Lets not forget that ALL humans have rights, born or unborn, and merely killing someone "privately" is still killing. There might be a valid debate about precisely when life starts, but outside of that issue, killing is still killing.
Posted on 01/16/2003 7:01:06 PM PST by KQQL
WASHINGTON (AP) - The head of a prominent abortion rights organization on Thursday predicted a Senate filibuster if President Bush seeks to fill a future Supreme Court vacancy with a nominee who does not clearly support the court's 1973 ruling on the issue. "The burden of proof is on any nominee," said Kate Michelman, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "It's the burden of that nominee to address constitutional freedoms and whether they indeed believe the court was right in recognizing a woman's right to choose."
"I fully expect that pro-choice senators will conduct a filibuster against any Supreme Court nominee" that does not express support for abortion rights, she added in an interview.
The White House declined comment on Michelman's remarks.
A spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said the South Dakota lawmaker "feels it's vital that all judicial nominees be willing to faithfully respect the Constitution. That said, he will make a judgment on each individual case as it is presented to him."
Michelman made her comments several days before the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed women the right to an abortion. Supporters of the opinion, as well as groups that hope to have it overturned in a future ruling, have scheduled a series of events to mark the date.
Groups opposed to abortion will hold their annual march in Washington on Jan. 22, the anniversary of the ruling, ending at the Supreme Court building. In addition, the GOP-controlled Congress is expected to vote in the coming months on legislation to ban one type of abortions, typically performed late in a woman's pregnancy.
Congress has twice passed legislation covering the procedure, in which the fetus is partially delivered before its skull is punctured, but former President Clinton vetoed it both times. Bush has said he would sign it.
NARAL will hold a fund-raising dinner on Tuesday night, and all six announced Democratic presidential contenders are expected to speak. In addition, the group will start a political campaign next week to seek passage of abortion rights legislation in Congress.
With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, prospects for passage of such legislation are dim. Additionally, NARAL backed several Democratic Senate candidates who lost to GOP contenders last November. Thus supporters of abortion rights are likely to find themselves trying to fend off attempts by opponents and the Bush administration to curtail the ability of women to end their pregnancies.
Those struggles are likely to include judicial confirmation battles in the Senate, particularly if there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Retirements are rarely announced in advance. But speculation, never in short supply, has increased since last fall's elections, when Republicans gained control of the Senate.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, for example, is 78, and missed December arguments at the court because of leg surgery. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative, is 72. She and the chief justice were both appointed by Republican presidents.
If it passes it will contain punishment for the enablers of such an atrocity. They should make it retroactive and indict all the past PBA murderers. Just like we did with those involved in the 'holocaust'.
Lets not forget that ALL humans have rights, born or unborn, and merely killing someone "privately" is still killing. There might be a valid debate about precisely when life starts, but outside of that issue, killing is still killing.
It never ceases to amaze me how the left-wing bias of the press prevents them from just telling the truth. John Paul Stevens, the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court, is 82 years old. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, another very liberal justice, is 72 and a cancer survivor.
O'Connor, while the same age as Ginsberg, is in very good health and will probably serve for many more years. The most likely retirees in the immediate future are Stevens, Ginsberg and Rehnquist, in that order.
I think that the most likely nominees will be Alberto Gonzales, Michael Luttig and John Ashcroft.
Particularly since they're doing it for profit.
How do you expect to ban abortion without a monthly government search of every fertile woman's uterus?
If you're going to prohibit abortion from the moment of conception, then in order for the law to be the slightest bit meaningful, the government is going to have to know who's pregnant. That seems pretty obvious, doen't it? Otherwise, how would the government know to prosecute and jail a woman who had an abortion in her second month? My cousin is about five months pregnant and only starting to show.
And for that matter, I've read tales of young girls who hid their pregnancy (woman working IN A MATERNITY WARD, college student, baby discovered 17 days after birth, gave birth while aunt was in another room) from their parents and friends. How do propose to prosecute and jail people like that should they have an abortion?
Certainly unless there's mandatory monthly pregnancy tests of all fertile women under threat of criminal penalties, patterened after Romanian dictator Ceaucescu's policies, it should be easier to fool government agents than a teenager's own relatives and coworkers.
Why haven't the feds broken down your door looking for drugs, child porn, or other illicit materials, you ask? THE FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHT TO BE SECURE IN ONE'S PERSON, PAPERS, AND EFFECTS FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCH, or in other words, THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY.
Now take another look at post 31 from MHGinTN. What kind of government measures do you suppose he envisions?
I'm serious about ending abortion slaughter as a means to deal with unwanted pregnancies, very serious. So serious that I respond to the outlandish black or white idiocy of people like you. It is apparent that you favor the 'rite' to hire a serial killer to terminate with extreme prejudice the most innocent individual human lives made vulnerable throught the disenfranchisement accomplished by the specious bench ruling of a societal engineering SCOTUS. You will, however, not be able to paint this complex set of issues as either or in your liberal bilge terms. And it is immediately insulting that you have only a onesided perspective on the right to life of these vulnerable little ones, a perspective that reflects your ignorance of men and their love for their children. You disgust me.
You have a skewed understanding of life that allows you only one sight, serial killers made licit to ensure 'a woman's right to choose murder, ignoring the humanity of the unborn' ... the right to hire a serial killer with impunity is not an empowering, enlightened policy. To understand this truth, you might take the time to read but a few of the horrible effects such killing in the womb has on women who've used your protected rite of slaughter to their unborn. But you can't allow even that enlightening commentary to reach your stone cold mind and heart. Disgusting.
Now take another look at post 31 from MHGinTN. What kind of government measures do you suppose he envisions? Having made that assertion, trying to allow only your putrifaction of belief to be the alternative to sanctioned serial killing, you expect Freepers to support your specious lickspittle? Hah! You have a shallow notion of Freerepublic. Your underwhelming mental prowess even failed to ask what I might envision before you tried to define my position, so you haven't a stitch of credibility with which to characterize me or my perspective on the issues, missy.
I mean, it seems like a tautology that the government would have to know who's pregnant in order to figure out who might have had an abortion. I just don't see any way around it, but you apparently do. Here's your syllogism applied to another topic, to expose the hidden foolishness in your starting assumption : 'The government would have to know who owns loaded guns in order to figure out who might kill someone.' Applied to a population demographic such as Los Angeles, the idiocy of the government (in a free Republic) recording every citizen for gun ownership and ammunition ownership AND loaded gun ownership, AND ... the series can be extended ad infinitum, but it still makes a strawman argument in a free Republic if applied to gender of fertile members, sexual activity of the members, and ...
Your lack of grasp on the fundamental issues belies your specious assumptions of women and men, the society as it now functions, and the fundamental declarations of our founding documents.
I'm attempting to point out to you is the black evil represented by the far opposite end I don't start at 'an end' of some artificially framed line of argument of the "abortion on demand" scenario that you and I both righteously oppose. I remain unconvinced of your sincerity (sincerity means free from hypocrisy).
Under what circumstances would you consider abortion to be acceptable? Finally, we get to the meat and means for discussion, fellow freeper. From the standpoint of a woman terminating a pregnancy, there are two criteria :1) the unborn child is dead or near enough to death that the woman's life is at stake; 2) a tubal or non-uterine pregnancy that cannot be altered in such a way as to continue life support for the as yet unaddressed member in the issue, and such pregnancy endangers the woman's life; 3) ... there is no three from my perspective. Just so you'll know, I base this criteria on the unalienable right to life already existing, that of the second individual human life in the mix, the child.
The issues are viewed, in my belief system, from the standpoint of life support for an already existing individual human life. As such I am against embryonic exploitation, whether in vitro or in utero. I'm against exploitation upon the body parts of a living individual human life when that exploitation requires the arbitrary termination of life support. Period.
The ramifications of my position ought be evident to you or anyone reading this exchange. Our society will have to undergo a paradigm shift in perspective, from ignoring the humanity of the conceived individual human life, to making whatever necessary alterations in societal and personal means necessary to choose life support, in and out of the womb, from conception to old age.
I don't satrt with spectres of a police state where these issues are involved, rather I choose to start with efforts to bring about a paradigm shift in our dealings with the nascent life and the woman so heroic that she will make possible the few months of life support for the innocent individual conceived in her womb ... and if she is unable or unwilling to continue life support postpartum, a noble society is obligated to provide that life support.
Caring for a crib-bound infant is far more difficult and confining to a lifestyle than providing support for an individual on life support in a womb entered by no choice from the individual human growing there. As one poster has noted, 'the consequences of a woman and man's choices ought not be alleviated through sanction for hiring a serial killer to terminate the totally innocent thrid individual human existing without a choice.' Killing an innocent individual to avoid unwanted consequences for personal actions (actions by consenting parties or by criminal action by one party) is not enlightened social policy, in my belief system.
Take a break from hurling personal attacks at me and post it. I attack idiocy when it arises to endanger the unalienable right to life of the little ones. You'll grow to understand that about me, if you remain around FR for much longer. I've offered the truth of my perspective, now how about yours?
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