Posted on 10/08/2007 7:29:07 AM PDT by Dukes Travels
It’s time for the fight against abortion to move to a new front. An honest look at the landscape suggests that the longtime goal of the pro-life movement – the banning of abortion – is never going to be achieved.
We need to try something else.
I believe a fetus is a human being who deserves protection under the law from being killed. But if the goal is to save the lives of unborn children – and it should be – we need to look at our primary line of attack and see what it has achieved, and what it is likely to achieve in the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at northstarwriters.com ...
And again I have to point out that the Founding Fathers never considered such an issue when it comes to powers of the Federal Government. Abortion isn’t considered by the constitution, therefore it is strictly an issue for the states.
I was just having that very same argument with some FReepers about not letting Hillary into the Whitehouse at any cost. They simply do not understand.
"We must work within the political process as much as we can, realizing our limitations, but more importantly, work to change hearts and minds. This has come a long way in the last 15 years, as shown by the opinion polls,"
Agreed. I think with having sonograms getting better and better and with premature babies being born earlier and earlier and living that public opinion is turning toward pro-life.
I like you. You are a pragmatic. You work with what you have and don't give up and walk away.
Nope. "Defeatist." With the next presidential election, conservatives could control the Supreme Circus for the next 20 years. And this person is preparing to surrender.
Julie Annie can do to our nation and our party what Mrs. Antichrist can NEVER do: End all hope and expectation of criminalizing the brutal murder of tens of millions of innocent unborn babies by taking the GOP out of the fight. That is the awful dream of the amoral and the libertarians but it has NOTHING to do with conservatism. Thus Julie Annie is actually WORSE than Mrs. AA.
If you don’t get the law changed you are not going to succeed. It hasn’t failed we just don’t have enough. We have to over comer thirty years of liberal dogma.
Best case scenario: SCOTUS recognizes the “personhood” of the unborn and, under the 5th Amendment (as to the federales) and the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause (as to states and their subsidiaries) outlaw abortion altogether. If you think “federalism” is more important than the right to life, particularly where the constitution has adequate provision for outlawing abortion, you and I are not political allies. Also, libertarians are NOT conservatives as this issue amply illustrates.
The democrats would sooner stage a coup than allow that to happen, and i'm being serious.
Look at the lengths they were willing to go in the run up to Roberts and Alito. They were laying the groundwork to ignore every past precedent of procedure to maintain the current court balance, and what they've learned from the result is they MUST get an iron clad litmus test from any future nominees.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I’m saying it probably can’t be done and almost certainly couldn’t be sustained, so we’re better off trying something else.
Yes, a ban on abortion would be right. I would support it.
But the pro-life movement had better have a strategy for stopping abortions without the law having its back, because chances are that’s the way it’s going to be.
Nations dependent on such "men" are not long for this world. No man is "compelled by law" to impregnate any woman. If the woman can say no, so can you. That gives you equal rights to non-parenthood. It just does not guarantee your "right" to retroactively revise history.
Hildy: You and I have long had major differences on this issue but you are certainly consistent in your arguments and you put this guy to shame in that respect. We still don't agree but I can respect your consistent defense of your principles.
That's like saying "we won except for our lower score."
We have slowed some of the progess, but that's hardly a reversal.
We have long had plenty of strategies and we have usd them and will use them. I have been involved in this since shortly after Roe vs. Wade. Trust me. When we win it will be a permanent win. This issue is not like tax rates or business regulations.
Also, our military will crush their coup (quite enthusiastically on military issues as well).
Going off on a tangent isn’t going to help, we’ve made a lot of progress we just have to keep going.
The first clause defines a person. The SC made that clause the definition of a person when they said the right to an abortion was in the 9th amendment purviewed through the 14th.
The other clauses reinforce the citizen as a person, and specifies the action a government cannot take against a citizen or a person.
None of them is accessible to an unborn baby, who is not a "person" as defined by the 14th amendment.
I, personally, don't agree, but it is those who said all that who will decide if a statute is constitutional or not.
It appears to me that the court, as they ruled in Roe, can't rule a statute defining a person constitutional, unless it is ready to dump Roe completely.
I gather this is the real point of the article, and the stuff about Jesus is just filler.
When my native state of Connecticut was the most antiabortion in the nation, the murderous witches of Planned Barrenhood drove van loads of pregnant girls to pro-abort New York to kill their babies. State solutions are, by no means, fully practical solutions.
In state and federal courts, I have represented arrested pro-lifers (1100 of them and 30 were convicted). I have also protected sidewalk counselors, pro-life protesters on sidewalks and highways, people who create crisis pregnancy centers, churches and pastors of my Catholic religion and others, served on boards of pro-life groups, worked within the YAF, CRs, YRs, GOP senior party and as a state chairman of Reagan's challenge to pro-abort Ford (by which we took policy control of the GOP even though Reagan's presidency was postponed for four years). I have given legal counsel to pregnant women who called me anonymously after seeing me on TV in defense of Rescuers.
If you counsel a political pacifism in the face of thirty-four years of the American Holocaust or even limitation of the fight to the state arena only, then you cannot blame people for assuming your lack of bona fides as a pro-lifer if you truly understand the issue. If you do not understand the issue, don't write about it. The key to you being labeled paleo or libertarian is this question of "federalism" somehow being in the way of imposition of pro-life policies nationally.
So, precisely and specifically what means have you been personally following in "banging your head against the wall" in favor of the babies when you could have been persuading people not to murder their offspring?
My long dead Irish grandmother used to say: Show me your friends and I will tell you what you are. Prove her wrong.
The “hearts and minds” argument won’t wash. When abortion was legalized in 1973, there wasn’t any mass movement to legalize abortion. If you look at polls during that time period, the overwhelming majority did not want to legalize abortion. What happened since then? Nobody wants to talk about it in “polite company”. Rush says all the time that we have to change hearts and minds, yet when the subject comes up, he’ll say something like, “I don’t want to go off on the subject of abortion.” If we wait to change the hearts and minds of people, we may never see the end of abortion.
What has happened is that the pro-life leaders, namely the National Right to Life, have not aggresively pursued stopping abortion. It is nothing more than a fund-raising cause.
In our own Archdiocese of New Orleans, the Catholic Church has designated October as Respect Life month, as they have done for the past 30 years. Why only one month? The Catholic Church should make this their number one focus, not just relegating one month to their “cause”.
Our pro-life leaders have allowed the other side to frame the argument, and a few bumper stickers on cars with cute sayings aren’t going to turn the tide.
The second part is the generally unused "privileges and immunities" clause which is not in question since it applies even on paper only to "citizens."
The Equal Protection clause is the key. Since certain persons (born or naturalized in the US) are citizens and others are not BUT ARE PERSONS nonetheless, the framers of the 14th required that those"persons" who were not in the narrower class of "citizen be afforded equal protection by the states.
Think this over and I believe you will agree with me. If you don't SCOTUS eventually will. No amendment necessary. No ratifications. No Congressional wrangling, just a recognition of the meaning of "personhood" as including those conceived but not yet born. Nothing less than the complete overturning of Roe is intended. SCOTUS dumped Plessy vs. Ferguson and a lot of other decisions entirely. Next up: Roe vs. Wade. SCOTUS consists of justices not of gods.
The key rationale is that all citizens are persons but not all persons are citizens. Thus citizens is a subset of persons and persons IS NOT a subset of citizens.
Comments like "Nations dependent on such "men" are not long for this world" and " if the woman can say no, so can you" sure aren't doing it.
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