Posted on 01/22/2006 9:27:01 AM PST by cgk
Nixon was unquestionably anti-abortion. He and his followers derided the left as the party of "abortion, acid, and amnesty."
Rockefeller and Grand-daddy Bush were definitely pro-abort. They were the type of "country-club" Republicans who Nixon had to ride rough-shod over to win the Presidency. They despised Nixon because of his humble background.
Daddy Bush became pro-life only because he knew he needed to be, if he wanted to ride Reagan's coat-tails into the Oval Office.
I believe that W is dedicated to a pro-life position. It may be that this is because he saw how soft his father's support was amongst social conservatives who never quite believed in Daddy Bush's change of heart. I really don't care why. W has walked the walk.
He has also been anything but a country-club Republican in style. Good thing, since there aren't many of them left voting these days, anyway...
When we say that social circumstances have changed so as to require the evolution of doctrine to maintain the vigor of an existing principle we do not mean that society's values are perceived by the judge to have changed so that it would be good to have a new constitutional principle.
The difference is between protecting that privacy guaranteed by the fourth amendment-the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"-and by requiring a warrant for government to listen electronically to what is said in the home and expanding that limited guarantee of privacy into a right not only to use contraceptives but to buy them, into a right to have an abortion, into a right, as four Justices of the Supreme Court would have it, to engage in homosexual conduct, into rights, as a number of professors would have it, to smoke marijuana and engage in prostitution.
If one cannot see where in that progression the adjustment of doctrine to protect an existing value ends and the creation of new values begins, then one should not aspire to be a judge or, for the matter of that, a law professor.
-Robert H. Bork
-The Tempting of America, Chapter 8, Original Understanding
Bush 41 was pro-life with exceptions.
BTTT!
Thanks for the ping!
To the best of my recollection, although many people disagreed, it was not seen as an enormous outrage. I get the impression that conservatives, including Reagan, had let their guard down for a while.
One reason may have been that (again as best I remember) hardly anybody doubted that legalizing abortion would practically eliminate illegitimate births. There were those - and I was one - who saw this as a cure vastly worse than the disease, but that view did not prevail.
The Supreme Court forced abortion on demand in America, and that has been a travesty for 33 years. God bless those who march for life today.
Ping for later study
Would you prefer that they revert to the old practice of stoning? What do you think the response should be?
Yes. In fact, as a Congressman, Bush was nicknamed "Rubbers" by some of his colleagues due to his support of contraceptive/reproductive issues.
No other country in the history of the world has killed over 40 MILLION of its future citizens. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Too few have bothered to speak against this slaughter of God's children, the truly "least of these." Our nation will not be spared when judgement falls on it...and it most assuredly will...for this hideous, extended wickedness. The cancer of devaluing life will hit the Boomer Generation when they are deemed "inconvenient" and too expensive in their old age. "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will reap." (Galatians 6:7)
In numerous books that he wrote after his fall from the presidency, Richard M. Nixon clearly declared himself "pro-choice" on abortion, the same view later adopted by conservative Republican Senators Barry M. Goldwater and John G. Tower. It was said that in 1972, when abortion was not an issue, that McGovern was more "anti-abortion" than was RN. Abortion was not an issue until after Jan. 22, 1973, when the Right-to-Life Committee was formed.
I read in the local paper over the weekend a story of a couple who adopted a frozen embryo & were able to bear & give birth to a healthy child.
What sickened me in the story is the pro-abortion crowd is AGAINST this! Can't call it "adoption"!!
You see, if an embryo is "adopted" and becomes a child, it is no longer the unemotional discardable "fetus" and therefore murder. ;) Pro-abortion rights crowd don't like the "slippery slope" this brings...
Doe v. Bolton
410 U.S. 179, 207
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, concurring [This opinion applies also to No. 718, Roe v. Wade, ante p. 113.]
I agree that, under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the abortion statutes of Georgia and Texas impermissibly limit the performance of abortions necessary to protect the health of pregnant women, using [p208] the term health in its broadest medical context. See United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62, 71-72 (1971). I am somewhat troubled that the Court has taken notice of various scientific and medical data in reaching its conclusion; however, I do not believe that the Court has exceeded the scope of judicial notice accepted in other contexts.
In oral argument, counsel for the State of Texas informed the Court that early abortion procedures were routinely permitted in certain exceptional cases, such as nonconsensual pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. In the face of a rigid and narrow statute, such as that of Texas, no one in these circumstances should be placed in a posture of dependence on a prosecutorial policy or prosecutorial discretion. Of course, States must have broad power, within the limits indicated in the opinions, to regulate the subject of abortions, but where the consequences of state intervention are so severe, uncertainty must be avoided as much as possible. For my part, I would be inclined to allow a State to require the certification of two physicians to support an abortion, but the Court holds otherwise. I do not believe that such a procedure is unduly burdensome, as are the complex steps of the Georgia statute, which require as many as six doctors and the use of a hospital certified by the JCAH.
I do not read the Court's holdings today as having the sweeping consequences attributed to them by the dissenting Justices; the dissenting views discount the reality that the vast majority of physicians observe the standards of their profession, and act only on the basis of carefully deliberated medical judgments relating to life and health. Plainly, the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand.
410 U.S. 179, 221
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST joins, dissenting [This opinion applies also to No. 70-18, Roe v. Wade, ante p. 113.]
At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons -- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that, for any one of such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her request if she is able to find a medical advisor willing to undertake the procedure.
The Court, for the most part, sustains this position: during the period prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus; the Constitution, therefore, guarantees the right to an abortion as against any state law or policy seeking to protect the fetus from an abortion not prompted by more compelling reasons of the mother.
With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers [p222] and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally dissentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshaling of values, I can in no event join the Court's judgment because I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court's exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.
It is my view, therefore, that the Texas statute is not constitutionally infirm because it denies abortions to those who seek to serve only their convenience, rather than to protect their life or health. Nor is this plaintiff, who claims no threat to her mental or physical health, entitled to assert the possible rights of those women [p223] whose pregnancy assertedly implicates their health. This, together with United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62 (1971), dictates reversal of the judgment of the District Court.
Likewise, because Georgia may constitutionally forbid abortions to putative mothers who, like the plaintiff in this case, do not fall within the reach of § 26-1202(a) of its criminal code, I have no occasion, and the District Court had none, to consider the constitutionality of the procedural requirements of the Georgia statute as applied to those pregnancies posing substantial hazards to either life or health. I would reverse the judgment of the District Court in the Georgia case.
There is also a rather long separate concurrence written by Douglas. You can find it here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0179_ZD.html
Since 1990, the number of abortions in the US is decreasing. The decrease is more dramatic in terms of the number of abortions compared to the number of women. It can be debated whether this is due to the "self-curing" effect or due to a change in attitude by society. Either way, it is a move in the right direction.
Regardless of what the law allows, if we as a society can change attitudes, we can reduce abortion.
Actually, it's a bigger affect than you've stated because it's cumulative. For example, for 2012 it includes not just those who would have been born between 1991-1994, but everyone who would have been born from 1973-1994. (If you were going to compute the actual numbers, you'd have to subtract those who would have died from other causes before 2012, but I wouldn't expect this to be a very large percentage, since the oldest in this entire group would only be 39.)
I suspect there was a man involved in each of these conceptions as well. While the women certainly bear responsibility for their actions, I wouldn't exempt men from this. There is huge support for abortion rights among the male population. Many women have been coerced into abortions by "boyfriends" who didn't want any responsibility for their actions. How many men who are unwilling to keep their pants zipped have "gotten off the hook" and escaped financial and emotional responsibility due to abortion?
Rather than pointing the finger onto another person or group, if each person took responsibility for himself/herself, there would be no abortions.
a whole generation that could have help make up the imbalance in the Social Security Roles. Think of the money they could have paid over the years in taxes, etc.
someone should turn this table on LIBS as they are the blame for the lack of contributors today in relation to the number of baby boomers.
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