Posted on 05/22/2019 2:33:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the past several weeks, a bevy of states have passed extensive new restrictions on abortion. Alabama has effectively banned abortion from point of conception. Georgia has banned abortion from the time a heartbeat is detected, as have Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi. Missouri has banned abortion after eight weeks. Other states are on the move as well.
This has prompted paroxysms of rage from the media and the political left -- the same folks who celebrated when New York passed a law effectively allowing abortion up until point of birth and who defended Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's perverse statements about late-term abortion. According to these thinkers, conservatives have encroached on a supposed "right to abortion" inherent in the Constitution.
This, of course, is a lie. There is no "right to abortion" in the Constitution. The founders would have been appalled by such a statement. The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) is a legal monstrosity by every available metric: As legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote, Roe "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." The court's rationale is specious; the court relied on the ridiculous precedent in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that a broad "right to privacy" can be crafted from "penumbras, formed by emanations." Then the court extended that right to privacy to include the killing of a third party, an unborn human life -- and overrode state definitions of human life in the process.
How? The court relied on the self-contradictory notion of "substantive due process" -- the belief that a law can be ruled unconstitutional under the Fifth and 14th amendments so long as the court doesn't like the substance of the law. That's asinine, obviously. The due process provision of both amendments was designed to ensure that state and federal government could not remove life, liberty or property without a sufficient legal process, not to broadly allow courts to strike down state definitions of conduct that justify removal of life, liberty and property. As Justice Clarence Thomas has written, "The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause is not a 'secret repository of substantive guarantees against "unfairness."'"
Nonetheless, the notion that such a right to abortion is enshrined in America's moral fabric has taken hold among the intelligentsia. Thus, we now experience the odd spectacle of those on the political left declaring that the Constitution enshrines a right to abortion -- yet does not include a right to bear arms, a right to freedom of political speech, a right to retain property free of government seizure or a right to practice religion.
For much of the left, then, the term "constitutional right" has simply come to mean "thing I want." And that is incredibly dangerous, given that the power of the judiciary springs not from legislative capacity but from supposed interpretive power. Judges are not supposed to read things into the Constitution but to properly read the Constitution itself. The use of the judiciary as a club has led to a feeling of radical frustration among Americans; it has radically exacerbated our culture gap.
The legislative moves in Alabama and other states will open a much-needed debate about the role of the states, the role of legislatures and the role of government. All of that is good for the country. Those who insist, however, that the Supreme Court act as a mechanism for their political priorities are of far more danger to the country than that debate.
There is nowhere in the constitution where murder is justified.
I defy any one on the Left to show us a specific constitutional clause sanctioning abortion on demand. They can’t.
And no constitutional amendment to that effect will ever pass Congress. Roe v. Wade was a pure judicial invention.
Its not based on any reading of what’s actually in the Constitution.
Sorry to say, this thinking is backwards.
The constitution protects our rights to freedom and restricts the government’s abilities to take away freedom.
Since the constitution is mute on the point of abortion (unlike the way it restricts gun ownership laws), it is a woman’s freedom to have an abortion unless a state or local law is passed to restrict it.
It is also within a doctor’s rights, barring any state or local laws, to perform abortions.
The constitution is also mute on whether or not a fetus is a citizen. It does, in places, recognize birth as a legal event. It’s only within the last 150 years that blacks and women explicitly became citizens through constitutional amendments. Not the fetus, not yet.
The entire issue would be reset if the constitution was amended to grant citizenship to a fetus. But that seems unlikely.
I am not a lawyer or constitutional expert, so step right up if this is incorrect and I’ll listen hard.
Neither is homo “marriage.” Neither is health care. Or assault wealon bans. Or income taxes.
The courts say otherwise. So either the courts are wrong or the Constitution is.
Not even close to being correct. The child's life is in question and no one has a legal right to kill it. If the SCOTUS wants to rely upon the Due Process clause, where is the child's due process? How about the father, since he contributed 50% of the DNA and was present at conception? The Founding Fathers all believed that life was sacred, which in their understanding of biology was when the child was conceived.
“Since the constitution is mute on the point of abortion...”
Except it’s not mute. The 5th Amendment is quite clear. Unless, of course, you’re arguing that a fetus isn’t a human being.
L
Well, income taxes are, thanks to the 16th Amendment...
Roe V Wade is one major reason why I have often thought that lawyers should never be allowed to become judges.
I also asked why they were protesting the abortion law in the commonwealth Communist of Massachusetts when the law was passed in Alabama. I said if you individuals are so eager for there to be abortions for women in Alabama, they should take up a collection; i.e., pay for a woman to come to a state that allows the murdering of babies. They said that they would not do that and wanted the government to do that. It was a waste of time for me to even engage them, but I felt I needed to know what the mindset of the other side thought.
p.s. if I mentioned states rights, the core of the tenth amendment, I would've have been draggged into the sideshow of calls about racism.. I said the tenth amendment to try to keep on topic and have the conversation flowing. I also came back from the doctor's office where I had to get shots and need many more and was not up to making a real big scene.
A pre-emptive tax on income constitutes involuntary servitude, which contradicts the 13th Amendment, which predates it.
bkmk
You’re actually arguing against abortion as a bonafide constitutional right.
In stark contrast to the rights that the Founding States expressly protected in the Bill of Rights for example, since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect having an abortion as a right, consider the true, ugly politics of the so-called “right” to have abortion.
The so-called “right” to have an abortion is nothing more than a politically correct, constitutionally indefensible “civil right” that corrupt federal career lawmakers promise to low-information voters to stay in power, such voters clueless that the feds have no express constitutional power to address abortion issues.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
The main thing keeping the so-called “right” to have an abortion alive imo, besides inexcusably wide-spread ignorance of the Constitution, is this. Unlike the basically solid protections provided by constitutionally enumerated rights, power-mongering Democrats must forever fight tooth-and-nail, evidenced by the smearing of Justice Kanavaugh by post-17th Amendment ratification Democratic Senators, to maintain a Supreme Court majority of pro-abortion tyrant justices to keep that phony “right” alive.
Consider that Thomas Jefferson had warned us about corrupt judges.
"The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” —Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819.
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." —Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823."
Thanks for your response FRiend, but I struggle with the logic of your argument.
It’s true that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are left to the states.
And there are, indeed, dangers that the judicial branch will misinterpret the law for political/social reasons.
But there are gaps in your logic. Substitute “playing baseball” for “abortion” in your statement. Does it make sense? Why not?
Please note that I believe abortion is immoral and am not defending it. I am trying to focus on what the Constitution does (and doesn’t) do.
Thank you for you patience with this discussion FRiend.
Substitute “the power to vote” for abortion and consider the following.
A pre-FDR era generation of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified the following about citizen power to vote to Virginia Minor, a women's suffrage activist.
The Court had indicated since the states, up to that time, had never expressly constitutionally given women the power to vote, there was nothing in the Constitution stopping the sovereign states from exercising their 10th Amendment (10A)-protected powers to prohibit women from voting, such power constitutionally unchecked until the states ratified the 19th Amendment.
On the other hand, in stark contrast to women now having express voting power, since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect having an abortion as a right, other than post-FDR era, state sovereignty-ignoring, tyrant Supreme Court justices keeping the Democratic politically correct, vote-winning, “constitutional” right to have an abortion alive, the power of the sovereign states to prohibit abortion still remains constitutionally unchecked.
Regarding tyrant justices versus state sovereignty, consider this. Using inappropriate words like "concept" and "implicit" here is what was left of 10A-protected state sovereignty after FDR's state sovereignty-ignoring justices got finished with it in Wickard v. Filburn.
"10th Amendment: 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."
"In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was "necessary and proper" to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept [???] of sovereignty thought to be implicit [??? emphases added] in the status of statehood." —Wickard v. Filburn, 1942.
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