Posted on 01/30/2002 5:28:14 AM PST by AUgrad
How Killing Became a ‘Right’
by Joseph Sobran
Nearly three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion is constitutionally protected. Ostensibly libertarian, the ruling was actually one of the most tyrannical acts in American history.
What greater power can the state claim than the power to redefine human life itself – to withdraw protection from an entire category of human beings? And what greater power could the Federal Government usurp than the power of the individual states to protect innocent life from violent death?
The pro-abortion movement has been consistent only in its inconsistency. It began by agreeing with its opponents that abortion was wrong, but arguing that abortion, when banned by law, "happens anyway" and could be better regulated – made "safe" – if legalized. Of course this could be said of any crime: murder, burglary, and incest, though banned by law, "happen anyway." Should they too be legalized?
Later the pro-abortion propaganda apparat took a new position: that when life begins is a "religious" question, beyond the competence of the state to decide. Oddly enough, my Darwinian public-school biology teachers used to answer the question without consulting their Bibles: life began at conception. Frog life, bovine life, human life. But in those days nobody had any axes to grind, so nobody denied or evaded the obvious. "When does life begin?" became a mystery only with the emergence of a political interest in killing the unborn.
Still later, the pro-abortion – alias "pro-choice" crowd decided that abortion, far from being a necessary evil, was a positive good, which the state should not only tolerate but support, encourage, subsidize, maximize. Taxpayers should be forced to pay for abortions. They should have no more "choice" than the child.
How did the pro-abortion position evolve from the necessary evil position to the positive good position? Easy. The Court arbitrarily ruled that the U.S. Constitution shelters abortion. Did the Court cite any passage in the Constitution saying so? No. Did it find any evidence that the Framers hoped to protect abortion? No. Did it name any justice of the Court, even the most liberal, who had ever claimed constitutional protection for abortion before 1973? No. It merely discovered, all of a sudden, that the abortion laws of all 50 states had been violating the Constitution all along, even when nobody suspected it.
This fantastic ruling generated a new debate about the "original intent" of the Constitution. Liberals argued that "original intent" didn’t matter or was unknowable anyway. The Constitution didn’t have a single fixed meaning; it "evolved" over time. Any interpretation was bound to be more or less "subjective" – yet somehow the Court’s subjective rulings had the binding force of law.
This amounted to saying that the Constitution means whatever today’s liberal interpreters choose to say it means. If that were so, there would be no point in having a written constitution, or for that matter any written law. We would be defenseless against legal sophistry, especially the sophistry of self-aggrandizing power. That’s the perfect prescription for tyranny, the opposite of the rule of law.
Anti-abortion forces thought they had a winning issue when they raised the subject of the agony the aborted child may suffer, as rendered visible in films of aborted fetuses. The pro-abortion crowd replied – when they didn’t just ignore the question – that nobody really knew whether abortion caused pain. But when the issue of late-term (or "partial-birth") abortion emerged, it transpired that they didn’t care at all whether a fully developed baby suffered when its skull was crushed and evacuated.
The Court agreed. It had originally made quibbling distinctions among first, second, and third trimesters of pregnancy, holding that a state might protect a child in the third trimester, when it had achieved "viability" and was capable of living outside the womb. But now the viability pretext was discarded. Killing the unborn was constitutionally protected at every stage between conception and live birth.
Right from the start, the pro-abortion movement has been defined by shifting arguments, fallacies, evasions, lame excuses, and utter bad faith. The Court has not only acted as part of that movement, but has been its greatest asset, sparing it the need for persuasion by imposing its arbitrary will on the entire United States – and in the name of the Constitution it actually despises.
January 30, 2002
I'll try to be cleare this time: Amendments can change the literal wording of the Constitution (like the 16th Amendment, unfortunately). That is how one can call it a 'living document' (changing over time). Liberals implying that it is 'elastic' because different people will interpret it differently is not honest, legal, or even a decent system for governing.
Better?
I think I have pointed this out before, but this is a good place to point it out again. The bolded part can apply to most anything that has been "banned" over the past thirty to forty years - or more. This includes guns, prayer in schools, posting of the Ten Commandments, nude statues etc. This also applies to "new powers" that the government "discovers" it has. Prayer had been in schools for years, religious inscriptions were placed on public buildings since the conception of this country, and then, more than a hundred years later, these things are "unconstitutional". Yeh, right. Like the Sobran says, they jus "discovered" this, although these things were never "suspected" by anyone to be unconstitutional.
I don't believe he did. At least I didn't hear him. Did anyone else catch any references?
Recognizing that the American people are not a collective national resource, we oppose all coercive measures for population control.
We oppose government actions that either compel or prohibit abortion, sterilization, or any other forms of birth control. Specifically, we condemn the vicious practice of forced sterilization of welfare recipients or of mentally retarded or "genetically defective" individuals.
We regard the tragedies caused by unplanned, unwanted pregnancies to be aggravated, if not created, by government policies of censorship, restriction, regulation, and prohibition. Therefore, we call for the repeal of all laws that restrict anyone, including children, from engaging in voluntary exchanges of goods, services, or information regarding human sexuality, reproduction, birth control, or related medical or biological technologies.
We equally oppose government laws and policies that restrict the opportunity to choose alternatives to abortion.
We support an end to all subsidies for childbearing built into our present laws, including welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children. We urge the elimination of special tax burdens on single people and couples with few or no children.
We hold that individual rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of sex. We call for repeal of all laws discriminating against women, such as protective labor laws and marriage or divorce laws which deny the full rights of men and women. We oppose all laws likely to impose restrictions on free choice and private property or to widen tyranny through reverse discrimination.
Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question.
We condemn state-funded and state-mandated abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone who believes that abortion is murder to pay for another's abortion.
It is the right and obligation of the pregnant woman, not the state, to decide the desirability or appropriateness of prenatal testing, Caesarean births, fetal surgery, voluntary surrogacy arrangements, and/or home births.
"Abortion is illegal. Roe v. Wade is not a law, it is a court decision. Since it was rendered by a court (in this case the Supreme Court) and not the Congress, it can not be a law at all, even less the 'law of the land.' It is a court decision that, at most, is only binding on the parties of that single court case. It’s that simple." -Howard Phillips, Constitution Party
redrock--Constitutional Terrorist
It is always a pleasure to view what Sobran has written...clear and concise.
redrock--Constitutional Terrorist
...and just how many Republican members of Congress (or the President for that matter),,,have stood up on their hind legs and spoke out against abortion????
...and how many Republican members of Congress have actually DONE anything to limit abortion??
As usual....you have shown that either you are one of the greatest examples of what a 'Public Education' can do...or you are a total idiot.
redrock--Constitutional Terrorist
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.