Supreme Court ends Roe v. Wade?

Thank you. Hopefully the last two resonate as well. They’re the crux of the whole matter.

Changing the entire fabric of society in pursuit of one abstract goal to the exclusion of all others (“freedom, equality, and fraternity”, “all power to the workers’ councils”, “the German Nation”, “the right to life of the unborn”) is about the most unconservative thing I can think of. And the means to achieve it are indistinguishable from those employed by the Bolsheviks or the Nazis or the Jacobins: denunciation, limited freedom of movement, arbitrary imprisonment, denial of medical care, torture, execution for “crimes against the State”, etc. It also won’t work. Real conservatives understand that society isn’t that malleable, that all rights have inherent limits, and must coexist with other rights in an imperfect state. There is no such thing as an absolute right to life anymore than there is an absolute right to property or right to privacy.

 

So here’s a poser. If a man violently attacks and beats a pregnant woman such that she miscarries, can that man ever be liable for the crime of manslaughter?

Some states think he should be charged with manslaughter. Some do not. Roe as it stands, is effectively a federal ban against states that wish to EXTEND human rights to the unborn.

From this point of view, Roe as it stands is a ruling contrary to the purpose of the Constitution in that it restricts human rights rather than protects them.

 

Good question, and a fair one. If we’re going to be consistent with definitions, I’d have to say “no”. Nevertheless it would be a very serious crime, especially if the fetus were viable at that point. I believe that would be aggravated battery (of the mother, of course), which is a very serious felony. The distance between that and manslaughter (in terms of the severity of the crime) under the circumstances would be small, but present nonetheless.

 

This really seems overblown to me.

"Limited freedom of movement"? Come on. No one is keeping women from leaving their homes or traveling.
"Denial of medical care"? Give me a break. Abortion is not medical care of the woman in the traditional sense. Abortion does not treat an illness, cure a disease, etc. "Medical care" in pregnancy is having checkups to make sure both mother and baby are doing well!
"Arbritrary imprisonment"? Not one bit. If a law states that having an abortion is punishable by incarceration, that's not arbitrary; there is a clear delineation between lawful and unlawful behavior so the woman can remain on the side of the law, and there's nothing arbitrary about protecting an unborn child.
"Torture"? If you believe that outlawing abortion is torture, then everything from robbery felony laws to traffic laws to income taxes are torture (I might agree on the last one to some degree).
"Execution for crimes against the state"? No one is talking about giving women the death penalty for having abortions.
"Changing the entire fabric of society"? Roe v Wade must have changed the entire fabric of society, then, if that's what you believe overturning it would do; this ruling would return things to the way it was before Roe, with states handling the situation in accordance with the will of their citizens (and noncitizens, too, in dumb states that let them vote). What is your problem with letting the people self-govern via representative government? Isn't that the American Way? Or do you prefer to have a small panel of oligarchs decide for everyone what "the good of the nation" must be? Show me any tyranny in history that was superior to a democracy or republic.

Strange that you would single out the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. In both instances a small group of individuals used a combination of deceit, bullying, and appeals to selfishness in order to entice, coerce and corral the large majority into a bad situation wherein a small minority gained socialistic control over practically every aspect of the people's lives. This new ruling simply gives the power to the people once again, so they can decide state-by-state what their abortion policy will be, and 99% of the women affected by any anti-abortion laws will only be constrained to act responsibly (and morally?) in the bedroom for a change.

Once upon a time, people thought twice before they hopped into the sack and committed fornication or adultery. Wouldn't it be nice to return to those times! If a couple has to stop and think, "What if one night's fun could result in 18 years of responsibilities and expenses?" just maybe they would be deterred from sin!

 

You say things in a way that I can't, but wish I could. The whole thing (to me) boils down to whether or not the fetus is a human being. It is actually a parasite in the woman's body. Usually it is a much wanted and loved parasite, but not always, and it isn't a human being until it is born. When a man can carry a fetus for nine months in his body, willingly or unwillingly, then perhaps he will have more understanding of the issues. I know there are so many men who 'get it' now, but so many of those who are anti-choice don't really understand the issue. A woman's body is her own, and no one has a right to tell them what to do with it, any more than I would tell a man whether or not he could get a vasectomy or do anything else to his body (poor analogy I know but men don't have to face this issue. A woman is allowed to get a hysterectomy or her tubes tied (at the moment - until that is outlawed as well) but she shouldn't get an abortion? The whole argument stems from the misguided belief that a fetus is a human being, which it is not, until it is outside the woman's body. Then we have the scare mongers who talk about late term abortions and killing 'babies' etc. No woman wants to 'kill a baby', she just wants a choice as to whether to be pregnant or not.

And as so many comedians have pointed out, it seems that the fetus is so precious to conservatives, right up until the time it is born - then forget it. Once a child is born, who cares what happens to it? Where is parental leave/ child care/ health care, pre and ant natal care? And it's ok to kill abortion clinic workers but not the unborn? It's just too bizarre.

The video explained it - this was a stunt that was used for political and financial benefit that grew all out of proportion until now it is a huge controversy and used to radicalise the right. That's probably all I will post on this topic since posters like Invictus say it all so much better than I possibly can, and say it without the emotional component. My only real qualification here is that I am a woman, one of the people who would have been affected by the whole issue (when I was younger). I care now because it is an issue of choice and women are always being marginalised, from WO opponents to anti-choice protesters. Men have just got to stop trying to control women.

 

Never the less, if it is right for the state to defend infants before birth, at little or no cost to itself, on the grounds that they are citizens of the state and individuals loved by God, then it is also right that born infants should be protected from poverty, starvation and abuse by that same state, after birth, even though it may involve costs to itself. A state that consistently fails to do both would be hypocritical. What price or value does that state put upon a human life, in the womb or out of it?

A state that is quite happy to separate mothers from their children and put them in cages at its borders or withhold financial and moral support from poverty stricken or poorly educated mothers, single or not, is not fit to pass legislation supposedly 'protecting' foetuses yet unborn. To do one but not the other would indicate that such a state is more interested in enhancing its own power over its citizens than it is genuinely concerned for the rights of their unborn infants.

 

This does seem to be an attempt at trivialising what was suggested in the post it is answering, rather than seriously challenging the point concerning draconian legislation and state control, made in the post itself.

 

How obtuse. As usual, you’ve managed to completely miss the point of what I’ve been saying. I’m not talking about some obscure hypothetical here. There are 22 states that are all set to enact nearly complete bans with civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance, for both the doctors and the women involved, even if it occurs in a state that allows the procedure (which is effectively a selective travel ban), etc., and we know that at least some of them will follow what Texas has already done and use a bounty hunter enforcement system (alongside more direct methods) that isn’t subject to judicial review under current rules. That is the beginning of a mob-based police state. And that’s just the beginning. America already has one-third of the entire world’s female prison population. In a supposedly “free” country, that’s outrageous. Do you expect that figure to go up or down after this? Alito’s draft made it clear there are other rights recognized in recent SCOTUS decisions that the current majority on the Court thinks should be rolled back as well. Texas is already talking about re-challenging decisions forcing it to provide equal education to all its child residents. This isn’t “calling balls and strikes” anymore, as Chief Justice Roberts put it during his own confirmation hearings. Binding precedent has given way to the arbitrary exercise of raw power, and the Court is now openly playing the part of an unelected legislature with its own political agenda.

So, there’s nothing “conservative” about the radical “pro-life” agenda. Nor does it have anything to do with “life”. Women will die as a result of this that otherwise wouldn’t have. If the kind of unaccountable enforcement they’re intending to implement can be applied to one fundamental right, it can be applied to any fundamental right: the right to marry, the right to practice a particular faith, the right to protest, etc. The “states’ rights” argument is disingenuous and I’ve already explained why, multiple times. It’s not my job to fix poor reading comprehension, and nobody is going to take a trivializing counterargument seriously at this point. That ship has sailed.

 

In other words, "The Sky Is Falling, O. M. G. "

Thank you for this glimpse into the liberal/progressive mindset.

 

Just to be clear, even non-citizens are protected by our laws.

And while it’s true also that we as a society should provide for the poor to the extent we are able, to link the “right” to electively kill one’s own unborn child is a different problem than social-level provision for the poor.

To say that they are somehow dependent on one another is to suggest that poor kids would be better off dead, or that it should be a crime for parents to be poor themselves.

 

I was witness to a group of college girls protesting last night and one of their chants went something like “pro-life is a lie, they want to let women die!”

it was a pretty wretched display of hatred

 

This whole business is a wretched display of hatred, particularly those who have self righteously highjacked the issue making themselves look righteous and those who support freedom of choice for women as murderers or worse. Murder has already been done in the cause of 'rights to life'. How hypocritical is that?

 

The only way out of this circular firing squad is for everyone to confess that they are sinners and have need of repentance and forgiveness.

 

Another way, is to recognize that it is impossible to reconcile Christianity to postmodern culture and its values.

It is impossible to have one's foot in both words, as I see some people here doing.

They probably keep one foot in the postmodern liberal world because they believe that to fully submit to Christianity and to natural law is to become a "fundamentalist". Inciteful and hateful labels like this are used, to sideline and diminish an entire worldview (one revealed by God himself), in favor of a man-made artificial worldview that is sick and dying, capable of only taking the last riches from Christian culture as it goes the way of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The future belongs to Christianity. We all know that. It's a futile effort to try to resist God's culture. Let's submit, and flourish in the world under the principles which Christians have embraced for thousands of years. It is the only way to healthy and happy existence.

 

This is the first and only instance of this word in this thread, to my knowledge.

You hope it does. If people keep hijacking it to serve destructive political ends, its future is very much in doubt. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”, is a perfectly serious question.

I’m actually a conservative temperamentally, and a social democrat ideologically. The two go together quite nicely. It’s also very Anglican. (Liberalism as an ideology makes some unwarranted assumptions about human nature, and I’m not in favor of the “woke” agenda that has come to define contemporary progressivism.)

My goal has been to make it clear that it’s possible to have a moral objection to something without resorting to wild exaggerations or the worst kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Is abortion wrong in most circumstances? Yes. Is it murder? No. That is the only position that is defensible on the basis of Scripture, which is the final authority on these matters for Anglicans. The extreme rhetoric on both sides of the debate comes from another source entirely. And since very, very few Americans are actually conservative in their outlook, with their ideology taking a back seat to their sense of caution, the potential consequences of these radical decisions are either being carelessly overlooked or disingenuously dismissed, while extremist political ideology masquerades as religion. It’s all happened before. We have plenty of history to refer to here for a guide, and yet we never seem to learn…

 

There is actually a great article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today from their Editorial Board, that is worth quoting here:

The Supreme Court draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade raises just as many arguments and counterarguments as the original ruling that Justice Samuel Alito excoriated in his opinion, leaked this week to Politico. Alito’s assertion that abortion rights don’t fall under the 14th Amendment, and that the Constitution makes no mention of abortion as a right, calls into question a wide range of other supposed rights for which no mention of any kind appears in the Constitution.

Alito basically would establish an entirely new bar for basic rights that cannot be met under a strict reading of the Constitution — not just including divisive issues such as gay marriage but also whether there is a right for gun owners to possess ammunition. The Constitution doesn’t specifically spell out a right for interracial couples to marry. Under Alito’s rationale, all those supposedly settled issues, widely accepted as basic rights, now could be subject to challenge.

Alito argues the opposite, saying that this draft ruling applies only to the rights of the unborn. But under his rationale, the Constitution offers no spelled-out rights to the unborn. In fact, it specifically excludes the unborn from having rights under the very 14th Amendment that Alito dissects as the basis for the conservative majority’s opinion.

Consider the amendment’s opening phrase: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof …” followed by the stipulation that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,” without due legal process and equal protection.

That opening paragraph specifically applies to women as a subset of all people who qualify as having been born — and it specifically does not apply to those who have not yet been born.

These are painful words to parse in such a literal way when talking about humans’ lives, but that’s the standard Alito himself is setting. This is what the Constitution says and doesn’t say. Yet Alito and the conservative majority have decided that the rights of the unborn supersede those of women even though no wording in the Constitution specifies any such distinction.​

The whole thing is well worth reading.
Editorial: Alito's draft ruling is so self-contradictory that it calls court's judgment into question

​

 

Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside...​

Notice what it specifically says: all persons who have been born in the US are citizens of the US.

Now notice what it does not say. It does not say that all unborn are not persons. Nor does it say that all unborn are not citizens.
Those who claim that the 14th Amendment excludes the unborn from the rights of personhood or citizenship are wrong. The Amendment is merely silent regarding the unborn. (This is what you get when newspaper editors play "lawyer.")

Illustration: suppose it said, "all cakes baked in the US are US desserts." One cannot say that pies baked in the US are not US desserts simply because they aren't mentioned.

 

This argument attempts to do precisely what Alito criticized, ironically. Yes, the Rules of Distribution matter. In this case, the proposition being a universal affirmative, the subject is distributed but the predicate is not. So, there could theoretically be a third, unnamed class of “persons born” who would also qualify as citizens. (And indeed there seem to be: those who are born in U.S. embassies, or on U.S. military bases abroad. However, this is not quite right; For the purposes of citizenship, subsequent legislation treats such places as being “in the United States”.) The problem with this argument is not the form of the proposition, but the status of the middle term “All persons, etc.”, which is disjunctive, rather than conjunctive, i.e., the two disjuncts form a complete whole, exhausting all alternatives. “Naturalized” in this context includes the concept “not born in the United States”, and by the Law of Excluded Middle (“Either A or not-A”), there is no middle category between “born in the United States” and “not born in the United States”, with “person born”, and not just “person”, being common to the two disjuncts. A person born, was either born here or she was not born here. There is no other alternative. The structure of the first clause of Amendment 14 cannot therefore be used to argue for an unenumerated ascription of “personhood” to the unborn (which, again, Alito wouldn’t like, since it isn’t explicitly enumerated), nor is the Amendment defining what a “person” is. It rather defines what a citizen is, in order to prohibit the infringement of the rights of the citizen, which would certain include any pregnant “person born in the United States or naturalized”. So it turns out the Amendment says exactly what it seems to say.

 

I don't agree with that convoluted 'analysis,' but I will drop the point. Be that as it may, it is moot whether or not an unborn child is a citizen because the unborn child is a human being, and all human beings have a right to life (as stated by the Declaration of Independence as well as under common law). Imagine a child five or ten minutes prior to birth; is that child NOT a human being just because he/she has not yet passed through the birth canal?

The question then becomes (as you have pointed out previously), does the child become a human being at viability or at conception? We all have our opinions, and we are unlikely to change other people's opinions on this.