Posted on 05/24/2007 8:08:36 PM PDT by WileyPink
Many pro-life advocates believe that the only way to truly outlaw abortion in America is to avoid lengthy legislative battles and address the real issue -- recognizing that every human life begins at the moment of conception. That is precisely the aim of an initiative that proposes an amendment to the Mississippi constitution.
David Rogers heads the group "The Campaign for the Ultimate Human Life Amendment." The goal of the campaign is simple: change the Mississippi state constitution to recognize that every human life begins at conception -- and hopefully, ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion on demand in America. Rogers explains how that could happen.
"The simplest way to explain it is, for example, if you are a citizen of Mississippi or citizen of a state, then you're automatically a citizen of the United States," he offers. There is a similar legal linkage concerning personhood, Rogers explains.
"If we declare, or if any state declares an unborn child [to be] a person through their constitutional process, then they're automatically a person of the United States," he says. In effect, then, it "legally maneuvers the Supreme Court into protecting unborn children," Rogers adds.
Supporters of the Ultimate Human Life Amendment are circulating petitions calling for a statewide vote on Initiative 23 in April 2008. According to Initiative23.com, the signatures of 110,000 registered voters are needed for the item to appear on the ballot.
Mississippi Ping
Ultimately there should be a Constitutional Amendment to the US Constitution to firm up details and keep activist judges out of it.
Something to prohibit this widespread abortion (50million dead) and attempts at human cloning and fetal stem cell farming (if the tests prove successful, they will have to “make more”).
If this has any chance to happen at all, it will happen in MS.
I surely do hope it does...
I love the “Choose Life” license plates.
I see them all of the time when I visit.
Good to see you. ;o)
Interesting approach. The minute it passes the NARAL slaughter queens will appeal it and it will go directly to the subpreme court ... because the new law would create instant contradiction to existing laws and an impasse over non-existant balance between the alive unborn and the life supporting female. Perhaps the only solution will be to finally approach the abortion malignancy in America from the self-defense direction so competing interests may be ironed out.
Can we all agree that things like Plan B make sense, if we want to avoid abortion, which we all do? Contraception as well. Wishful thinking?
.
If this thread stays up long enough, you will be hearing from folks who know Plan B does on rare occasions cause an abortion of an alive embryo-aged human being. Until science makes it practical to save even an embryo conceived from rape or an alive fetal human being endangering his or her mother’s life, there will have to be negotiations to balance competing interests. But definitely, abortion for avoiding responsibilities —as in killing as birth control— must end.
No, there shouldn't be. This is an issue for the separate and sovereign states as intended by the 10th Amendment. I have no problem with banning abortion but quit mucking with the US Constitution to cover moral issues.
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Actually, in my opinion, had the Blackmun court not taken their liberal approach, the Constitution already addresses the right to live for the alive unborn. It was the Griswald ruling upon which the bloody black robes hung their Roe ruling which should have been ONLY a states issue. We see what activist judges do when the Constitution has provision they can penumbrate over.
Yes we do. 'Conservative' and liberal judges alike. There are more than a few issues that have been taken to the SCOTUS, cheered on by several here, that were only a Constitutional issue because the 14th Amendment has been twisted, warped, misread, misused, and yanked all throughout the 20th century by both flavors of judges.
The Constitution of these United States was not intended to address any right as the Framers understood that rights came from God and not from government. The Bill of Rights was intended to be a listing of further limitations on the federal government and nothing else.
I wish people would, yeah.
Madison’s effort to reach compromise for bipartisan ratification as I recall ...
Wishful thinking? Most likely. You’d be surprised at the number of young women who don’t want those chemicals (contraceptives) in their bodies.
I meant condoms mostly. I used the wrong term I guess. Reasonable preventitive measures, I’ll say.
Somebody needs to challenge it, but right now we have only 4 votes (at most) for overturning Roe. We need at least one more.
This one sentence from Roe v Wade is the heart of the matter in these cases:
``If the suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants'' case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would be guaranteed specifically by the {14th} Amendment.''
It seems simple then, and is summed up simply by Dr. Jack Wilke “The only difference between a born person and an unborn person is place of residence and age.” That’s how I look at it
Now I don't like this, but here’s the problem: {and why perhaps abortion should be used on lawyers}
FROM:
FT November 2002 How Not To Overturn Roe v_ Wade
Excerpts:
An aside in Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent article, “God’s Justice and Ours” (FT, May), provides a useful and timely reminder that efforts to overrule Roe v. Wade through “personhood” litigation are doomed to failure.
No present or past Justice has ever taken the position that the unborn child is, or should be regarded as, a “person” as understood in the Fourteenth Amendment, including the late Justice White, perhaps the most eloquent critic of Roe v. Wade. And in the Carhart case, the Court refused even to consider Nebraska’s argument that a partially born child is a constitutional person. That question was rejected for review without dissent. So much for the naive notion of “forcing” the Court to take on the personhood issue.
But there is more than silence to indicate the Justices’ views. Dissenting in Casey, Justice Antonin Scalia stated, “The states may, if they wish, permit abortion-on-demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” This statement, in an opinion that Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice White, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined, quite obviously is not compatible with a recognition of personhood. And in dissenting from the Court’s decision to strike down the Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas once more urged that the issue of abortion be returned to the states.
In his brief dissent in Carhart, Justice Scalia stated that “the Court should return this matter to the people—where the Constitution, by its silence on the subject, left it—and let them decide, state by state, whether this practice should be allowed.” Justice Thomas, writing for himself, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justice Scalia, began his lengthy dissent by stating: “Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother.”
Entirely apart from the issue of personhood, there is little basis for believing that any of the Justices would accept the argument that the Supreme Court (or any court) is qualified to state when human life begins. Dissenting in Casey, Justice Scalia, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices White and Thomas, wrote that the question of when human life begins is not “a legal matter” capable of resolution by a court, but, instead, is “a value judgment” that may be made only by the political branches of government. In his concurring opinion in Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health (1990), Justice Scalia said that the determination of when human life begins is a question not capable of judicial resolution and instead must be left to the political process where compromise and accommodation of divergent views is possible. This theme—that the resolution of the abortion question should be left to the political branches of government—has been a leitmotif of Justice Scalia’s abortion opinions.
The immediate objective of the NFFL’s strategy is to compel New Jersey and a handful of other states to recognize wrongful death actions for unborn children where such actions are not currently allowed. But this objective, to the extent that it is intended to challenge Roe, is also misdirected. Nothing in Roe, properly understood, forbids New Jersey or any other state from imposing civil liability and/or criminal sanctions on anyone who causes injury to or the death of an unborn child (outside the context of abortion). Indeed, many more states recognize such civil actions (and punish such crimes) now than before Roe was decided. One might go further and argue that the Constitution should forbid one person (the pregnant woman) from being able to consent to the injury or death of another person (her unborn child), but that assumes a state of affairs in which both persons are entitled to the protection of the Constitution. For the reasons set forth above, no federal court is going to hold that New Jersey (or any other state) must extend its wrongful death statute to unborn children on either equal protection or due process grounds, regardless of whether their death occurs as a result of abortion or otherwise.
But if the NFFL strategy is pursued, several federal courts will hold, as Roe did and as the Third Circuit already has in an earlier failed attempt of the “Global Project,” Alexander v. Whitman (1997), that the unborn child is not a constitutional person (“the short answer to plaintiffs’ argument is that the issue is not whether the unborn are human beings, but whether the unborn are constitutional persons”). These decisions, none of which has been (or is likely to be) reviewed by the Supreme Court, simply reinforce the positivist legal principle that having the attributes of humanity is not enough to entitle one to the protection of the law. That result, in my judgment, would be most regrettable.
Roe may be (and we must hope and pray will be) overturned some day, either by a Court decision returning the issue to the states or by a constitutional amendment. But most assuredly it will not come about through an effort like the NFFL’s “Global Project,” which simply diverts scarce pro-life resources into a quixotic venture destined to fail. Justice Scalia’s recent restatement of his view that the Constitution does not speak to the issue of abortion at all should serve as a much needed wake-up call to those who think otherwise.
Duncan Hunter all the way!
How exactly does that work?
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