Posted on 01/24/2009 8:44:42 PM PST by rabscuttle385
Yesterday, January 22, saw a veritable army of pro-lifers participate in the 35th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. This demonstration of public sentiment was first held in 1974 to mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. In that decision, of course, the Supreme Court ruled that all state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. Since then, an estimated 50,000,000 babies have been killed in the womb in the United States.
As we observed yesterday, ever since the Roe v. Wade (and the less publicized Doe v. Bolton) decision, the primary strategy among pro-life people has been to overturn Roe by electing so-called pro-life Republican presidents who will appoint strict constructionist justices to the Supreme Court. Theoretically, this strategy will eventually lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
...at yesterday’s rally, Gray told those gathered that the battle for life had to be won at the federal level, that it was not enough to send the issue back to the states, where abortion could be legal in one state and illegal in the next.
Of course, that strategy overlooks the fact that abortion, like other crimes, was criminalized on the state level prior to Roe v. Wade. In fact, it was Roe v. Wade that interjected the federal government into the abortion issue in the first place and at the same time made abortion on demand legal throughout the United States. Since the federal "solution" to the abortion issue has resulted in a holocaust of 50 million preborn babies since 1973, why should a return to the pre-1973 approach of prohibiting abortion on the state level be rejected now in favor of another federal "solution"?
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
Huh???
Well, it is okay with the ObombUs and his only accomplishment the born alive, or whatever it was called, bill in the IL state sInate.
Whether or not it was a good idea, the 14th Amendment exists, and was duly passed by the process the Constitution described, which was something envisioned by the framers.
Even Brennan acknowledged that if the personhood of fetuses were recognised it would require the states, under their existing criminal statutes, to punish and act to prevent abortion.
Sorry; that’s Blackmun, not Brennan.
Blackmun, in Roe v. Wade:
“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The Constitution does not define “person” in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to “person.” The first, in defining “citizens,” speaks of “persons born or naturalized in the United States.” The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.
“All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the l9th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn. This is in accord with the results reached in those few cases where the issue has been squarely presented. McGarvey v. Magee-Womens Hospital, 340 F. Supp. 751 (WD Pa. 1972); Byrn v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 286 N. E. 2d 887 (1972); Abele v. Markle, 351 F. Supp. 224 (Conn. 1972), Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U. S. 308 (1961); Keeler v. Superior Court, 470 P. 2d 617 (1970); State v. Dickinson, 28 Ohio St. 2d 65, 275 N. E. 2d 599 (1971).
Indeed, our decision in United States v. Vuitch, 402 U. S. 62 (1971), inferentially is to the same effect, for we there would not have indulged in statutory interpretation favorable to abortion in specified circumstances if the necessary consequence was the termination of life entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection.
It's obvious that certain "Pro-Life" activists were worried about their livelihood. A great deal of progress was being made in bringing the issue back to the states, where it belongs.
WWRTD? That is, What Would Randall Terry Do if the abortion battle were won? I think he realized five years ago that success in fighting abortion would lead to less attention for himself, so he spiked the decades-long strategy that was bearing fruit, and pushed for a Roe-justifying strategy of Federal primacy.
Ron Paul ping
And there are plenty more implications. Consider the fact that half of the time that conception occurs, the zygote passes from the mother's body without coming to term even without artificial abortion! Think of all the homicide investigations that would be required.
And what of those who absorb a twin in the womb...manslaughter charges?
Attempts at politically defined science are absurd. Legal banning of abortion is one thing; trying to legally define reality is another.
No, it wasn't, no it doesn't, and it was nothing envisioned by the Framers since it attempt to turn the entire Compact inside out and give the federal government total control over the People.
Here is a paper by Judge L.H. Perez explaining why the 14th Amendment is unconstitutional.
Congress has the authority to regulate immigration, but it has NO authority to create citizenship.
In Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, he describes the people residing in the areas of exclusive jurisdiction and legislation.
§ 1218. The inhabitants enjoy all their civil, religious, and political rights. They live substantially under the same laws, as at the time of the cession, such changes only having been made, as have been devised, and sought by themselves. They are not indeed citizens of any state, entitled to the privileges of such; but they are citizens of the United States. They have no immediate representatives in congress.
IMHO, unless and until the People understand that those of us outside the areas of exclusivity enumerated in the Constitution are STATE citizens, not 'US' citizens, we and our children will have only privileges, not rights.
The conspiracy-theory thesis against the 14th Amendment fails by its own logic.
The slave states gave consent to their lack of representation in Congress by their secession and participation in the insurrection.
Everything thereafter in the tortured chain of reasoning falls apart right there.
This is nonsense, most death certificates issued today do not entail homicide investigations.
But it would require hospitals to look at miscarriages as more than just medical waste.
But you are correct in your instinctive apprehension that overturning Roe v. Wade would undermine the cornerstone of the Sexual Revolution and threaten the sexual mores and habits of the ruling classes.
Then how could they ratify anything?
I'm not sure much of that hatred was authentic FReeper opinion - Ron Paul's enemies in banking and government have a pretty big disinformation budget.
The state legislatures continued to exist, even in insurrection. When they decided they wanted their representation back, they agreed to ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
It was strictly business; you can’t call a negotiation compulsion just because the other party requires you to make concessions to finalise the deal.
The slave states wanted something back they had given away: their representation in Congress. In order to get it back they had to deal with the new amendments.
A bad deal, maybe, but that’s what happens when gamble on an appeal to arms and lose.
Sorry.
That should be “...when you gamble on an appeal to arms...”
To be clear, there’s a lot I don’t like about the 14th Amendment, and much more I don’t like about the abuse of the so-called incorporation clause, which was clearly not intended by the Amendment’s authors, but the 14th Amendment does exist, is valid, and does require the federal government to have a definition of personhood which would necessarily trump any attempts by the states to provide alternate definitions.
An ad hominem attack as a substitute for logical argument....nice.
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The slave states gave consent to their lack of representation in Congress by their secession and participation in the insurrection.
LOL! The entire argument of the federal government having 'authority' over the Southern states was that the South never left the Union, so your 'tortured chain of reasoning falls apart right there'.
Now, would you like to actually discuss the issue, or are you just going to continue acting as if government has the authority to define everything?
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BTW, here's what early colonial law said on the subject of abortion:
COMMENTARIES on the LAWS OF ENGLAND
Sir William Blackstone, 1765
BOOK THE FIRST - OF THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS
CHAPTER THE FIRST - OF THE ABSOLUTE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS
Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor.
Whether or not the states successfully left the Union by their Acts of secession is not at issue. What is at issue is that the act of secession did certainly entail forfeiture of representation in the U.S. Congress.
Once that had been forfeited, everything those states had to do to get it back was a consequence of that action, not an outside imposition.
What does Blackstone’s opinion of abortion in 1765 matter? I thought nerarly all conservatives agree that Blackmun’s definition of personhood was erroneous.
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