But I do have some confusions about it and the Constitution.
James Wilson was one of only six men to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution, and was a Supreme Court justice from 1789 to 1798.
Recognized as “the most learned and profound legal scholar of his generation,” Wilson’s lectures were attended by President George Washington, Vice President John Adams, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and a “galaxy of other republican worthies.” For this reason, as constitutional scholar Walter Berns states, “Wilson, when speaking on the law, might be said to be speaking for the Founders generally.” So what do the Founders say about the right to life?
He wrote:“With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb. By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and in some cases, from every degree of danger.”
I take this to mean, that the Constitution protects life.
The key question then becomes the point at which the unborn fetus becomes an unborn child.
Wilson, in agreement with the limited medical jurisprudence of his time, assumed that life begins with the “quickening" of the infant in his mother’s womb. As taught by Aristotle, the quickening was the point at which the fetus was infused with a human, rational soul. John Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, first printed in 1839, defines the quickening as follows: “The motion of the foetus, when felt by the mother, is called quickening, and the mother is then said to be quick with child. This happens at different periods of pregnancy in different women, and in different circumstances, but most usually about the fifteenth or sixteenth week after conception….”
So, what about it? Does this mean that abortion is accepted, by the Consitution, in what we call the first trimester?
No, why?
Yes, why?
Before I get flamed by others for this, I'm seriously trying to understand, and I am confused by this passage.
:O)
P
