You're correct in that I don't embrace that view and I don't embrace it because I think it simply leads to animus between those with differing views and an inevitable split in this country somewhere down the road.
The "due process" you speak of is a collective due process while the document unique to America is steeped in the individual. It is the individual that must be given due process, not the collective Vicomte or we are no better or worse than any other collectivist failed nation.
Words mean what they say. I don't really care what the "founders" meant or didn't mean, I care about the words "the people" ratified and those words make it quite clear that the people intended a right to life unless due process done individually found that a person had forfeited that right.
I also understand that my view on that is not the common one here at FR since I don't happen to agree that states can abridge that right any more than the federales can absent due process to the individual. But I'm set in my ways and I won't be changing my mind any time soon.
A free country has to have at it's base a Supreme Law that treats all of it's citizens equally, our Constitution does just that and the people made it a document that can evolve but not at the whim of activists interpreting emanations from penumbras. That way lies danger witnessed by the murder of full term babies almost totally delivered from the birth canal and the never ending and always escalating internecine culture wars.
Regards.
You wrote all of this:
"The 'due process' you speak of is a collective due process while the document unique to America is steeped in the individual. It is the individual that must be given due process, not the collective Vicomte or we are no better or worse than any other collectivist failed nation.
Words mean what they say. I don't really care what the 'founders' meant or didn't mean, I care about the words 'the people' ratified and those words make it quite clear that the people intended a right to life unless due process done individually found that a person had forfeited that right.
I also understand that my view on that is not the common one here at FR since I don't happen to agree that states can abridge that right any more than the federales can absent due process to the individual. But I'm set in my ways and I won't be changing my mind any time soon.
A free country has to have at it's base a Supreme Law that treats all of it's citizens equally, our Constitution does just that and the people made it a document that can evolve but not at the whim of activists interpreting emanations from penumbras. That way lies danger witnessed by the murder of full term babies almost totally delivered from the birth canal and the never ending and always escalating internecine culture wars."
I understand precisely what you are worried about, and why, and I agree that the concerns are very real, and the effects of the current crop of "judicial activism" are very toxic. The problem I have with your viewpoint lies here:
"I don't really care what the 'founders' meant or didn't mean, I care about the words 'the people' ratified and those words make it quite clear..."
I end up having the same debate, for the same reason, with Biblical literalists on creationist/evolutionist threads. In both the case of the Constitution and the Bible, I am always willing to agree to go by the exact text, the specific words, as written, in trying to figure out what it means. But in the case of the both the Constitution and the Bible, it becomes apparent within the first sentence that the words are very loose. Any particular word has multiple meanings in the dictionary, even. Now, I know you think that this is "activism", that activists try to "redefine" words to mean what they want. But I think you assume far too much. I think you assume that the words EVER had a clear, single meaning. One of the reasons the Constitution is so vague and general is precisely because the drafters could not agree on any SHARP and CLEAR divisions of power. They covered over their disagreements by generalities. Truth is, one side wanted one thing, another side wanted a different thing, and neither could agree. So they chose words, quite deliberately, that each could colorably argue meant what they wanted it to mean. In this way they got out of conference. When they argued the Constitution to the People, who ratified it, the regional interpretations were striking. The drafters, in arguing for (or against) the Constitution argued that the words MEANT what they wanted them to mean. In this way, Massachussetts and South Carolina ratified the same language, but there was never agreement on any of it.
Let me take the most stark of all possible examples, the very one you are referring to. You say: the words the People ratified make "it quite clear that the people intended a right to life unless due process done individually found that a person had forfeited that right".
I say they absolutely, positively do not and did not, not ever.
Nobody in 1789 argued that black people were not people. Nobody argued that they were not human. Nobody argued that they were not men, or women. Some argued for their rights, but most didn't give a fig about them. The Constitution never refers to black people, never exempts black people from the right to life, the definition of person, anything. But black people had no right to life: they were killed by their owners by summary orders, a man destroying his property because he no longer wants it. Now, one can argue that the 14th Amendment (and 13th) overwhelms all of that, and that's true, that's history, but THE WORDS THE PEOPLE RATIFIED, the Constitution itself, didn't allow slavery or the killing of black slaves in the first place. A slave was a person, even legally, until the Dred Scott decision made it clear he was not. But he could be killed without due process, or any process. He could be made to do anything. He was treated as a piece of property. Nowhere does the Constitution say that's ok, or carve out an exception to itself in the case of black people. But that exception was universally understood and applied.
In short: the text does not matter. What the courts and Congress and Executive DID with the text is what always mattered.
Moreover, colonial law, continued into the federal period, did allow the use of abortifacients before "the quickening".
I think, truly, that the answer does not lie in hearkening back to some sort of Golden Age of American law, when people respected the text. They never respected the text as written. The Constitution has never been applied textually. It's always been a Common Law document. The early ages in America were as ugly and black in terms of national evil as today, in many ways uglier.
I think that the abortion argument can't be won on legalism, that the text "prohibits" it, without some pretty strong judicial activism that chooses to interpret the vague "due process" clauses to apply to unborn persons, thereby protecting them from abortion. Pick a text, any text, and read it literally. There's not much there. To appeal to what "the People" ratified in 1789 is to appeal to history, and to run smack into the problem that the text is vague precisely because even THEY didn't agree on fundamental things.
Even then, the text meant what the customs and organs of government interpreted it to mean.
To end the scourge of abortion, legalism won't do it.
The moral argument has to be made, and won on persuasion. Then the law will be interpreted to make it so.