As for our legal arguments, have you read Mark Levin's Men in Black? I highly recommend it.
“I believe that Government is not to blame for this wholesale slaughter of the innocent.”
What happened is that FDR appointed a bunch of radical justices. And prior to that, the colleges were infiltrated with leftist constitutional law professors [Coulter’s ‘Treason’ sheds some light on Marxist infiltration]. If you study the shift in our legal system, the drastic changes first occurred from the FDR court. The ABA to this day is incredibly leftist. That's why Bush had a hard time with his nominees— he refused to listen to the ABA’s brazen partisanship.
“Moral decisions come from Bible-Torah literacy, (Psalm 139), not from legislation.”
Our law is founded on national tradition and heritage. Black's Book on Law— if memory serves— is a good source to find what genuinely settled law is. A single dissent, so far as I'm concerned, is not settled law. There were strong dissents in Roe v. Wade. Also note that our ‘esteemed’ justices later ruled against the Constitution in their Kelo decision. So it goes beyond abortion. That was a warning bell.
We also were two supreme court justices away from losing our rights to treaties— that recent Supreme Court decision regarding the right of Texas to execute illegal aliens who murder.
“Roe v. Wade aside, we have not been forced to kill our babies. Abortion statistics are staggering because we (yes, I mean Judeo-Christians) have chosen to murder our unborn.”
That is thought provoking, but we could also legalize everything — stealing, murder by anyone's definition— you name it. We would not be forced to do those things, but obviously, the government would be negligent to allow it.
“I believe that liberals have used the abortion debate to divide and conquer. We need to stop this naive militancy.”
We need to educate those who fail to understand originalism in the courts. And frankly, we need to let people know they can pressure congress to impeach rogue justices. We do have that power in the Constitution, although constitutional law professors try to convince themselves that we don't.
Deuteronomy 11:
“And you shall teach them (God’s statutes and ordinances… V1) to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.” V19.
The law is actually supposed to help preserve our national traditions. The legal term is ‘natural law’. The more we break away from it, the more our society breaks down.
“Though separation of church and state cannot be found in the Constitution, the following might be a better way to view the concept… Morality is personal and none of the Government’s business. Anything otherwise is kin to dictating religion.”
The original intent of the Founders was to prevent a government run religion. We do not even have the constitutional right to worship Satan or multiple gods. We have the right to “ ... worship God ... “ as we so choose. Monotheism, agnosticism— and arguably atheism— are the only religious rights we have.
“Abortion and terrorism are both wars against humanity. But the battleground for the unborn should be waged from the home (church), not the Supreme Court!”
The original definition of life beginning was officially established long before Roe. Life begins when the child first stirs in the womb. [If anything, modern technology shows that we should err toward life beginning even sooner.] If a murderer intends to kill an unborn child, many people [and some states] have the sense to see that villainy for what it is. The Supreme Court overreached by imposing its will over the states.
“ — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973” — Ronald Reagan
The ‘right’ to abortion is based on a dissent which led to a fictitious privacy right. That's right. Roe v. Wade is based on privacy rights— not from law, but from a dissent. Talk about absurd. That ‘privacy right’ that the dissent conjured was never discovered in the Constitution until 1961. That's how weak Roe v. Wade is.
“The modern right to privacy began in 1961 in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent in Poe vs. Ullman.” — Mark Levin's ‘Men in Black’, page 55.
One should not lightly ignore the dissents in Roe v. Wade. And you might be surprised to hear what some of the justices were like. For example: Thurgood Marshall [a man who admitted that watching soap operas helped him decide cases] Blackmun [who was influenced by fan mail and hate mail], and William O. Douglas [riddled with scandal]. Overpopulation was mentioned more than once by the justices who ‘won the vote’ in Roe v. Wade. Should that have even been on their minds? The Supreme Court's job isn't to legislate. Thoughts of overpopulation are something for legislators to ponder and perhaps to amend the Constitution if there's a need.
I hope to one day write about this in more detail.
I would like to add to Arthur’s post 160 with some additional history to the disgrace that is Roe.
A BRIEF SURVEY OF US ABORTION LAW BEFORE THE 1973 DECISION
By Brian Young (excerpts) http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
In the years prior to and immediately after the American Revolution, colonists and citizens followed the rule of law brought by British settlers, the “common law.” Rather than being a code of statutes passed by a legislature and printed in a book, the common law was a set of legal standards established in England through court decisions and legal custom.
According to Sir William Blackstone, the renowned 18th century English jurist, under common law, the abortion of a ‘quickened’ fetus was a ‘very heinous misdemeanor.’ At that time the penalty for misdemeanors could be severe; loss of a limb, confiscation of property or life in prison.
‘Quickening’ - when a pregnant woman first feels her child move - generally occurs in the fourth month. Scholars have noted that the common law requirement of a ‘quickened’ baby for the crime of abortion was probably based on a very practical consideration. Since there were no pregnancy tests in the 18th century, evidence that a baby’s movement had been felt might have been the only way to establish with any certainty in a court of law that a pregnancy had existed.
The abandonment of the “quickening” requirement coincided with the 19th century discovery of how conception takes place. The public, lawmakers and jurists were becoming aware of the scientific fact that life begins when a sperm enters an ovum.
Abortion Statutes of the 19th & 20th Centuries (excerpts) http://www.missourilife.org/law/preroe.htm
During the first decades of the 1800’s, scientists began to understand the cellular basis of life and for the first time were able to observe the process of fertilization in mammals. As the stages of development became clear, it also became clear that abortion kills a living human being, no matter what the stage of the child’s development. The resulting scientific knowledge about the process of conception and development led to efforts to enact stronger bans on abortion. In addition, scientific progress allowed for surgical means of performing abortion, and abortion was perceived to be on the increase. Beginning in 1859, the American Medical Association called for strong anti-abortion laws and vigorous enforcement of them. In view of the claim by twentieth century abortionists that physicians did this only to protect their own profession or solely to protect women’s health, it is useful to quote the doctors themselves on why they wanted action by the states:
“The first of these causes is a wide-spread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime—a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.
“The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of fetal life; . . .
“The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being.
“In accordance, therefore, with the facts in the case, the Committee would advise that this body, representing, as it does, the physicians of the land, publicly express its abhorrence of the unnatural and now rapidly increasing crime of abortion; that it avow its true nature, as no simple offence against public morality and decency, no mere misdemeanor, no attempt upon the life of the mother, but the wanton and murderous destruction of her child. . “ Volume 12, Transactions of the American Medical Association, pp. 75-78 (1859).
The AMA adopted the recommendation described above and sponsored initiatives in all states, spurring most legislatures to enact strong prohibitions upon abortion that swept away the “quickening” distinction. In the remaining states, abortion remained prohibited by common law.
A BRIEF SURVEY OF US ABORTION LAW BEFORE THE 1973 DECISION
by Brian Young (excerpts) http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
Pro-abortion historians claim that these laws were passed primarily, if not solely, to protect women from possibly fatal abortions. Concern for pre-term babies was not a factor, they claim. Yet, as law professor Joseph Dellapenna has noted, all surgeries at that time involved substantial risks of death. If legislators were motivated to pass anti-abortion statutes only to protect women, why did they not protect other patients by banning other potentially dangerous fatal elective surgeries?
Coincidentally or not, during this period of pro-life legislative activity Congress passed and 28 states ratified the 14th Amendment, prohibiting any state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law.”
By 1910, every state except Kentucky had passed an anti-abortion law (and Kentucky’s courts had declared abortion at any stage of gestation to be illegal).
By 1967, not much had changed. In 49 states, abortion was a felony; in New Jersey, it was a high misdemeanor. Furthermore, 29 states banned abortion advertising, and many outlawed the manufacture or distribution of abortifacients. In 1967, though, state abortion laws began to change, but only after years of organized campaigns by pro-abortion forces.
The American Law Institute (ALI) proposed, in its 1959 model criminal code for all the states, a “reform” abortion law. The model bill, approved by ALI in 1962, declared that abortion should be permitted for the physical or mental health of the mother, for fetal abnormality, and for rape or incest.
While leaders of the American legal community were promoting radical changes in state abortion law, a 1962 case in Arizona generated sympathetic press coverage of the notion of “justifiable abortion.”
Mrs. Sherri Finkbine, a married mother, made public her intention to abort her fifth child. She had taken some tranquilizers/sleeping pills her husband had brought home from a trip to England. The pills turned out to be Thalidomide, a drug that had become associated with birth defects. Fearful of giving birth to a handicapped child, Mrs Finkbine traveled to Sweden, where she had her baby aborted.
In June 1967, the American Medical Association voted to change that body’s long-standing opposition to abortion. With a new resolution, the AMA now condoned abortion for the life or health of the mother, for a baby’s ‘incapacitating’ physical deformity or mental deficiency, or for cases of rape or incest.
That same year, Colorado, North Carolina, and California became the first states to adopt versions of the ALI “reform” abortion law. By 1970, though, four states - New York, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington - passed laws that basically allowed abortion on demand. Of those four, New York’s was the only law without a residency requirement and the state quickly became the nation’s abortion capital.
The pro-abortion onslaught was beginning to face opposition, though, as pro-life forces organized. In 1972, the New York legislature voted to repeal the state’s liberal abortion law, but Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the repeal. Ballot questions in Michigan and North Dakota in 1972 attempted to decriminalize abortion; the measures were defeated by majorities of 63% and 78%, respectively.
Just as pro-lifers were beginning to turn the tide however, the Supreme Court handed down Roe vs Wade in January 1973. With one judicial stroke, over 200 years of legal protection for the unborn was rendered null and void. For the first time in American history, abortion was the “law of the land”.
[... The Supreme Court overreached by imposing its will over the states...]
Thank you for taking the time to reflect on my post.
It is extremely helpful as some of my ideas come from
strong emotion. As I massage this piece, “overreached”
and “Natural Law” are terms I’ll embrace for the sake
of clarity.
****************************
Mr. Antoninus accuses me of advocating anarchy. But
I say the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize murder
of the unborn is anarchy. Just look around and reflect
back from 1975 to now. Does society look organized?
Civilized? Informed? Evolved? I say NO! It doesn’t
take a cultural analyst or a Social Engineer to recognize
that our culture is in serious decline.
To protect civilization, we must practice and teach
God’s law from the home then (because God is faithful
when we obey His Word), that law will naturally flow
out and “correct” the culture.
John Nesbitt’s “Megtrends” makes the point that
lasting and genuine trends start from the bottom
(the home or the street). Synthetic fads start
from the top (advertising or government), and do
not last.
Goverment is our friend when it sticks to the business
of providing infrastructure and protecting EVERY citizen.
We are well past that now. This old ship won’t turn
without a moral, Godly rudder. We won’t find that rudder
in our courts or in our houses of Government. That moral
rudder is in the houses of the people and cannot be
legislated from us. So... we are without excuse.
*******************
“For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst
weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to
Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfuly made.... (snip) ...
Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance...”
(Psalm 139)