Posted on 01/31/2003 6:28:04 AM PST by A2J
The point of the Roe v. Wade decision is not abortion, but rather usurpation by the Supreme Court of legislative powers.
Under our system, the legislative branches decide moral and philosophical issues; the courts decide issues of law. The Constitution is dead-silent on the subject of abortion, just as it is silent on virtually all moral and philosophical issues. The Constitution is a charter of government, laying out the branches, the powers and the division of those powers. It says nothing about social issues.
Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the 50 state legislatures handled the issue of abortion according to the wishes of the majority in their respective states. It was not, as pro-abortion fanatics claim, a case of no legal abortions anywhere. Abortion was legal in some states and not in others, and various restrictions were in place.
What the Supreme Court did was usurp the powers of the 50 state legislatures and say: "You can't legislate on this subject. We are going to legislate on it and make it legal in all 50 states." That is not a proper ruling by the Supreme Court. It has no legislative powers, and the crazy sophistry it uses to claim something is a constitutional right is just that, sophistry.
By the way, we should never refer to rights as constitutional. The Constitution does not create any rights at all. The Bill of Rights was added to make sure the new federal government recognized already-existing rights. That is plain from the language. Nowhere does it say "this right is hereby created." It says that the right shall not be infringed or abridged by the federal government. Or it says the federal government may not do certain things.
The point is that if the Roe v. Wade decision was reversed, you wouldn't suddenly have all abortions made illegal. The subject would simply be tossed back into the 50 state legislatures where it belongs, and the people in the states could decide for themselves whether they wished abortion to be legal or illegal. That's as it should be.
Personally, I believe abortion is taking an innocent human life and is no more justifiable under any circumstances than infanticide. The minute a baby comes out of the womb, we don't allow the mother to murder him or her; why should she be able to murder the child when he or she is still in the womb? It doesn't make sense.
It is never a question that a woman should control her body. Of course she should. But she should not control the body of a baby, which is a separate living human being with its own soul. Once conception takes place, there is a genetically complete human being in the womb; all the mother supplies are food, oxygen and a warm place in which to grow. A woman should have no more right to kill a child in the womb than to kill one in the nursery.
It might seem a stretch, but legalized abortion, which has been condemned by most societies for most of human history, amounts to legalized mass murder. It certainly cheapens the concept of life. If the most innocent and pure of human beings can be killed for convenience or expediency, then what's the gripe about killing people for sound business reasons? We have certainly developed an attitude that life is cheap. In some movies today, 10 or more people might be killed while they're showing the credits. And we seem immune to any feelings at all about the lives of foreigners we drop bombs on.
At any rate, we need to make sure we elect and appoint judges who won't usurp the authority of the legislature on this or any other issue.
© 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Under our system, the legislative branches decide moral and philosophical issues; the courts decide issues of law.
Neither clause of this statement is true. The legislative branch decides the law; the courts are expected to render verdicts by applying the law, and to measure legislated law against the strictures of the Constitution. What moral and philosophical aspects our system of government has are entirely confined to the Constitution, although it speaks on them only indirectly, by the incorporation of the British Common Law, the enumeration of powers, and the guarantees of various rights.
The best illustration of this I can think of is as follows: Imagine that Congress were to pass, and the President were to sign, a law that legalizes murder. Would that be a moral decision? That is, would it alter the moral understandings of our culture that the killing of a nonaggressive person is absolutely wrong? Would it be a philosophical one, addressing such abstractions as the metaphysical origin of the right to life? Or would it be a mere attempt to exercise the power to legislate -- and rightly ignored by the citizenry?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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