Our basic unalienable rights are not defined by the constitution. The founders clearly understood that.
The founders did not have the knowledge of the last 200 years of medical advances to help them understand the true personhood of the baby in the womb.
I have ALWAYS believed in the personhood of the fetus, from the time of conception. If you find ANY quotes of me anywhere that suggests otherwise, please ping me to them so I can correct them, but I doubt there are any.
As to your argument, The 10th amendment clearly reserves rights both to the states and the people, so not everything that isn’t a federal responsibility is a state responsibility.
Further, the 10th amendment, and the constitution, define what limited liberties the government can TAKE from us, not the other way around. The 10th amendment does not say that any rights that are not specifically protected by the federal government can be violated by the states, it says that whatever powers are NOT explicitly given to the federal government are restricted to the states, or to the people.
I think I understand the basis for the disagreement here. You and I have opposing views on the unalienable, God-given right of a pre-born to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So where you see an HLA amendment as a “restriction” on the rights of a person, I see it as a limitation of the government’s power to take AWAY the rights of the people.
If you think of abortion as the violation of the rights of the unborn, then you would see that a prohibition ON abortion isn’t really an ACTION of the state, it is a prohibition of an action of the state, the action being the sanctioning of the violation of the rights of the preborn child.
HLA would ensure the pre-born were given their due as persons, thus extending the UNDERSTANDING of their rights so those rights are not violated by state or federal laws allowing others to harm them or kill them.
Just as, absent a specific constitutional definition of some people as property of others, the personhood of those slaves would have naturally protected them from being treated as property, without any specifig constitutional amendment being needed to define them as such.
I’ll use a misapplication of the principle as my last example. The Supreme court recently ruled that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment when applied to minors. We easily understand that there IS a specific mandate in the constitution for the federal government (and the state governments) to NOT violate the right of people not to be punished cruelly. Note this is not a power given the federal government to meddle in the state affairs, but a right enumerated specifically that the people possess protecting them from government action.
All that it took for a nationwide ban on the death penalty for minors was for the supreme court to decide (wrongly) that there was an age at which the punishment was cruel. Much like they wrongly decided in Roe that there was an age before which the baby was not a person at all, and an age after which the baby deserved MOST but not all the protections of a person (now there’s an idea that is nowhere found in the constitution, that our inalienable rights come to us in bits and pieces as we age).
So while the ruling is wrong, the principle is correct — a person is protected from violation of their inalienable rights at both the FEDERAL and STATE level, by the RESTRICTION on the power of the government to pass laws which take away those rights.
While you are arguing from the point of view that an abortion ban would “take away” the right of the woman, I am arguing that the “ban” is not on abortion, but is on the state passing laws which ALLOW abortion, laws which infringe on the rights of the pre-born.
Much like nobody talks about how laws against murder “take away” the rights of the murderer to do what they please, and nobody anymores talks about how prohibiting slavery “took away the rights” of slaveowners, someday nobody will talk about mothers having their “right to murder” taken from them.
>>>>>Our basic unalienable rights are not defined by the constitution. The founders clearly understood that.
And so I:
.... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
>>>>>I have ALWAYS believed in the personhood of the fetus, from the time of conception.
I believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is the taking of a human life. Problem. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention anything about the fetus being a person, or about abortion, the unborn human or life beginning at conception. And I seriously doubt the SCOTUS will ever grant personhood to the fetus based on an interpretation of the 14th amendment that no justice holds.
However, when "We the people" are ready to give our consent to our elected officials and through majority rule, demand a HLA be added to the Constitution. Then and only then, will we have true protection for the unborn.
>>>>>As to your argument, The 10th amendment clearly reserves rights both to the states and the people, so not everything that isn’t a federal responsibility is a state responsibility.
When it comes to the issue of abortion, the 10th Amendment is crystal clear. There is no ambiguity whatsoever.
>>>>>I think I understand the basis for the disagreement here. You and I have opposing views on the unalienable, God-given right of a pre-born to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Wrong. The basis for our disagreement is simple. I understand and respect the Constitution. You do not.
Then again, about a week or so ago, I thought you did understand and respect the Constitution. In an article thread I posted by John Hawkins, you agreed with Fred Thompson --- and by default many others, myself included --- on his federalist viewpoint concerning abortion and RvW.
Remember, in Fred Thompson, Tim Russert, Federalism, and Abortion, you said, "I agree with this analysis. That analysis was in support of Fred`s federalist approach.