Posted on 11/12/2004 9:07:10 AM PST by cpforlife.org
Askel, you are such a predictable Bush-basher, I can count on you to pile on with the rest of the neanderthal far-right nutcases who are also predictable in their trashing of Bush.
How is it that any criticism of the consistently un- and extra-constitutional actions of this administration translates to "Bush Bashing"?
You fight like a girl.
I'm not a lawyer, but in here, it looks that way...
A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. A licensed physician (Hallford), who had two state abortion prosecutions pending against him, was permitted to intervene. A childless married couple (the Does), the wife not being pregnant, separately attacked the laws, basing alleged injury on the future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, and impairment of the wife's health. A three-judge District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court ruled the Does' complaint not justiciable. Appellants directly appealed to this Court on the injunctive rulings, and appellee cross- appealed from the District Court's grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford.
Held:
1. While 28 U. S. C. § 1253 authorizes no direct appeal to this Court from the grant or denial of declaratory relief alone, review is not foreclosed when the case is properly before the Court on appeal from specific denial of injunctive relief and the arguments as to both injunctive and declaratory relief are necessarily identical. P. 123.
2. Roe has standing to sue; the Does and Hallford do not. Pp. 123-129.
(a) Contrary to appellee's contention, the natural termination of Roe's pregnancy did not moot her suit. Litigation involving pregnancy, which is "capable of repetition, yet evading review," is an exception to the usual federal rule that an actual controversy [p114] must exist at review stages and not simply when the action is initiated. Pp. 124-125.
(b) The District Court correctly refused injunctive, but erred in granting declaratory, relief to Hallford, who alleged no federally protected right not assertable as a defense against the good-faith state prosecutions pending against him. Samuels v. Mackell, 401 U. S. 66. Pp. 125-127.
(c) The Does' complaint, based as it is on contingencies, any one or more of which may not occur, is too speculative to present an actual case or controversy. Pp. 127-129.
3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life- saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Pp. 147-164.
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician. Pp. 163, 164.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. Pp. 163, 164.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.
4. The State may define the term "physician" to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined. P. 165.
5. It is unnecessary to decide the injunctive relief issue since the Texas authorities will doubtless fully recognize the Court's ruling [p115] that the Texas criminal abortion statutes are unconstitutional. P. 166.
314 F. Supp. 1217, affirmed in part and reversed in part.
It seems to me that the Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling.
There's no such thing, Orwell.
Askel, don't you dare insult girls like that. LOL
Yeah, I can see where an election that turned on moral values proves that we shouldn;t fight for the unborn.
Hermann quotes the 14th Amendment in the post you replied to.
It's constant, Askel. Constant.
Oh, and blaming Bush and Kissinger for 9/11 was the penultimate in Bush-bashing. And saying, because you were pissed over the Iraq War, that our soldiers didn't deserve the protection of the Geneva Convention.
LOL!! Feeling masculine today?
Putting all that aside, saying that the Bush family is guilty of murder is the ultimate Bush bashing.
And you have done that.
Try not to feign such indignation.
I quote it right in #218, to which you are responding. Apparently, you cannot read.
I can't speak for all FReepers who disagree with cpforlife.org, but I can say for myself that opposition to Gonzalez is based on the fact that he didn't legislate from the bench in a fashion pleasing to one small group of individuals. I consider refusing to legislate from the bench to be a GOOD thing.
I think you cold-cocked this argument right off the bat. As I understand it the Attorney General is about LAW ENFORCEMENT and not about LAW MAKING or LAW CHANGING.
Roe is now law and has to be changed before the Attorney General would get involved, that is unless someone were NOT allowed to get an abortion in violation of the law.
The "Parental Consent" charade in Texas was the initial blow to the gut which ruined my plans to vote for Bush last time around.
I tried in vain to get folks to actually read the bill or pay attention to the immediate precedent that was Supreme Court-ordered abortions for minors sans parental notice, much less consent. (These, of course, being only those minor abortions where Mommy the Magistrate hadn't already decided that the girls were mature enough to make this decision.)
The legislation obtained a properly defined Square One and, in the process, gifted the pro-aborts with fasttrack through the system, increased veils of privacy for providers and their shills and capped damages for offending abortionists.
Idiot FReepers tossed their hats in the air, yelling "Don't Mess with Texas!"
I headed to DC where I called the NRLC and asked to meet with their legislative director. Turns out the Texas Legislative Director was covering him that week! We spoke for three hours over lunch.
I was absolutely right ... even where I felt he'd been mispresenting the bill, then, in the newspapers.
Yes, he said, but if girls have the "impression" that they'll have to tell their parents ...
(All they need do is make one phone call to have that much cleared up by a helpful abortion provider or school nurse.)
It's sickening.
You are so right to term the pro-life movement as "bought and paid for" by the GOP who keep them busy-busy-busy with letter writing campaigns and "get out the vote" on behalf of the Personally-Opposed-But potemkin politicians and NRLC.
Abortion is, and always has been, a GOP policy. They were first to pitch it in Congress and the first to make it a "vital" element of our population control policies at home and abroad.
The truth hurts ... but only for a moment. The clarity and reordering of priorities once things FINALLY make sense for a change is well worth the gut-wrenching realization you've been played for a sucker your entire life.
Spare me the lectures, I'm not interested.
And that's exactly what they say as well.
So, we will just continue playing the game.
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