Posted on 04/18/2007 7:14:49 AM PDT by Spiff
Edited on 04/18/2007 8:48:59 AM PDT by Lead Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Voters have nothing to do with who gets to pick them or confirm them.
“Voters have nothing to do with who gets to pick them or confirm them.”
Actually, they do, indirectly. They cast votes for President and the U.S. Senate.
An ignorant comment for sure...it's is not the deceased fetus involved in partial birth abortion but a live baby who has it's head punctured and brain contents sucked out... SOuter, Ginsberg, Stevens and Breyer voted to retain this gruesome procedure...
We are not at the voting stage ...we are even a head of the game in the nomination process....SO.....you gonna help a liberal [Rudy] get nominated or a Conservative such as Hunter or Thompson? If you are just a cino ....p-off!
You replied: A car trip. With me. Driving the trans-America highway from Tierra-del-Fuego to Point Barrow Alaska.
We can do sing-a-longs the whole way.
It will be fun.
First, let me apologize for being snide. Second, the car trip sounds like the proper punishment, especially if show tunes are involved.
Giuliani says he would appoint strict constructionists.
Here’s something to nibble on...
Near Death Experiences
In my experience, treating epilepsy and also seeing post-cardiac resuscitation patients in my daily job, as a Neurologist, I have interviewed and studied NDEs. The background is three possible precipitants, blunt or penetrating head trauma, decreased blood flow and O2 in the brain (Hypoxemia), and temporal lobe epilepsy (partial complex seizures.)
NDE experiences are stereotypical no matter which of the above was the cause. The person is observationally unconscious. The remembered experience often perceives an out of body experience (OBE) which has two forms. One is standing next to one’s own body or more often floating above their body, seeming to see people around the bedside such as nurses and doctors. The other is a feeling of limitlessness, expanding and merging with the universe. The OBE is followed by going through a bright tunnel in a dark background. In this phase there are the seeing images of dead relatives, angels, Jesus, or Brahma, or saints, then a smaller but brighter light. Usually at that point they either come out of it or come out of it in reverse. During the tunnel phase they may hear the voice of a dead parent or God/Jesus/Virgin Mary/Muhammad/Brahma.
On recovery, the patients often feel disappointed, cheated out of Heaven or bliss. They do have other neurobehavioural changes mainly in short term memory, attention span, and emotional regulation with loss of some inhibition, loss of rational skills, loss of some problem solving efficiency, and changes in efficiency of task specific shifts. I know of a neurologist whom I may not mention. He was a skilled, rational expert in electroencephalography and neurophysiology, author of some excellent protocols. He recovered from a cardiopulmonary arrest but his career disintegrated. His papers were incoherent, his protocols badly designed, and his papers elicited ridicule and pity. Incidentally he was also transformed from a sceptic to religious believer. The frontal religious bollocks filter obviously ceased to work or was disconnected. I was personally saddened by his deterioration and end of career.
The mechanisms of NDEs are only near death in that they sometimes are cardiac arrests which indeed are life threatening. In such cased there is a marked drop or stop in blood flow to the brain temporarily. This reduced perfusion affects the border zone between the territories of two arteries. Arteries branch into more and smaller arteries and arterioles. At the peripheral end of an arterial “tree” the capillaries merge with those of the neighbouring artery in what is called the Watershed Area. When blood flow decreases, the area getting the worst of it is this watershed area. It is the area also suffering any neuronal loss (there is likely always some neuronal loss, varying with the severity of hypoxemia). Watershed areas are in the inferior medial temporal lobe (arteries are posterior cerebral and middle cerebral), sudden hypoxemia can precipitate temporal lobe like seizures. Other watershed areas are in the upper parasagittal areas of frontal lobe (rational, inhibitory, analytical), calcarine occipital lobe (visual), and cerebellar (balance, coordination (arteries are Superior Cerebellar, Anterior Inferior Cerebellar, and Posterior Inferior Cerebellar.)
Temporal lobe seizures are epileptic discharges that begin in the mesial inferior temporal lobe to amygdala in known epileptics. They can also occur in brain hypoxia, as described above. In Epileptics they are due to temporal sclerosis (scarring), head trauma, brain tumours, arterio-venous malformations, small haemorrhages, small infarcts/strokes, and possibly by drugs such as cocaine. The electrical discharge begins in the neurons in the region of Ammon’s Horn. The discharge is transmitted to memory association areas of the nearby temporal lobe for visual and auditory memories and odd smell memories. Some go to the superior parietal lobe (body orientation/localization areas) to give the primary OBE phase. In this situation they have an inhibitory effect. Some go to cingulated gyrus as well for the affective component. In some cases frontal lobe discharges are recorded. This causes the symptoms I described in the second paragraph.
The third major cause is head trauma. Sudden trauma precipitates seizures. Americans usually remember the televised generalised seizure of Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys in the end zone of a Saturday televised game seen by millions of fans. His career soon ended. But he didn’t have epilepsy. It was just a post-traumatic seizure. Many who have these have partial seizures instead of generalised. These often manifest as Temporal Lobe seizures or focal motor seizures. The Temporal Lobe Seizure may be simple hallucinations auditory or visual or go into the full NDE described in the second paragraph.
The most important thing is that these people are not clinically DEAD. They are unconscious, and in some cases at risk of death. Those who actually die may experience NDEs before they die but cannot tell us about them. The DEAD brain cannot seize. We have no evidence of sentience in a dead brain. That is for you to speculate as you wish.
We should point out though that only a small percentage of those having NDEs report seeing entities of any kind, and of course only a small percentage of people who ‘die’ recall experiencing anything at all. And in addition to seeing God/Jesus/Virgin Mary/Muhammad/Brahma, you may also see people such as playmates who are not even dead. This is especially the case with children (Blackmore, 1991. Near-Death Experiences: In or out of the body? Skeptical Inquirer16, 34-45) who tend not to have known people who have died.
There are two prospective studies looking at the prevalence of NDEs in cardiac arrest survivors, van Lommel et al (Lancet 2001; 358: 2039-45), and Parnia et al. (Resuscitation 2001; 48: 149-56).
In both studies, about 90% of survivors experienced nothing resembling the classic NDE. In van Lommel et al (2001), 41/344 experienced a core NDE, as defined by Ring’s weighted core index. And the authors state that this may be an overestimate. In Parnia et al (2001), 4/63 (6.3%) of cardiac arrest survivors reported some form of NDE, assessed using the Greyson NDE scale.
In van Lommel et al, only 15/41 NDEs included “out of body experience,” but it is unclear what was counted as a postive. For instance, if the patient said “I lost awareness of my body,” or “It was like I did not have a body,” was that counted as a positive? About 20 reported perceptions of landscapes or persons. Parnia, et al’s prospective study found 0 out of body experiences. None of the 4 patients who experienced NDEs experienced an out of body experience. Which is a shame, because the researchers had placed hidden targets that could be seen from the perspective of the ceiling — as a test of veridical out of body perception.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=64940
“Those who have never seen never see in their dreams. But their NDEs are fully sighted, and afterwards they are as formerly sighted people, who had eyesight but lost it. They comprehend, for example, the concept of color, which the congenitally blind do not, as they have never seen anything, and don’t know what color is (try to describe “color” in words that don’t use color).”
Uh...if they don’t know what color is, then how do they know they saw color?
On matters of principle immigration and excess spending are the only things I can think of. The war in Iraq may leave something to be desired but that's execution.
Your response is not very insightful. P-Marlowe was obviously speaking of the 5-4 majority.
I agree that there is no way that Giuliani will nominate conservatives. Without a MAJOR, PROVABLY SINCERE conversion to pro-life on his part, I will not vote for pro-abortion Giuliani in either primary or general.
What about illegal drugs? Do the feds have the power to make crack etc. illegal?
Justice Ginsburg: Because your time is running out I did want to ask you about a feature of this legislation that hasn’t come up so far, and that is perhaps stimulated by Stenberg. But up until now, all regulation on access to abortion has been state regulation and this measure is saying to the states, like it or not, the Federal Government is going to ban a particular practice and we are going to take away the choice from the states, in an area where up until now it’s, it’s been open to the states to make those decisions.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, I mean I don’t think it should figure in this Court’s decision. I mean principally because the other side in neither case makes a challenge based on the Commerce Clause, and I suppose there is two reasons for that. That legal reason that they don’t bring the challenge is because there is a jurisdictional element that I think would address the challenges as a doctrinal matter. [This is the statement that the Act applies only to partial-birth abortions in or affecting interstate commerce, as I noted above. — Patterico] The practical reason I think is because this isn’t the only instance in which the Federal Government has gotten involved to address issues related to the abortion context. [And that is the reference to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or “FACE Act,” that Whelan refers to. You’ll see further references to this act in the transcript, which refers to it as the “face act.” — Patterico]
JUSTICE GINSBERG: Well I know, when it is a question of funding –
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well but also access to clinics, in the the face act, which is also –
JUSTICE SCALIA: The best example where government has gotten involved in overriding what the states want to do is Casey. It seems rather odd for this Court to be concerned about stepping on the toes of the states.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well — it’s certainly true that abortion has been dealt with at a Federal level one way or another since 1973. So I think that’s also part of the backdrop, but I also think, I mean, you know, the Federal Government gets involved in this issue, you know, depending on your perspective, for good or for harm. It’s there to protect access to the abortion clinics –
JUSTICE STEVENS: General Clement, that brings up a question I was intending to ask you. I notice the finding says nothing about interstate commerce but the statute says any physician who in or affecting interstate commerce performs the procedures. Does that mean that the procedure is performed in a free clinic, as opposed to a profit organization, it would not be covered?
GENERAL CLEMENT: Justice Stevens, I don’t think we have taken, the Federal Government hasn’t taken a definitive position on that. I think it could be interpreted either way. I think my understanding is the face context, a free clinic would be covered. There’s not a jurisdictional element in the face statute. So there may be differences as, in application.
JUSTICE STEVENS: But how could the Commerce Clause justify application to a free clinic? I don’t understand.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, I think by, I mean, you know, the Court’s precedents in other areas [he means Raich and Wickard — Patterico] has suggested it’s just not a matter of whether the ultimate service is provided in commerce but in order to get the services they have to take –
JUSTICE STEVENS: Activities that –
GENERAL CLEMENT: Yes. Exactly. I don’t, I mean, that hasn’t been briefed up in this case. If it had been we’d probably have a definitive position one way or another. But I don’t think the constitutionality in this facial challenge where that hasn’t been a feature of the challenge turns on the answer to that question one way or another.
Well, Sandy, it seems as though Justice Ginsburg has had a change of heart on Raich! All is not lost. :-}
I will vote look first to see if a candidate favors killing my family or me. If he’s pro-life, he gets a second look.
I will then check to see if he is a conservative. If so, then he will get on my list. If he is not, then he will not get on my list.
Sounds very wise to me.
From a legal standpoint, none of that matters, because we should err on the side of caution where we don’t know.
He usually does in these instances.
I take it you’re not a “believer”.
OK. Question, do you believe in anything?
Long time no see there FRiend. :)
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