal the deal in becoming America’s majority party. But if the GOP is perceived as going gung-ho on first trimester bans, the red tidal wave we were anticipating this November could devolve into a tepid ripple.
Steve Levy is president of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as an New York State assemblyman and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” Find more from him at www.SteveLevy.info , @ SteveLevyNY on Twitter and steve@commonsensestrategies.com.
-
What's not good for the red wave is all the blue vote fraud left unpunished.
2022 and 2024 will be stolen.
Three more GOP-led states join move to restrict abortion
Judge grants motion for injunction in North Dakota
BY KIMBERLEE KRUESI ASSOCIATED PRESS NASHVILLE, TENN. | Three more Republican-led states will ban almost all abortions this week as yet another slate of laws severely limiting the procedure takes effect following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
To date, 13 states have passed so-called “trigger laws” that were designed to outlaw most abortions if the high court threw out the constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The majority of those states began enforcing their bans soon after the June 24 decision, but Idaho, Tennessee and Texas had to wait 30 days beyond when the justices formally entered the judgment, which happened several weeks after the ruling was announced.
That deadline expired Thursday.
North Dakota’s trigger law was scheduled to take effect Friday, but a district judge in Burleigh County granted a motion for a preliminary injunction as he weighs arguments from the state’s lone abortion clinic that the law violates the state constitution.
Judge Bruce Romanick granted the motion as part of a lawsuit brought by the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo.
The changes in Idaho, Texas and Tennessee will not be dramatic. All states already had antiabortion laws in place that largely blocked patients from accessing the procedure. And the majority of the clinics that provided abortions in those areas have either stopped offering those services or moved to other states where abortion remains legal.
Texas, the country’s secondlargest state, has banned most abortions once fetal cardiac activity has been detected, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. The ban has been in place for almost a year, since courts refused to stop the law last September.
While clinics were severely limited in the services they could provide during that time, they offi cially stopped offering abortions on the day of the Supreme Court ruling. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that state laws that banned abortion before Roe v. Wade could be enforced ahead of the implementation of the trigger law.
Much like Texas’ current abortion ban, the trigger law does not include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Instead it has a provision allowing abortions if a woman’s life or health is in danger.
The political response to the change was swift: Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke chose Thursday to unveil the first TV ads in his campaign against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed off on the statute.
Meanwhile, Texas has challenged a legal interpretation put forth by the federal government that was aimed at requiring Texas hospitals to provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the government from enforcing that interpretation.
Texas argued that the federal guidance would have required hospitals to provide abortions before the mother’s life is clearly at risk, which would have violated the state’s trigger law.
In Tennessee, just two of the six clinics that provide abortions continued to offer the service after Roe was overturned. They did so even as Tennessee enacted a “heartbeat law” similar to the one passed in Texas. Under both the new trigger law and the previous heartbeat law, doctors who violate the law risk felony convictions and up to 15 years in prison.
Operating after the high court’s abortion ruling has been at times a “painful” experience, said Melissa Grant, chief operations officer of Carafem, which has had a Nashville clinic since 2019. The legal environment has required difficult conversations between staffers and patients who may be unaware how early in pregnancy cardiac activity can be detected.
“When we find that we do ultimately have to turn somebody away, whether it’s the first visit, the second visit, the conversations can be very emotional. Primarily anger, fear, grief, sometimes disbelief, and it’s difficult for the staff,” she said.
In Idaho, the federal government argued that Medicaid-funded hospitals must provide “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies despite its trigger law.
Much of Idaho’s law went into effect Thursday, but due to the federal judge’s ruling Wednesday, the state cannot prosecute anyone who is performing an abortion in a medical emergency.
Most abortions in Idaho were effectively banned on Aug. 12, when the Idaho Supreme Court allowed a different law to go into effect allowing potential relatives of an embryo or fetus to sue abortion providers
===================================================
GOP won over Roe, but is losing abortion debate
Republicans need to go on the offense (and compromise)
By Steve Levy
Republican commentators are in a quandary as to why Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a New York swing seat contest for Congress. Or how Democrats are leading in key U.S. Senate races for the midterm election, despite the fact that the country is wallowing in Democratic-caused hyperinflation, open borders and record-breaking crime waves.
The answer? To paraphrase former Bill Clinton operative James Carville: It’s abortion, stupid. (We can also couple in the impact that multiple Trump investigations have had on distracting the focus from these Democratic liabilities.) There have been two seminal political moments in the Biden administration that have altered the trajectory of public opinion. The first was the botched Afghanistan withdrawal last August, which combined gross incompetence with horrific policy. The debacle made Mr. Biden look feeble, illogical and out of touch. It marked the end of his honeymoon and a clear dive toward the polling dumpster.
Additional polls followed showing that Americans favored Republicans in generic matchups as to who should run the country. But over the last few months, Democrats
B3
have gained ground and now are even ahead by four points in a Politico Morning Consultant poll.
The change correlates closely to the leaking of the Supreme Court decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which now places abortion in play in elections on the state and national levels.
Republicans have traditionally been on the losing side of the abortion argument, given that most agree with the policy baked into the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
In May of 2021, Gallup polls showed Americans’ support for abortion in all or most cases at 80%, while the Pew Research Center finds 59% of adults believe abortion should be legal.
An NPR/PBS poll showed that this year, two-thirds of the American public opposed Roe’s reversal.
That concept was confirmed just last month in a Kansas referendum which surprised many political observers but shouldn’t have. Yes, even conservative Midwesterners (when they got in the polling booth) didn’t want the government removing options in the first trimester.
It’s simply hard to fathom how a party can maintain dominance nationwide promoting ending abortion choice in the early months when the public is seemingly demanding it.
While polls show abortion landing far below inflation as a top issue, one should not underestimate the passion it stirs in voters. Fifty-five percent of Americans said in a post-Dobbs poll that abortion now ranks as an important issue to them in the upcoming election, with 56% opposing the Dobbs decision.
Since Dobbs, money has been flowing into Democratic coffers and advocacy groups such as Planned Parenthood, which will be crucial in generating get-out-the-vote campaigns. Dems are crushing Republicans in money raised, having brought in over $80 million through June after word got out about the court decision.
Important demographics, including single women and independents, are impacted markedly by Dobbs.
Lesser informed voters might not be sold on the fact that the Democrats caused the massive rise in crime (which they indeed did), but it’s very easy to distinguish how your local candidate will vote on an upcoming abortion bill.
A recent AP/NORC poll shows that 60% of Americans want Congress to pass legislation making access to some abortions a national right. Given that 60 votes in the Senate would be needed to effectuate such a change, the Senate races will logically be more impacted by the Dobbs decision, which may explain why Democrat Senate candidates are pulling ahead of their Republican rivals.
Republicans would be wise to strike a compromise position that is in line with the electorate and actually winds up limiting abortions. Just as voters want to maintain choice in the first trimester, only 28% support abortions in the last trimester.
Yet, the Democratic platform continues to espouse the radical view that abortion should be a matter of choice, even as a baby is exiting the birth canal.
The GOP should announce that they will agree not to alter present access in the first trimester if Democrats will support bans in the third.
This isn’t only a wise political move, but it would also wind up actually lessening abortions, which is the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement. Pushing too hard on bans in the first trimester will likely lead to larger Democratic majorities and, thus, more abortions.
Polls show that the public trusts Republicans more than Democrats on important issues such as the economy, the border and crime.
The GOP even shifted public opinion toward their favor on the issue of education, a longtime centerpiece of the Democratic platform.
Still, Republicans have faired very poorly with single women and the younger generation, in large part due to a perception of not being flexible enough on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion (though a majority of even Republicans now are copasetic with the former.)
The average American thinks much more like a Republican than a progressive on most issues. By striking a compromise on the abortion front, Republicans could seal the deal in becoming America’s majority party. But if the GOP is perceived as going gung-ho on first trimester bans, the red tidal wave we were anticipating this November could devolve into a tepid ripple.
Steve Levy is president of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as an New York State assemblyman and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” Find more from him at www.SteveLevy.info , @ SteveLevyNY on Twitter and steve@commonsensestrategies.com.
-
Court says churches don’t need to pay for abortions
BY SEAN SALAI THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A federal court has overturned a California state mandate that required churches to pay for employees’ elective abortions in their health insurance plans, ending a yearslong legal battle.
U.S. District Chief Judge Kimberly Mueller wrote in an opinion filed Thursday that the 2014 directive from the California Department of Managed Health Care is unconstitutional because it imposes a “substantial burden” on the churches’ freedom of religion.
The Eastern District of California’s chief judge said that Mary Watanabe, the department’s director, failed to demonstrate a “compelling interest” for the state not to accommodate the religious beliefs of three churches that filed the lawsuit in 2015.
Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch had asked to be exempt from covering abortions except “when absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother.”
The state agency had argued it only considers objections that come directly from health plans, not from individual employers, due to its compelling interest to keep millions of employers from filing a “flood of exemption requests.”
“Even assuming similar religious challenges materialized in California in large numbers, [Watanabe] has not offered evidence showing that entertaining these religious objections would be so difficult and time-consuming that DMHC’s operations would grind to a halt,’” wrote Chief Judge Mueller, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The ruling does not extend to artificial contraception, which California does not require church health plans to cover.
Jeremiah Galus, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom who helped represent the churches, said emails discovered in court showed California issued the abortion mandate in response to requests from Planned Parenthood.
“The government can’t force a church or any other religious employer to violate their faith and conscience by participating in funding abortion,” Mr. Galus said in a statement.
======================
MARC: What about atheists who believe abortion is a moral wrong?
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How Abortion Could Upend Michigan
An initiative to codify Roe is close to qualifying for the November ballot.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
Aug. 30, 2022 7:00 pm ET
Michigan could be the next state to put abortion on the November ballot, and Democrats no doubt hope it will juice turnout among their base, carrying Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to a second term and maybe flipping some House or state legislative races. Have Republicans devised a better strategy since this month’s blowout referendum in Kansas?
Michigan’s proposed constitutional amendment would create a right to “reproductive freedom,” including abortion access through fetal viability, which is roughly 24 weeks. Proponents needed to gather 425,059 signatures. They submitted about 750,000, which news reports say is the most ever for a Michigan initiative. Official certification to appear on the November ballot could come from a state board Wednesday.
The context is that Michigan has a 1931 law that broadly bans inducing miscarriage, with an exception “to preserve the life of such woman,” but not for victims of rape or incest. The law is on hold as court challenges play out, but it doesn’t seem to be consonant with public opinion in 2022, even in red states like Kansas, to say nothing of purple ones like Michigan.
Yet the proposed constitutional amendment would mirror the Supreme Court’s old standard under Roe v. Wade of requiring unrestricted abortion through about 24 weeks, and it isn’t clear that this is the plurality position either.
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Nationally, the Gallup numbers say 67% of Americans want abortion to be “generally legal” in the first three months (12 weeks) of pregnancy. But only 36% say the same through the first six months (24 weeks). For Michigan residents, state data show that 89.5% of all reported abortions in 2021 were conducted in the first 12 weeks, according to the Detroit Free Press.
In other words, a Michigander could easily consider herself pro-choice and against the 1931 law, while also thinking the proposed constitutional amendment goes too far and that 24 weeks—nearly the start of the third trimester—is late for purely elective abortions. In a less polarized age, Gov. Whitmer and the Republican state Legislature could get together to agree on a line somewhere in between, at 12 weeks, or 15 or 18. Neither side would be thrilled, but that’s the nature of compromise.
Since that seems unlikely at the current political moment, voters might instead be given an all-or-nothing choice: approve the proposed constitutional amendment to codify the line at 24 weeks, or risk the enforcement of the 1931 law. For the pro-life side, this political prospect might be even worse than the lay of the land in Kansas. There the threat was the unknown, and voters decided against giving state lawmakers the power to legislate freely on abortion.
The lesson for pro-life Republicans from Kansas is that they would be better off politically if they put on the record the policy that they intend to pass. Fifteen weeks? With or without an exception for rape victims? Voters of all political persuasions want to know, and they won’t trust a Legislature that declines to specify. Michigan Republicans would be wise to answer the question long before November, and they can then defend that policy on the merits.
Or look at the recent transformation in Arizona of Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee. In the primary he said he was “100% Pro-Life.” Now he’s trying to put Democrat Mark Kelly on defense, saying that the Senator “votes for the most extreme abortion laws in the world.” Mr. Kelly is on record against parental consent requirements. “Ultimately I feel that young women at a certain age should have the rights to make these kind of decisions with their doctor,” he explained. What age? He wouldn’t say.
The public finds some of the Republican proposals on abortion extreme, and it finds some of the Democratic plans extreme, too. Outside the progressive coasts and the most conservative states, the side that will lose is the one that cedes the middle.
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https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=9f27302814c4420cac95b89521210dc7_6310aefd_6d25b5f&selDate=20220901
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The DOJ/FBI will get right on that!
https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=9f27302814c4420cac95b89521210dc7_6310aefd_6d25b5f&selDate=20220901
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The election isn't over yet but it already turns out that the right to slaughter your unborn at any time for any reason is not as widely motivating as initially thought.
https://thehill.com/opinion/3695068-the-gop-is-playing-offense-on-abortion-and-theyre-winning/
Marco Rubio handled the question masterfully in his debate. Paraphrasing, I'm pro-life but every bill I've sponsored or supported includes exceptions because that's what the American people want.
Hard to call that extremist when your opponent wants them killed at any moment up until they can see daylight and maybe a little longer.
-
Note: This is one year before Roe v Wade. Leading Democrats (above) all knew abortion was wrong.
McGovern’s position at the beginning of the campaign was that abortion was a matter that should be left to state legislatures (which is the default Republican position today), and although he resisted attempts at including a pro-abortion plank in the Democratic platform in 1972, he gradually conceded to the pro-abortion views of insurgent feminists. (Muskie and Humphrey, it is worth adding, both opposed abortion. “I am not for it,” said Humphrey. “It compromises the sanctity of life,” said Muskie. The Rev. Jesse Jackson had an even tougher opinion at that time, describing abortion “as too nice a word for something cold, like murder.”) While McGovern conceded under pressure from feminists, he wouldn’t embrace abortion-on-demand. There must be regulating legislation, McGovern thought: “You can’t just let anybody walk in and request an abortion.”
- https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/george-mcgovern-rip.php
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What changed? Science discovered it's not an unborn human life in there??
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Michigan Republicans Show How to Lose on Abortion
Their unwillingness to compromise may lead voters to approve a law more permissive than Roe.
By Nicholas Tomaino
Oct. 28, 2022 5:22 pm ET
Michigan voters may be about to approve an abortion law that would be among the most permissive in the country. If they do, the reason will be a combination of proponents’ dishonesty and opponents’ negligence.
The end of Roe v. Wade has yet to change anything in the Wolverine State. A 1931 law, still on the books but unenforceable under Roe, prohibited abortion except to save the life of the mother. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Planned Parenthood both challenged it in pre-emptive April lawsuits. Two courts granted their petitions for an injunction against enforcing the law, and a state judge struck down the law in September.
Meantime, a group called Reproductive Freedom for All gathered signatures for an initiative to amend the state constitution. “It could be a blueprint for many other states,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren cheered in June.
Proposal 3 is styled as a restoration of Roe, but the language goes further. The amendment’s opening clause provides that “every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including “abortion care.” The term “individual”—not “woman” or “adult”—could preclude laws requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions, says former Michigan Solicitor General John Bursch.
Proponents deny that. “When Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, courts upheld restrictions on minors’ ability to obtain abortions,” writes University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman in an op-ed. “That’s the law that Proposal 3 restores—the protections of Roe. It’s that simple.”
Yet Ms. Litman’s reading contradicts the proposal’s text. It says the right to abortion can’t be infringed absent a “compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” That’s the same standard that applied under Roe between 1973 and 1992, when Planned Parenthood v. Casey changed it to an “undue burden” test.
But Proposal 3 rewrites the standard: An interest is compelling “only if it is for the limited purpose of protecting the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of practice and evidence based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision-making.”
“Those are connected at the hip,” Mr. Bursch says, “so the state would have to survive all three of those hoops in order to pass muster.” It’s difficult to see how Michigan’s parental-consent requirement would remain intact if challenged. Likewise for other moderate restrictions, such as a 24-hour waiting period or a requirement that doctors performing abortions have hospital admitting privileges.
Proponents also take advantage of public confusion over how permissive Roe and Casey were. A June Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans thought abortion should be generally illegal in the second trimester—yet 58% opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, which required it to be available on demand. Although Proposal 3 would allow the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, it also says it shall be available when “an attending health care professional” determines it to be “medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.” As under Roe, the exception swallows the rule. Nothing prevents mere distress from justifying abortion at any point before birth.
Although the amendment imposes policies that seem inconsistent with public opinion, Proposal 3 has as high as 61.6% support in one recent poll. That disparity can be explained in part by the state’s Republican lawmakers’ refusal to consider relaxing the 1931 law. It’s a principled position, but it’s also highly unpopular.
This was made clearer in August, when Kansans voted 59% to 41% to keep their state’s constitutional protection for abortion. When voters believe they’re presented with an all-or-nothing decision on the issue, most are usually inclined to take the former. In ducking that unfortunate reality, Michigan Republicans risk irreparably damaging the pro-life cause.
If Proposal 3 fails, Michigan’s Supreme Court will proceed with the appeal of the 1931 law. The state high court has a 4-3 Democratic majority, which would become 4-3 Republican if GOP candidates win both seats that are up next month. In that event the Democratic majority might speed up the process and rule before the new term begins on Jan. 1 that the Michigan Constitution protects a right to abortion—though presumably not as expansive a right as Proposal 3’s.
This dynamic provides a convenient out for Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon. When asked about the issue in this week’s gubernatorial debate, she said: “The people will decide what they want to do. . . . Abortion rights will be decided by Proposal 3, or it will be decided by a judge.” When pressed again on whether she’d favor amending the law, she demurred.
Republicans are trying to have it both ways, refusing to compromise while avoiding political responsibility for an uncompromising position. The wiser course would be the opposite: not to abandon their principles, but to understand their constituents’ present limits, enact restrictions that have more popular support, and do the hard work of forming a pro-life consensus over the long run.
When the U.S. Supreme Court took on abortion, the Republicans who control Michigan’s Legislature sat on their hands. They had an opportunity to pass legislation amending the 1931 law—by imposing, say, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks—only to have Ms. Whitmer veto it. Doing so would have given them the opportunity to show voters what they would do if not for their extreme governor.
Instead, they countered the Democratic “blueprint” with nothing, which may ensure a political defeat.
Mr. Tomaino is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
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Don't watch this. It's disturbing.
https://youtu.be/nd_9y1-L60c
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/im-so-sorry-sweetheart-new-animated-video-shows-heartbreaking-reality-of-abortion-in-graphic-detail/
This question should be left to the unborn to decide.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/south-carolina-supreme-court-strikes-down-states-six-week-abortion-ban/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30166156
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/actually-we-do-know-when-human-life-begins/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIR%20-%20Sunday%202023-01-08&utm_term=WIR-Smart
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/photographer-captures-incredible-pictures-of-a-baby-born-via-cesarean-section-while-still-inside-his-amniotic-sac_4976616.html?utm_source=Bright&src_src=Bright&utm_campaign=bright-2023-01-14&src_cmp=bright-2023-01-14&utm_medium=email&est=wbi8uuY5Gochyez3tFS96PuK0C3Yxr%2B3qo5RcMzVoNt3BRPg%2B7Y%2BUCiQNTPpi2D5Im5h
Also, note the new, improved name of this thread.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/photographer-captures-incredible-pictures-of-a-baby-born-via-cesarean-section-while-still-inside-his-amniotic-sac_4976616.html?utm_source=Bright&src_src=Bright&utm_campaign=bright-2023-01-14&src_cmp=bright-2023-01-14&utm_medium=email&est=wbi8uuY5Gochyez3tFS96PuK0C3Yxr%2B3qo5RcMzVoNt3BRPg%2B7Y%2BUCiQNTPpi2D5Im5h
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https://www.propublica.org/article/websites-selling-abortion-pills-share-sensitive-data-with-google?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-whole-lot-of-people-were-really-wrong-about-the-dobbs-leak-investigation/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/two-florida-residents-indicted-on-federal-charges-in-connection-with-pregnancy-resource-center-attacks/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30350377
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Perhaps I posted too soon , , ,
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/25/kristen-clarke-pregnancy-resource-center-doj-fake-clinic-abortion/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=7L9tFDZbLa4E1PzdrzGyQoPdrkn.WpkoNOGg37M5oRJmG_HEsJvBfb_q6F4Y0jbdTI8.vUoD
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of course
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/gw-students-add-morning-pill-184734804.html
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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DFMKD00Fm1A
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https://acpinternist.org/weekly/archives/2023/02/28/2.htm?utm_campaign=FY22-23_NEWS_INTERNIST_DOMESTIC_022823_EML&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
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https://acpinternist.org/weekly/archives/2023/02/28/2.htm?utm_campaign=FY22-23_NEWS_INTERNIST_DOMESTIC_022823_EML&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
It polls better than “baby murder”.
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:-D :-D :-D
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The NRA doesn’t sell arms.
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You're on a roll!
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https://www.foxnews.com/us/dna-half-eaten-burrito-ties-wisconsin-doctoral-student-pro-life-center-firebombing-attack
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/04/07/wsj-the-five-alarm-warning-to-republicans-in-2024-n2621638
?
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/04/07/wsj-the-five-alarm-warning-to-republicans-in-2024-n2621638
?
Say it with me.
Vote fraud.
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Agree that there is vote fraud and manipulation but in when it comes to abortion IMHO Reps are seriously overdoing it and it has genuine vote implications. As a political matter (i.e. not spiritual or moral) things like six weeks (this is Florida now IIRC) are a serious non-starter for young voters.
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Agree that there is vote fraud and manipulation but in when it comes to abortion IMHO Reps are seriously overdoing it and it has genuine vote implications. As a political matter (i.e. not spiritual or moral) things like six weeks (this is Florida now IIRC) are a serious non-starter for young voters.
This is why conservatives can’t even conserve the ladies’ rook.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/judge-suspends-fda-approval-of-abortion-pill-mifepristone/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31102875
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/florida-legislature-overwhelmingly-passes-six-week-abortion-ban/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31160353
Politically speaking IMHO this is an error. 12 weeks would have been better.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/florida-legislature-overwhelmingly-passes-six-week-abortion-ban/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31160353
Politically speaking IMHO this is an error. 12 weeks would have been better.
Good.
This helps with the sorting.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/067/711/749/original/ecf4c7d3be7cfcf8.png)
https://notthebee.com/article/so-it-seems-the-left-is-now-turning-to-satan-to-try-to-keep-abortion-legal
Ephesians 6:12
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/satanic-temple-will-argue-abortion-religious-ritual-legal-challenges/
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2023/02/new-mexicos-bishops-shudder-at-prospect-of-satanic-abortion-clinic
There is no free lunch abortion. The price paid is with something that can't be seen by the eyes of mankind, but we know it exists.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/democrats-finally-admit-conservatives-were-right-about-the-equal-rights-amendment/?bypass_key=b29hQXRaU08wdDREVFNsUW40cVo3QT09OjpjMEZGU0RsQ1dubDZObkJpYlV4WlpsRTFTMWxPVVQwOQ%3D%3D&lctg=547fd5293b35d0210c8df7b9&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202023-04-27&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/connecticut-wesleyan-pay-for-students-abortions
I though colleges were for education
not funding sex parties......
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/connecticut-wesleyan-pay-for-students-abortions
I though colleges were for education
not funding sex parties......
They are for whatever the left wants them for, which doesn't include actual education.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chip-roy-confronts-abortion-activist-with-graphic-recording-of-her-casually-discussing-late-term-abortion/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31503221
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Ohio Vote Is Another Warning to GOP on Abortion
Defeat of Issue 1 on Tuesday is likely to encourage abortion-rights advocates to put the issue on more ballots
By Laura Kusisto
Aug. 9, 2023 2:38 pm ET
Even in red-leaning states, support for abortion rights is again proving to be a potent electoral force.
That was the message of Tuesday’s vote in Ohio, where voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made it harder to add abortion rights to the state’s constitution.
The victory for abortion-rights groups, which follows similar wins in Kansas and Michigan, is likely to encourage abortion-rights advocates to put the issue on ballots in more states next year and beyond. Such moves could boost Democratic turnout at a time when many party leaders are worried about low enthusiasm for re-electing President Biden because of his age and weak job-approval ratings.
Republicans likely will have to continue grappling with how much to respond to their conservative base on the issue given that efforts to restrict abortion appear to alienate many moderate and independent voters, particularly in the suburbs.
The Ohio vote Tuesday on the proposal known as Issue 1, didn’t directly touch on the issue of abortion, but it would have put a significant hurdle in front of a separate measure—on the November ballot—to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. Issue 1 would have raised the threshold to amend the state’s constitution by referendum to 60% support, instead of a simple majority. As of Tuesday afternoon, with 97% of the ballots in, the vote stood at 57% against Issue 1 and 43% in support, according to the Associated Press.
Both antiabortion and abortion rights groups ran millions of dollars of advertising in the state in recent weeks. Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who supported Issue 1, said it was needed to raise the standards for future amendments, but at a Lincoln Day event in May he said it was “100% about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of URGE, an abortion-rights group, said Issue 1 was “a cynical attempt to sabotage the power of the people to secure abortion access and they failed.”
Abortion-rights groups have prevailed in six ballot measures since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June. But a key question has been whether they can continue winning referendums in conservative and politically mixed states, as well as leverage voter passions about the issue in other political races.
“It’s pretty clear what direction this stuff is going in. I do think it sends a pretty strong incentive for Democrats to get that on the ballot,” especially in the 2024 presidential election, said Susan Burgess, distinguished professor emerita of political science at Ohio University.
Abortion-rights supporters are gathering signatures in Florida to put a measure on the ballot enshrining abortion rights in that state’s constitution in 2024, which would go before voters as GOP Sen. Rick Scott is seeking re-election. A similar effort is under way in Arizona, one of the most competitive presidential swing states and home to one of the year’s marquee Senate races. That measure could also appear on the November 2024 ballot.
Nationally, Republicans have struggled with how to frame the issue. Republican presidential hopefuls are under pressure from antiabortion groups, an important source of political support, to support a national 15-week ban. So far, leading candidates, including GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, have avoided committing to a national ban, although some of their rivals have.
In a warning sign for Republicans nationally, the Ohio results signaled that support for abortion rights can drive voter turnout. The defeat of Issue 1, by a landslide 14 percentage points, came as more than 3 million voters cast ballots. It was a large turnout for a summertime, off-year election, and substantially higher than the state’s most recent primary election, in May 2022.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who supported Issue 1, said in May that measure was ‘about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out’ of the state’s constitution. PHOTO: JAY LAPRETE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The results also suggested that abortion restrictions draw wide opposition not only in the nation’s populous cities and suburbs but also the exurbs—the communities on the edges of the suburbs that Republicans have relied on to produce big voting margins. Lately, those margins have slipped. The nation’s exurbs swung away from Trump between 2016 and 2020, trimming his 18 point margin from 2016 by 6 percentage points, a Wall Street Journal analysis found after the last presidential election.
In Ohio, outside Columbus, Trump won exurban Delaware County—one of the state’s most populous—by 7 points in 2020; voters there rejected Issue 1 by 16 points. Voters were split about evenly on the measure in Fairfield County, an exurb of Columbus, and Butler County, an exurb of Cincinnati. Trump had won both in 2020 by more than 20 percentage points.
The results also showed that the nation’s urban-rural differences remain an important dividing line in politics. In the 10 Ohio counties that each produced more than 80,000 votes, Issue 1 failed in nine. In the 50 counties that each produced fewer than 15,000 votes, voters favored the measure in all but two.
It remains far from clear whether Tuesday’s results will lead to a revival of Democratic fortunes in Ohio or other similarly conservative states.
“Right now you’re seeing a lot of Democrats take victory laps in the state” and suggesting Ohio may now be more of a swing state, said Robert Alexander, founding director of the Institute for Civics and Public Policy at Ohio Northern University. “That might be a bridge too far.”
The defeat of Ohio’s Issue 1 came as more than 3 million voters cast ballots—a strong turnout for a summertime, off-year election. PHOTO: KURT STEISS/THE BLADE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democrats can look to Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who won re-election by more than 10 points in a race that turned in large part on her opponent’s support for abortion restrictions and featured an abortion amendment on the ballot.
But several GOP governors handily won re-election last year after backing strict abortion restrictions, including Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Greg Abbott of Texas. In Florida, DeSantis won re-election by nearly 20 percentage points after signing a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He later signed a six-week ban.
Tuesday’s vote in Ohio was also likely affected by factors other than abortion. Many voters across the political spectrum viewed it as an attack on democracy and the citizens’ veto, political scientists said.
Nonetheless, polling in the state shows strong support for abortion rights. Opponents of the procedure said that in the lead-up to the November vote they plan to focus on arguments that the amendment would abrogate parental rights.
Nonetheless, Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, acknowledged it will be an uphill battle for the antiabortion side, which is likely to be outspent and doesn’t have the wind at its back in these types of races nationally.
“Every state battle has to be now and is de facto a national battle,” he said. “It creates a certain momentum, a certain expectation, a certain emboldening of one side or another.”
Write to Laura Kusisto at Laura.Kusisto@wsj.com and Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com
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Still no national Republican leadership on this.
Pro life advocates need to separate the moral and legal aspects. You don't enshrine it in the legal system when a majority of the people disagree with you.
I've been saying, find the 60-40 balance point for now, and that point is different in different states. Find that point in law or get used to losing elections.
Heart beat, ability to feel pain or just imagery are ways to judge when a fertilized egg goes from a blob in the mother to a separate human being inside the mother.
Conservatives seem unable to operate with liberal tactics. Probably 30 or 40 states could have at least passed protection for the unborn in the 9th month, or 8th and 8th month. Maybe 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th month in some states. Start somewhere where the Left cannot defeat you, and build political support from there. But no. It's all or none, polls and elections be damned. And so here we are, overreaching politically and losing. Lose the states, lose the nation, lose the economy, lose the rest of our rights, but we held the moral ground! Or did we?
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well said Doug
Agree 100%
no question this will be played nonstop in MSM during the few moments not talking about Trump.
De Santis could easily take this up but seems to refuse
instead is now stuck at 6 weeks due to signing law in Florida
even if he changes it to far more reasonable 14 to 16 weeks he will be asked 100 % of the time why did he then sign law of 6 weeks
Laura Ingraham mentioned yesterday that overturning Roe Wade was the greatest achievement of Conservatives
That his her opinion. - of course she fails to mention it was the greatest political blunder in history if as Doug points out - we DO NOT separate the legal from the political reality.
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"De Santis could easily take this up but seems to refuse. Instead he is now stuck at 6 weeks due to signing law in Florida. Even if he changes it to far more reasonable 14 to 16 weeks, he will be asked 100 % of the time why did he then sign law of 6 weeks."
There is another possible political out here-- he can say there is no federal role here.
"Laura Ingraham mentioned yesterday that overturning Roe Wade was the greatest achievement of Conservatives. That his her opinion. - of course she fails to mention it was the greatest political blunder in history if as Doug points out - we DO NOT separate the legal from the political reality."
Dobbs was a great victory. The political problem arises from how we poltically have played the legal victory e.g. 6 weeks in FL and similar outcomes in some other states.
===============================
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99565-ohios-abortion-warning-2023-08-10?mailing_id=7700&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7700&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/post-roe-america-nikki-haley-151602006.html
got to get the girly vote, those who cannot live without ability to abort at any time.
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Is that fair? Is she not against third trimester abortions?
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I applaud Haley on this.
I was criticizing the NYT
which I felt was kind of writing an attack piece on Nikki
who on Jake Tapper today is impressive though again weak on immigration
Frankly I am thinking she would be better than DeSantis. Certainly better than you know who.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Q39JTABEw&list=PLwl83FtM2x-elRevmyEyAEo3P-MGgOWeH&index=17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Q39JTABEw&list=PLwl83FtM2x-elRevmyEyAEo3P-MGgOWeH&index=17
Lyrics:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jimihendrix/bellybuttonwindow.html
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C'mon
:roll:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/speaker-mike-johnson-dodges-question-on-whether-he-ll-crack-down-on-birth-control/ar-AA1jqvf1?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=9a6e429d04d94ad6b6e21c65eb81eb8f&ei=11
he is against BC ?
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That is both seriously stupid and seriously inconvenient.
I've had such high hopes for him too , , ,
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/gop_cant_make_up_its_mind_about_abortion.html
I think the GOP has made up its mind.
Unfortunately, a large part of the electorate simply does not agree.
That all said I am not clear why some people on the LEFT choose this topic to be the all encompassing reason to vote for the Dems
with so much else going on.
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GOP should make up it's mind on a lot of things.
Abortion has different aspects, medical, moral, political, legal.
Let's say you are 100% pro life and think everyone should be. In the political shere, you need to convince others of that before putting it in law. The law should be state by state and it should where you can get 85% or so agreement, not banned, no exceptions and not unrestricted to full term.
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Keeping our woke vernacular up to date, we will no longer be referring to unborn babies. They are womb colonizers!
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https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/what-comes-after-ohios-issue-1
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second
https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/abortion-miscarriage-and-the-reality-of-an-unborn-child
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https://washingtonstand.com/news/1-in-3-women-worldwide-become-depressed-after-abortion-study
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/elise-mccue/2023/12/15/pro-life-democrat-running-for-president-airs-graphic-ad-exposing-abortion-n2632330
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The GOP hasn’t crowned its nominee for president, but the party has found what it’s sought for months: a winning message on abortion. Though different in style, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley strike similar notes on the issue. Both are pro-life, yet neither supports a federal ban. Their message resonates with a majority of Republicans and could sway a majority of Americans, 55% of whom told Gallup that they oppose abortion in the second trimester. Their position offers the pro-life movement the best chance at saving the unborn.
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First, consider the candidates they beat. Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Mike Pence each supported enacting a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks gestation. While polling shows that many Americans support such a limit in theory, the issue has proved a nonstarter in practice. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, pro-life activists have suffered defeat in ballot measures in such states as Michigan, Ohio and Kansas. Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley have charted a different course.
Mr. Trump’s position seems more or less grounded in political calculation. At a town hall shortly before the Iowa caucuses, he took credit for appointing justices who overturned Roe. At the same time, he said he supported exceptions for the “life of the mother, rape, incest” and wouldn’t push for strict bans in a second term. “I want to get something where people are happy,” he said. “You have to win elections.”
Ms. Haley’s position is politically honest. As South Carolina governor, she signed a 20-week abortion ban, along with other measures such as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Though she said she would have signed a six-week restriction into law, Ms. Haley has also rightly noted that such policies have no chance of passing at the federal level. Doing so would require 60 senators to clear a filibuster. The GOP hasn’t had a majority that size since 1910. Given these constraints, Ms. Haley has promised to “find a consensus that allows us to save as many babies as we can while supporting women in difficult situations.” She wants Americans to “show love for one another, not judgment or contempt.”
image
Nikki Haley speaks during a rally in Concord, N.H., Jan. 23. PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
Both candidates offer exactly what Americans are looking for: consensus. Polls show that voters want something of a compromise—neither strict bans nor limitless access. While Democrats have successfully run state and federal campaigns warning against national restrictions in the past two years, they’ll struggle to pull the same stunt with Mr. Trump or Ms. Haley. Both candidates can shake their heads, smile at the camera, and honestly say: “I stand with the American people.”
Many in the pro-life movement are fearful of this development, concerned that the Republican Party is abandoning its principles for the sake of political expediency. They needn’t fret. Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley haven’t gone soft on abortion. They’re simply doing the hard work of being pro-life without alienating the majority of Americans who describe themselves as pro-choice.
Critical to that approach is speaking up about abortion. There are many people, on the left and right, who would prefer the GOP to ignore the issue altogether. That would be political malpractice, alienating a significant contingent of the GOP base. More important, it would be wrong on principle. Lives are at stake, and if the Republican Party won’t defend them, no one in politics will. Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley aren’t shy on the issue and stick to principle even as they admit political reality.
In the post-Roe landscape, pro-lifers won’t be maximally effective unless we win elections, influence policy, and continue to shape hearts and minds. One of the most successful ways to persuade more people to the cause is with a pro-life president behind the bully pulpit: someone who can uniquely make the case in the public square that unborn children and pregnant mothers deserve protection. In Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley, the movement has its winning message for life.
Mr. Busch is founder of the Napa Institute, a Catholic organization.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-will-alabamas-embryo-ruling-impact-ivf-here-are-6-key-questions-raised-by-the-decision-233037450.html
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Honestly, I never even thought about this let alone knew this was the Jewish view:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/letters-to-the-editor-law-professor-alabama-embryo-ruling-leaves-no-doubt-that-we-re-becoming-a-theocracy/ar-BB1iOgmA?ocid=msedgntphdr&cvid=0ece0aa232d04a939113653ce66e3862&ei=35
http://www.reclaimingjudaism.org/teachings/when-does-life-begin-jewish-view
First breath not conception. :-o
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I did not know that either, but the prof indulges with hyperbolic, sanctimonious crap when he calls the decision a sign of theocracy.
There is sound science and rational logic supporting the definition of the beginning of Life at conception.
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"but the prof indulges with hyperbolic, sanctimonious crap"
Absolutely. I had no doubt prof is a Democrat from the get go. :wink:
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Regarding that "first draws breath" standard-- it was articulated before protecting life upon viability was an option.
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Today's topic.
Alabama's IVF ruling. Last week, Alabama's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of couples suing an Alabama storage facility under the state's wrongful death law after their frozen embryos were lost in an accident. The groundbreaking ruling, in a case dubbed LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., treated the embryos as children who should be afforded certain legal protections, a theory championed by some anti-abortion groups that has now gotten its first validation from a major U.S. court.
Back up: The case combined two lawsuits filed by three sets of parents who underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures to have children and opted to have their remaining embryos frozen. IVF involves combining sperm and egg cells in a lab to create embryos, then implanting one or more of those embryos in a woman's uterus. Extra embryos are usually frozen and stored. In December 2020, the parents claimed that a patient entered an "unsecured doorway" at the Mobile, Alabama, hospital where the embryos were being stored and removed several embryos from the cryogenic nursery. The parents’ suit stated that the patient's hand was freezer-burned by the low temperatures, causing them to drop the embryos and kill them.
The parents sued for wrongful death, but a lower court dismissed the case, saying cryopreserved embryos do not fall under the definition of a "person" or "child." However, the state Supreme Court overruled the court’s decision, saying "extrauterine children" located outside the uterus when they are killed are, in fact, children under the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor Law.
That decision was further enforced by an amendment to the state constitution ratified in 2018, when Alabama voters passed a ballot measure that granted fetuses full personhood rights (though the amendment does not mention frozen embryos).
The law "applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation,” the court wrote. “It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
The court did not go so far as to say the embryos have the same rights as people, nor did it rule that fetuses have constitutional rights. Rather, the court ruled that embryos are covered under both the wrongful death law and the fetal personhood amendment passed by Alabama voters in 2018.
Now what? Three major IVF clinics in Alabama immediately suspended services after the ruling, saying they needed time to figure out the legal implications. At least 11 states have broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws, meaning a ruling like this could lead to similar lawsuits popping up across the country. About 2% of births in the U.S. are now done through IVF.
Over the weekend, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Alabama said the state needs legislation to protect IVF after the ruling, and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said he has no intention of prosecuting families or providers involved in IVF.
While some anti-abortion groups are celebrating the ruling, others expressed concern about how it might impact families who are trying to have children but struggling to get pregnant. Abortion rights groups suggested the ruling is just the tip of the iceberg, and pointed to the words of Alabama'a Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, who quoted the Bible in his opinion.
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself,” Parker wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
Today, we're going to examine some arguments from the right and left about this ruling, then my take.
What the left is saying.
The left is very concerned about the ruling, saying that it puts the entire practice of IVF in jeopardy.
Some say the legal implications imply that all frozen embryos must be implanted, as a discarded embryo could lead to a murder charge.
Others recognize that the ruling is somewhat narrow, but still fear its ramifications on women’s reproductive health.
In CNN, Mary Ziegler wrote about the "twisted irony" of the Supreme Court's ruling.
“In the United States today, recognizing the value of an embryo or fetus sets a precedent that no state can permit access to abortion — and that anyone who chooses abortion may be committing a crime," Ziegler said. "The irony in the Alabama court’s decision is that more Americans who want to be parents will be unable to achieve that dream. The ruling is extraordinary not only in declaring personhood before birth but also in applying the idea to embryos that haven’t been implanted in the uterus. But the ruling is not just bizarre; its consequences may be profound."
"If an embryo is a person, it can no longer be destroyed, donated for research or potentially even stored," she said. "Some abortion opponents argue that if embryos are persons, each one that is created must be implanted — and that would make even storing embryos for future use impermissible. If any of that comes to pass — and in Alabama, it likely will — that will transform how in vitro fertilization (IVF) works, and will mean a lower rate of success for Americans who already struggle to start a family."
In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern said the decision is "even worse than it sounds."
"Judges are once again playing doctor, to the extreme detriment of women trying to build families," Stern said. "It means that a medical professional who inadvertently damages or destroys a microscopic embryo has maimed or killed a legal person and is on the hook for punitive damages that could run into the millions... Any accidental damage to an embryo, and even a failed thawing or transfer, could trigger a calamitous wrongful death suit. And what about unused embryos? The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision suggests that if patients refuse to pay for their storage, the clinic must simply preserve them for free, forever, lest it get slapped with a suit."
"According to the majority, this amendment requires courts to interpret 'the rights of the unborn child equally with the rights of born children.' In practice, that appears to mean that every state law involving 'children' must be extended to embryos—including criminal laws, up to and including homicide," Stern said. "Does the destruction of an embryo, intentional or not, now constitute murder in Alabama? The majority ominously reserved this question for a future case."
In Vox, Rachel Cohen criticized the decision that "invoked God" to claim that frozen embryos count as children under state law.
"This decision and its very obvious fallout are a victory for an extremist wing of the anti-abortion movement I’ve been covering for the last two years. These particular activists believe in the radical idea of ‘fetal personhood,’ meaning they want to endow fetuses (and embryos) with full human rights and legal protection," Cohen said. “It’s also a reminder that the overturn of Roe v Wade is about more than just abortion. It has ramifications for the full spectrum of reproductive health care — including birth control and fertility treatments."
"The ruling was somewhat narrow and did not weigh in on the future of other frozen embryos," Cohen said, and "there's a world where this decision could be relatively contained. The case is also not over; the state Supreme Court is sending it back to a district court for further litigation. In short, this victory for the fetal-personhood movement isn’t fully set, but medical providers and patients… are already left trying to piece together answers that nobody yet has."
What the right is saying.
The right supports the ruling, saying that the court is simply enforcing a standard defined by a state law
Some say the law should go further and end the entire practice of IVF, since it means the killing of unborn children.
Others note that IVF is very popular, and that legal protections for it would and should be coming.
In Newsweek, Josh Hammer said the ruling embodies America's legal heritage.
“The groaning from the left-wing media and political class can be easily explained: The Alabama case entails a dispute over the destruction of unborn human life, and there is no greater sacrament for the contemporary secular leftist than the destruction of unborn human life," Hammer said. "The Alabama Supreme Court had held in an uninterrupted line of cases that an unborn child constitutes a ’minor child’ under the state's wrongful death statute—regardless of stage of embryonic or fetal development. Crucially, neither the plaintiffs nor defendants contested this understanding, and the question was not before the court."
"The only legal question in LePage was thus whether the court should legislate from the bench and decree that which the Alabama Legislature had opted not to do itself: Read into the law an 'extrauterine exception’ that would retain the wrongful death statute's inclusion of unborn children developing in utero but remove legal protection for embryos developing outside the womb. The court, appropriately, declined to do so. That's it. That's the whole case."
In The Spectator, Ellie Gardey called IVF “evil” and applauded the Alabama supreme court.
"Several conservative leaders have responded to the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision by denouncing it," Gardey said. "Conservatives need to wake up to reality: In vitro fertilization is an ugly, evil practice that not only kills millions of children but also has led to a society in which we commodify children as assets to be bought and sold and women as bodies that can be purchased… Conservatives should pursue the end of IVF just as adamantly as abortion because IVF entails killing or freezing many children to create just one. This is because each in vitro treatment typically produces 12–15 children of a particular set of parents."
"Nikki Haley’s response to the Alabama Supreme Court decision suggests that some support for IVF is due to ignorance of its evil. Haley correctly maintains that embryos are human persons and rightly denounces the evil of murder. Yet she somehow misses the fact that there is no IVF without murder," Gardey wrote. "Other states have laws similar to Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. They, too, should recognize that those laws apply to embryos produced through IVF. It is the fastest way to slow the mass slaughter of innocents."
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said a supermajority supports IVF, including many conservative leaders, and you can expect Alabama to protect it.
"Mike Pence has a long political record on behalf of the prolife cause, and in his recent memoir he revealed that his wife underwent IVF. 'Karen and I struggled for more than five years with unexplained infertility,' he told CBS. 'I fully support fertility treatments and I think they deserve the protection of the law,'” the board said. “A memo circulated Friday by the National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed to survey data showing supermajority support for IVF. Donald Trump waded in on Truth Social. 'Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans,’ he said, ‘I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.'"
"The same goes for leaders in Alabama," the board continued. "Given the clarification that’s likely coming, the pausing of IVF procedures in Alabama amid the legal uncertainty could produce needless heartache for couples. But with Roe gone, the people reign supreme on abortion policy, and that will be true on in-vitro fertilization."
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism, or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
Legally speaking, the court’s decision is a logical conclusion of Alabama state law and precedent.
Practically speaking, it’s a terrible result that will have wide-reaching implications for IVF.
Politically speaking, this is a disastrous outcome for Republicans.
Anytime we cover a controversial ruling like this, I like to break it into two parts: The legal arguments, and the practical outcome. Because this case was decided in an election year, I also think it's worth discussing the political ramifications of what just happened.
On the legal merits, this ruling is not that surprising. Alabama's high court has exercised some creative jurisprudence to get to the point where frozen embryos could be protected by law, as Vox's Ian Millhiser laid out. But still, this is both a logical extension of previous rulings, and the logical next phase of the anti-abortion movement's strategy. Alabama voters passed an unqualified fetal personhood bill, and the combination of that bill with pre-existing language about the wrongful death of children made this outcome perfectly plausible. Josh Hammer noted (under "What the right is saying") that the Alabama Supreme Court has held "in an uninterrupted line of cases" that unborn children are granted the same legal protections as minor children under the state's wrongful death statute, regardless of the stage of embryonic or fetal development.
In effect, the court was deciding whether to make an exception for "extrauterine" embryos — that is, embryos existing outside the uterus. I would not have been shocked or surprised had the court gone in either direction in the case, but ultimately the justices argued that the “natural, ordinary, commonly understood meaning” of the word child includes embryos — and argued this was true when the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act was passed in 1872 (state lawmakers then considered the unborn as full legal persons, the majority argued).
Whether or not you agree with that is irrelevant — the court was on pretty solid legal ground to make that interpretation.
As for the practical outcome, it’s simply terrible. Let’s start with the easy stuff first: I want to be clear that I don’t think the hospital was innocent. The details of this case are bizarre (who walks into a hospital and starts fishing around in freezers?), but the hospital seems at the very least negligent. It did not do a good job protecting a very precious thing that belonged to these parents. And the plaintiffs had good reason to pursue a court decision under the wrongful death statute: To collect more money. Justice Will Sellers, who dissented, said “these cases concern nothing more than an attempt to design a method of obtaining punitive damages.”
The ruling is also likely to have narrow implications. Alabama’s criminal homicide or assault law encompasses children in utero, so I doubt we see criminal cases start popping up where someone is charged with homicide for damaging a frozen embryo (again: this was a civil lawsuit). Alabama’s attorney general has already said no such prosecution will happen.
So why is the outcome terrible? Because it undermines the very process of bringing more children into this world. I know so many friends and family members who have benefited from IVF. When I read writing like Ellie Gardey's (under "What the right is saying") describing IVF as "evil," I have no way to reconcile that with my baby cousins or best friends' kids that are the product of IVF. It’s just impossible for me to see these children as the product of "evil" rather than of remarkable scientific advancements that have allowed more and more people to have families.
Of course, that is informed in part by my moral and ethical position on life — and the fact that I see inherently more value in a newborn baby than a frozen embryo. To me, a half dozen frozen embryos never becoming children is worth it for the one that does — especially when the alternative is no new children. I'm pro-family, pro-kids, pro-procreations, and I want as many people who desire it to have the opportunity to be parents.
This lawsuit undermines that — not theoretically, but practically. Alabama's IVF clinics immediately suspended operations after this ruling. Even though IVF clinics are allowed to continue to operate, they could now be confined to practices that we know don’t work as effectively and will with absolute certainty lead to ever fewer children being born. That is to say nothing of how much more expensive the already outrageously expensive treatments will become. Worse yet, we can now expect similar lawsuits to pop up in other states across the country.
Finally, on a political note, this is a disaster for Republicans. According to internal Republican polling, 85% of Americans support IVF. Even former Vice President Mike Pence, perhaps the most high-profile pro-life politician in America, supports IVF (Pence speaks openly about having had children through IVF). House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) also said he supports IVF treatment because it has been "a blessing for many moms and dads" who struggle with fertility. Republican legislators in Alabama are already playing defense, promising to safeguard IVF.
None of that, though, is going to stop Democrats from reminding voters that those assurances are only necessary because of a conservative legal movement. Abortion is the issue helping Democrats win elections right now, and this ruling legitimately represents the "nightmare scenario" many Democrats have warned voters about. Now, they'll be able to use it to their political advantage, no matter how many Republicans try to distance themselves from it.
Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.
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Unintended consequences of the abortion effort:
Abortion is Running Out of Babies
Whom do you abort when no one is pregnant?
March 4, 2024 by Daniel Greenfield 21 Comments
Newsletter
[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The Biden administration is preparing to run the 2024 election on abortion. With a miserable economy and failure on every side, that is the one thing still left for the Democrats to run on.
But no generation has ever had less use for abortion than this one.
After the end of Roe v. Wade, Democrats warned of a decline in abortions, what they failed to mention was that abortions had been declining long before the Supreme Court decision.
After Roe v. Wade first came on the scene, abortions shot up all through the 80s and hit a peak in 1990 with 1.6 million. Then, just as the Democrats decided to go all-in on abortion, purging their pro-life wing, abortion rates crashed, and now struggle to pass the million mark.
The numbers are even more striking when accounting for the large U.S. population increase since 1990. According to the CDC, there were 345 legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births, 24 per 1,000 women, in 1990. By 2021, there were 204 abortions per 1,000 live births and 11.6 abortions per 1,000 women. The actual abortion rate had fallen by more than half.
There were over 4 million babies born in 1990 to a population of 250 million. In 2021 there were only 3.6 million babies born among a population of 330 million. It wasn’t abortion that accounted for much of the decline. The babies were not being aborted, rather they were not even coming into being.
Fewer of the young women in their twenties who used to get abortions need them anymore. 63% of men under 29 describe themselves as single, but only 34% of women under 29 do. 57% of those who say they’re single aren’t looking for a relationship or even casual dates. Only 13% of those who are looking, are seeking a committed relationship.
Rates of sexual intimacy have also dropped. 1 in 3 men in 2018 reported no intimate encounters. Even among teens, the number of high schoolers who ever had sex fell from 54% to 38% in 2019. (These numbers predate the pandemic which means nothing that happened during the pandemic had any impact on them.) There’s a decline in casual sex and intimacy among married couples, but it would be more accurate to say that it’s a decline in relationships.
It’s not just a male-female romantic decline either. Friendships are disappearing as are all sorts of in-person interactions. More people are single, not just as couples, but are lonely and alone.
Nothing Biden or any of the Democrats can do will save abortion from itself.
The war on the family has succeeded all too well, but what replaced it isn’t whatever perpetual orgy the sexual politics activists of the sixties imagined would ensue. There are endless varieties of new sexual identities emerging, men are getting castrated and women are getting mastectomies to try and pretend to be the other sex, but none of this is bringing people together.
The alternatives to the family have failed miserably even on their own terms. The family has been crippled, but in its place are lonely shallow narcissists who can’t tear themselves away from their phones long enough to connect to another human being. The country has come to inhabit the world of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’, but the late night diner is a 5 inch screen.
There is a grim comedy to the endless fight to save abortion when it’s aborting itself.
The idea that the family would be replaced by casual relationships temporarily spurred a wave of them accompanied by the widespread use of abortions. But each succeeding generation became less likely to have any kind of relationships. Women turned off by casual sex and men by the demands of relationships drifted apart. Social media replaced real relationships with virtual ones offering online pornography and narcissism as substitutes for human intimacy.
And that is where we are now.
Democrats believe that it’s urgent to fight for abortion and to plant graphic pornography in schools, especially of the non-heterosexual kind, but apart from spurring a rash of teenage girls to mutilate themselves in the hopes of making themselves over to be boys, it’s not doing much to what may be the least sexual generation of teenagers since the 1880s.
In the 1990s, liberal men claimed that they didn’t want to get married until gay marriage was legal. Now liberal couples claim that they don’t want to have kids because of global warming. But marriage rates didn’t turn around when gay marriage was legalized and childbirths wouldn’t be significantly impacted if it was announced tomorrow that the climate is doing just fine.
Likewise, overturning Roe v. Wade didn’t have all that much of an impact on abortion.
Abortion, like marriage and childbirth, are all in decline. That’s also bad news for Biden and the Democrats because it means that there are fewer younger and traditionally more liberal voters.
In 1990, 18 to 24 year olds, more likely to vote Democrat, made up 10% of the population while those 50 and over, who are more likely to vote Republican, made up a quarter of the population. Now the 18 to 24 cohort has dropped down to 9% while the over 50 group makes up a third of the country.
Democrats have become more fanatical about abortion even as it becomes less relevant in a country without marriages, children or even intimacy. The real threat to abortion isn’t coming from Republicans or the Supreme Court, but a society with no more babies to abort.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/abortion-is-running-out-of-babies/
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The LEFT rallying the abortion queens
but the reality check is that more abortions have been performed than ever before:
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/ivf-abortion-access-could-shape-205407402.html
Essentially a non - issue except maybe in a few states,
but get the word out past the ministry of propaganda.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/105399-trump-gets-strategic-on-abortion-2024-03-22
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Works for me.
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I thought our position was, it should be left to the states.
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Yes, I would prefer that it be left to the States, but I can live with Trump taking a 15 week position.
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"This is Trump seeking out the strategic middle ground in an effort to defend against the abortion extremist charge while at the same time exposing the Democrats and the “good Catholic” Joe Biden as the real extremists. They are the ones demanding that the U.S. remain one of only seven nations in the world allowing abortion all the way through pregnancy — just like China, Vietnam, and North Korea. Let’s face it: Our membership in that club is a disgrace.
Will Trump’s 15-week marker work? Time will tell."
I personally do not read that he is proposing a national law on this but just getting out in front of the bashing the LEFT will give him on abortion.
Seems like a wise political position to me
I want to win.
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https://rumble.com/v4lsds9-is-breyer-the-supreme-court-leaker-matt-christiansen.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab
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https://notthebee.com/article/oh-look-a-hospital-in-prague-performed-an-abortion-on-the-wrong-woman-and-now-her-baby-is-dead?utm_source=Not+The+Bee+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04022024