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To: WOSG; brothers4thID; EternalVigilance

WOSG and Brothers,

Its ironic that conservative Republican’s like yourselves believe that the federal government must leave abortion up to state governments. This is almost exactly the position that Stephen Douglas took about Slavery. In his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln, Douglas advocated Popular Sovereignty and argued that the citizens of each new teritory should decide whether or not to allow slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, saw slavery as evil and said that the federal government should prevent it from spreading into any of the territories. After the civil war the 14th Amendment was ratified which states that “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law” and that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” States which allow abortion are allowing a living person to be deprived of life without any due process of law. Therefore, it is clearly constitutional for the federal government to prohibit abortion under the powers granted to it by the 14th Amendment.


623 posted on 07/10/2007 4:24:58 PM PDT by dschapin
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To: dschapin

Yeah but I’m also a Southerner and a states rights throwback. Crazy me. Small r republicansim, etc.


660 posted on 07/10/2007 5:08:14 PM PDT by brothers4thID (FDT: "Every notice that while our problems are getting bigger, our politicians are getting smaller?")
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To: dschapin

Great post.


668 posted on 07/10/2007 5:16:28 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (Implement the FairTax and be free and prosperous, or stick with the StupidTax...it's up to you...)
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To: dschapin; WOSG; brothers4thID; EternalVigilance

“Its ironic that conservative Republican’s like yourselves believe that the federal government must leave abortion up to state governments.”

That is not quite accurate. The dispute is with EV’s incorrect claim that the 14th Amendment *already requires* it. He goes even beyond your points. This is the kind of judicial activist reading of the 14th that gave us Roe v Wade in the first place. It’s wrong, a bad reading of the Constitution that no Federal Judge, including Scalia, would go along with.

The GOP platform advocates for a Human Life Amendment to address this issue. Why would the GOP Platform have that if the 14th amendment could fix it automatically? Reality is 14th cant and it wont be fixed/addressed without additional enabling definition of human life. HLA does that.

Note that the analogy with slavery fits - Just as addressing slavery finally did require constitutional amendment to have a national solution written in Constitutional Law, this Constitutional Amendment is a possible solution to abortion as well. Pretending that the 14th can be twisted into a pretzel to serve the pro-life cause rather than the pro-abort cause is — well, that’s smoking some mighty strong crack.

I support a Human Life Amendment but I can do the math too - it will never happen because the Democrats are as pro-abort as possible and wont ever vote in numbers to make the 2/3rds bar get met.

So, IMHO, the realistic next step is to take the issue out of the courts (who wrongly decided Roe v Wade) and put it back to the people to decide. Its easier to get 2 more votes on the Supreme Court than to get an amendment passed.
To suggest that you cant be prolife and hold this position (repeal Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states) is absurd.

Just tell me how many unborn children have been saved by EV’s position on the 14th (answer: Zero, because what he advocates never will happen), and you’ll have your answer as to whether this is really the effective pro-life position.

EV’s the kind of guy who will call people who merely advocate for parental consent ‘RINOs’, and yet abortion rates declined significantly in states that implemented the (widely popular) parential notification and parental consent laws.

The good is the enemy of the best, and extremism is the enemy of effective political activism.


922 posted on 07/10/2007 9:48:21 PM PDT by WOSG ( Don't tell me what you are against, tell me what you are FOR.)
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