Posted on 07/13/2013 2:11:12 AM PDT by lbryce
The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic filibuster blocked the bill and intensified already passionate resistance by abortion-rights supporters.
The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers, among other requirements. Its supporters say that the strengthened requirements for the structures and doctors will protect women’s health; opponents argue that the restrictions are actually intended to put financial pressure on the clinics that perform abortions and will force most of them to shut their doors.
Mr. Perry applauded lawmakers for passing the bill, saying “Today the Texas Legislature took its final step in our historic effort to protect life.” Legislators and anti-abortion activists, he said “tirelessly defended our smallest and most vulnerable Texans and future Texans.”
Debate over the bill has ignited fierce exchanges between lawmakers, and tense confrontations between opponents of the bill, who have worn orange, and supporters of the bill wearing blue. Signs and slogans have been everywhere, bearing long, impassioned arguments or the simple scrawl on a young man’s orange shirt, a Twitter-esque “@TXLEGE: U R dumb.”
The bill had come nearly this far before: a version had been brought to the Senate in the previous session of the Legislature, in June, and was killed by State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, with an 11-hour filibuster that stalled the bill until after the deadline for ending the session. The filibuster became an overnight sensation on Twitter and other forms of social media, with more than 180,000 people viewing the filibuster live online
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Some leftists will murder their entire families in protest.
It’s unconstitutional, though.
I remember when conservatives cared about that.
I agree
An outright total ban would be struck down by our masters on the Sup Court. So you’d get the Texas GOP demonized even more for an action that has no hope of standing. At least this bill might survive if the current High Court hears it.
Even if the Sup Court did the right thing and left it to the states, a total ban would not go over well with the public. Yeah, I know, it’s a matter of principle. An innocent life is an innocent life, but the vast majority of Americans oppose a total ban on abortion. Most Texans oppose a total ban on abortion.
A ban on abortions past the first trimester is about the best conservatives can hope for without being punished by voters.
They swore to support and defend the Constitution, not to obey judges.
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution...”
— Article VI, the United States Constitution
“Bound.”
I agree that their duty is to the Constitution, not the lawless word of judges. But the fact is that we live under a system of judicial supremacy. The Sup Court has made itself supreme, and the other branches and the states and the people have meekly accepted it. So that’s that. I wish the bogus idea and practice of judicial supremacy would be successfully challenged, but I see no hope of that. We’ve been conditioned to accept the idea that the Sup Court should have the final say, and this hasn’t been challenged at all.
As to the Constitution and abortion, I’d agree that a better case can be made for it prohibiting abortion than can be made for it legalizing abortion. But really it’s silent. It is a matter best left to the states, and that’s the most you’ll get from even mostly excellent judges like Scalia.
Sad that you would surrender this free constitutional republic and accept the coup d'etat so easily.
But really it’s silent.
No, it's not. Two Amendments explicitly, imperatively demand equal protection for every person, in every jurisdiction, in every single state.
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.""No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
And abortion destroys every single clause of the stated purposes of the Constitution.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."pos·ter·i·ty
/päˈsteritē/Noun
All future generations.Synonyms
progeny - issue - offspring
The general government and the states must protect the right to life and provide equal protection in order to fulfill the primary purposes for which they even exist. It's not optional.
To say otherwise is to throw away the cornerstone moral, legal principles of this free republic.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Other than the supreme right, the right to live, what other of our God-given, unalienable rights do you believe the states can alienate if they see fit?
Was the 19-11 a party-line vote? One senator was absent, or is there a vacancy?
I’m not proud of my surrender to judicial supremacy. But it’s a universal surrender, surely you see that. The states meekly accept every judicial usurpation and outrage from their own courts and federal courts. Congress meekly accepts every judicial usurpation and outrage. The President meekly accepts every judicial usurpation and outrage. I hope this changes, but what chance is there that it will?
It’s probably a safe bet that the provisions of the Constitution you cite as prohibiting abortion were conceived and ratified with little or no thought to abortion. An Originalist interpretative approach would not yield the result you want. You’d have a hard time getting even mostly excellent judges like Scalia agreeing to issue a ruling that the Constitution bans abortion.
So yeah, I do think abortion is one of the countless issues that the Founders would have deemed a matter for the states to handle.
Your principles on abortion are consistent. I’ll give you that. But those principles would lead to a federal ban on all abortions. Is that a correct assessment? If so, then I’ll ask if you’re aware of public opinion on abortion? I get that it may not matter to you, and I can appreciate that, but banning all abortions is supported by maybe 15-20% of the population. It’s on the opposite end of the equally unpopular position of abortion on demand. Supporting such a policy, and then somehow actually implementing it would be disastrous for Republicans.
And it’s never going to happen anyway. The best conservatives can hope for is to return it to the states.
There is no chance for America if a sufficient mass of Americans continue to surrender our constitutional republican form of representative self-government to the tyranny of a judicial oligarchy. The coup d'etat is complete.
It’s probably a safe bet that the provisions of the Constitution you cite as prohibiting abortion were conceived and ratified with little or no thought to abortion. An Originalist interpretative approach would not yield the result you want.
Such a conclusion flies in the face of the Ninth Amendment, and the Original views that were behind the Ninth Amendment.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
James Madison and others did not want a Bill of Rights because they feared the rise of the exact attitude you are exhibiting. They figured that if you start enumerating rights someone would jump to the conclusion that just because a right was not enumerated that it does not exist. However, the antifederalists won that political debate, and the first thing the new Congress under the new Constitution did was to begin the process of ratifying a Bill of Rights. Madison ended up agreeing and helping pass these Amendments, his objections having been overcome by the inclusion of the Ninth. So please, stop pretending that the framers originally intended that the only rights we can enjoy are those that they thought to include.
Having said all of that concerning unenumerated rights, I will once again point out that you're missing the forest for the trees. The Constitution's crowning stated purposes includes the protection of Posterity, which is by definition the unborn:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to... secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
You’d have a hard time getting even mostly excellent judges like Scalia agreeing to issue a ruling that the Constitution bans abortion.
Conservatives love to fawn over Supreme Court Justice Scalia. I have no idea why. He's not a conservative. He's a squishy libertarian who lacks a basic understanding of liberty, of rights, of morality, and of the true basis of our constitutional form of government. He goes around the country giving the same old speech, in which he denies that we can know what is moral, because science can't tell us. Meh.
So yeah, I do think abortion is one of the countless issues that the Founders would have deemed a matter for the states to handle.
Such a view flies in the face of what they stated as the raison d'etre, or reason for being, of all human governments:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Your principles on abortion are consistent. I’ll give you that.
Thank you. They're also correct, and the only hope of delivering a free republic to our Posterity.
But those principles would lead to a federal ban on all abortions. Is that a correct assessment?
Yep. Abortion is illegal, right now, on every square inch of American territory. All we lack are officers of government who will keep the oath in its first and most important aspect.
"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
If so, then I’ll ask if you’re aware of public opinion on abortion? I get that it may not matter to you, and I can appreciate that, but banning all abortions is supported by maybe 15-20% of the population. It’s on the opposite end of the equally unpopular position of abortion on demand. Supporting such a policy, and then somehow actually implementing it would be disastrous for Republicans.
Actually, the contrary is true. Unless the Republicans will turn completely around and begin supporting the core principles of this free republic once again, without compromise, there is no hope that that political party will survive. They will go onto the ash heap of history with the Whigs, where they rightfully belong.
And it’s never going to happen anyway.
An unsurprising conclusion from someone who already admits that they have surrendered.
The best conservatives can hope for is to return it to the states.
The right to live is the supreme right. Your statement implies that states have a right to alienate the God-given, unalienable right to life. It denies that they, the officers of the states, and the officers of the national government, have as their first duty the obligation to secure the rights of the people, and of Posterity. It strikes at and obliterates the very soul of America, as Originally founded.
Article Six
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution..."
“These communities [the Fathers of the Republic], by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
“This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures.
“Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of American Independence.”
— Abraham Lincoln, speech in Lewiston, Illinois, August 17, 1858, four days before his first historic debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Printed in the Chicago Press and Tribune.
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