Posted on 03/14/2002 5:50:19 AM PST by wwcc
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, during a luncheon in Buffalo on Wednesday, re-emphasized his view that women don't have a constitutional right to an abortion. His belief flies against the court's majority decision in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutionally protected right of privacy that covers abortion.
"My votes in abortion cases have nothing to do with my pro-life views," Scalia said after his speech at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. "They have to do with the text of the Constitution. And there is nothing, nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the right to an abortion."
At times flashing a prickly wit, Scalia also criticized the process for selecting new Supreme Court justices as being highly political today.
And he defended the court's 5-4 decision in the 2000 presidential election that stopped ballot counting in Florida and handed victory to George W. Bush.
The recurring theme throughout Scalia's 40-minute speech, and in answers to audience questions, was the importance of a strict, limited interpretation of the Constitution.
"It says what it says, and it ought not to be twisted," he said.
Scalia, who is the foremost conservative member of the Supreme Court, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. .
Scalia devoted the bulk of his speech to the clauses in the First Amendment that ensure government may not restrict people's religious practices, nor impose religion on anyone.
Judicial rulings on those clauses - and the entire Constitution - must be based on their text, the authors' original intent or historical practice, he said.
In quoting George Bernard Shaw - using a phrase later appropriated by Robert F. Kennedy - Scalia said those who believe in judicial reshaping of the Constitution "dream things that never were."
The appropriate way to deal with an issue that demands updating judicial precedent or the Constitution is by legislative action or, where appropriate, a constitutional amendment.
"We have an enduring Constitution, not a living one," Scalia said.
After his prepared remarks, Scalia took questions and delved into several hot-button issues.
He dismissed the idea that abortion is a constitutionally protected right, but he also said the Constitution doesn't explicitly prohibit abortions, either. He indicated the issue ultimately should be decided by a constitutional amendment.
The fight over abortion rights already is heating up, as pro-choice groups dig in for a battle whenever Bush gets to make a Supreme Court appointment.
Picking up that theme, Scalia blamed the the bitter political fights over court nominations on the belief that judges are free to rethink the Constitution.
"Every time you're selecting a Supreme Court justice, you're conducting a mini-plebiscite on what the Constitution ought to mean," he said.
Scalia defended the court's decision in the 2000 balloting debacle, saying it properly returned authority in the matter to the Florida Legislature.
Organizers said 930 tickets were sold for the event, sponsored by the Chabad House of Western New York and the University at Buffalo Law School.
I do not think you understand the meaning of that word servitude. Moreover it is not involuntary. In most cases of terminated pregnancy, the sexual act that resulted in the pregnancy is voluntary. Therefore the consequence cannot be termed as an involuntary servitude in any way. At worst it might be termed a voluntary servitude. And many live in slavery to their own false opinions, more in slavery to their passions.
Pregnancy in many cases is an undesired consequence. Again, we solve the problem of unintended consequence by terminating the consequence, instead of addressing our own misdecisions resulting in that consequence. But the more important point is that the human life has no say whether or no it should be terminated. It is very convenient that it cannot assert its own right, and because it cannot it is very easy for us to say it has none. Yet never have I heard that a child under the age of five desired rather to die than live.
"But the strongest part of the Constitution in favor of abortion is that it is silent on it, and therefore a power reserved to the States to find or not to find it a right in THEIR Constitutions. I find your entire diatribe specious."
You are indeed a surprising man. Because the Constitution is silent on the matter it supports abortion? If it is silent, the more obvious reason is found in the ninth and tenth amendments. It is silent because, as you say, it is a matter reserved to states and municipalities or to individuals -- that is where the debate should be. However, the Supreme Court took away our right to rule ourselves in this matter.
"A woman should not be forced to carry a rapist's germination to term. That is unconscionable and you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting such a philosophy."
Come now, it not a philosophy. You give me too much credit. But do reread my post. I said that in the case of rape, should a woman obtain an abortion, the trauma mitigates, perhaps altogether, the action. Address the argument itself. Surprising man, to appeal to an antiquated notion of shame! Indeed if shame and honor had any place in our society still, there would be no contraversy over such a shameful act. How you turn the world and the argument on its head. Come now, who is shameful?
You say that protection begins at independence. That is precisely what is under debate. My point is that a child of 3 months, of five years, or thirty years is not independent. Merely because an unborn child is not independent is not a reason to assert that it has no right, or that the mother has no duty, nor that the state has no interest in that child.
Parents have a duty to raise and educate their children. If they do not, it is shameful. It is criminal when they so neglect them as to risk their health and life. Children cannot live independently of parents (or parental substitutes whether that be foster parents or state asylums). You are merely arguing that there is a difference in degree of independence. My question is why does the fact that an unborn child is more dependent mean in has less right to live?
This takes me to your next point:
"Each person has a right to maintain the integrity of his or her own body. If one body needs another to sustain itself, then the first body has the inferior claim to life. Oh it may have a claim to life, but it has an inferior claim, because of its dependence."
It is not a question of a claim to life. The child in almost every case, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, do not threaten the life of the mother. The competing claim is the right to life of the unborn child and the mother's "right to her own body". But the child is not the mother's own body. Science has shown that it has a different genetic make-up from the mother and therefore this argument is antiquated. The competing rights: are the right of a mother not to have to accomodate any one else even her own child, even if that child is the result of her own voluntary actions that brought about conception --- and the right of that child to live.
That is the debate. It is sad to me that there is a debate at all. And it is amazing that Hippocrates, without the insight of modern medicine or divine revelation, so decidedly thought that abortion was a shameful, intolerable act that he required an explicit oath against performing or supplying instruments for performing it.
Again I feel really sorry for you and I will continue to pray for you.
Lord forgive this man for his eyes are closed and he refuses to open them to the truth. Forgive him and help him to see the truth.
"For you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
Please permit me a tag-on here, even thought I think Hajman has taken your statements at face value and answered you in #373 and #374 with his customary grace, precision and inexorable, unassailable logic.
(Donning flame retardant attire here optional. This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.) I'm venturing back through the cyber looking-glass, but your statement that it is worse to bring a fetus into this world - [because it] results in more misery and death - than the opposite is a statement that is not even connected with reality. Bless your heart, liberallary, but is it not self-evident to you that lives-in-being, by definition, are already IN the world? If they did not have existence in the world it would not be 'necessary' to hire an abortionist to kill them by poisoning them or by cutting them to pieces in utero, would it? Good God, man! Listen to yourself!
(sigh) I don't know. I am almost speechless (something for which, were you a religious man, you would no doubt be in fervent prayer) but how in the world is killing human beings in utero supposed to reduce 'misery and death' more than not killing them?(!) Such assertions are absurd and self-refuting on their face, and I cannot see how in them your subsequent use of the word 'evil' is not rendered utterly meaningless.
The fact is, dear FRiend (and I hope these words burn into your soul) each and every human being has the same intrinsic dignity and worth that you do, no matter what the accidents of their development or their functional abilities. That is the blazing light of that glorious self-evident truth proclaimed in Declaration of Independence. I hope your eyes will be opened to see it. < /rant >
Cordially,
It's always a pleasure to argue with a civilized person - no sarcasm intended. We - you, I, and Hajmon - are not done yet. Perhaps we are getting to the most interesting part.
Unfortunately, you'll have to wait for my comments. I want to do this as well as I can and - at the moment - am otherwise occupied.
My apologies.
Your position is that human life is sacred, especially innocent human life. That life begins at conception and the fetus is the essence of innocent human life. Killing it is the essence of murder.
My position comes in two parts
a) Nothing is sacred (I'm not religious) and especially not human life. Humans have never - throughout history - treated it as such, whatever they've said to the contrary.
b) Humans exist in various stages, conditions, classes - young-old, weak-strong, poor-rich, black-white-yellow, Jewish-Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, wise-foolish-smart-dumb, sick-healthy, man-woman, etc. People have always put different values on a human life according its category.
That's enough of a beginning. I suspect a storm of abuse is coming from many who will be horrified at my position.
Read history. Read the newspapers. People kill each other all the time, in large numbers, often with great cruelty. They torture each other. They humiliate each other. They steal from each other. And all the while they claim allegiance to some higher power, higher goal, higher...baloney.
Cordially,
The problem with these statements is that sex is not an unalloyed pleasure, but that it can result in procreation, that is that the "risk" is procreation.
But see my posts 308 and 309.
My position comes in two parts
a) Nothing is sacred (I'm not religious) and especially not human life. Humans have never - throughout history - treated it as such, whatever they've said to the contrary."
Well, again I would refer you to posts 308 and 309 in response to H.Atkins, and especially the fact that Hippocrates thought human life was sacred, even before it became fully human. Moreover, any good society, any civilized society lived only because the members of that society regarded human beings as sacred -- if not all human beings certainly the members of that society, and children first and foremost.
Society is faced with a problem: A substantial number of young girls - many teen-agers - are having sex, getting pregnant and then finding themselves unwilling or unable to bear and raise a child.
Three approaches suggest themselves:
1) try to cut down on the number of such sexual encounters
2) try to cut down on the number of pregnancies which result from such encounters
3) try to make child-bearing and raising more attractive to such women
Your position makes 2) unattractive if not absolutely immoral. I can understand your opposition to abortion but, in truth, you also oppose contraception. You favor 1)
My position leads to to seek the most practical, least damaging (there are other values to consider) approach - which I find to be 2).
A very quick reply since I think I can make one which will make my position much clearer.
You believe that we have fallen from a state of grace - a state where goodness was the rule and the rules were known and clear.
I believe we are coming up from the darkness, learning as we go - and each stage of understanding is provisional, subject to revision as we learn more.
Yours seems a very rational solution.
However, the as great problem is what happens to a society in which its women see children as a burden and in which women do not realize their role in domesticatic the sexual urges of men?
Such a society in my opinion is doomed to fall apart both from internal and external strife.
I have no objection to the teaching of abstinance. To the contrary. But I do not want to have it forced on me.
I do not wish to alienate people who I judge to be decent and civilized by forcing them to tolerate actions which they deem immoral.
The last above two paragraphs are somewhat contradictory - unless some common ground can be found. That's one of the reasons I post to a conservative site with a screenname "liberallarry".
No apology needed. My job keeps getting in the way of having a good time here, too.
Society is faced with a problem: A substantial number of young girls - many teen-agers - are having sex, getting pregnant and then finding themselves unwilling or unable to bear and raise a child.
Stop the tape! Why is teenagers getting pregnant and unwilling or unable to raise a child a problem? You are implying here that something is not as it 'ought' to be. What is 'wrong' with teenage pregnancy if nothing is sacred, especially human life, and since people have been torturing and killing each other for a long time? Since people have always put different values on a human life, what's the 'problem'?
Three approaches suggest themselves:
Again, you have to give an accounting of why you think the present state of affairs is somehow not as it ought to be before we start trying to 'fix' an imaginary 'problem. Remember that it is your position that humans have never throughout history treated human life as sacred, and neither do you.
1) try to cut down on the number of such sexual encounters
2) try to cut down on the number of pregnancies which result from such encounters
3) try to make child-bearing and raising more attractive to such women
Your position makes 2) unattractive if not absolutely immoral.
There you go again. In a universe that is nothing but the result of gigantic cosmic, uncaused, impersonal accident, and which consists of nothing but energy and matter in motion, all of your 'solutions' and their opposites, indeed all our respective thoughts are equally valid. as they all are nothing but the effects of physical and chemical forces in our respective brains. To say that there is something 'immoral' about physical and chemical forces is absurd. It makes no sense to say in such a universe that there is something 'wrong' with any of it, including any thought and action which is caused solely by those same impersonal, purely physical forces.
You must first give an accounting for the existence of a 'problem' in such a universe.
Cordially,
If you can refute moral relativism (a task which has eluded philosophers for millennia), they will not only award you the Nobel Prize in Philosophy, they'll create one especially for you.
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