Fred Thompson has never argued that the federal government has no interest in abortion policy or that there is nothing the federal government can properly do with respect to abortion. If he had, it would be a legitimate gotcha to point out that he voted to ban PBA. Since he didn’t there is no inconsistency and no gotcha.
The federalist argument against a human life amendment to the constitution is that imposing an extreme resolution to a highly contentious issue on a nationwide basis is inconsistent with the proper division of responsibility between state and federal governments. Declaring that the unborn are persons within the meaning of the 14th Amendment would mandate that every state treat abortion like any other intentional homicide, in other words as a serious crime. It is unlikely that there is a political majority anywhere in the U.S. for that result and there certainly isn’t one in most states.
Sweeping mandates about controversial social policy from the central government are a bad idea. They are no more likely to achieve their purposes than any other government initiative. Remember Prohibition? Even if we could pass a human life amendment (and we can’t) it would be a hollow victory. Instead of enhancing respect for life it would diminish respect for the law. In liberal jurisdictions there would be rampant civil disobedience aided and abetted by the authorities. Our politics would be further embittered and our nation further divided.
Once Roe is out of the way the American people have to work out a compromise approach to abortion policy. In our system, the proper place for the process of working out that compromise is state legislatures, which are closer to their constituents than their federal counterparts. That’s what federalism means.
It is painful to compromise about matters of fundamental principle, but that’s life in a big diverse political community. Federalism is our best strategy for managing that size and diversity.
None of this has anything to do with the PBA ban. That ban didn’t touch on any issues we need to resolve through a complex process of political accommodation. Everybody with any moral sense understands that infanticide is wrong and that PBA is tantamount to infanticide.
The PBA ban doesn’t preempt any conversation we need to have on a state by state basis. It therefore doesn’t raise any of the federalism concerns associated with the human life amendment the the Constitution that the Republican platform has so long and so foolishly advocated.
Please let’s stop with the mindless gotcha games.
But your last statement, that PBA doesn’t preempt any conversation we have to have, is unsupported. You seem to say that if there’s enough support to pass a law, then we can do so because everybody’s OK with it, and if there isn’t enough support to pass a law, it’s too contentious to impose from above.
But on a state-by-state basis, you COULD find majorities who oppose the PBA ban imposed by the federal government. Since nothing in the constitution suggests that regulating abortion is a federal function, and as others have (I think mistakenly) claimed, there is no federal “murder” laws, it seems that the PBA ban is an undue interference in a legitimate state activity of determining exactly what abortions will be legal and which won’t be.
However, that said, you have done an excellent job of explaining how one would vote for PBA and not vote for the amendment. There obviously is a line that will be drawn to determine which things are well-settled enough for a federal law, and which aren’t. I just think under that argument all 50 states would pass PBA — there’s no compelling reason why every state’s law must be the same, no “interstate commerce” claim that having differing PBA laws somehow interferes with the relationship between the states.