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Rick Perry Categorizes Abortion as a States' Rights Issue
ABC News ^ | July 27, 2011

Posted on 07/27/2011 7:01:25 PM PDT by ejdrapes

Rick Perry Categorizes Abortion as a States' Rights Issue
July 27, 2011 8:32 PM
ABC News' Arlette Saenz (@arlettesaenz) reports:

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."

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 10thamendment; abortion; moralabsolutes; perry; presidentperry; prolife; rickperry; statesrights
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To: CA Conservative

We did. It’s called the 14th amendment, which gives all persons the right to life, liberty, and property. Have Congress define person as starting at conception, and there you go, states have to protect the rights of pre-natal children. This is the civil rights issue of our time.

Mind you, I support the right of states to secede. If a state does not like it, it can leave as far as I am concerned. I have no desire to cooperate with a state that allows the murder of some of its citizens. We obviously are not defending the same things.


61 posted on 07/27/2011 8:04:16 PM PDT by RecoveringPaulisto
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To: ejdrapes

I completely understand what you’re saying but don’t muddy the waters by interpreting what I said as I think killing babies is OK. No Freeper is okay with that and it’s insulting to be accused of it.

Do you prefer the career suits beholden to everyone in Washington deciding it should be legal *everywhere*? Do you prefer we all be dragged down into the cesspool liberal states have become? Do you prefer the federal government deciding arbitrarily that killing mentally retarded people is legal in EVERY state?

If you think the federal government is going to make it illegal nationwide, you’re dreaming. The only thing slowing the gay marriage onslaught is the citizens saying, “Not in our state!” We’ve already given way too much power to Washington.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t even have to have a discussion as to whether a baby had a right to live or not. Sadly, that’s not the world we live in. How many lives would be saved if only half the states declared it illegal?


62 posted on 07/27/2011 8:05:42 PM PDT by nodumbblonde ("The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity." - Ayn Rand)
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To: EternalVigilance

makes perfect sense to me...


63 posted on 07/27/2011 8:05:50 PM PDT by ejdrapes (Can we keep our attacks focused on the real enemy: Obama)
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To: Arthur McGowan

” The disjunction between a “human” and a “person” is a post-Constitutional fiction of totalitarians, who, having introduced it, exploit it to murder whom they will. “ <<<

I don’t disagree with you. And now the fiction is law by the back door of privacy rights of all things. Anything left unsaid and not minutely defined is going to be the crack for litigation and legal argument. Assumptions are mocked openly by the Left. What the framers “knew” as a given is now shredded. No argument here.


64 posted on 07/27/2011 8:05:56 PM PDT by RitaOK (We hang together or will hang separately. 2012, or bust)
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To: EternalVigilance

They fail to read the Preamble to the Constitution. It does not say that the States establish the Constitution. It says that the People do. The People ratified the Constitution through their state legislatures. But the People are sovereign, not the States. The States are absolutely not sovereign over the right to life or any other inalienable right of the People.

All men—i.e., individual people—are endowed with their inalienable rights by their Creator. The States are the creatures of the People who are the creatures of God.

To use the Tenth Amendment as Perry does is a cheap, cowardly, despicable, intellectually bankrupt dodge.

No one who is as muddleheaded on this issue as Perry is belongs in the White House.


65 posted on 07/27/2011 8:08:39 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (In Edward Kennedy's America, federal funding of brothels is a right, not a privilege.)
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To: ejdrapes
"So if a State decided to legalize murder that would be OK under the 10th amendment?"

Yes, under the Constitution, the Federal government has very limited, enumerated powers.

The States are free to make bad laws or good laws or no laws.

Wife-beating, abortion, rape, clubbing baby seals, killing puppies, etc., might be evil things to do, but they are not Federal issues.

If you think the States are too unjust to handle these issues, then why stop at the Federal level? Shouldn't the U.N. make these decisions, because otherwise what if the U.S. legalized murder?

66 posted on 07/27/2011 8:08:57 PM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (Don't nuke me, bro)
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To: untwist
This critical decision belongs in the hands of the people.

You have no understanding of the natural rights, natural right, natural law basis of this republic, I'm sorry to say.

Unalienable means unalienable. These are rights given by our Creator, not by any man, and therefore not rightfully alienable by any man.

The founders of this free republic understood this intimately, and in fact premised our entire form of government upon that understanding.

Sorry, my God-given rights are NOT up for a vote.

No government, no individual, has any right to legislate, act, or adjudicate against God-given, unalienable rights. All they have is the sworn duty to protect them within their lawful jurisdiction.

un·al·ien·a·ble/inˈālēənəbəl/

Adjective: Unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor:


67 posted on 07/27/2011 8:09:37 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (For decades they've kicked the can down the road. Sorry, but there's no more road.)
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To: Arthur McGowan
Justice Scalia doesn't see a Fetus as a “person”, at least when it comes to the Constitution.

He also doesn't think that Abortion is a Federal Issue, so he vehemently opposes the rationale of the Roe v Wade ruling.

68 posted on 07/27/2011 8:13:27 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Would you rather live in Obamaville or Palintown?)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

Unalienable rights are not given to people by states. Life is an unalienable right.


69 posted on 07/27/2011 8:14:03 PM PDT by ejdrapes (Can we keep our attacks focused on the real enemy: Obama)
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To: ejdrapes
Amen. And every officer of government is sworn to protect those rights. It's the primary reason for the existence of their office.

One of my favorite all-time speeches was delivered in 1852 by Frederick Douglass, on the occasion of the Fourth of July.

My favorite passage:

"I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in. all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain, broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight."

To what principles did he refer?

"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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."

70 posted on 07/27/2011 8:14:42 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (For decades they've kicked the can down the road. Sorry, but there's no more road.)
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To: ejdrapes
So if a State decided to legalize murder that would be OK under the 10th amendment?

As far as I know, murder by itself is not a federal crime. Murder against federal agents or on federal land certainly is. If the federal government wants to go after a murderer they might go after that person for civil rights violations or something along those lines.

As far as a I know, murder is a state issue. If some state tried to legalize murder, the politicians who did such a thing would be voted out of office and replaced with new representatives who would simply reverse said law.

Once Roe is overturned and abortion law is sent back to the states, each one would be able to restrict or outlaw the killing of unborn babies.

71 posted on 07/27/2011 8:14:59 PM PDT by Longbow1969
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To: EternalVigilance

And how exactly has the “full force of American law and justice” worked out so far? Legally aborted babies left to die wriggling in a toilet?


72 posted on 07/27/2011 8:15:51 PM PDT by nodumbblonde ("The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity." - Ayn Rand)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

The Federal government should have little power over the vast majority of criminal cases. However, Congress was granted the power to define person under the 14th amendment. This would then force states to outlaw abortion. This is not a violation of the 10th amendment because the power was delegated to Congress to do this.


73 posted on 07/27/2011 8:16:27 PM PDT by RecoveringPaulisto
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To: Kickass Conservative
He also doesn't think that Abortion is a Federal Issue, so he vehemently opposes the rationale of the Roe v Wade ruling.

The only rationale of Roe that matters is that the court dehumanized the child. In the written opinion Blackmun even admitted that if the child is a person, OF COURSE they are protected by the explicit imperative requirement of our Constitution.

"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment." -- Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Roe vs. Wade, 1973

Neither Scalia, nor any other member of this court, has ever acknowledged the simply obvious fact that the fetus is a person, even though science has removed any shadow of any doubt about when the physical existence of every single person begins.

74 posted on 07/27/2011 8:19:38 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (For decades they've kicked the can down the road. Sorry, but there's no more road.)
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To: nodumbblonde
I completely understand what you’re saying but don’t muddy the waters by interpreting what I said as I think killing babies is OK. No Freeper is okay with that and it’s insulting to be accused of it.

I'm not suggesting that at all. Just exaggerating to prove a point. While I certainly support States rights, I don't think anyones right to life should be up for a vote. But then I consider an unborn fetus to be a human being that has natural rights.

75 posted on 07/27/2011 8:21:51 PM PDT by ejdrapes (Can we keep our attacks focused on the real enemy: Obama)
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To: EternalVigilance

Your support for abortion & Roe v Wade is pretty sick.


76 posted on 07/27/2011 8:25:13 PM PDT by Minus_The_Bear
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To: Kickass Conservative

Justice Scalia is mistaken.


77 posted on 07/27/2011 8:25:22 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (In Edward Kennedy's America, federal funding of brothels is a right, not a privilege.)
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To: Longbow1969

Sad thing is if Roe was overturned I can’t see many States that would outlaw abortion. I sometimes wonder if we’re not all going to hell for allowing the murder of innocent human life.


78 posted on 07/27/2011 8:25:22 PM PDT by ejdrapes (Can we keep our attacks focused on the real enemy: Obama)
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To: wideawake
The XIVth Amendment guarantees everyone in America the right to life at the federal level. Perry is wronger than wrong.

Unless and until you can get the Supreme Court or Congress to agree with your interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Perry's position is the legally correct one. We can argue unendingly about whether or not abortion should ever be allowed, and I think all of us, Perry included, would agree it should not. But to get on Perry's case because he states the facts as they are, not how we would like them to be, is kind of ridiculous.

79 posted on 07/27/2011 8:26:59 PM PDT by CA Conservative
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To: crusader71; ejdrapes
Perry is right that this should be governed by each state, this has been argued, cited and corrected on other threads already.

Rick Perry is pro-life. People need to do their own investigating instead of believing everything that others deliberately throw out there.

Rick Perry Pro Life Record.

LINK


80 posted on 07/27/2011 8:26:59 PM PDT by potlatch (They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind......)
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