Posted on 07/13/2013 2:11:12 AM PDT by lbryce
The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic filibuster blocked the bill and intensified already passionate resistance by abortion-rights supporters.
The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers, among other requirements. Its supporters say that the strengthened requirements for the structures and doctors will protect women’s health; opponents argue that the restrictions are actually intended to put financial pressure on the clinics that perform abortions and will force most of them to shut their doors.
Mr. Perry applauded lawmakers for passing the bill, saying “Today the Texas Legislature took its final step in our historic effort to protect life.” Legislators and anti-abortion activists, he said “tirelessly defended our smallest and most vulnerable Texans and future Texans.”
Debate over the bill has ignited fierce exchanges between lawmakers, and tense confrontations between opponents of the bill, who have worn orange, and supporters of the bill wearing blue. Signs and slogans have been everywhere, bearing long, impassioned arguments or the simple scrawl on a young man’s orange shirt, a Twitter-esque “@TXLEGE: U R dumb.”
The bill had come nearly this far before: a version had been brought to the Senate in the previous session of the Legislature, in June, and was killed by State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, with an 11-hour filibuster that stalled the bill until after the deadline for ending the session. The filibuster became an overnight sensation on Twitter and other forms of social media, with more than 180,000 people viewing the filibuster live online
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You don't "get your nose in the tent" by sacrificing the only moral, constitutional, and legal arguments there are against the practice of abortion. You're throwing the whole tent on the campfire.
Politics is the art of the possible
I have. We've advanced the understanding of pro-lifers here to the point that the Republicans can no longer pass this sort of immoral, unconstitutional, counter-productive, lawless bill.
The Republicans control the Texas Legislature completely, along with every single statewide executive office. The only reason it isn't "possible" is because they don't want to stop the practice of abortion.
I do not believe that they would stop abortion even if you gave them 100% of the seats.
Looking at the database. Wow. Missouri (besides supporting all the KA clinics), has just 1 clinic to Iowa’s 17.
Arkansas only has 3.
Georgia has fewer clinics than Iowa’s 17.
States with more:
WA, CA, TX, CO, FL, NC, VA, MI, IL, MD, NJ, CT, MA.
Iowa ranks 14th in state clinics. 30th in population. 3 million population with 176k per clinic. There would be 1705 clinics in America if America was like Iowa. Iowa has about 2x the national average. Texas with 25 million has about 90 clinics or about 277k per clinic. Somewhat higher than the national average.
Why does Iowa have such a high ratio of clinics/population?
You’re at twice the national average, you have more clinics than every other bordering state save IL.
Surely you wouldn’t be lecturing Texas while leaving your own backyard to rot, now would you?
What difference does it make after you’ve sacrificed every scriptural imperative concerning the protection of innocent life, surrendered the first law of nature, discarded the moral principles of the Declaration of Independence, ignored every clause of the stated purposes of the Constitution, and trashed the explicit, imperative equal protection requirements of multiple Amendments to that Constitution?
I, like you, ran for office recently in a doomed attempt largely related to being seriously underfunded and, as a result, ignored. I ran for Congress in 2010 and the primary winner that went on to replace a Democrat in Congress outspent me by a ratio of 16:1. Like you, I’ve had an opportunity to develop and support a platform for public support.
I ran as a Constitutionalist. (One of the things that I’m proud about is that I was the only candidate to regularly carry a copy of the Constitution with me on the stump even though there were Ron Paul supporters at every stop that would try to trip me up about what was in it, “If you love the Constitution so much, tell me, what does Article 7 say?...”) After the primary, my primary winner and current Congressman began to carry a copy of the Constitution with him on the campaign trail for the General and does so routinely to this day.
One of the questions that I was asked frequently as a candidate is if I would ever vote on something that had any unConstitutional provisions contained within it. That, of course, is a trick question because just about everything voted out of Congress these days has unConstitutional provisions. Unless your legislators in Washington limited their votes to naming Post Offices, the ability to affect policy would be severely truncated by the requirement of a NO vote on everything (something I do agree is appropriate 90% of the time anyway).
Here’s the problem with voting no by rote because everything is unConstitutional (and it’s the problem with your take on the new Texas law): we are 100 yrs outside the Constitutional box. There is no way-back machine. We can’t, in PollyAnna fashion, stamp our feet and demand to be levitated back to where we belong.
It took a long road and train of abuses to get us where we are today. If we are to get back to Constitutional limitations, we must, MUST, retrace our steps to get there. That involves walking over a lot of unConstitutional ground between here and there.
The standard cannot be to never vote for anything unConstitutional. We are already there. The standard must be to only vote for things that walk us back towards the Constitutional box. This was my promise as a candidate for office: I would respect the U.S. Constitution and make it my primary mission to walk/run our feral fedgov back to its boundaries and limitations as fast as possible. I would weigh each decision primarily along the framework of whether it was a move in the right direction of restraining the fedgov or not, of honoring our social contract as expressed in the Constitution or not, and I would not vote for those measures that walked us further from the Constitutional construct that made our nation what it is today.
If you are going to stamp your feet and demand Constitutional purity at all cost, you must answer the question: short of revolution or secession, how do we get there from here? Because, in the meantime, nobody and no law can be supported. That explains your protest here, to be sure. It’s also an impotent stand at a critical time in our nation’s history when we need potent people and ideas.
In the meantime, walking Texas Law as far back towards the Constitution as Texas can do without having it thrown out is huge step in the right direction.
We cannot simultaneously demand that our lawmakers respect the Constitution and also tie their hands on how to get there from here. Such a proposition is self-defeating.
Well, your strategy sure ain’t working in Iowa.
Not only does Iowa suck, you are 14th in the nation for total clinics. Pretty mind blowing when you are only 30th in population yet jump ahead of 16 other states.
And that’s just on a gross basis, not a net basis. Ohio, has fewer abortion clinics. Pennysylvania has fewer clinics. Georgia has fewer clinics than Iowa.
You say you’re trying. You say you’ve been working at it for more than 20 years. Apparently you haven’t been doing very much.
There’s been significant improvements in ND, SD, even in MN, and MO, and KA and NE. KY and IN, etc. Basically all the nearby states have improved except Illinois and Iowa. By my calculations you’ve had 5 clinics shut down in 30 years. Well off the pace.
Why is this, Eternal Vigilance? You say your strategy works. Why then is Iowa so bad compared with comparable states? Even MN is doing better.
By the way, Iowa Republican politics is dominated by folks who tow the immoral, unconstitutional NRTL line just like you. So, if there are problems in my state, you might want to look a mirror to discover why.
My last post addresses your reply.
“What difference does it make”
Why don’t you ask Hillary? Arkansas is kicking your butt here!
You just argued yourself out of a representative, constitutional, self-governing free republic. Congratulations.
Federal c*&% judge strikes it down in ..... seconds.
Why? I don’t live in an abortion exporting state like you. Why do you think the clinic in SD is located in Sioux Falls, and all three Nebraska clinics just over the border. There are 21 clinics within a 10 mile distance of Iowa’s borders, 4 of these in other states.
There’s a reason for it Iowa is a significant hub for abortion in the plains states. It used to be Kansas but Kansas has mostly cleaned up their act. (although MO has a large clinic just in Kansas city, again, over the border.
We talk about how bad Illinois is, but it’s mostly confined to Cook County and Chicago. Iowa on the other hand?
Maybe you can explain why Iowa is so poor on life issues, EV?
Nice use of truncated quotes to avoid the real issues and make my words mean something different than what I actually said.
Try to argue honestly, okay?
Clearly Iowa has perfected ‘sitting on their ass’ technology...
What difference does it make, EV?!
I already did that. Republican politics is full of folks who care about morality, the Constitution, and the obligations of the oath almost exactly as much as you do.
And you argue yourself out of relevance. As such, your opinions on what constitutes a Constitutional Republic mean nothing because you will never have the ability to act on it. You defeat yourself.
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