By Bill Devol
Since Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court nominee is judged on what people think they would rule on abortion. This is the litmus test; nothing else matters.
I am not a Constitutional scholar, but the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Abortion, in my opinion, should never go before the Supreme Court unless the United States Constitution gets amended, and that is never going to happen.
Back in 1973, real Constitutional scholars on the United States Supreme Court agreed to rule on a Texas state law which made procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother’s life a criminal offense.
I actually went out and read the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade which was written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun (appointed to the Court in 1970 by President Richard Nixon). I found the text at www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Roe/, but you can find it in many other places.
By a 7-2 vote, the all-male Supreme Court ruled that “a state criminal abortion statute of the current (1973) Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Along with that ruling, the Court provided the following guidelines for “constitutional” abortion laws:
- For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.
- For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
- For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
An abortion prevents life; there is no arguing that point.
Anti-abortion people say a woman should have no rights over her body once sperm and egg collide; they want the state to intervene and regulate the pregnancy and the woman until the pregnancy reaches its “natural” conclusion.
Pro-choice people say the state has no right to regulate a woman’s reproductive choices; a woman should not have to submit to state regulation once sperm and egg collide.
Roe v. Wade is a shaky compromise. It can never satisfy those that believe abortion is murder, and it is all that personal reproductive rights advocates have to cling to.
I am personally anti-abortion; I would never get one if I found out I was pregnant. I will not, however, ever have to confront that dilemma seeing as how I am never going to be pregnant.
I can not side with those that would hold a woman prisoner during her fertile years. I can respect people that believe abortion is murder; they have no choice but to oppose its availability.
I do oppose the people that are against abortion for any reason, against the “morning after pill,” against providing early instruction on how to keep sperm and egg from colliding, against distributing devices or medicine that would keep sperm and egg from colliding, or that believe aborting a doctor at gunpoint in his/her 160th trimester is a good idea.
As far as I can tell, these people are basically against sex and believe that if you do the horizontal bop you should pay all the freight that comes with it. To paraphrase Hamlet’s Mom, “The nut cakes doth protest too much, methinks.”
You would think that they’d be OK with gay people having sex since no abortions would be contemplated, but they are especially against sex between Adam and Steve or Brandy and Eve. They quote the Bible in their opposition to abortion or gayness.
If God hates abortion and gayness as much as these folks say he does, he will even up with all those sinners on the other end. The nuts want to even up on this side of death…sort of behave like the God of the living…sort of like they don’t believe God can handle it…tisk, tisk, why you gotta’ be hatin’ on God?
By the way Justice William Rehnquist wrote the Court’s minority opinion on Roe v. Wade back in 1973. Justice Rehnquist also was appointed by Richard Nixon. He was later promoted him to Chief Justice during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency.
Two Supreme Court Justices, one president, two different decisions…hmmmmmmm.
1 Comment
June 11, 2009 at 5:33 pm
You said, “I am not a Constitutional scholar, but the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Declaration of Independence which came before the Constitution says,”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” Life must always hold precedence in the above trinity, for without it–the other two cannot exist.
To say that you yourself would not choose to abort (if you were a pregnant woman), but cannot tell another person how they should act under that circumstance is tantamount to saying, “I would never hang a black man from a tree–but I’m not going to tell the guys w/the pillow case masks that they can’t.” To say that it’s a woman’s prerogative to kill the child because it’s “her body” ignores the separate and unique being who is alive within. Otherwise when listening to a second heartbeat w/a doppler during pregnancy the doctor would need to explain that the woman is now Klingon–you know, those beings from the Star Trek universe who have two hearts.
And can you please explain what it was I was seeing on ultrasound when I was pregnant? What looked like a small child must have been my imagination. Why believe my own eyes, right?
Just so you know, one of the ways “Dr.” Tiller made sure he had his lethal injection needle in the right person was called “harpooning the whale.” After stabbing the unborn child with the needle he would let go of it and see if it would move…that way he could be certain that he was killing his intended victim and not the mother of that child.
Also–you should be aware that the chance of the mother dying during a late abortion is much higher than if she gave birth–nearly twice as high as a live birth. So much for the “pro-woman” pro-”choice” side caring about the woman…
I consider myself pro-life, and if you wish to be PC you should either call one side anti-abortion and the other pro-abortion, or one side pro-life and the other anti-life. Or–you could call each side by what they prefer…pro-life and pro-choice. Personally, I am pro-choice before conception and pro-life after.
I also firmly believe that women deserve better than abortion–which is one of the by-lines for femistsforlife.org. I cannot speak for your belief on the beginnings of life, but science is clear that a new LIVING organism begins at the moment of conception. As for the “child as a parasite” argument, I was once doing research for a paper on this topic and found some papers written by supposedly learned people–you know, the ones with PhD’s after their names. They were making a very strong argument for parents–with the help of physicians–to be able to choose death for their child up to at LEAST two years AFTER birth. Their arguments were in the realm of cognitive development (the brain not being “fully” developed for at least two years postnatal) and a child’s undeveloped sense of self. I sat in that library reading these soulless arguments and wept.
Since you brought it up–I am Christian AND pro-gay rights. I have no problem w/two adults who love each other being married…even if they are the same gender. I am also a feminist–but in the tradition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and (later) Alice Paul (who was one of the Iron Jawed Angels and adamantly pro-life). So please, do not assume that we all fit into some stereotype.
I would also like to share w/you my own story. My mother became pregnant out of wedlock just before she turned 19. When she realized that she was pregnant she went to Hawaii where her older brother took her to an abortion “doctor.” Because it was 1968 and abortion was still illegal (and I was just past 3 months in my post-conception development), the “doctor” wouldn’t perform the abortion. My mother thinks it was because he was running an adoption agency and he wanted her to place me through his office after I was born. She turned him down and got on a plane back to CA (where she learned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated). She lived in a home w/two other pregnant women and one who was not while waiting for my birth. We were living so close to where Bobby Kennedy was shot that she (and perhaps I–hearing is one of the earliest senses to develop before birth) heard all the emergency vehicles rushing to the scene. Three-and-a-half months later I was born and was placed for adoption…to make a long story a bit shorter–my mother changed her mind, my parents married and then divorced…my childhood was not always happy or easy. And yet I remain grateful that I was not killed while still living within my mother’s body.