Posted on 11/27/2009 7:18:55 AM PST by EternalVigilance
Part of the problem with your citation of the 14th amendment is that you leave out the first few words:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized...”
By definition, unborn persons are not born (or naturalized).
Section 1 says in full:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
An argument against your interpretation is that the amendment applies to born persons, as explicitly stated in the first sentence. Your counterargument should be that the first sentence only refers to who is a citizen, not which persons are protected against violations of rights by the state, and which persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. The problem is that this interpretation, though completely reasonable, isn't explicit in the language of the amendment. I favor this interpretation. My younger son came to the same conclusion upon reading the Constitution on his own when he was about 9 or 10. It's the most natural reading of the amendment, as my son showed. Between you, me and him, that's three! ;-)
The difficulty is that others read the amendment in a way that protects only the rights of persons born, and although you, I and my son all think that this is an erroneous, even tendentious reading of the amendment, our opinion does not, nor will ever, save the life of one unborn person through application of law. At least, not for a very, very long time.
The problem is that rights may exist separate from their vindication, but the vindication of rights requires the political will of the people. In other words, slavery was no less an offense against the rights of the slave in 1859 than in 1865. The only difference is that in 1859, it wasn't possible to obtain from the polity the vindication of the right not to be “owned” by another person, but in 1865, it was. All it took was a little contretemps between the North and the South that took over 600,000 lives and left the South nearly pretty much in ruins. There! That was easy!
Large discontinuities (like wars, famines, economic collapses) have the capacity to fundamentally alter what the polity will accept, will rally around.
And perhaps the United States may undergo some sort of discontinuity that leads to the vindication of the rights of the unborn through the application of the 14th amendment.
But barring such a calamity, it doesn't appear that that's in the cards. And neither should we hope, pray or act to bring about such a discontinuity.
The deeper problem is a lack of imagination. In 1859, most folks couldn't/wouldn't imagine a society without the peculiar institution. The upheaval of the war forced people, drove them to imagine and think about things that in their comfort, they put off and denied.
Similarly today, most adults haven't lived in a time when abortion on demand was not “guaranteed” by the fiat of the nine black-robed tyrants. They cannot imagine a society where there isn't recourse to abortion.
So, any solution that promises to immediately wipe out all abortion all at once in every state with few or no exceptions (and if one recognizes that the unborn are protected under the 14th amendment, it's difficult to imagine real, live circumstances that would trump the protections provided thereunder) is a non-starter.
It may be an objectively true interpretation of what the amendment actually says. It may be the actual objective status of the rights of the unborn.
And at the present time, it stands absolutely no chance of being vindicated by the polity. At all.
Primarily because folks just can't imagine any longer our society without legal abortion. For folks, at least, in a “difficult situation.” Available legally somewhere. At some price. Folks really don't know what's happening, and really don't want to know. They want abortion to be illegal in “frivolous cases,” but believe that most abortions are procured in cases of danger to the life of the mother or rape. They're wrong. These sorts of “exception cases” make up perhaps as much as 4% of abortions. Without realizing it, most folks favor restrictions that would ban about 96+% of abortions. But 35+ years of trying to educate them hasn't gone anywhere far. Because they really don't want to discuss the issue. They really don't want to be confused with the facts.
So, folks aren't ready to accept that the 14th amendment recognizes the inalienable rights of the unborn against private killing.
Conversely, the polity is more than ready, RIGHT NOW, to significantly restrict the abortion license. A majority of Americans would be happy with the results of the reversal of Roe and the ability of individual states to enact restrictions, ranging from modest to severe, on abortion. "Let the states decide what is best for them," is a rallying cry that many, probably a large majority of folks will accept. It turns the rhetoric of "choice" on its head, putting the pro-aborts on the defensive.
This is the low-hanging fruit. This is the 80 mph fastball coming straight over the center of the plate with bases loaded that can be plowed 600 feet out of the ballpark for a grand slam.
Merely reversing Roe and returning it to the states would result in significant restrictions on abortion in about 30 states, with about 20 or so of those states restricting abortions to exception cases of when the life of the mother is endangered, rape and incest (and maybe severe genetic deformity).
I don't know how many abortions would be prevented, but it would be some hundreds of thousands per year. And in many states, laws would directly vindicate the rights of the unborn.
Is this the final goal? Heck no. I'm a devout Catholic loyal to the teachings of Holy Mother Church. I say we're done when no direct abortion is permitted in law under any circumstances whatsoever. I believe this day will come. I pray for it every day. I'm also iffy about whether I will live to see the rights of the unborn fully protected in law across the entirety of the United States.
But in the meanwhile, overturning Roe would result in three excellent things:
1. It would actually save lots and lots of lives.
2. It would establish in principle in at least some states the idea that the rights of the unborn must be vindiated in law.
3. It would expand folks’ imagination on the subject of how they could live without legal abortion. Folks would see that in states with abortion laws that restrict the crime to “exception cases,” that there really are very few women who find themselves in those circumstances. They'd find that it's possible to live without easy or even general access to abortion.
And folks would be closer to accepting the principled position that unborn persons have inalienable rights that must be protected by the state in law.
In disdaining the intermediate goal of reversing Roe and returning the issue to the states, you're trying to step across the river in two hops without the benefit of a bridge.
sitetest
God gifted us with human government to restrain man's sinful nature, in order to protect the God-given rights of all.
That’s a separate clause. The ellipsis is not only perfectly proper, it is necessary for clarity, to keep people from going down rabbit trails which cause them to miss the explicitly stated purposes of the constitutional provision.
“Show me the enforcement mechanisms for your laws... then we will have an ‘adult discussion’.”
That one’s easy. We do what we did before Roe, in states where abortion was illegal. Abortionists convicted of the crime were liable to prision.
That’s the usual penalty for various forms of intentional, unjustified homicide.
sitetest
But, most of all, you must not really believe that God allows things to happen for a reason, in everyone's life. If you did, you would not be so judgmental of those things you can't change. Instead, you would support a person who will help to lead us out of the swamp we are struggling through.
If I go to DC today, I will have to speed or get run over. If I get pulled over (and some do), I will get a speeding ticket. I better be wearing my seatbelt, too! They don't believe in unearned grace...
And it requires that all persons within the state's jurisdiction enjoy the equal protection of the laws.
5 Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
6 “ Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.
“That’s a separate clause. The ellipsis is not only perfectly proper, it is necessary for clarity, to keep people from going down rabbit trails which cause them to miss the explicitly stated purposes of the constitutional provision.”
Nonetheless, it's written how it's written, and because of it, folks do “go down rabbit trails which cause them to miss the explicitly stated purposes of the constitutional provision.”
Like I said, what's objectively true about the rights of the unborn doesn't get us very far if ultimately the polity refuses to recognize and vindicate those rights.
Most folks aren't going to sign on to your interpretation, rightly or wrongly. At least, not any time in the near future, or even the not-so-near future.
I know that my post was very long, and for that, I apologize. But I treat at length why it might be necessary to focus on the reversal of Roe at this time, and how that might eventually lead to the final goal of complete protection in law of the rights of the unborn.
sitetest
What will you do with the women having the abortions? Does God not know what’s going on? Can He not protect His own? Does your faith require you to not break ANY of man’s laws, or God’s? Do you believe that one sin is worse than another? If so, you are wrong. You’re wrong about Sara Palin, too!!!
********
Job 1
Prologue
1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
4 His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.
Job’s First Test
6 One day the angels [a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan [b] also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”
8 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
12 The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, 15 and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
16 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
17 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
18 While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 19 when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart. [c]
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
That, sir, is poison fruit, which detroys the moral, legal, and political basis for any argument against abortion.
You will never stop abortion when your first act is to give away every moral, legal, and constitutional tenet which explicitly argues against it.
You’re talking nonsense.
Without the recognition of the personhood of the child in the womb (which Blackmun denied), and their resultant protection by the Fourteenth Amendment, (which even Blackmun admitted if they are PERSONS) you have no means to even “overturn” Roe much less stop abortion. You’ve surrendered from the get-go. You’re in the mental trap which has allowed for the violent and vicious destruction of tens of miillions of American children.
Then, shorn of its moral basis and foundations, the American republic is dead, as dead as the thousands who continue to be violently slaughtered by cruel and unusual means EVERY DAY IN AMERICA, because every officer of government in this country will not keep their sworn oath to fulfill the ultimate stated purpose of our Constitution: "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to POSTERITY."
“What will you do with the women having the abortions?”
In that they were relatively effective at preventing most people from committing the crime of abortion, I'd look to the statutes and practices in the states prior to the era of abortion. I think that although some states had some penalties on the books against procuring abortions, most of the time, women were treated with some discretion as victims. Sounds reasonable to me. The folks who are killing for money are the abortionists. Strike at them, and the crime will largely disappear.
“Does God not know what’s going on? Can He not protect His own?”
Starting here, your post wanders into irrelevance and incoherence. I can't even figure out what your point is after this.
But generally, we know that just because something is illegal doesn't mean that everyone will obey the law and refrain from committing the illegal act. Nonetheless, by making an act illegal and imposing penalties that are severe enough to dissuade people from performing the act, we do deter many from committing the act. And that is a primary purpose of law.
It worked prior to the 1970s, when abortion was illegal in almost every state, and where there were fewer than 100,000 illegal abortions every year. In the years following Roe, acts of abortion increased rapidly to over 1.5 million per year.
Thus, going from illegal to legal increased the commission of the act by 15-fold.
Looks like the laws against abortion were pretty effective, if not perfectly so.
sitetest
“That, sir, is poison fruit, which detroys the moral, legal, and political basis for any argument against abortion.”
Nah. I disagree. It merely sets the stage for what can then come next.
Remember that the Republican Party was founded on such a compromise - the idea that slavery should not be permitted to spread to new territories in the United States. One could argue that that hardly was a principled, uncompromising stand against slavery. Because it wasn't.
Free soil was where many folks could/would go in the 1850s. Total abolition wasn't.
Although we need to get to where you want to go, I don't see how we get from here to there without going through something imperfect and incomplete.
sitetest
http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1774
31 N.Y.2d 194
335 N.Y.S.2d 390
286 N.E.2d 887
Robert M. BYRN,
as Guardian ad Litem for an Infant “Roe”, an Unborn Child,
and All Similarly Unborn Infants, Appellant,
v.
NEW YORK CITY HEALTH & HOSPITALS CORPORATION et al., Respondents,
Court of Appeals of New York
Argued May 30, 1972
Decided July 7, 1972
BURKE, Judge (dissenting).
As I stated in Robin v. Incorporated Vil. of Hempstead (30 N Y 2d 347, 352) chapter 127 of the Laws of 1970 is not a valid exercise of legislative power. The majority opinion states the issue as: “whether the law should accord legal [p892] personality is a policy question* which in most instances devolves on the Legislature, subject again of course to the Constitution as it has been ‘legally’ rendered”.
This argument was not only made by Nazi lawyers and Judges at Nuremberg, but also is advanced today by the Soviets in Eastern Europe. It was and is rejected by most western world lawyers and Judges because it conflicts with natural justice and is, in essence, irrational. To equate the judicial deference to the wiseness of a Legislature in a local zoning case with the case of the destruction of a child in embryo which is conceded to be “human” and “is unquestionably alive” is an acceptance of the thesis that the “State is supreme”, and that “live human beings” have no inalienable rights in this country. The most basic of these rights is the right to live, especially in the case of the “unwanted” who are defenseless. The late Chief Judge Lehman once wrote of these rights: “The Constitution is misread by those who say that these rights are created by the Constitution. The men who wrote the Constitution did not doubt that these rights existed before the nation was created and are dedicated by God’s word. By the Constitution, these rights were placed beyond the power of Government to destroy.” In other words, what the Chief Judge was saying was that the American concept of a natural law binding upon government and citizens alike, to which all positive law must conform, leads back through John Marshall to Edmund Burke and Henry de Bracton and even beyond the Magna Carta to Judean Law. Human beings are not merely creatures of the State, and by reason of that fact, our laws should protect the unborn from those who would take his life for purposes of comfort, convenience, property or peace of mind rather than sanction his demise. Moreover, if there is a confiscation of property through a zoning law, it is “constitutionally” invalid. Recently, the United States Supreme Court held that the taking of a life of a murderer by a State was constitutionally invalid, and in the words of one Justice, was found to be “immoral and therefore unconstitutional” (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 364-366 [Marshall, J., concuring]).
The Attorney-General argues that the legislative determination in choosing between the competing values involved herein is a value judgment committed to the legislative process of government, not to the discretion of the judiciary. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a legitimate State interest in a woman’s right of privacy and in the undesirable effect of unwanted children upon society. (See Lexogram, Vol. 4, No. 10.) Upon scrutiny, these arguments are not persuasive, and the legislation cannot stand for two reasons — it is irrational and unconstitutional.
The irrationality of the legislation in question has several aspects. In view of modern and reliable contraception devices, there is no reason for unwanted conceptions to take place that would cause an exceptional population growth. Secondly, the argument that these unborn children are unwanted is fallacious as there are many, many families presently interested in adoption, who would be more than happy to welcome such an infant into their home. Thirdly, as we reach zero population growth, there is no compelling State interest to support the abortion legislation. Additionally, two other frequently raised arguments by proponents of abortion cannot withstand scrutiny. Thus, the plaint regarding women dying from botched abortions under the old law is easily answered. Examples of due justice for foetuses are more merciful than the unbounded exercise of pity for those few unfortunate pregnant women who fall into the hands of the few inexpert doctors. Thousands of illegal [p893] abortions were performed in New York City hospitals under the old law without fatalities but with serious side effects. To overcome this self-created problem by destroying hundreds of thousands of foetuses by State law is uncivilized. At best, a few human beings are only possibly wholly preserved from a fate set in motion by themselves at the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands and soon millions of other human beings. Nor can the old abortion law be said to be an interference with a physician’s right to practice his profession. The old abortion law sanctioned therapeutic abortion when medically indicated, thus enabling the physician to save the life of the mother in extreme circumstances.
The more telling fact than the present legislation’s irrationality is its unconstitutionality. The unconstitutionality stems from its inherent conflict with the Declaration of Independence, the basic instrument which gave birth to our democracy. The Declaration has the force of law and the constitutions of the United States and of the various States must harmonize with its tenets. The Declaration when it proclaimed “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” restated the natural law. It was intended to serve as a perpetual reminder that rulers, legislators and Judges were without power to deprive human beings of their rights.
Unless there had been a Thomas Jefferson who was educated by a philosophy professor to know the primacy of the natural law — there would be no United States of America. For, if the Declaration had been written by a pragmatist for expedient reasons we never could have enlisted the sympathies and agreement of such a large part of the then world, including members of the British Parliament in our righteous cause. They would know the pragmatic reasoning would be nothing more than pettifoggery, and had no basis in law.
We began our legal life as a Nation and a State with the guarantee that these were inalienable rights that come not from the State but from an external source of authority superior to the State which authority regulated our inalienable liberties and with which our laws and Constitutions must now conform. That authority alone establishes the norms which test the validity of State legislation. It also tests the Constitutions and the United Nations Convention against genocide which forbids any Nation or State to classify any group of living human beings as fit subjects for annihilation. In sum, there is the law which forbids such expediency. It is the inalienable right to life in the nature of the child embryo who is “a human” and is “a living being”.
Inalienable means that it is incapable of being surrendered (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary). Thus, the butchering of a foetus under the present law is inherently wrong, as it is an illegal interference with the life of a human being of nature.
The report of the Governor’s commission explanation that it was not dealing with “morality” but only law, overlooked the fact that it turned its back on the law — the natural law reiterated in the Declaration of Independence. The reasons given for the enactment of the present abortion law are irrational from a medical, scientific and factually objective analysis. There is no need for abortion except in very limited medical circumstances.
Chapter 127 of the Laws of 1970, authorizing abortion “on demand” is a resort to expediency which is recognized everywhere as the death of principle. The rationale of the majority opinion admits that customs do change and the Legislature could, if it should in the future be the attitude of the Legislature, do away with old folks and eliminate the great expense the aged are to the taxpayers. This, of course, would parallel the Hitler laws which decreed the death of all the inmates of mental hospitals and also decreed that for [p894] many purposes non-Aryans were nonpersons.
Chief Judge Lehman’s understanding of inalienable rights is the only understanding that makes any sense out of the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention against genocide.
According to the majority opinion, valid law is a merger of legislative and executive emotions, whims and hunches — announced today and perhaps changed tomorrow. One’s rights are never permanent as the existence of the natural law is denied. The majority suggests that all law is man made. Such a philosophy of law we know would not attract persons educated in philosophy. Others, however, are attracted by pragmatism. This is just as dangerous as expediency because certain individuals think: we are realistic and self-sufficient — this legislation will control population growth and assist the taxpayers.
This pragmatism, of course, is masked by a contrived theory exemplified in Abele v. Markle (342 F. Supp. 800) of giving the right of privacy of the woman an absolute paramountcy over the inalienable right of the foetus to life. On that false and unsupported premise (as I shall point out later) it then cites Griswold v. Connecticut (381 U.S. 479). That citation is inapposite. Here there are three people with different interests involved. The man, the woman and the foetus. The foetus has the superior “right to life” rather than the particular female’s or male’s concern to avoid responsibility. The proponents of abortion know that there are men who desire offspring for the joy as well as the responsibility they bring. The protection of the foetal life has been the concern of law givers even before the judicial Law of Moses, the great law giver (the Ten Commandments) down through the ages. Even in barbaric ages this was the law (see de Bracton, Sir Matthew Hale, Fleta, Sir Edward Coke, Sergeant Hawkins, Sir William Blackstone).
Under New York State law the foetus, if it is born, is entitled to posthumously share in a deceased husband’s intestate estate. This legislation gives the “right” to the wife to unilaterally, through abortion, appropriate the husband’s entire estate by preventing offspring and depriving the legally wedded husband of transmission of his blood line, name and properties to “flesh of his flesh”: another inalienable right.
The proponents of abortion take refuge in concocted distinctions as to what living human beings are persons and what living human beings are not persons -to justify the massacre of the innocents, over 400,000 in New York State this year. They belittle Chitty, Coke and twist the statements of Hale to try to persuade those who, as did the author of the Declaration of Independence, recognize that the natural law granted inalienable rights to human living beings. They demand that the natural law expressed in the Declaration of Independence on which the United States is founded, should be ignored for expedient reasons. The pragmatists have a remarkable capacity for bearing the suffering of others with equanimity so long as the suffering is not imposed on them. They are just as callous toward their fellow human beings (they all started as foetuses) as the parents who slaughtered their children in the earlier centuries. In that age parents engaged in wholesale slaughter of children for the same expedient reasons dictating this legislation, which is forbidden by the natural law (see P. Pringle, Hue and Cry, William Morrow and Company, Great Britain).
In view of the myriad methods of contraception now approved and fully utilized by females of all ages, the pronouncement in Abele v. Markle (342 F. Supp. 800, supra) that women after conception have the unquestioned right to make the sole decision to abort is contrary to the State’s responsibility to preserve and protect life. (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 364-366, supra.) The contraception [p895] methods available today if used are more than sufficient to control population growth. Witness the fact that we have already reached zero population growth and possibly gone below it. The complete disrespect for the foetus’ right to life is in keeping with the cruelties which antedated the age of the lawmakers of Judaism, and certainly is a return to the barbarism of the English people of the early centuries (see P. Pringle, Hue and Cry, supra).
There is no medical or scientific doubt that foetuses are a group of human beings not a part of his or her mother. Every respected doctor, specializing in this field, treats the unborn child as a second patient different and individually distinct from the mother. Unless we intend to indorse the totalitarian philosophy already practiced of destroying the elderly, the insane, the newly born defective child or other groups of “lesser quality” as defined by the “state”, scrap the Declaration of Independence, distort the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, we should find this legislation constitutionally invalid.
The Appellate Division arrived at the obvious contradiction that even though the foetus is a human being with “a separate life from the moment of conception”, it need not be considered a person under the Fifth Amendment. Again the Appellate Division adopted the theory that the State is supreme and free to degrade the inalienable rights of human beings which were not given to them by the State and cannot be diminished nor taken away by the State. The Appellate Division and the majority agree that the “state”, as in Nazi Germany, could decide what human beings are persons or nonpersons. Human beings are not created by any woman unilaterally — only with the aid of viable semen. Men and women can have intercourse thousands of times and fail to create a foetus. The woman and the man, not only the State, are obliged to recognize the inalienable rights that issue out of the uncontroversial factors flowing out of one’s humanity. There is the sanctity of human life. To pass a law authorizing foetuses’ destruction is akin to establishing a State religion which conflicts with the rights given to those conceived in our democracy. To state that the present law does not violate the freedom of conscience of those who believe abortion to be a crime while the public revenues and public institutions are used is to resurrect the disgraceful argument that the citizens of Nazi Germany knowing of the death camps had an individual freedom of conscience to shrug off the atrocities of Dachau, Auschwitz and the other death camps. The question answers itself once we look at that society under Hitler.
The deeper disease in this legislation is the widening gap between the American self-image of a country that values human life and the reality of a growing preoccupation of the hedonists with a competitive drive for La Dolce Vita. Because some women of means have practiced abortion for years without regard for the then existing laws or the consequences apart from death is no reason to legalize it and conduct a campaign among the poor to convince them that philosophically and biologically they can consider an unborn child as one not a distinct human being with an individual right to life.
The Presidential Commission on Abortion fails to distinguish between an unwanted and unplanned birth and unwanted children. Adoptive agencies all over the United States have long waiting lists of prospective parents eager for a baby. But there are no babies to adopt. Every baby in the United States being aborted because of an alleged belief that the infant is unwanted is being denied life on the basis of an untruth. Our society has for ages allowed the woman to discontinue a responsibility for the developing human organism when that organism has reached a stage of development at which this responsibility can be transferred to another. The argument in Abele v. Markle (342 F. Supp. 800, supra) completely evades this option and relies entirely on the concept that a woman’s [p896] body is “private property” to be used as she wishes without interference from the inalienable rights of the unborn which was created when she chose to use her body in conjunction with the body of a man. I remind you that the woman’s body, her “private property”, cannot unilaterally create a foetus — nor can the body of a man. Incidentally if it is “private property” public funds cannot be constitutionally directly or indirectly used by hospitals to dispose of the foetus. The premise relied on by the courts and the Legislature is a false premise because the issue is not whether the woman has a right to use her body as she wishes (of course she has and does) but rather, if perchance another human being is conceived, that human being has an inalienable right to life that neither she, nor the man, nor any State, has the legal power to destroy.
As long as the proponents of abortion, all of whom I assume condemn genocide, have no rational reason to refuse to assign the same principle of natural law to abortion as they do to genocide, they are inconsistent.
To sum up, conception can be legally avoided — adoption opportunties are enormous — abortion legislation except in rare medical cases is neither necessary, humanly acceptable, legal nor constitutional.
The fundamental nature of life makes impossible a classification of living, human being as nonpersons, who can be excluded from the protection of the Constitution of the United States so that their right to life can be taken from them in spite of the due process clause and equal protection clause.
Such a classification is constitutionally suspect. The relationship between the classification excluding this human group of foetuses from the enjoyment of the right to life and the fabricated purposes for which the classification is made are so imperfect that it follows that the classification is clearly unconstitutional.
For instance, this abortion legislation gives the woman the right without the knowledge of the man to destroy the foetus who has, under the New York State law, the right of inheritance for devolution of property if the father dies intestate. By this act the woman, if she should be the wife, would increase her share in the intestate estate by confiscating the inheritance rights of the foetus.
In answer to the concurring opinion of Judge Jasen, which was filed after this opinion, I merely add that there can be no debate or value judgment when the operating doctors and their nurses examine the bucket in the operating room. They should know they have destroyed living human beings, the remains of which are in the bucket. If they rely on the opinions of the self motivated, they should examine the exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute. The United Press International recently reported the birth of a foetus at 21 weeks in a New York hospital. Was it “less-than-human”?
Accordingly the order of the Appellate Division should be reversed and chapter 127 of Laws of 1970 be declared unconstitutional.
The Reagan Republican platform has for the last 25 years recognized the personhood of the child in the womb and their protection by the Fourteenth Amendment.
He was human, and a sinner, no doubt. Yet God called him blameless and upright. He imputed Job with blamelessness by choice. He did it because Job believed in Him just enough. Job was a rich man.
In those days, there were constant wars and rivalries for territory. They made gains by killing and pillaging, and taking new wives. Yes, wiveS. Many also had a string of concubines.
You can try to play God with rules and mandates, but you cannot stop sinners from sinning. You can't even stopped the redeemed from sinning. For example, see Jimmy Swaggart and motels. For more examples, see Roman Catholics and pedophilia.
The Taliban is quite effective in their role of the sole arbiters of righteousness. They cut off hands for thievery, and stone women for adultery. You sound right in step with them.
Would you also like to see women wear burquas? We see in the New Testament that women should cover their heads. Do you require your wife to cover her hair?
1 Corinthians 11:5-7 (New International Version)
5 And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved. 6 If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. 7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.
Nah. Very few people with brains actually think that Roe had any legal legs to stand on. The Court could merely state, “The reasoning of Roe was badly flawed, the refusal of the people of the United States to accept this badly flawed decision is evidence of that, we therefore vacate Roe and return to the status quo prior to Roe.”
One of the alleged effects of settled legal doctrine is acceptance by the people. It's easy for justices to say that this hasn't happened in the 36 years since Roe since... it HASN'T happened. And thus, Roe does not legitimately belong to the realm of those decisions that should enjoy stare decisis.
And there are probably four votes on the Court RIGHT NOW who would vote in that way.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that there are any willing to interpret the 14th amendment as you suggest. If someone presented the argument, maybe Justice Thomas? Maybe not.
sitetest
But, just out of curiosity, are you making an argument for anarchy, because of the imperfections of human laws and governance?
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