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To: Brilliant

As you know, “largely unregulated” is not entirely unregulated.

We’ve bickered over the word “can’t.” If you didn’t take such an absolutist position, this wouldn’t have continued this long. Your subsequent posts convey your understanding that the holding was not that abortion can never be regulated, but rather that it may be regulated in very narrow circumstances. I can live with that because after all, that’s correct.


55 posted on 10/16/2007 7:56:27 PM PDT by enough_idiocy (www.daypo.net/test-iraq-war.html)
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To: enough_idiocy
For all practical purposes, it's unregulated. You really have to be a leftwing looney to be satisfied with the level of regulation that we have, and the states have pretty much imposed as much regulation as the courts will permit in light of Roe.

There was a point in time--when I was in law school--when we were told that Roe meant abortion was completely unregulated in the first trimester. There were a lot of cases striking down parental notification laws, and the Supreme Court had not yet clearly stated whether parental notification laws were permissible at all. Partial birth abortion was something that was not even yet being argued in the courts, but of course, we were just talking about the first trimester at that point anyway. The simple way that Roe was described was as follows: "The government can't regulate abortion in the first trimester."

You might think that is an oversimplification. At the time, it was not much of one. And if anything, the right to abortion has expanded since then. Now we are talking about the second trimester and the third trimester. Even in the third trimester, during the birth process, there is now a right to abortion.

My original point is a very simple one: Polls show that a majority favors Roe. But polls also show a majority favors regulation of abortion. You really can't do both, though. Those are inconsistent positions. What it really shows is that people don't understand Roe, and thus the poll is meaningless.

56 posted on 10/17/2007 3:53:42 AM PDT by Brilliant
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