An update for those participating:

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota signed the Abortin Ban Bill.


Story: Link

They don't have that right Leder, the law was passed in direct violation of a Supreme Court decision, I don't see how anyone could see otherwise. That would be like saying well I don't have a problem with Mississippi deciding to reinstitute segregation, because that is what the people of the state want. This thing will definitely be making its way up to the Supreme Court.

Secondly, it is a little bit of a stretch to say it is what the "people of South Dakota" want as well. They elected these representatives in their state but they didn't have any say in the creation or passage of this law. For this to truely be "from the people" it would have been a ballot iniative voted on during an election.

Well CJ, until we abandon our republic and go for a direct democracy, your argument holds little water. The people elect their representatives and if they disagree with what they vote on, then they will simply elect representatives that will agree with in the next election.

I am not making any illusions to my feelings that Roe v Wade is not a good decision and that abortion should be left to the states which is why i support this measure. SD knew what they were doing violated a Supreme Court decision and thats because they want it to go back to the court. Furthermore, comparing segregation to abortion is apples and oranges. Equal protection is an explicit right in the constitution while you can look for decades at the document and not find abortion anywhere.

Leder,

Do you think any state legislature should be able to pass any law without federal interference?

The Bill of Rights has been incorporated to include the states through Amendment XIV. Although the right to privacy is not explicit in The Constitution of the United States, William O. Douglas and others on the court have found the right to privacy implicit and applicable to the states via the Bill of Rights through Amendment XIV.

If and until Roe v. Wade is overturned, that's the way it is.

Again I think the South Dakota law will be struck down in federal district court. That decision will be affirmed by a federal appeals court and the United States Supreme Court will decline hearing the case, allowing the lower court cases to stand.

I covered this rather thoroughly in post #92.

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...ndpost&p=182871

State's rights arguments are rather threadbare.

Notice that they never simply ask people if they think states should be able to decide on their own whether, and to what extent, abortion should be legal or illegal. You'd probably see drastically different numbers, given the huge public ignorance about what Roe v Wade actually did. This ignorance is reinforced by constant media reports referring to it as the Supreme Court decision "legalizing abortion".

Aftter all, most people would conclude, if this decision "legalized abortion", then overturning it would make it illegal, right?

BoF, I've seen the opinion and that does nothing to change my stance on the issue. Just because a few justices were able to stretch their beliefs so far as to see something that isn't there doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it wrong, its just a matter of opinion. I can fully buy and do agree with the inherent right to privacy that may be interpreted by the Constitution. But how a right to privacy somehow translates into a right to abort a child still doesn't register with me.

The fact of the matter is that there is NO mention of abortion in the Constitution and just because it was somehow applied to privacy is of little relevance. They are making an assumption on top of another assumption that plenty of people disagree with. I disagree with Roe v. Wade not for the abortion issue but because it usurped the rights of the individual states to decide its own laws. I know plenty of pro-choice people who agree with that assessment. If you think that abortion should be legal, than elect representatives that will make it so. But if people in another state believe it shouldn't they should have the right to elect representatives who make that so.

To respond some egregious comparisons such as CJ's talk of Mississippi reinstating segregation...again this is explicitly written in the Constitution that nobody can be discriminated in any fashion based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, exc... The right to have an abortion is not explicitly written and should thus be left up to the individual states.

You are covering ground that's already been covered thoroughly. You are assuming that fetus is a child. At certain stages of development, many people disagree with you.

When does a potential baby become a baby?



You are entitled to that opinion, but the U. Supreme Court's opinion is the one that counts. Unless Bush get's third nominee, that opinion is not likely to change.



As long as we have a federal system, questions of jurisdiction will arise. The court didn't think state's rights applied in this case. That's reality and it is likely to remain reality for the foreseeable future.



The reason the founders gave U. S. Supreme Court justices life tenure was to remove them from political influence.



That opinion doesn't count. As my Constitutional law professor from The University of North Texas said some forty years ago, "the constitution is what the courts say it is." I realize Justices Scalia and Thomas and posssibly Robets and Alito may disagree, but they aren't in the majority yet.

The original question asked both how the court should and and will rule. You have opined about the theoretical "should' but the will part (reality) is that the court will let the previous prescedent stand by refusing to hear the case once the lower federal courts have ruled.

And therein lies the frustration.

I believe that judicial "activism" takes on a different connotation dependant upon which side of the fence that you sit upon, but in the case of Roe v. Wade, many legal experts believed that the consitutional basis that the USSC used to reverse legislation was shaky at best.

However, as I've mentioned in previous threads, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing this come to a popular vote. I believe that our political system has and does push agendas in both directions, often away from the popular opinion. Frankly, the unfortunate part of something like Abortion is that the American voice doesn't count. Our voice is what the USSC says it is, of course unless the political climate changes in the Supreme Court? Hogwash!

I would venture to state that the abortion issue would be far less heated, far less opinionated, and far more civil in the event that I knew that I went to a poll and made my voice heard... talk about voter turn out!

It is not the right to abortion women want they want reproductive rights.

Do you believe women should have reproductive rights and do you believe the Constitution supports these rights?

This is to me a matter of human rights, and even more specifically woman's rights, that are paramount to every female citizen of the US. Or are we once again going to allow the states to further restrict our rights as humans under the guise or perceived importance of the state?

Do you somehow feel women's reproductive organs are property of the state for the purpose of amassing production for the state? Or are our bodies and their functions privately our own to govern? I think public or private is the perfect means of viewing this debate..aren't some functions of being human private matters not destined or requiring state involvement? Aren't there some rights we are afforded regardless of our jurisdiction or state representation? And if you agree with me that there are in fact "human rights" we need not have the state's permission to exercise than how are reproductive rights not one of them?

I support a woman's right to her "reproductive rights". If she exercised them, there would be no need for abortions.

The problem with abortion is that it doesn't only involve the woman's "organs", it involves a third party created via the activity of those organs.

The ethical issue of allowing a woman the right to kill that third party out of convenience or any other reason is a moral dilemma that needs to be decided by the people, not the courts.

The pro-abortion crowd has framed this issue (cleverly) as about reproductive rights and the inalienable rights of women. What they leave out is that the third party (the unique fetus) arguably possesses inalienable rights too. The real question is when do those rights outweigh the rights of the woman in whom the fetus resides.

It's not clear cut.

Only a far-left pro-abortion zealot would think that it's perfectly fine to kill a full term fetus the mere moment before it was born. Unfortunately, this is the position of people who join groups like N.O.W and NARAL and who populate the current democratic party leadership, but I digress.

On the other hand, most reasonable people would have a hard time really objecting to the abortion of a fertilized egg, the moment after it was fertilized.

The truth, as people say, is somewhere in between. And, it's for the people to hash out via their elected representatives, not some un-elected elitists sitting on a court dictating to us what our morality should be. No taxation without representation used to be the rallying cry of those rejecting English rule of the American colony. I say, no imposition of morality without representation is equally valid.

Using your logic, why should it be decided by some elected elitists sitting in a chamber dictating our morality either?

The most reasonable way of looking at it is that the government should have no say in the matter and it should be an individual choice. In other words the way things are now.

The really sad thing is that you essentially support abortion, but you get caught up in the rhetoric of the anti-abortion crowd. This whole partial birth abortion thing is a device they choose to emphasize to get their message across. They make it sound like this is the most common form of abortion and frame their message around it when in fact that isn't true. Check out this wikipedia article.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1998 (see graph) only 4% of all abortions are performed from 16 to 20 weeks and only 1% are performed at 21 weeks or more. 20 weeks is the commonly defined period for "partial birth abortion". So that is 1% of all abortions and only 5% if you move back to 16 weeks. If you dug further I'm sure you'd find that those 5% are probably done for medical reasons including the health of the mother, severe genetic defects, etc. I think you'd find that the overwhelming majority of women do not want to go through that procedure for the purposes of birth control.

You would have us believe that groups like NARAL are fighting for that 5%, they aren't. They are fighting for the other 95% and they know that if they give ground then the goalposts will be moved. The religious right will get their partial birth abortion ban and they won't be satisified, they start going after other types of abortions, emboldened by their victory and perhaps their legal case even strengthened.

This is about reproductive rights and your post, up to the partial birth abortion nonsense, affirms and agrees with that.

Well, I'd have to say that at least elected officials are bound to the process of re-election. Politicians sell the agenda of their constituents, and in many cases, simply pander to what will garner votes.

That all being said, at least it's better than a Supreme Court judge who is accountable to no one basically until they choose to step down.

Doesn't seem like a too far-fetched notion if you ask me...

It's not just the woman; it's the man involved too. But as other have pointed out, only the woman is 'punished' for it.

How about if all "able-bodied" men were to undergo forced vasectomies? You could choose to reverse it if you wanted to have a child. Forced vasectomies and forced births would make it a more equitable situation.

ETA: forgot to check spelling

So tyranny by the majority then? That is exactly how things like segregation in the South were allowed to continue. The majority supported the practice and the minority (the people affected and some activists) did not. That doesn't answer the question of whether it is right or not. That is also one of the reasons why a court is necessary.

As far as this debate goes, I'm sure that BoF is correct. A federal court will hear this case, they'll strike down the law, the appellate court will uphold their decision and the supreme court will punt the case and let the lower court ruling stand.

That all may take a few years, which is certainly unfortunate for the women in South Dakota, but that is the way it'll play out. Hopefully in the meantime it might prompt some of them to wake up and stop voting the people into office that seek to take away their reproductive rights.

The operative word is "elected". In our representative form of democracy, that is precisely how it should work.



Then, per your logic, why not make all moral issues "individual choices"? If you believe that it's ok to molest a child, then why should be prohibited from doing so? If your personal code allows spousal abuse, theft, murder, drug dealing, etc., then what right does society (via our elected representatives) have to impose their "morality" on the individual?

I'm sure you can see where your logic leads. To anarchy and against the rule of law and any sort of civilized society.




The rhetoric that I use is the rhetoric of reality, cubejockey. It's the pro-abortion crowd that uses rhetoric, euphemisms like "choice" and "reproductive rights" to blur the REALITY that abortion is about killing a third party, albeit a partially developed third party.

And yes, NARAL and NOW are against banning "partial birth" abortion or ANY types of abortion. Their mentality is more extreme than that of the NRA when it comes to gun ownership (which is EXPLICITLY protected in the bill of rights) since even the NRA support (and even sponsored) gun controls like background checks and the like.

The slippery slope argument doesn't cut it. We NEED to slide the goalposts down the field (to steal your analogy) to the point where our society, via our ELECTED officials, decide, as a civilization, where the moral line needs to be drawn. That ethical debate is long overdue. We need to overturn Roe vs. Wade so the long overdue moral and ethical question of abortion can be decided by our people.

And that is the way it should be!

Please. Only the woman is "punished" for it? Well, it IS her body, is it not? Perhaps she should exert some more control over the circumstances that it is used for given the inherent risk factors involved?

And, life has it's inequalities. When women start paying child care to men and when a stay-at-home dad can lay claim to 50% of his working wife's accumulated wealth upon divorce, then we should feel sorry for the other inequalities in life.

The issue of abortion is that it's an ethical and moral issue. That shouldn't scare us away from the issue since ALL law is based on ethical and moral limits drawn on society. This one is no exception. Sidestepping the issue via an activist supreme court is not a solution.

We deserve better as a people.

I don't know when life begins...which is why i am on the side of life instead of abortion.



I agree with your assessment that the court probably won't hear/overturn the case...thats not what i have been saying. I have been speaking strictly from my subjective viewpoint. As you noted, i am discussing what i believe the court should do knowing full well what they will do.



As lordhelmet pointed out, what concerns me are both the rights of the mother and that of the baby. Is it unreasonable to be able to care about both? You have the right to reproduce free of any government interference but the moment that one wants to abort a consequence of those rights...its a problem for the state just as any murder would be. Now i am a little bit more pragmatic than others in that i can accept abortions in limited circumstances but luckily those few instances are very minute.



CJ, the point that you have made is very valid in that most abortions do not occur past about 21 weeks. I am not sure if that is due to state laws prohibitng to such a thing or if it is a matter of society but there is one thing we must keep in mind about these numbers and that is that they are skewed and always will be skewed. The numbers you show are based on abortions performed ina state owned clinic which is more likely to be frequented by the poor and minorities. Middle and upp class women who go to private doctors for their abortions have their records private and not usable for research. This is an important point that we all must remember when assessing numbers in the issue of abortion.

How exactly are these numbers skewed leder? You can't just suggest that without backing it up with some kind of proof. Are you suggesting that women who go to private doctors are somehow fundamentally different in that they prefer late term abortions? What other facts exactly would you base that on? It just doesn't even make a lot of sense to even assert that. If you've got a competing study from a credible source then cite it.

Secondly, I don't know where you determined these abortions are performed in state owned clinics. Even if you go to the web site that is the source of this graphic it does not state that this is based on state run clinics anywhere that I could see. If you see that somewhere then please do point it out.


It really is funny sometimes how you can present someone with the facts of the situation and then they can't handle them and go off on a complete tangent. You claim that late term abortions are the root of all evil and you support "other" abortions. When presented with the fact that those abortions account for around 1% of all abortions (5% if you go to 16 weeks) and the fact that anti-abortion outfits focus the entire debate on this 1% you simply can't handle it and you instead accuse me of denying reality. I posted the facts and you posted...... what? Exactly.

I am not making any assumptions about how the numbers may be different but merely pointing out that it is impossible to get correct numbers being that no private doctor is allowed by law to divulge what treatments (especially abortions) were given to their patients. Its confidential information between a doctor and patient. That's what makes the numbers skewed in that it does not correctly represent the women who have abortions. Even though it doesn't mention that anywhere in the report doesn't change the fact that the source of the info is most likely from state-owned and operated clinics which are more likely to be frequented by poor and minority women.

The last time I checked doctor-patient privilege applied equally to private practice and clinics run by the state. If there is some legal expert here that knows otherwise then please speak up but I was under the impression that medical privacy was universal. You have provided no credible reason to doubt the accuracy of the numbers and until you do I'd say they stand.

That's pretty weak. This is hardly the only report to state exactly the same thing, every survey on abortions in the US states the same thing. Here is one of the most comprehensive studies you will find on the topic:

http://www.abortionfacts.com/statistics/gestation.asp

And sure enough, 1.4% of all abortions occur after the 20 week mark, only 5.6 abortions occur after the 15 week mark.

In fact, 75% occur before the 10 week mark, where the zygote is about the size of a fingernail and is still a lump of cells.


But, if thats not good enough for you, how about this source?

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Or this one?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1801164_pf.html

Even FoxNews agrees:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html



Now, then against all these unanimous reports, you have posed the following: The numbers are skewed because of patient doctor confidentiality.

Well firstly, thats wrong. The Doctor is not allowed to give out the name or details which might identify his patients, but doctors are asked all the time to provide general census reports on their patients: How many cancer patients, survival rate, age, how many abortions, stage in pregnancy, etc. This is standard practice, and is in fact required by the AMA. No confidentiality is breached with this information.

Secondly, even if your point were correct (which it is not) how would a few private doctors unreporting skew the statistics in any specific way? Basic mathematics tells us that the distrubution would be equal to the standard. So even if your fictional point were correct, why on earth would it change the stats towards one way or another?


Or is it possible that the reason you presume the statistics are skewed is just because the facts do not jive with your personal opinions?

You are missing my point. I'll try again. My "rhetoric" as you call it calling abortion what it IS; killing a fetus. The side that is for unlimited abortion rights insists on avoiding that (painful) truth and tries to veil the reality of abortion (killing a fetus) behind high-minded concepts such as "choice", "reproductive rights", and "privacy".

Is that part of my position clear now?

On to the debate of this thread. I reiterate my position again with respect to Roe and the abortion issue at large.

The courts, when they wrongly decided Roe vs. Wade, short circuited the representative democrat system and IMPOSED a ruling on the people. Therefore, the necessary MORAL and ETHICAL debate on this issue did not take place via our system.

Is that part clear?

My position is that the moral/ethical debate about abortion is overdue. It's a difficult fight, for sure, but a necessary one.

Still following me?

Since abortion involves the rights of a third party (the fetus), it's not a clear cut case of "reproductive rights", "women's rights", or even privacy.

Ok?

The vast majority of American people (when polled) say that they think that late term abortions should not be legal except in extremely dire (and rare) circumstances.

On the other hand, the majority of people (when polled) are against a complete ban on abortion.

Therefore, our society, via their elected representatives, would find a consensus somewhere between those two extreme positions.

Still following me?

That is the obligation of the elected representatives. Oh, I know it's an emotional fight and that the spineless politicians would rather NOT take up this issue and risk ticking off a substantial portion of the population NO MATTER what they do. But their cowardice does not change the fact that it's their duty to provide such representation, create such legislation, and perform the constitutionally mandated role that they were elected for, and are paid to perform.

Ok?

That's why the status quo (which you said you supported in your post) should not be followed.

Personally, I support limited abortion rights. I think that a woman should have the right to kill the fetus inside of her during a very limited stage in that baby's development. Beyond that, no. Killing a developed fetus is infanticide and it should be banned and those who violate those laws should be charged with homicide.

I hope that my restatement of my position has clarified what I was trying to communicate.

In your opinion.



In your opinion. Frankly, the right to reproductive rights and privacy is VERY important when compared to a zygote, or frankly anything that is not a full human under the law.




Yes, that is true, that is what the courts did. My question is why that is suddenly a problem. The courts impose rulings on people, what a hundred times a day acros the country? A thousand? In a huge percentage of those cases the courts are imposing a moral definition, their interpretation of what people should be doing. During the microsoft case, the company said they were not a monopoly, the state said they were, the Courts laid down their opinion about what is and is not a monopoly, based on precident and law and their morality, and IMPOSED it on the population.

Just because you don't like the decision, you do not now get to say 'well it doesn't matter, individual states should decide what is and is not a monopoly'. Or take a hundred thousand other cases.

Thats their JOB, to determine policy based on their reading of the constitution. No there is nothing specifically in the constitution about abortion, nor is ther about airoplanes, so should nobody get to fly?

How is this decision any different from decisions they take every ay? Oh, except in this case, the majority of the country agrees with their ruling, and opposes overturning it.



Or, in the case of a miscarriage, just a manslaughter investigation. Right? You can't have it be a person in some aspects of the law, and not others.




I'm still not sure why it is THEIR job, and NOT the job of the courts... You are going to have to justify that.

This is the crux of the issue which is why I'm focusing on it.

The job of the USSC is to determine whether legislation falls within the boundaries defined by the constitution.

It is NOT their job to determine policy or to otherwise LEGISLATE from the bench. That is beyond their constitutionally mandated powers.

Yes, there is nothing in the constitution about abortion and that's how Roe should have been decided. The legislation should have been allowed to stand. There is nothing, as you say, in there about airplanes either. Therefore, a court would be remiss in creating a right to fly or not to fly within the constitutional document. Legislators would be free to decide EITHER WAY. The constitution is a document, after all, that limits government, it does not "grant rights". In some areas, the government is explicitly limited. In others, core principles are laid out that limit government. The issue with the modern activist court has been the ultra-broad interpretation of these core principles and the pretzel-like twisting that has occurred in order to secure liberal policies in spite of the will of the people and the democratic process.

In Roe v. Wade, the supreme court created an interpretation of the constitution that did not exist and therefore created legislation that allowed unlimited abortion on demand by declaring that they discovered a constitutionally mandated right to abortion in the text (obviously written in invisible ink between the lines of that original document) and thus subverted our democratic system. Such "judicial activism" is specifically the behavior that conservatives and President George W. Bush are attempting to correct.

I don't deny that activist judges have overstepped their bounds (as they did in Roe) in literally hundreds of cases. This issue is bigger than one case. It's an issue of co-equal branches of government and our system working as designed, instead of the tyranny by a minority of un-elected justices.

That's the issue, not whether I "like" a ruling or no. If the people disagree with an activist judge who legislates from the bench, the people have no recourse. They have a recourse in the executive and legislative branches because they can throw those people out of office in regularly scheduled intervals. The issue is how some elitist judges took it upon themselves to appoint themselves more than their 1/3 co-equal power and how the cowardly legislature freely allowed them to make the hard choices (like on abortion) thus insulating them from possible retribution by their constituents.

Again, I think you are creating a line where one does not exist.

The supreme court has been dealing with cases since day one that are not specifically deliniated in the constitution. How far does one right preside over another, how do right apply to modern cases never envisioned by the framers.

I mean look at the list of cases in the last 20 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unite...e_Roberts_Court

Things like-

-minimal quantum of creativity is required for copyright protection
-constitutionality of mandating teaching of creation science in conjunction with theory of evolution
-cruel and unusual punishment; capital punishment for juveniles under 16.

They constantly balance rights, interpret rights, or try and make sense out of things in the constitution that are downright vague or subjective. (what is cruel and unusual punishment?) Any of these decisions could be described as legislating from the bench. I do not see the division.

I mean, in your ideal, what WOULD the supreme court see? 90% of the cases listed as brought before it, the court would have to just throw up its hands and say 'sorry, not my thing, talk to somebody else'.


But, it gets worse. What about the specific case of abortion? There is in the constitution a right to privacy, and a right to control over your body. Inplied or explicit, those rights EXIST. However throughout the document, there is NOTHING which gives rise to any kind of right to the unborn, In fact just the opposite. The 14th amendment referrs specifically to people 'Born' having the rights deliniated in the constitution.


So, it seems to me, in RvW, they could ONLY have decided as they did, choosing rights defined in the constitution as more important than something specifically listed as having no rights.

To have decided anything ELSE would surely have been 'legislating from the bench', deciding as they did was just following the constitution...

Funny, that's not what it says in the Constitution.



Now, article 3, section 2 was modified by the 11th amendment to prevent certain cases between citizens and states from going directly to the Federal courts, but I can't find any passage of the Constitution that says that the Court's only job is to measure the constitutionality of legislation.



See, here is where we get into an argument which both baffles and, to be honest, annoys me. (Not you specifically, nor this forum. I had to hash this out in class a lot last year and it drove me crazy.)

Now, you're arguing that the Court "determined policy" when it settled Roe v. Wade. They do that each and every time they rule, do they not? When they find that unwarranted wiretapping is illegal, they're setting policy. When they find that military recruiters are free to function in educational facilities they're determining policy. The only way they could reach a decision and not "determine policy" would be in a case where no legislation was involved, citizen (or other party) was impacted, and no laws would be changed.

I flat-out dare you to cite a single Supreme Court decision that meets this criteria.

Perhaps you (or someone else) can explain to me what exactly "legislating from the bench" means, exactly. I understand the concept in general terms, but I'm not quite sure what you're expecting the court to do. The Constitution is extremely limited in what it actually says... it is designed to be expansive. That necessitates the court to read into the Constitution. The word "education" does not appear in there, nor does wiretap, surveilliance, or fetus. The court must create law in order to settle legal disputes that are not explicitly resolved by the Constitution, that is it's entire function. If it could not do this then American jurisprudence would be unchanged from 1791.

To be honest I think you're deluding yourself. If the Supreme Court "determined policy" when it ruled on Roe v. Wade because there is no right to privacy explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, then you are asking it to "determine policy" in overturning Roe v. Wade in deference to fetal rights, since fetal rights are no more defined by that same document.

Well, I don't take the "liberal" point of view, so I must be delusional, huh Joe? Typical liberal arrogance.

The court overturns other court decisions from time to time if they are found to be in error. The "right to privacy" is bogus on its face. Privacy is a "state", it's not a right. It 's like saying we have a right to be "cold", "warm", or in a "dark" room. One doesn't have a right to "privacy" anymore than one has a "right" to quiet.

Roe vs. Wade as a massive overstep. It basically ignored the fact that the rights of a third party (the fetus) were involved and gave 100% of a life and death decision over that third party to the woman. It denied the fetus, including a fully developed "baby" any due process, etc. Yes, the constitution is silent on fetal rights because the thought of abortion was not dreamed of by the creators of that document. But, we cannot deny that modern science has pushed the limit of a "viable" baby to a point not considered possible when Roe vs. Wade was passed. In my own family, I have 2 nephews who were born very prematurely. They are now healthy children. Yet, they were born earlier than what could have been killed legally (if still in the womb) thanks to Roe Vs. Wade.

You don't have a problem with that?

Activist courts, and their willing enablers in the cowardly legislature, are happy to let the courts tackle the hard moral issues because then THEY are not held accountable for the outcome.

I say that it's time to reverse that faulty modus operandi. The killing of a baby, for whatever reason, should be outlawed. And, it's up to our society to determine when the fetus is a "baby" and not just a blob of insignificant tissue.

That's where the debate should be. Not on some arcane pseudo-legal argument regarding the euphemistic "rights of privacy" or "reproductive freedom" that were invented from within the text of the 14th amendment.

Roe was a product of the radical 1970's and should be overturned. It's not a reasonable decision. It attributes protections to the 14th amendment that do not exist.

I think you missed my point, which may be my fault since I left it to the end. And I was not trying to call you delusional.



Ok, you admit that the Constitution is silent on fetal rights. Now, you assert that those rights should be read into the Constitution (and I have mixed feelings on the issue, so don't go branding me one way or the other.) That's all well and good, but the fact is for the Supreme Court to rule this way would in fact be legislating from the bench; they would be creating new law. You have already stated that you don't believe that the Supreme Court has the authority to do this.

So, which is it?

The entire constitution is designed to limit government against "the people". The issue is when does the fetus legally become a "person". Then, all protections within the entire document kick in.

That is the issue. Its not clear cut, but I'll again restate the boundaries of the issue.

Most reasonable people would not consider a fertilized egg to be a "person". Therefore, most reasonable people would not have a problem aborting that egg.

On the other side, most reasonable people would not consider a fully developed fetus, about to be born, anything BUT A person. Therefore, most reasonable people would have a big problem killing that baby, consider it infanticide, and want it outlawed.

The truth is somewhere in between those two extremes.

That's what the people have to decide (through their representatives).

The answer may be 4 weeks, 6 weeks, or even 20 weeks into the gestation process. But at some point, a consensus needs to be reached. After that point, the woman doesn't have a right, in private or otherwise, to harm that other "person" just because she wants to.

Roe vs. Wade completely ignored the third party. It was born of radial feminism and radical leftism in the heyday of the 1970's. It ignored the constitution and any reasonable forms of ethics with respect to the reality of the fetus.

It should be overturned. And then guess what? Abortion, for most states in America will continue to be legal. And, at some point, federal laws will likely be passed to make those laws uniform (in exchange for federal health care dollars, no doubt).

And that's the way it should be.

It was not an overstep at all. Nor did it 'ignore the rights of a third party'.

Let us be very clear on this issue, the Constitution is VERY CLEAR on the rights of the unborn: THEY HAVE NONE. You may not agree with this, you may think it is morally wrong and should be changed, but you cannot pretend the constitution does not have a position.


The constitution lists a series of ights and laws. But who, you ask, do these laws and rights apply to? Anyone within the jursidiction of the constitution. And who, the constitution explicitly states, is within the jurisdiction of the constitution?

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States..." (14th Amendment)

So you do not enter the jurisdiction of the constitution, and are thus not entitled to its protections, until you are BORN.


In RvW, the courts balanced the rights of the woman vs. the rights of nobody, AS DEFINED IN THE CONSTITUTION. To have decided ANYTHING else would have ben ignoring the text of the constitution, and legislating from the bench.




The courts did not deny the fetus these rights, and Constitution does. And actually, though medicine was limited and knowledge of the exact biology was slim, people in the 1700s knew where babies came from, and how they were made, and they could EASILY have stated 'Conceived or naturalised' but they did not.




If thats true, it will require a rewrite of the 14th amendment.

I don't really want to get involved in this debate, but this is not correct.

Roe v. Wade considered the fetus and the mother. It noted, as some have here, that the US Constitution does not consider the unborn to be "persons". It then made some arbitrary decision regarding the trimesters.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade

The USSC did consider, but then rejected, the rights of the unborn. As happened in the death penalty for minors cases, perhaps the USSC should re-examine the consensus of whether or not the unborn should be considered "persons".

Roe vs. Wade essentially "re-wrote" the 14th amendment. It discovered a "right to abortion" in that text. If you can find it, please post it. It doesn't exist.

Again, your premise is backwards. Your implication is that the constitution "grants rights". It does not. The constitution cannot grant rights to a person if they are INALIENABLE. If the constitution and the American system was based on the government handing out rights, then what you said is correct. But that is not the premise of the constitution therefore your argument must be incorrect.

The constitution is a document that specifies the limits on government over the individual. And, within the 14th amendment, there is no provision that states that the government cannot define morality, via legislation, in cases such as abortion. Whether the constitution considers a fetus to be a person is a moot point since the 14th amendment does not contain any provision that prevents the government, via the democratic process, from infringing on woman's intent to kill her own fetus.

This is not a constitutional issue at the end of the day. It's a moral issue. And it's a moral issue that must be defined by the people, not the courts.

It did not such thing. all RvW did was follow the exact text of the 14th amendment, and that is that the unborn have NO rights. Given that, a person protected constitution will always trump anything NOT protected by the constitution, It was acase of the rights of a woman vs. nothing. And so obviously the rights of a woman won.



That is semantics. Fine, it does not grant rights, it simply defines their parameters. Amd as such it clearly defined the unborn as having no rights, inalienable or otherwise. In RvW the courts were simply following the letter of the constitution.




Yes it does. That would be infringing on the rights of a woman, in favour of the r'rights' of something explicitly given NO rights under the constitution. In any game of constitutional authority, someone protected by the constitution automatically trumps something specifically NOT protected by the constitution.

It's black-letter law. A fetus is not protected, therefore in any constitutional challenge of fetus versus US citizen, the fetus loses. Its not complicated at all. To have decided ANYTHING else, would have been legislating on the bench, that is to say using morality to overturn the exact printed word of the constitution.



You keep saying that, but firstly it turns out you are mistaken, RvW IS a constitutional issue, but secondly, EVEN IF you were right, you still have not explained why issues of morality are somehow forbidden in the courts. As I said, if you look at the list of cases the supreme court has seen in the last 20 years, some 90% involve issues of morality. When the supreme court rules on segregated marriage, blacks in the military and many such issues, it was on issues of morality. You keep claiming a division between the two, but you are going to have to justify it for it to provide any weight.

First how is an abortion not an exercising of a woman's reproductive rights?

And how on earth can you say the above? Is she permitted to exercise these rights you claim to support during rape or sexual abuse? Obviously not, so do you then perhaps see the need for more control over her reproduction than just contraception?

Or what if her child is said to be grossly defected? Again do you support the idea that control of her reproduction needs to be extended beyond just insemination?

Or perhaps she was using birth control and is representing that 1-4% failure rate, what then do you support? Her rights to commit to her desire to not have a child?

There will always be a need for abortions. You won't remove the need and I suspect you know that and it matters little to you because your comments have shown that you have no imagination or care for a woman's needs. You just desire to address our rights. Your objective is to support what you feel we should have the right to do or not do.

I'm fairly certain that in 30 years or so, we will actually not need abortions at all, because technology will have caught up to us and we will have essentially perfect control over biological reproduction. At that point, the abortion debate will begin to wane until technology becomes available to everyone and it eventually becomes a moot point. But note that technology will make abortion obsolete, not perfect. That means that abortion today is a flawed process that only exists because of flaws in our biology (and a lack of a technological solution). Also, I know that personal facts should not determine the outcome of a debate, but I am curious to know if anyone is this thread has actually had an abortion.


Out of 1.6 million abortions per year, 1.4% is 22,400, or the population of a small city every year. If 1.4% of homocides in the US consisted of someone hacking their victim to pieces with a machete, nobody would be bragging about how "only" the population of a small city was murdered by repulsively violent means. Consider that 5.6% of 1.6 million abortions is almost 90,000 fetuses. That's a medium-sized city in the US. If we later decide (several decades in the future, that is) that those fetuses were, in fact, persons, then all that blood will be on our hands. Perhaps in the future, the abortion industry will be charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.

When this law passes (as seems almost certain) and it is brought before the Supreme Court (also almost inevitable), how should the court rule? How will it rule? Either way, what are the implications for abortion in the United States?
It should rule that the earlier court incorrectly legislated the personhood status of the fetus. Since the law did not previously define fetuses as persons or non-persons, and since it is by far not universally accepted that fetuses are non-persons, the court should have erred on the side of caution and declared that fetuses may be entitled to due process and equal protection, and thus will be until such time as it is definitively determined that fetuses are, in fact, non-persons. Basically, assume "innocent until proven guilty". It's worked so far, and nobody has complained about that principle.

The court also incorrectly legislated that vegetative persons are also non-persons, despite the possibility that within Terri Shiavo's natural lifetime it could become technologically possible to revive her (in fact, I suspect that would have been true with high probability).

Hitler legislated that Jews, gays, and the disabled were non-persons, Stalin legislated that Slavs were non-persons, and America legislated that blacks were either non-persons or curiously enough, 60% persons. I don't see how any of that is different than legislating fetuses as 0% persons, and then magically 100% persons the instant they are born, except in states where they are granted limited personhood if the mother insists that they are persons. They are all arbitrary definitions designed to suit authoritarian agendas...the rights of one group over another.

I personally would not be opposed to fractional personhood of fetuses if it meant that late-term fetuses were granted enough personhood to spare them from the vacuum, the saline syringe and the scalpel. I would hope that mid-term fetuses were also granted such protections, but I doubt that our American selfishness would extend such generosity to those not powerful enough to hire their own lawyers.

The other questions have been dealt with so thoroughly in the media that it's hardly worth rehashing them here.

1. As a man, anyone who thinks that this issue will only affect women is delusional. I am disgusted that men, who will never have to face this situation, would even think they could nationalize a woman's body for the sake of politics, which is exactly what is happening here. Everyone should be outraged.

2. If Roe V. Wade is overturned, then the issue becomes a state's rights issue. So what will happen is that in more affluent and progressive blue parts of the country, abortion will remain safe and legal, and in the rest of the country, it will be banned. This turns the issue not just into a social issue but an economic one. Additionally, banning it will not stop it, it will just create another underground which states will have to pour their precious resources into investigating, halting and punishing.

3. Lastly, I think it is naive on the part of conservatives to think that Alito and Roberts will actually not follow established law but rather follow their conscience on the issue. Does the appointment of more conservative judges really mean this ground breaking shift in social policy? I don't think we have heard enough or know enough about either of these men, but I think people may be very surprised to find out they are not just darlings of the religious right and that they actually know a thing or 2 about law.

I hope it is OK I posted here as a man, this is a very important issue.

Are you saying no one on this board has stated their rationale for opposing abortion is based to some degree on religious beliefs; or are you inadvertently suggesting you'd rather I ignore such remarks, leaving them unchallenged? Are you disagreeing with the fact that the responsibility and cost of contraception isn’t 50/50?

If you’re in the mood click the Report button. I would suggest waiting for a new abortion thread and making sure you don’t insinuate you’d prefer U.S. women seeking abortions, like their third-world contemporaries, are better off dead before requesting civil debate.


Primary or secondary method of preventing pregnancy, be my guest and choose the terminology that best balms your conscience. The South Dakota legislature certainly did. I’m not the one calling a zygote a baby.


I’ve been with responsible men. The only reason why I think men would even take a woman at her word that she can’t conceive or she’s on the pill, is a combination of limited contraception options for men and/or not wanting to deal with condoms and refusing to take hormonal contraception when/if it becomes available. If you’re not one of these men, where’s the rub?


Jesus Christ, Aevans. Stop linking sources that utterly contradict the points you try proving, stop thinking we won’t check out these sources for ourselves or better yet, take a second look at what you think you know.

Yeah, physically speaking a man has to put on a male condom, but who’s buying those condoms for men? Doesn’t the fact that all the results presented by that poll revolve around the contraceptive behavior of women clue you in? Just above “Male condom” is this: “CONTRACEPTIVE METHODS AMONG U.S. WOMEN WHO PRACTICE CONTRACEPTION, 2002”


Which court would that be? As for Terri’s chances of recovery I’ll refer you to this article.

When this law passes (as seems almost certain) and it is brought before the Supreme Court (also almost inevitable), how should the court rule? How will it rule? Either way, what are the implications for abortion in the United States?
In spite of some like Bikerdad hinging on the preamble and others like Vermillion hinging on the 14th, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t speak on abortion. The Framers and the authors of the 14th had more pressing, and more controversial matters to see too, like the legalization of slavery to bring the southern delegates on board, and the abolishment of the institution that followed, respectively. Abortion wasn’t on the minds that shaped the founding of this country nor on the minds of those who corrected their mistake. Unless someone can produce previously undiscovered documents shedding new light on both of these measures abortion is a constitutional non-issue.

The court should, therefore, reverse Roe and let the states handle the issue. How the court will rule, I’m not sure. Souter and Kennedy are up for grabs if Roberts works them, IMO.

I personally support abortion. I think it’s in my best interest and in the best interest of other women to force the deals of the pro-life movement onto the rest of the states. Apart from the usual pro-life arguments there’s something new. This is a quote from a friend’s blog:


That something is the participation of sympathizers who used to bite their tongues for fear of setting the pro-life movement back. It’s not just Randall Terry telling us how his personal views inform his anti-abortion opinion anymore; it’s the guy next door too.

Pro-lifers like comparing abortion to slavery. They’re not even close. The unborn and the innately private condition of pregnancy, even if it is never recognized in our laws as private, just aren’t worth it. South Dakota’s loophole is proof enough of that. To quote a Frayster:


South Dakota pro-choice associations have very little to lose. Pro-choice associations throughout the country will have nothing to lose if SCOTUS overturns Roe. They should litigate until the courts force the legislatures to consistently apply the definition of human life and enforce the protections that innocent life demands to the delight of pro-life purists, step aside as “life” is supported by punishing its contraceptive and non-surgical extinction as a class 1 or 2 felony instead of the class 5 used in South Dakota, and watch the movement implode.

If not for the courts, many moral issues would have had to wait for the public conscience to come around. It is the duty of the courts in our republic to make sure the majority does not overstep it's bounds. We are not a majority rule here in America.

As far as a right to privacy in the constitution, it does exist and is established law in America. The state can not just invade a home or a car or a person without just cause or without permission from, you guessed it, a JUDGE. Abortion is a medical health issue not a forum for public debate. This is a decision a woman makes with her health care provider. There are other factors beyond just physical health of the mother, there is the mental health of the mother as well and the state should yield to the mother in this instance, that she knows what is best for herself and her unborn fetus.

This is nothing more than the nationalizing of a woman's body for political reasons.

So you're saying that there can be only two legal "settings" when it comes to termination of an offspring's life? Either it's a right fully protected by the Constitution, no ifs, ands, or buts - or it's first-degree murder? That's quite a boundary condition. Any chance you'd be willing to say exactly where the line is to be drawn between the two?

The visual cortex is a fairly standard portion of the brain with very little affect on the personality. If suitable technology existed, it would be one of the most straightforward parts of the brain to reconstruct. There is reason to believe we will have such technology in less than 40 years (namely, sophisticated nanotechnology as well as significantly increased expertise with genomics and proteomics). If her frontal cortex were severely damaged or atrophied, that might be a different matter.


So you think that the risks of abortion are outweighed by the benefits? Do you have any idea how much risk of sterilization women are exposed to? I oppose abortion at least partly on the grounds that it presents an undue health risk to women that is inherent in the procedure itself, as well as due to the various techniques employed. I also oppose abortion on the grounds that many women, especially young girls, are compelled to have abortions against their better judgement, and sometimes, altogether against their will. Are you not concerned by those effects?


The rhetoric about "privacy" and "ownership" between the pro-choice camp and the pro-slavery camp sound eerily familiar. Of course slaves aren't the same as fetuses. But the methods of oppression aren't so different.


Non-sequitur. Moral equivalence is a sliding scale. We don't let two year olds drink, drive, or purchase pornography. I don't support a fetal right to vote, buy firearms, or use controlled substances. We all agree that humans slowly acquire rights as they mature. We simply disagree on the point at which those rights begin to accrue, including the most fundamental right to life. Besides, women themselves are not the ones performing the murder. The abortionist is. Women are merely accomplices (except in the rare case of self-administered abortion). Especially since abortionists are the ones that profit, at the expense of the safety and well-being of the mothers, I think that abortionists should bear the brunt of the responsibility. I personally think that abortion is a sufficient trauma to serve as its own punishment, and that women themselves should not be criminally charged.

And I am fairly certain that when we make this technical advancement that pro-life advocates will once again evolve their argument and feigned concerns. As it was shown with the morning after pill, which many now call medical abortion. How did that little medical advancement in available options allow women to further escape the demand for control by others? It didn't....so what makes you so certain anything else would?

I also think you don't really understand the need, the need isn't for abortion or the morning after pill, the need is for control or self determination and I think we are all familiar with this eternal struggle all throughout history so I find your prediction very unlikely.
Besides what does it matter what will occur in 30 yrs , the need is still prevalent and current and always will be, is it the mode so much that the anti-abortion advocates oppose? I don't think that it is at all as once again RU486 proved and the stance these same groups take on other forms or access to birth control also proves.