Posted on 06/09/2022 9:20:12 PM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Last month, in response to the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinon ending Roe v. Wade, the Louisiana legislature briefly considered a bill that would define a fetus as a person for the purpose of the state’s homicide law...... on page 16 of the draft opinion, Alito cites a brief by John M. Finnis and Robert P. George that argues that fetuses are legal people. Finnis and George are clearly wrong, though. This issue has already been considered and decided by the Reconstruction-era Congress. They definitively determined that fetuses do not count as “persons” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, as Finnis and George argue.....
The original public legal meaning of “persons” encompassed all human beings. On this, the legal meaning fixed by treatises and cases was confirmed by rapid mid-1800s expansions of prenatal protections. … the inclusion of children in utero could not have been blocked except by wording (easily available, but neither proposed nor adopted) such as “any person wherever born.”
From this they conclude that the history of the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment:
proves prohibitions of elective abortions [are] constitutionally obligatory because unborn children are persons within the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.......
Many of us are familiar with the great clauses of Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I couldn’t agree more. Natural rights (life, liberty etc) are retained by all whether born or not yet born. After all, killing pregnant women has been considered two counts of murder for a very long time.
Civil rights, like the right to vote or being counted in the census are invested at various ages and are often predicated on being a citizen.
Well, according to the author’s interpretation of the clause, (theoretical) people delivered by Caesarean section are also not really people. Besides, nothing done by the rump Reconstruction government should be considered constitutional.
The Constitution is not a biological treatise.
Nice try, but you are addressing a member of a generation that thinks the word, mankind, means only male genitalia.
Human life begins at conception and ends at death. Any other beginning or ending is arbitrary. Prove me wrong.
“The Constitution has already established...”
Sure. The Constitution got up, walked over to the Supreme Court, and nailed this conclusion to the door.
Idiot.
The Constitution has to be read and applied to specific questions of the law. That’s the entire point.
But rather than appealing to previous legal precedents and rulings, he simply skips all of that, wipes the slate clean, and pretends the whole conversation begins with his opinion.
In this case he’s asserting the Constituion speaks for itself and needs no interpretation. But then he proceeds to try to pull a ventriloquist act, using the Constitution as his dummy.
His anthropomorphism is an expression of his insanity. To the left, everything is defined according to what they want. It’s psychosis. If they don’t like something, they’ll just change the meaning of words or forbid you from using certain words. Easy peasy.
Except back in the real world, Mr. Rosin doesn’t get to decide how to apply the Constitution to specific questions of the law. That’s why we have a Supreme Court.
He’s entitled to his feelings and opinions, but that’s all they are. In this case his opinions are about as useful as used toilet paper.
I’m willing to trust the genius level legal reasoning of Michael L. Rosen, writer for Slate, over that of Samuel Alito, Supreme Court Justice. (Do I really need the tag?)
As long as there is a heartbeat, the baby is getting oxygen fed from the mother that is going to the developing brain…which means consciousness and awareness. There is no debate for me. Abortion is murder.
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.