[MeanWestTexan]

I oppose abortion for religious reasons, but often debate people for whom citing religious authority is pointless.

I was pretty proud of this, and figured it was a good thing to share.

[MeanWestTexan]

Perhaps suitable for a ping, maybe not.

[HappyinAZ]

Yes! To get more support, We need to stop identifying this position as “religious” and use the Constitution!!!! Good job!

[Jibaholic]

The problem with that argument is that you can define person however you want. There is no scientific or empirically verifiable meaning of the word. Most philosophers define person as "an entity that is aware of itself and can plan for the future." On those grounds a fetus is not a person. Of course, neither is a newborn infant but other than Obama, very few people are pushing for legalized infanticide. We have a rational duty to hold logically consistent beliefs so we have to either drop support for abortion or start supporting legalized infanticide.

Alternative, we can base personhood on a scientifically verifiable concept: being a member of the species Homo sapiens. In that case abortion should be prohibited because a fetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens. That's scientific fact.

[wolfcreek]

I like that approach but, has it been tried before that you know of?

[wideawake]

Good. I would point out that the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly guarantees the right to life of every person.

I would also add that the law already recognizes unborn children as persons in some circumstances: if I leave my estate to my as-yet-unborn child, that unborn child has legal standing as a person in a probate proceeding.

The common law background on all this is ambiguous, because before the twentieth century society's attitudes were generally quite normal.

The concept of a woman intentionally murdering her own child - as opposed to an angry man killing a woman who bore his illegitmate child in order to avoid future claims on his property - was fairly alien.

Only unmarried women of high social rank had much to fear from illegitimate pregnancy. Married women of high social rank generally bore their illegitimate offspring and passed them off as legitimate. Women of lower social rank, married or unmarried, bore their illegitimate children and passed them off as relatives' children or left them as foundlings.

It wasn't until the twentieth century - when there emerged a large urban upwardly-aspiring middle class of leisured women as well as surgically less-risky abortion - that abortion became popular.

The common law was not formulated in an age when there were millions of unmarried women in their twenties who thought that motherhood was an avoidable inconvenience.

[JimSEA]

History teaches that the more degraded a society allows the protection of human life to become, the faster the society collapses from its internal rot.

Science, through an understanding of DNA, teaches that at the moment of conception, a unique human being is created. In short, there is no "fish period" to an embryo, it is always a singular human being.

[San Jacinto]

Abortion does not involve the State taking a life, so the 5th Amendment does not apply. Think of it this way: it is not "unconstitutional" for a robber to shoot a store clerk, even though the poor clerk is being deprived of life without any sort of due process.

The issue of whether Roe v. Wade is good law has nothing whatsoever to do with religion and never has. The issue of abortion can certainly be argued on religious grounds, but it has never been necessary to resort to religious argument to argue the legal issue.

The question is: Does the Constitution prohibit the state governments from making abortion illegal? In other words, is there a Constitutionally protected right to have an abortion which cannot be abridged by state (or federal) law?

The correct answer is (or should be): Such a right does not exist in the Constitution. It is not in there. I checked. Read the whole thing. Not in there.

Roe v. Wade holds that the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) taken as a whole, create a "penumbra" (or emanation) of other, non-defined rights such as a right to privacy from state intrusion in a personal decision such as abortion--and Voila!-- no state can prohibit abortion. It is really just mumbo-jumbo concocted for the convenience of liberal, activist judges to impose social policy.

[ElectricStrawberry]

Not sure that one can “logically” start with the assumption that the fetus IS a person and then force the State prove it is not.

[I_like_good_things_too]

I’ve truly never understood why this was allowed to be framed as a “religious vs. non-religious” debate. It’s clearly more scientific & constitutional in nature.

[tacticalogic]

I think it’s going to be a hard case to make. All references to the age of a person for purposes of things like voting and holding public office were understood to start at birth. You’re going to need to clarify what this means in terms of recognition of citizenship after conception, but before birth.

[GloriaJane]

Here's my non-religious argument....

[Amendment10]

Corrupt majority justices wrongly decided against Texas in Roe v. Wade, in my opinion. This is because, since the federal Constitution says nothing about abortion, the 10th A. automatically makes abortion a state power issue.

10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In fact, special-interest justices wrongly ignored 10th A. protected state powers in Roe v. Wade (corrections welcome).

As a side note, consider how the USSC is playing double standards with respect to arbitrarily recognizing state powers. This is evidenced by its respecting of state powers in cases like Terri Schiavo while ignoring state powers in cases like Roe v. Wade.

Given the USSC's scandalous legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade, the reason that I'm happy that constitutionally clueless Obama is going to be president is the following. With respect to ongoing social strife related to injustices like abortion, the people will now be forced to reconnect with the Constitution and its history in order to protect themselves from Socialist Obama's misguided pen.

[angkor]

>>>>>“Has the State proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a fetus is not a person?” <<<<<<

Ironically the State Of California convicted Scott Peterson for the murder of the fetus carried by his wife Amy (?).

IIRC he’s not the first or last to be prosecuted for killing a fetus in the course of murdering the mother.

[Glacier Honey]

ping

[dbz77]

http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html

[west texas refugee]

I believe another person has no right whatsoever to dictate my family choices or rule over my womb.
I think if our government has the right to make my reproductive choices for me, then they should be able to pass laws that any man who commits adultery, fathers children out of wedlock, rapes, or owes more than $10,000 in back child support should be castrated.