Posted on 10/05/2016 3:45:07 PM PDT by NYer
During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, pro-abortion vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine made the claim that pro-life laws banning abortions prior to Roe v Wade punished women. It turns out that’s not true.
Kaine made the claim that states could pass criminal laws to punish women if they decided to have an abortion and indicated abortion bans prior to Roe did just that.
“Governor Pence wants to repeal Roe versus Wade. He said he wants to put it on the ash heap of history, and our young people in the audience were not even born when Roe was decided. This is pretty important before Roe versus Wade — states could pass criminal laws to do just that — to punish women if they made the choice to terminate a pregnancy,” the pro-abortion senator claimed.
Yet that is not the case.
Clarke D. Forsythe, the senior legal counsel for Americans United for Life, has extensively profiled pro-life laws prior to Roe and those laws prohibiting abortions punished abortion practitioners for ending the lives of unborn children, not women.
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The political claim—that women were or will be prosecuted or jailed under abortion laws—has been made so frequently by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and NOW over the past 40 years that it has become an urban legend. It shows the astonishing power of contemporary media to make a complete falsehood into a truism.
For 30 years, abortion advocates have claimed—without any evidence and contrary to the well-documented practice of ALL 50 states—that women were jailed before Roe and would be jailed if Roe falls (or if state abortion prohibitions are reinstated).
This claim rests on not one but two falsehoods:
First, the almost uniform state policy before Roe was that abortion laws targeted abortionists, not women. Abortion laws targeted those who performed abortion, not women. In fact, the states expressly treated women as the second “victim” of abortion; state courts expressly called the woman a second “victim.” Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law.
Second, the myth that women will be jailed relies, however, on the myth that “overturning” Roe will result in the immediate re-criminalization of abortion. If Roe was overturned today, abortion would be legal in at least 42-43 states tomorrow, and likely all 50 states, for the simple reason that nearly all of the state abortion prohibitions have been either repealed or are blocked by state versions of Roe adopted by state courts. The issue is entirely academic. The legislatures of the states would have to enact new abortion laws—and these would almost certainly continue the uniform state policy before Roe that abortion laws targeted abortionists and treated women as the second victim of abortion. There will be no prosecutions of abortionists unless the states pass new laws after Roe is overturned.
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This political claim is not an abstract question that is left to speculation—there is a long record of states treating women as the second victim of abortion in the law that can be found and read. To state the policy in legal terms, the states prosecuted the principal (the abortionist) and did not prosecute someone who might be considered an accomplice (the woman) in order to more effectively enforce the law against the principal. And that will most certainly be the state policy if the abortion issue is returned to the states.
Why did the states target abortionists and treat women as a victim of the abortionist?
It was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of the abortionist, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.
The irony is that, instead of states prosecuting women, the exact opposite is true. To protect their own hide, it was abortionists (like the cult hero and abortionist Ruth Barnett when Oregon last prosecuted her in 1968), who, when they were prosecuted, sought to haul the women they aborted into court. As a matter of criminal evidentiary law, if the court treated the woman as an accomplice, she could not testify against the abortionist, and the case against the abortionist would be thrown out.
As Forsythe notes it turns out that only two cases have taken place prior to Roe where women were subject to any criminal prosecution. As he concludes: “There is no documented case since 1922 in which a woman has been charged in an abortion in the United States.”
Vote TRUMP!!!
Unbelievably, Hillary found someone less likeable than herself.
The angry Leprechaun.
Kaine is a liar.
‘and our young people in the audience were not even born when Roe was decided.’
Pence should have responded with “And there are 50 million of their fellow American citizens who were not born either, since Roe Vs Wade.”
Now we just punish the most helpless among us, the babies ...
Abortion is murder. Those who facilitate murder, of any degree, should be punished appropriately and fairly.
If demoncraps want abortion I say we abort them.
Until now, there has existed a strange silence on the subject of her absolute insistence on promoting the "destroying" of human life in the womb.
On the underlying question moral question discussed here, nothing addresses it better than the simple logic of this quotation from Mother Teresa, who, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC on February 3, 1994, as cited above, stated: "And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"
Mother Teresa's declaration may be the most powerful statement in 2016 from which to begin discussions of where a candidate stands on all the questions of life and liberty.
The sole reason these rights were deemed unalienable is that both are derived from the Creator--not from the mother or father, and not from government or judicial decision. What is "granted" by human decision also can, by implication, be withheld.
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them (life and liberty)," said Thomas Jefferson.
"The world is different now. . . and yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forefathers fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God." - John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
That understanding underlies every other consideration embodied in our Declaration of Independence and every protection of our Constitution. It is the very basis of our rights to life and liberty, of laws to protect them, and it distinguishes ours from other forms of government.
When we fail to acknowledge that foundation of our liberty, then we risk liberty itself for future generations, for where does the right to choose who lives and who does not really end?
That is why the question is of vital importance in each election. Already, we have deprived millions of their Creator-endowed rights to life and liberty, and our nation must be weaker for their loss. We need leaders who understand the implications and potential consequences of departing from our founding principles.
In recent decades, technological advances have enabled us to observe the characteristics and actions of God's tiniest creations in the womb. Unlike previous generations who could not see, we have no excuse for imagining that these are mere blobs of tissue labeled "fetuses." In their early weeks, we now can see that they are living babies who will continue on to possess life and liberty if we do not "destroy" both. Indeed, they are simply smaller versions of ourselves.
Questions on the economy, taxes, threats from terrorists, health care--all are considerations at this election time. One, however, may be basic to all others. Who will best protect the underlying premise of our Constitution--and the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn?
Promises are illusive and cheap. One fact is indisputable, however: Hillary Clinton is committed to the Far Left's agenda on this matter, and that agenda is not compatible with our Constitution's premise.
Some time ago, my attention was drawn to a late-1800's essay which helps to explain the absolute, unbending positions "progressives" hold on what that writer called "population control" and its necessity to "socialism"--the essential position being that without such mechanisms, socialism cannot work in a society.
There is an oft-overlooked imperative for the Democrat Party's hard stand on abortion, as declared in the first paragraph of a late-1800's analysis of "The Impracticability of Socialism." In that paragraph, the writer's point seems to be that under Socialism, ordinary human population growth cannot be economically supported.
The following is quoted from the Liberty Fund Library "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), Chapter 1, final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay, "The Impracticability of Socialism":Note the writer's emphasis that the "scheme of Socialism" requires what he calls "the power of restraining the increase in population"--long the essential and primary focus of the Democrat Party in the U. S.:
"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.With Hillary, isn't this the choice we must make--a path to tyranny or a possible path back to freedom in America?
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. . . .
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON
Boy, Timmy is really stupid isn’t he...
Sometimes attempting to do too much to be “fair,” does nothing. If every court case were pushed to a full argument before jurors, our backlog would stack up across the country. And legal considerations of our own Fifth Amendment would prevent the woman from testifying against the abortionist. If you want to scorch-earth our own constitutional provisions, find some other country to do it in, please.
Low-information Kaine doesn’t seem to understand the following about constitutionally unchecked 10th Amendment-protected state powers.
State sovereignty-ignoring activist justices cannot effectively repeal constitutionally unchecked 10th Amendment-protected state laws by deciding cases in a way that politically repeals such laws; corrections, insights welcome. Such mischief by the Supreme Court is evidenced by the Court stealing constitutionally unchecked 10th Amendment-protected state powers to establish from the bench the politically correct “right” to have an abortion.
On the other hand, and with all due respect to the family, friends and supporters of the late Terri Schiavo, note that the Court properly refused to interfere with Florida’s constitutionally unchecked euthanasia law imo.
In other words, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear Roe v. Wade as it did with Terri’s case, the Supreme Court’s inconsistent, outcome-driven response to these cases examples of state-sovereignty-ignoring, activist justices wrongly practicing double-standards with respect to protecting 10th Amendment-protected state powers.
Remember in November !
Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will also put a stop to unconstitutonal federal taxes and likewise unconstitutional inteference in state affairs as evidence by the politically correct “right” to have an abortion..
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
Idealism would almost certainly be the largest wall against some kind of effective solution. A consensus like the one forming in Poland would be required to even start to think about idealism, and if it were not approached with care, might risk a reversal.
The reason that women were treated as second victims was that, emotionally, they generally were. The modern egalitarianism has severe drawbacks. Cede the egalitarianism, and the gains to be had are greater than what was ceded.
In fact... the more I ponder, the more I realize that marital role blind idealism probably gave root to the abortion problem in the first place.
“The Father... from whom every family on earth derives its name.”
Like it or not, there was a godly reason to put men in this position, which the new feminist women so loathed. Women weren’t required to marry, but if they didn’t they were expected to carry on as childless singles. If they wanted a child later, they were expected to marry a (gosh!) man who in turn would provide for the child.
Now we have all these confused women and men going around not knowing WHAT to do. Being hard hearted towards the offspring of random matings is just one sour fruit of this picture.
This is something that heaven has to correct if it is to be corrected at all. It is beyond the power of mankind now. I am inclined to think that “gay marriage” did us a favor in disguise, by showing us what a ludicrous place we were in. What hath humanity wrought? A wreck. What can God work? Miracles.
Sorry, not buying that suggestion. If I have learned is that you push things to your “extreme” so that things eventually settle somewhere you are comfortable. You can’t compromise with evil.
Where in the hell is the responsibility those women should be held to? Don’t screw around and don’t get pregnant and then kill the baby... take responsibility for their actions!
More like a clown to me. No brains.
Is there anything that Tim Kaine doesn’t lie about?
Is Tim Kaine homosexual?
Stupid and psychotic.
Clinton/Kaine: The insane clown posse.
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