Posted on 10/26/2005 8:37:20 AM PDT by TitansAFC
Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers said in a speech more than a decade ago that “self-determination” should guide decisions about abortion and school prayer and that in cases where scientific facts are disputed and religious beliefs vary, “government should not act.”
In an undated speech given in the spring of 1993 to the Executive Women of Dallas, Miers appeared to offer a libertarian view of several topics in which the law and religious beliefs were colliding in court.
“The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women’s [sic] right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion,” Miers said.
Those seeking to resolve such disputes would do well to remember that “we gave up” a long time ago on “legislating religion or morality,” she said. And “when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act.”
“My basic message here is that when you hear the courts blamed for activism or intrusion where they do not belong, stop and examine what the elected leadership has done to solve the problem at issue,” she said.
Courts are there to settle cases, not solve issues. She sounds like the anti-Roberts.
Can an ongoing debate stop and still be ongoing?
I think that the libertarian belief of letting one do what they will with their own body only works with abortion when you assume that the baby inside the woman isn't a person and has no rights.
Link to the Wash Post article on this here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102502038_pf.html
PDF file of the speech, here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/miers/EWDSpeech.pdf
But not Bush's. His wife and parents favor "choice", and probably he as well.
Ditto that. Libertarians who recognize the basic facts of human reproduction are pro-life.
The White House says not to get into a "snit" over this.
This is just devastating.....just devastating.
I'm sure Miers is a nice person; I'm sure she's been loyal to our President. But she isn't SC material.
After reading the full speech I detect little if any libertarianism but great big doses of across the board liberalism.
“The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women’s [sic] right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion,” Miers said.
SOUTER CLONE
Where an unanswered question is: is that good or bad?
I meant it in the negative way.
Read the whole speech. She makes Souter sound like Scalia.
"But not Bush's. His wife and parents favor "choice", and probably he as well."
Bingo. Bush came out against partial birth abortion, but I cannot for the life of me remember him ever saying that abortion should be illegal, period.
I'm sure Miers believes as President Bush does. I trust him on that. The question is: Would we want President Bush on the SCOTUS?
Sad, but true.
The speech is interesting too, in that she discussed a voter turn-down of school funding as something that might need to be settled by the courts.
I am convinced that she is not only woefully unqualified for the position, but that she would be horribly bad as a justice from every perspective that matters to me as a lawyer, former judge, and Conservative Republican Pro-Life Catholic Red Sox fanatic. (While I'm not sure what her position on baseball would be, I feel confident in asserting that she would screw that up as well.)
STOP, Mr. President. STOP! Please!
I agree. And I'm not a sexist either...
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