President Bush's Potential Supreme Court Picks are Pro-Life on Abortion

LifeNews.com ^ | November 24, 2004 | Steven Ertelt

[Aussie Dasher]

I'm getting your Constitution mixed up with the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

Perhaps you could amalgamate the three for the benefit of confused Australians?

[jwalsh07]

The founders did not always adhere to founding principles of this country laid out by the DOI and the US Constitution. The Catholic Church does not always adhere to principles as put forth in the Old and New Testaments. All of us do not always adhere to our own principles. That is because all of us, from the founders on down, are fallible.

Roe and Dred Scott are but two instances where the principles laid out in the DOI and affirmed in the 5th and 14th Amendments were violated. They are blatant examples of a majority stepping on the inalienable rights of a defenseless minority.

So what should one do when deciding between the principles of the right to life and liberty vs strict contructionalism? It is evident to me that certain principles should indeed be inalienable and not subject to the whim of court majorities or plebiscites.

Given a choice, I would vote for the man or woman who espoused the principles set forth in the DOI, 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment rather than the man or woman who pledged to rule based only on strict construction when ruling on a basis of strict construction would violate the founding principles of this nation.

And now a question for you my friend. Would you vote to affirm a man or woman who pledged to strictly follow the constitution and affirm a black man to be less than a person or a man or woman of principle who understood that "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."?

[jwalsh07]

The Declaration of Independence.

The US Constitution, the Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution thanks to those who were most vehement in protecting the rights of the individual.

[MHGinTN]

Well done! And THAT is precisely why the DOI is the starting point that leads to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which was added. Would that someone had asked that question of the court considering the Dred Scott case!

[jwalsh07]

Thanks MG.

[Aussie Dasher]

Thank you, squire. Much appreciated.

[Huck]

And now a question for you my friend. Would you vote to affirm a man or woman who pledged to strictly follow the constitution and affirm a black man to be less than a person or a man or woman of principle who understood that "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."?

It's an interesting question. I'd say at the moment, I'm leaning towards the former. I've actually been poking around looking for a good explanation for where old Chief Justice Taney was wrong. Didn't the Constitution say to count a black as 3/5s a person? Weren't they singled out in the Constitution as property? Didn't it take a Constitutional amendment to change that?

I want a justice to read the Constitution as is, without coming up with novel ways to advance the "spirit" of the document. Let the people amend it to be perfectly clear.

[inquest]

Didn't the Constitution say to count a black as 3/5s a person?

No, it counted a slave as 3/5 of a person. That's where Taney went wrong.

[LWalk18]

The 3/5ths compromise applied to slaves, not blacks. The slave holding states wanted slaves to count as full persons for the sake of representation, although they had otherwise the status of chattel.

[Huck]

The slaves were negroes. Your making a semantic point. Dred Scott was a negro slave owned by someone. The Constitution clearly protects property rights, clearly rates slaves (such as Dred Scott) as less than a full person, and clearly protects the slave owners' right to own slaves. Isn't all that much obvious? Didn't it take an amendment to ban slavery? Nowawadays, we'd just have a court decide that slavery was unconstitutional all along, even though that's clearly untrue.

Isn't it strange that a woman's right to vote required amendment, but her right to abortion was discovered to exist already?

[inquest]

The slaves were negroes.

"If p then q" doesn't mean "if q then p".

Dred Scott was a negro slave owned by someone.

That was the very point in dispute - whether or not he was still a slave.

There were a number of holdings in the Scott ruling, but one of them was that blacks (even free blacks) can't be citizens. There is (and was) no constitutional warrant for such a conclusion.

[LWalk18]

Not all blacks were slaves- roughly 5-10% of blacks were free around the time of the Dred Scott decison. Taney claimed that neither slaves nor free men who were the descendants of slaves could be U.S. citizens.

[MHGinTN]

"Isn't it strange that a woman's right to vote required amendment, but her right to abortion was discovered to exist already?" You raise an interesting contradiction since the right to hire an innocent person killed doesn't exist in the Constitution or in the documents that led to the Constitution, yet an activist court 'created' (rather than the right already existing) something that wasn't enumerated. In actuality, I would say that the right to vote already existed for women but due to a predisposed bias over the word 'men' (as in all men are created equal, found in the DOI), women were disenfranchised rather than existing unenfranchised. The same curious wrong is being perpetrated against the alive unborn children slaughtered in abortion, don't you think? [HINT: the word person has been biasedly interpreted to mean only born humans, in order to support a wrong that raises women's rights to liberty higher than the alive unborn's right to LIFE; women already had a right to life since abortion could be performed prior to Roe where a woman's LIFE was endangered by a continuing pregnancy. This is that 'self defense' thingy, the right to defend one's LIFE, which of course rests upon the assumption that one IS alive, not disenfranchised from LIFE. The DOI is essential to establish the reason for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.]

[jwalsh07]

No sweat mate.

[Huck]

Taney claimed that neither slaves nor free men who were the descendants of slaves could be U.S. citizens.

Well that explains that. Thanks.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[bobsatwork]

"Pro-life judges are no more desirable to me than pro-abort judges. I want pro-Constitution, pro-republic judges.".........Well said. I agree completely. It does not matter to me whether a judge thinks abortion if FORBIDDEN by god, or is a basic motherly right. It matters whether the judge sees such forbiddance or right in the constitution (it ain't there).

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Theodore R.]

Six percent of southern blacks, some 250,000, were free in 1860; there were other free blacks in the North. Some impoverished free blacks actually sold themselves into slavery to garner a better life style.

[Theodore R.]

The Constitution does not use the word "slavery" until Amendment 13. In the original body euphemisms are used to refer to "slavery" or "slaves," such as "one bound to service or labor."