Posted on 12/01/2021 5:01:41 AM PST by Kaslin
After President Richard Nixon appointed then-Appellate Court Judge Harry Blackmun to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970, Blackmun somehow convinced members of the U.S. Senate that he embraced judicial restraint and felt a duty to protect "little persons."
When Blackmun's nomination came up for a vote, Democratic Sen. John McClellan of Arkansas made the case for confirmation.
"He does not believe it is either the duty or the prerogative of the Court to change the historical interpretations of the Constitution so as to be tantamount to amending that great document by edicts and decree," said McClellan. "For these basic principles of judicial integrity, I commend him and respect him."
McClellan then quoted a statement Blackmun had made during the confirmation process about how important the Supreme Court was to "little persons."
"What comes through to me most clearly is the utter respect which the little person has for the Supreme Court of the United States, and I think that the little person feels this is the real bastion of freedom and protection of strength in this nation," Blackmun had said, according to the Congressional Record.
"It was a lesson that was taught to me in the last two weeks and one which I think I shall not forget," said Blackmun.
Three years later, Blackmun wrote the court's opinion in Roe v. Wade. It declared there was a constitutional "right to privacy" that included the right to kill what could be called "little persons" -- unborn babies -- in the womb
To come to this conclusion, Blackmun had to circumvent the obvious biological fact that an unborn human being is a living human being. So, he referred to unborn babies as "prenatal life," "potential life," "potential human life" and "the developing young in the human uterus."
In his opinion in Roe, Blackmun pushed aside what he called "the theory" that life begins at conception that was advanced by those who supported banning abortion.
"Some of the argument for this justification rests on the theory that a new human life is present from the moment of conception. The State's interest and general obligation to protect life then extends, it is argued, to prenatal life," said Blackmun.
He disagreed.
"There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth," Blackmun wrote. "This was the belief of the Stoics."
"In areas other than criminal abortion, the law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn except in narrowly defined situations and except when the rights are contingent upon live birth," he said.
"In short," Blackmun, "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."
"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins," he concluded.
Wrong. The answer to that question, which science had already unambiguously determined, should have been embraced by the court. Human life begins at conception. Killing a human being any time after that is exactly that: killing a human being.
By arguing that the court could declare abortion a right without resolving whether or not an abortion kills a living human being, Blackmun was essentially arguing that the court could legalize what as far as he knew might be an act of murder.
"This right of privacy," Blackmun wrote, "whether it is founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
But then Blackmun appeared to open a narrow avenue for some regulation of abortion.
"Logically, of course, a legitimate state interest in this area need not stand or fall on acceptance of the belief that life begins at conception or at some other point prior to live birth," he wrote. "In assessing the State's interest, recognition may be given to the less rigid claim that as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone."
He then concluded that states could regulate or even prohibit abortion after "viability" except when killing the unborn baby was "necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother."
There were two problems with this: 1) "viability" (the point at which a baby can survive outside the womb) is determined not by the baby's inalterable humanity but by advances in medical science; and 2) the "health" of the mother, as defined by Blackmun himself in Roe's companion case of Doe v. Bolton, is anything her doctor says it is.
In that case, Blackmun declared that "the medical judgment" about whether a woman's health justified an abortion "may be exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the women's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient."
Blackmun was not the only justice who voted in 1973 to declare abortion a "right." He was joined in his Roe opinion by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices William Douglas, William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis Powell.
Their legacy? Between 1973 and 2017, according to numbers published this year by the Guttmacher Institute, doctors killed 58,177,540 babies in the United States. The National Right to Life Educational Foundation estimates that from 1973 and 2020, the number is 62,502,904.
This year, the killing has continued. But the Supreme Court now has a chance to reverse Roe v. Wade. Will Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett stand with Blackmun -- or with the innocent unborn?
American abortions produced 30 Million+ Illegal Aliens.
The fact that the court never gave the benefit of the doubt to innocent life speaks volumes to its ignorance and mendacity.
Abortion is murder. Cut and dried murder.
Since Roe v Wade black females have killed more blacks than slavery, war, KKK, Jim Crow, skin heads and white supremacists combined.
The safest place on earth for a baby should be inside the body of its loving mother. We don’t have a society which leaves families to starve on the street. Most abortions are for the purpose of terminating failed attempts to trap prospective husbands. The question we should ask is, what did the baby do wrong? Nothing, and it doesn’t deserve death as a reward.
We have birth control, and it’s legal. Murdering one’s own children is recognized as a barbaric practice in every moral society. What does this say about our society?
When Christ spoke of millstones, He wasn’t kidding. Our nation will be judged, and there is no denying that we as a nation are found wanting. We’ve gone from a sheep nation to a goat nation and our baby killing party is almost over.
Slaughtering innocents might be popular with some but, GOD IS NOT MOCKED. AMERICA WILL REAP WHAT IT HAS SOWN.
Pure slime
Hitler himself couldn’t have come up with a better eugenics program to remove people of color from society. There would be 30+ million more people of color in America if RvW had not been allowed. Something the POC movement misses or ignores. The welfare roles would be more jam packed with gimmedats by the millions without RvW just saying.
The assumption that life only begins at birth is also a theory. The truth is that no one can prove at what specific moment the inalienable rights of the individual are bequeathed to the individual. Thus, because the one thing we do know, that life is precious, the law should err on the side of protecting the individual at the most vulnerable stages of life.
Worldwide there’s been 1.64 Billion children killed by their own mothers, just since 1980.
In a short 4 decades, that’s more people killed by mothers than in all of the world’s wars and health epidemics in all 1000s of years of recorded history combined.
How’s that for the fairer gender?
Only mothers have the right to kill children - no questions asked, and kill them they do.
Written mostly by Senator "Da Nang" Dick Blumenthal who clerked for Blackmun.
It is no theory that an individual human life exists at the instance of conception, as there exists a new and unique individual(s) human DNA. That human’s lifeforce builds it’s own body without any external instruction on how to do and only receives from the mother food, air, protection and love. Well, at least that is the intention. Sadly, many interrupt or hinder that process. The point is, it is it’s own life force and the life is distinctively human, undoubtedly, and it’s life begins at the instance of conception.
They talk about the sins of a country, they rightfully mention slavery. But were 63 million slaves murdered?
I suggest our countries biggest sin was this decision.
Our rights are to be assumed, is the point I'm trying to make. . .rather than something that must be proven by science. I don't look to science for this, I look to "self-evident" truths as the basis of our rights. As I mentioned. . .it is self-evident that life is precious but the exact moment when our rights are bequeathed to us cannot be proven by science. . it is to be assumed. ..and because life is precious the law should err on the side of protecting life at its most initial and vulnerable stages.
“Our rights are to be assumed, is the point I’m trying to make. . .rather than something that must be proven by science. I don’t look to science for this, I look to “self-evident” truths as the basis of our rights.”
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I agree with that 100%.
But, the fact remains that science has now proven that a new human life exists at conception. So, it is no longer a theory, as Blackmun claimed, and those who feel our rights are not be assumed have no leg to stand on regarding whether there is an individual human life.
It’s worth noting, not one single Supreme Court Justice has ever found personhood for the unborn child, regardless of the fact that many have even been Catholics (prior to Marxist Bergoglio) a staunch ProLife religion.
Of the 114 Justices:
91 Protestants
13 Catholics
8 Jewish
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