Posted on 06/08/2012 1:21:30 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
ROSEMONT, Ill.—Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have never gotten along, and while the primaries are effectively over, their intraparty rivalry could stretch on through the summer.
With 267 delegates pledged to him so far, Santorum is planning to flex his muscle at the Republican National Convention in August, where he predicted Friday there could be a showdown over the party platform between the social conservative delegates who pledged support for him and Ron Paul's libertarian supporters. Paul's campaign predicts that about 200 delegates will attend the convention on his behalf.
Both want a piece of the party platform, but the candidates agree on very little politically. Speaking to reporters here Friday at a conservative conference, Santorum said his supporters are ready for a "fight" in Tampa.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
There are many impracticalities involved.
You say that the word "person" as used in the Constitution refers both to a statutory and a biological person. That it must refer to a statutory person is self evident. That it also refers to a biological person, and was understood and intended to appears to be purely speculation. Every available test I can see that would clarify it fails to produce any evidence that was the original intent and understanding.
There is no basis I can see for a claim that what you are proposing is an exercise in an "original intent" application of the Constitution. It is an innovation - an new interpretation and application. It will have unintended consequences. If "personhood" begins at conception rather than birth, every application of the law that makes reference to that age of a person is subject to challenge.
Many other questions will be asked, from all quarters. Current technology allows us to freeze fertilized eggs almost indefinitely. If they are kept for many years, thawed out implanted, will the person be born already eligible to vote, or collect retirement benefits? While it was impractical to count them then, we do have the technology to do it now. A state could have a facility for creating and storing frozen, fertilized human eggs. The could conceivably stockpile millions of them in a relatively small space. Could the state then use this new interpretation to claim that since they are persons, they should be counted as part of the state's population, and the state then entitled to additional representatives in Congress based on additional population?
There are probably a lot more questions and potential problems this would provoke, and it doesn't appear that you've made any attempt to consider what all the consequences are going to be or are pepared to have answers to the questions.
Forcing a re-interpretation of what the word "person" means in the Constitution will cascade to a potential re-interpretation of every law already on the books that's derived from those parts of the Constitution that make reference to a "person". It would be struck down in courts just for the potential chaos it will cause figuring out how it could affect existing law.
The proper way to do this is with an amendment.
Well, we already know the consequences of your position.
I could show you photos if you'd like.
Do you think that’s going to fix what’s wrong with your idea?
You first. Amend away the word "posterity" in the statement of purpose.
pos·ter·i·ty/päˈsteritē/
Noun:
All future generations.
Synonyms:
progeny - issue - offspring"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Demand that the Declaration of Independence be amended.
That'll make it all work.
There's nothing wrong with "my idea." It comports perfectly with the laws of nature and of Nature's God, with all the stated purposes of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, and with what even you know is right in your own heart.
Unlike your position, which is nothing more than the sort of "clever" lawyering that led directly to the dehumanization of a certain class of human beings, and the butchering of more than fifty million of them.
Those aren’t the words of the Declaration of Independence. They are the words of the U.S. Constitution.
Well then, good luck with it. I'll be watching to see how well it works out for you.
You’re so concerned about what constitutes a “statutory person.”
Why are you then completely unconcerned about who constitutes “posterity”?
You sit there and argue that anybody that doesn't agree to do it your way just wants to kill babies. I'll watch and see how that works out for you.
Your way has been tried for forty years. The evidence is already in.
How long have you been at it your way, and what’s your success rate so far?
A couple of years. And our “success rate” is zero. They’re still killing babies, under the color of “law.”
So all the evidence so far says your idea doesn’t work, either?
"Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other." -- Malcolm Muggeridge
"The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life, regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic...has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy. The reverence for each and every human life has also been a keystone of Western medicine. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous, whether intra-uterine or extra-uterine, until death."-- California Medicine, September, 1970
If we’re picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a ‘new’ Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless. —Antonin Gregory Scalia, Supreme Court Justice
You speak of the Constitution, and following it, but consistently ignore its stated purposes, all of which abortion violates, and continue to do EXACTLY what the Ninth Amendment expressly forbids.
And from that you conclude that the federal government should control the practice of medicine?
All I have done is express an opinion that ending abortion is best pursued by the process of amendment, and that I do not believe trying to do it by Executive Order will be successful.
Please explain to me and everyone else how that is a violation of the Ninth Amendment.
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