Posted on 12/03/2016 6:16:13 PM PST by ReformationFan
President-elect Trump’s reconfirmation recently on 60 Minutes that he will nominate “pro-life judges” has sparked some unprecedented media focus on what will happen when Roe v. Wade is overturned. This focus is long overdue. The notion of Supreme Court justices acting as public-health officials ranking the priority of abortion as health care, deciding what standards should apply to the practice in clinics from coast to coast, and deciding what credentials are suitable for abortionists would have astounded the great justices of the past. That’s why it has to be dressed up as some solemn “constitutional right” that obscures the Court’s actual role as the de facto National Abortion Control Board. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recognized what the justices were doing back in 1983, warning of “our continued functioning as the nation’s ‘ex officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.’”
But no one should jump the gun. There are three huge political hurdles to the Supreme Court’s doing the right thing and returning the abortion issue to the democratic process in the States. First, it will take at least the replacement of Justice Scalia (with a like-minded Justice), plus the replacement of one or two of the Justices — Breyer, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan — who threw out health and safety standards for Texas abortion clinics last June, claiming the need for evidence of a public-health crisis in abortion clinics.
Second, the U.S. Senate, with a 52–48 (possibly shifting) Republican–Democratic split, will be a high hurdle when it comes time for a vote during the confirmation process. Third, Planned Parenthood and 30 allied organizations, and their billionaire population-control funders, like George Soros and Warren Buffett, backed by numerous billion-dollar foundations, will all be working 24/7 to pressure the Senate and prop up Roe v. Wade, backed by a media bullhorn featuring all kinds of horrible myths about the implications. They will work to hide the reality that in the U.S. today, abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, and sometimes with taxpayers’ subsidies, putting our nation in the company of North Korea, China, and Canada as the only nations that allow abortion for any reason after fetal viability.
But once those hurdles are overcome and Roe is overturned, there are three essential conditions that will maintain the status quo for at least the short term and ease the transition back to the states.
First, overturning Roe does not mean that the Court makes abortion illegal. Overturning Roe will return the issue to the states, where legislators can act in accordance with the views of their citizens. And no federal law exists that would make abortion illegal. (Congress might try to legislate a national law, but Congress’s constitutional authority to do so, in the absence of Roe, is doubted by legal scholars and judges.)
Second, if Roe were overturned today, abortion would be legal in 40 to 45 states tomorrow, up to 20 weeks and possibly to fetal viability, for the simple reason that there are no enforceable prohibitions on the books in those states before that time. The state legislatures and governors would have to act affirmatively. State regulations that are on the books on the day that Roe is reversed would likely be enforceable — parental-notice or consent laws, clinic regulations, etc. — subject to specific legal factors in each state that may prevent enforcement. Third, women won’t be penalized. The actual practice of the states for nearly a century before Roe (1973) was to target abortionists (the actual practitioners) and to treat the woman as the second victim of abortion. The states will undoubtedly follow that effective practice when Roe is overturned.
What would the states actually do? Based on the data in Americans United for Life’s annual publication, Defending Life, and AUL’s Life List, showing how the states have legislated (or not) on the life issue for the past 40 years, a fair prediction might be that — in the short term — a dozen states would maintain abortion on demand, a dozen states would try to enact and enforce broad prohibitions, and about 25 states in the middle might try different limits. That diversity is called federalism, a bedrock of the American constitutional system, which prevents Congress from dictating a single national law (in some areas) and leaves important issues to be decided at the local level, by local representatives accountable to the people at regular elections. It would be wise to leave the abortion issue to the states — where Americans can make their voices heard and where it was addressed since colonial days — unless 37 states act through constitutional amendment to enact a national rule.
In the meantime, the Court should delegate the broadest possible discretion to the states to address abortion, a serious public-health issue that state legislators and public-health administrators can handle better than unelected judges in Washington. A public-health crisis exists in America today as under-monitored, rarely supervised abortion centers operate as the red-light district of medicine. Abortion advocates increasingly claim that abortion is the supreme “right” that has to be publicly funded and guaranteed by voters and their tax dollars. But consider the Second Amendment, containing the “right to bear arms,” which is actually protected by the text of the Constitution: Taxpayers don’t have to subsidize the purchase of guns or ensure that people drive less than 30 minutes to have “access” to a gun dealer. The existence of that express right does not include federal or state responsibility to facilitate a sale.
But public opinion has long shown that the majority of Americans have rejected an extreme view of abortion and want limits on abortion. As the National Abortion Control Board, the Court has failed to protect women and their unborn children from the dangers of abortion and the sometimes deadly conditions inside rarely monitored, poorly supervised abortion clinics. This dangerous public-health vacuum could be filled by the states if the Justices would get out the way.
Clarke Forsythe, an attorney, is the acting president and senior counsel at Americans United for Life (AUL) and the author of Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade (Encounter Books 2013).
No, especially not if welfare is reformed.
And I think we need to reform welfare to say that if you’re on the dole in any form, you have to take long term contraception that can be removed when you’re off the dole - for every female of child bearing age in the house. No point in giving Mama birth control if the teenager can still get pregnant.
We have IUDs that we can implant for $1000 and get 99.99% effectiveness for ten years. That’s cheaper than birth control pills over the same period and you aren’t relying on the person to take them and do so correctly. Liberals shouldn’t whine about this, since it doesn’t mess with hormones or their sacred breast feeding.
Then there are injectable contraceptives like Depo Provera or implants like Norplant.
Change welfare to say “you need free housing, SNAP, utility discounts? You’re too poor to afford another baby, and society can’t support you AND another mouth to feed”. And if they marry a man who can support them or raise themselves out of poverty, they can have the implant out. Using a long term, serious method also solves the problem of the 20% of the population literally too stupid to manage their own fertility.
This is a low cost method to reducing the dependent population that encourages marriage, doesn’t mandate abortion, reduces the population that is mentally unfit to contribute to society and doesn’t rely on those who can’t manage their own affairs to take pills.
Nor is it eugenics per se because the lazy SJW with a high IQ and low IQ woman with 8 kids on welfare would both be required to contracept. And both could get their fertility back if they got independent financially.
That is tacky. “Give her something cheaper than a serious show of commitment to get laid!”
It's a start.
Outside the USA both of my kids would have been considered non-viable on the day they were born (both extremely premature), they are both in their mid thirties now and both very successful.
Do you know what the difference is between these seemingly contradictory passages are?
"I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
IMHO, IANAL
The usurpation of state power by Fed.gov has been in overdrive since the 1960’s. Abortion, while a grievous moral issue, is just one of thousands of areas where Fed.gov, and its many cronies and leftist allies, have grabbed power.
I find it hard to believe the issue of abortion will somehow buck the trend.
That blurs the line between theocracy and republic
Don’t get me wrong- I certainly hope both Roe and obergefell are overturned.
When Planned Parenthood gets put out of business then you will see Democrats trying to get mass hysteria.
? You probably make a good point. My point is very general. Very. And it certainly allows for divine intervention along with fall from grace as a nation if we don’t just stop the sanctioning of abortion but also allows for not being a theocracy. We don’t want us Catholics taking over any more than any other denomination. Spreading the good Word is still an individual calling
Natural law comes from God as He is tge creator.
In any case, mothers killing their own babies is just wrong and for us as a nation to sanction it goes against natural law. It causes a lot of trouble That can be said without forcing religion into anyone
Planned Parenthood is a big donor to the Democratic Party. So you could say dems are partially funded by the murder of babies. No wonder they are so evil and demonic. That viscous circle of immorality, broken families, absent fathers, welfare, pregnancy and abortion keeps the money flowing to Demoncrats. Of course they will shriek like the wicked which tech of the west when that money spigot gets shut off.
I think we mostly agree.
The thing we’re sometimes calling natural law is the witness of the Lord’s will that manages to percolate even unto the souls of the lost. Its exact nature will vary from place to place and person to person. People even now are aware of some of it even when they are not aware of all. Of course we know that God loves the babies very much indeed — to the point of His Son sacrificing Himself for them. But even a dim apprehension of this may be enough to move people to do almost anything to save a baby.
Anyhow I think we’re seeing a movement in the spiritual world in this direction, and that’s a herald of good news. When a large pocket of the elect is about to show up, this kind of thing will tend to happen. We have problems bigger than abortion here. Merely refraining from abortion wouldn’t in itself carry anybody to heaven. A full on acceptance of divine salvation is needed for that.
I tend to be symbolic minded, and in that vein I might notice that a society that loves its babies more will also be more likely to understand the principle that God loves them enough to make an earnest effort to save them. The two things share one principle.
The more we lean on God, the more we are likely to see miracles. Because now we aren’t doing things for our own personal glory but for God’s glory — which makes more room for blessings.
Roe might be easier to deal with. “Gay marriage” may be trickier. My hunch here is that it could take a constitutional amendment to put that kind of policy back into the purview of individual states. However political pendulums do swing, and the shove that represents “gay marriage rights” may have imparted enough energy to the pendulum to make a very marked swing back to countervailing rights that are actually real, not illusory — states’ political rights, and individuals’ religious rights.
Interesting.
I just like to separate church from state. Reversing tge decision can’t come from a religion speaking to the government. But the framers would not have allowed for abortion. But roe v wade, according to Mark Levin and others is not constitutional
Sticking with the constitution is the way to go when it comes to legal matters.
We can’t be forced to concur wit roe v wade but we are when we taxpayers are forced to contribute to PP or when the majority of the electorate vote for abortion kings and queens to run the country. Hillary for instance. But she’s out so boldness will have to prevail
Roe V Wade will never be overturned.
Personally, I’d love it but, practically it will never happen.
The Govt should not fund it (even if that means more tax dollars supporting welfare).
Ideally,we should stop taxpayer funded welfare.
Our only hope/line is teaching against it.But that would mean conservatives were involved in Education, Entertainment, etc. Since we’ve given over the reigns to the liberals, we don’t have a shot.
As for me and mine, I teach my kids that abortion is murder and goes against everything we believe in. What else can we do when we don’t control the various mediums? Everything is all about a woman’s choice. Everything.
It will take decades to fight against that.
Roe V Wade will never be overturned and that shouldn’t be our objective, imo. We should be focusing on Life and teaching our kids that life begins at conception. And the consequences of that is taxpayer funded until we get rid of welfare in all its forms.
Dred Scott V Sandford 60 US 393 (1857) was settled law, by the same government entity. We all know how that one turn out, just 4 (four) years later approx. April 1861.
Thank you !
This campaign of control through fear is ridiculous. Roe v Wade will not be overturned. Women’s so call rights will not be overturned.
Criminy, Trump may also work to get equally qualified people, men and women, equal wages. How about that?
Conservative women will not allow it either. What do those liberals think anyway?
I agree it is highly unlikely - we have a some here who will probably blame Trump because they can't help themselves.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.