Posted on 07/27/2011 7:01:25 PM PDT by ejdrapes
Rick Perry Categorizes Abortion as a States' Rights Issue Despite holding personal pro-life beliefs, Texas Gov. Rick Perry categorized abortion as a states’ rights issue today, saying that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, it should be up to the states to decide the legality of the procedure. “You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,” Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston. “You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, 'We’d rather not have states decide that.'” The 10th Amendment reads: "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."
July 27, 2011 8:32 PM
ABC News' Arlette Saenz (@arlettesaenz) reports:
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
In the highly unlikely event that a state makes murder legal the federal government should mind it’s own constitutional business. And no, I am not pro-murder. We are in this mess (and getting worse than you can imagine) because we have a mammoth and unstoppable central government. We are headed toward collapse because the states have shunned their responsibility. Life as we have come to know it in America is all but finished. Thanks to the centralized government that you love so much.
Yes. In the late 19th century (when the 14th amendment was written and ratified), abortion was widely considered to be the murder of a human person and was therefore illegal throughout most the United States. Aborting an unborn child at that time was punishable regardless of whether any harm befell the pregnant woman and the fact that many of the 1860s era statutes punished not only the doctors or abortionists, but ALSO punished the women who hired them.
Furthermore, it was clearly intent of the framers of the constitution that unborn children constituted human persons that were protected by U.S. law. James Wilson, a framer of the U.S. Constitution, explained as follows: “ With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb. By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from every degree of danger."
Abortion is murder. So why would you even ask this question?
OK, that moves the determination of morality to the person picking the word.
But the official dictionary definition of murder is:
1. The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
2. Verb: Kill (someone) unlawfully and with premeditation.
But I understand the point you were making with the word, so we have communicated.
Abortion kills a human being. There is no logical reason why a state can constitutionally have a law that legalizes killing human beings at one point in the life but it is not constitutional for states to have a law to have a law that legalizes killing human beings at another point in their life.
Even abortion promoters admit that abortion is killing a human being. It’s not removing a clump of tissue or a rabbit.
In case you haven’t been paying attention your precious national regime makes it legal in all 50 states. Has been that way for about 40 years. Where in the heck have you been? Asleep apparently.
My precious national regime?
Bye.
When states currently restrict abortion via state law immediately the pro-aborts file a lawsuit, and these lawsuits will eventually wind up in the Supreme Court.
I don’t see why you are accusing me of being complicit in the murder of the unborn.
Do you think that it would be okay for a state to de-criminalize murder of born humans? Yes or no.
Plus, not sure what you mean by “my precious national regime”.
And you submit that this consitutes evidence that the intent of the 14th amendment was to take the decision of whether it should be illegal from the States, and transfer it to the federal government?
That means that making abortion a federal crime was not their intent when they wrote and ratified that amendment.
You are proposing to use the text of an amendment to transfer a power from the States to the federal government that the people who wrote and ratified that amendment did not intent for it to transfer.
Re-read the Fourteenth Amendment.
Enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment against a state that has legalized abortion would NOT make abortion a federal crime. What IS a “federal crime” under the Fourteenth Amendment is denying the equal protection of the laws to some people.
I.e., it is not ABORTION that is a federal crime; it is making abortion “legal” that is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Murder has been made unlawful BECAUSE it is unjust.
When murder is made lawful, it remains unjust.
To what end? Having read it, and knowing what the words are doesn't provide any context. Words have different meanings in different contexts. The context and intent determines exactly which meaning of the words was intended when they were written.
You want finding out what it meant to them to be irrelevant, so that you can replace that with what it means to you. That ass backwards. What it means to you is irrelevant. What's relevant is what it meant to them.
I.e., it is not ABORTION that is a federal crime; it is making abortion “legal” that is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, was abortion legal in any of the States that passed it?
When the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, abortion was legal in some states, and illegal in others. After it was ratified abortion continued to be illegal in some states, and legal in others, and it stayed that way until Roe v Wade.
You want me to believe that the people who wrote and ratified that amendment intended and understood that it required all the states to make abortion illegal, and then forgot to do it.
That's what your position sounds like to me.
It goes without saying that any state who wants to enact a law prohibiting abortion should be allowed to do so. But as I mentioned up thread, any state even passing a law restricting abortion is immediately hit with a lawsuit - why? Because of the foul SCOTUS decision. So states have had their rights taken away from them, and not just about this issue. So at this point it is beyond a States Right issue. Additionally, if a state wanted to de-criminalize murder, that would also be wrong and should not be permitted because it is against the Constitution - legally allowing people to deprive others of their lives. Same as abortion.
Abortion was illegal in every state by the early 20th C.
The Declaration of Independence is incompatible with slavery, but the process of getting rid of slavery was lengthy. I.e., they “forgot” to get rid of slavery for more than 80 years. That fact does not detract from the truths enunciated in the Declaration.
The Fourteenth Amendment, as written, prohibits the states from marking out some segment of the population, and legalizing the murder of those people.
Why wasn't it made illegal in every state immediately upon ratification of the 14th, like slavery?
Moral corruption. Also, abortion was so dangerous there was hardly any point making it illegal.
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