Posted on 03/01/2013 2:19:07 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Arkansas state legislators voted to override Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of a bill that will ban abortions in the state at 20 weeks, unless the woman is a victim of rape, incest or her life is at risk due to a medical emergency.
On Wednesday, the override passed the House with 53 votes, which included all 51 Republicans and two Democrats. The bill then moved to the Senate floor on Thursday, where it received 19 Republican votes to complete the override.
In Arkansas, legislators can override a governor's veto by a simple majority, which is 51 votes in the House and 18 votes in the Senate. During this legislative session, Republicans have a slight majority in the House, holding 51 of the 100 seats, and in the Senate, where they hold 21 of the 35 seats.
Rep. Andy Mayberry (R-Hensley), the sponsor of HB 1037, "an act to create the pain-capable unborn child protection act and to declare an emergency," told The Christian Post that he's happy about the outcome. "I am certainly pleased that the Arkansas General Assembly chose to override the veto of this life-preserving bill that reflects the pro-life values of the people of this state," Mayberry said. "This is a good law that I believe will hold up under constitutional and judicial scrutiny. Most importantly, it will save innocent babies who are capable of feeling pain from suffering a horrific, painful death."
Mayberry told CP that under the current Arkansas law, abortions can be performed up-to 25 weeks. He also added that an abortion can be performed up-to 40 weeks, if a doctor says that a baby is not viable, or if the mother faces a medical emergency.
Beebe, who vetoed HB 1037 earlier this week, said in his veto letter that he's concerned about legal costs the state could incur if an outside organization decides to challenge the constitutionality of the bill.
"In the last case in which the constitutionality of an Arkansas abortion statute was challenged, Little Rock Family Planning Services v. Jegley (1999), the state was ordered to pay the prevailing plaintiffs and their attorneys nearly $119,000 for work in the trial court, and an additional $28,900 for work on the state's unsuccessful appeal," said Beebe.
According to Mayberry, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has claimed that they will challenge the law. "I'm not sure what they would gain," said Mayberry who added that the Arkansas law is based on similar legislation that passed in Nebraska and has not been challenged since it became law in October 2010.
Courts don’t make law.
Roe is an immoral, unconstitutional forty year-old court opinion in a particular case.
The only reason it has any meaning is because folks like yourself grant to the courts power they don’t rightfully possess.
Actually it is about as meaningful as the Dred Scott decision, or at least would be, if legislators and executives would simply fulfill their own oaths, and provide appropriate checks and balances against oathbreakers in the judiciary.
"Every word employed in the Constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, rounded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them, the people adopt them, the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common-sense, and cannot be presumed to admit in them any recondite meaning or any extraordinary gloss."-- Joseph Story, Constitution (5th ed.) 345, SS 451.
"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
-- The U.S. Constitution
Says someone defending the codification in our laws of the killing of certain classes of innocent persons, which even the authors of Roe admitted was "of course" explicitly unconstitutional.
“Courts don’t make law.” Now, who can deny that fact?
Only someone who has never read Article One, Section 1.
Of course, even the actual constitutionally-empowered lawmaking body, the legislative branch, has no legitimate power to legislate against the supreme God-given, unalienable right.
The founders, and all of those they pointed to as authorities on the law, made it clear that all such lawless laws would be null and void.
Because the electorate is made up of: (1) a core of 100% pro-abort liberals: (2) a core of 100% pro-life conservatives; and (3) a whole lot of people in the middle who think that abortion as "personal choice" is wrong, and late term abortion is barbaric, but an abortion for thirteen year old Suzy two weeks after being assaulted by her uncle is regrettably necessary.
And as long as that middle group swings the election, any candidate answering "yes" to the question I have posed will lose. Every time.
So the pro-life movement must precede the issue of "who runs for office?" with "how do we get more voters from the mushy middle over to our side?"
And as I have told you before, EV, until they fear for their reelection if they do not fulfill those oaths, nothing will happen. Not one child will be saved as a result.
So the mission is to change people's minds at the retail level, rather than to run quixotic campaigns aimed only at one's fellow choir members.
Carhart went on to MD, where he recently killed both a mom and her baby.
They’re not part of the choir, though, if they don’t understand the natural law, natural right, moral basis of this free republic.
When even FReepers don’t understand, or choose to ignore, the most fundamental and important facts about our national principles, the Constitution’s stated purposes, and its explicit, imperative requirements, it’s obvious that the first work that has to be accomplished is among those who claim to be “pro-life” conservatives.
They are at the same time the main obstacle to ending the bloodshed, AND the only hope for doing so.
Which is exactly why I take the time for threads like this one.
This is as “retail” as it gets.
Again, lay out a REALISTIC path to Personhood ever becoming law.
That’s good. I’m glad. The bill in Arkansas had 30+ democrats who voted for it originally. After Beebee vetoed it, only 2 deomcrats voted for it. It passed via arm twisting. The bill in your state would have failed in Arkansas. When they get a decent Gov. and AG, they’ll just have to do what your state had to do. In the meantime, some babies are going to live who would have otherwise been murdered.
We lose credibility when w make this fight all or nothing. It stinks because it should be all humans being protected. There are few places where that’s legislatively possible. I think the Gov should just order law enforcement to go in to Abortion “clinics” and arrest the murderers inside, put them on trial, and execute them. Since no governor is willing to do that, we have to save babies somehow.
If there were a referendum in my state tomorrow defining abortion at any moment after conception as murder, and making no exceptions whatever, I would vote for it.
So you do not need to convince me.
But I (unlike you??) know that referendum would lose. Probably by at least two to one, maybe more.
Likewise, any candidate who openly says "I'll ban all abortion by executive action, damn the courts" will lose, certainly by a bigger margin still.
And babies will go on dying until the majority of voters sees it your way, but then, you've already made it abundantly clear that this is not as much a problem to you as is the taint of apparent compromise.
You’re never going to convince anyone to a position you will not assert, AND stand for consistently in your political and policy actions.
That’s the primary practical problem with the incrementalist, compromised approach that has been taken for forty years. It has no moral, constitutional, legal, or political authority, because right up front it abandons the only moral, constitutional, legal, and political argument against the practice of human abortion, which is equal protection for the unalienable rights of all, starting with the supreme right, the right to live.
Equality is by nature all or nothing. If all are not protected, there is no equality. It's very simple.
Life is also by nature all or nothing. You're either alive or you're dead.
That is a utilitarian question, not a moral or constitutional one. And it is my belief, based on my knowledge of the natural law fact that you reap what you sow, that over the long term, being principled is practical, while being unprincipled is ultimately, inevitably, impractical. Why? Because there is a God in heaven who rules over the affairs of men.
I agree, it should but I do not believe it will because of the current makeup of the SC and that won't get any better with Obama as president.
This is the mindset that the pro-life movement has been trapped in for forty years, and it contains a heavy judicial supremacist presumption.
We have forty years of evidence to show that this bloodbath is not going to end by looking to the courts. They will not be convinced, so they must be constrained. Legitimately, by those who are constitutionally-empowered to do so in the other two branches.
Again, lay out a REALISTIC path to Personhood ever becoming law.
The only possible real first step on that path is for legislators to understand the first principles which make up the cornerstone of the rule of law in this country, the stated purposes of the Constitution they swore to support and defend, and that Constitution's explicit, imperative requirement that equal protection be provided for every person in this country, starting with their right to live.
"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.""No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution..."
-- Article VI
Yes, but there is no evidence that the "Personhood" bill will ever save even one life and as a matter of fact, I predict it won't. SO, that leaves us with two other avenues, also chip away at abortion any way possible and save lives any way possible and that is happening. We can't give up that fight. There is also to make abortion unthinkable, which is the route Lutherans for Life takes. No one must have an abortion--yet, anyway. We throw all we have at it.
You don’t “chip away” at abortion by codifying its acceptance for some disfavored classes of persons in our laws. You more deeply embed it.
Write a clean bill that provides equal protection, as the Constitution explicitly and imperatively requires.
The more I think about your logic, the faultier I find it to be. First, you believe that if you pass a bill that declares everyone to be a human being at the moment of conception (and I agree with that) and that they are to be afforded all the same protections as born humans, that God will take care of the rest.
Why even bother to pass the "Personhood" bill? God doesn't need that, either.
How I wash you are right but in practicality, it does nothing.
As of now, the "Personhood" people are alienating many very good pro-life people. Calling them "pro-abortion" does not help anyone.
Ok, I go it.
We must strive to get those squish people in the middle who have no real convictions by circumventing ours - makes perfect sense.
God doesn’t need either you, or me to do what he already did thousands of years ago. “Personhood” legislation is worthless in this day and age. You’re defying God to take care of this while you could be helping save lives.
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