Friday, March 05, 2004
I'll get to today's topic momentarily.
First, reader participation time.
Here's an exercise for ya'll: go and read this article on AOL News. It gives an account on the question of whether or not the U.S. forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power through threats of violence. I want you to compare the U.S. Embassy's translation of Aristide's letter with an independent translation done by an Indiana University linguistics professor. Then, take what you've gathered from comparing the two translations and apply it to Aristide's statements quoted in the article. When you've done all of this, tell me the first conclusion that leaps into your mind. The comment link is as always below this entry.
Now, I've been putting off discussing this topic because far more interesting issues have come up. However, nothing right now is too compelling, so now's the best time. It's also very relevant when you consider that the country is divided over an alleged civil rights issue, gay marriage.
So we're going to talk about that other of inflammatory "civil rights" issues, abortion.
It's funny how pro-choicers have claimed this as a civil rights issue, while feverently denying that unborn babies have any civil rights. Well, not so much funny as poignant, but you get the picture. I am now going to show why a woman's right to choose is a misnomer. Pro-lifers don't have it entirely right either, but they are far closer to the truth than "pro-choice" advocates.
I'm going to do this in two parts. Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that is currently the U.S. position on the issue, is so complicated that it needs to be dissected seperately from whether or not abortion should be legal. I spent the night reading the entire Supreme Court ruling (and let me tell you, reading all that legalese can give one a headache), so I assure you: I come prepared for this.
Let's shed the light on Roe v. Wade.
First off, the bare basics. (Don't Mess With) Texas passed a law that outlawed abortion except when health concerns were involved. A woman (Roe) seeking an abortion sued, on the basis that she had a right to have an abortion. The decision went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in January of 1973, they ruled on the matter.
Roe v. Wade rules that abortions are protected under the right of privacy, but are subject to regulation if the state has a compelling interest. The state does not have such an interest if a fetus has not reached viability. U.S. law had rarely given fetuses any rights or status under the law, and then only when the fetus was viable. A person is not clearly defined by the Constitution, but the Fourteenth Amendment uses the phrase "persons born or naturalized", and the other two uses of the word can only be applied post-birth. Finally, the court did not presume to enforce a definition of life upon everyone since the science, theology, and philosphy communites of the time could not agree on an answer.
So they ruled that the state has no compelling interest in regulating abortion during the first trimester, limited health-related interests in the second, and full power of regulation in the third.
Summary mode over. Let's now analyze. And good god, where do I begin? There's a lot of nonsense to go through.
We'll start with the dividing of abortion rights into three trimesters. Simply put, the Supreme Court had no business coming up with this scheme. The court rules that the states' compelling interest in regulating abortion begins with viability. If that was the case, the correct action for the court to take would've been to strike down the Texas law, and declare that a state can only ban abortions of a viable child, exempting when the mother's life is in danger. Instead, it decided to create a new, trimester-based law. The problem is, creating laws is not the Supreme Court's job. That's the job of the peoples' elected officials.
The Court also put forth the position that one cannot force one definition of life upon a woman who believes in another.
I wonder in amazement at how our Supremeist of courts could get so easily confused.
First off, the Court has every right to force a definition of life upon a woman. Life is very clearly specified in the Constitution as a protected right. It is the Court's duty to figure out what the writers of the Constitution defined life as. Here's the thing: there's no question an unborn baby possesses life. There has never been any agreement as to what point in the reproductive process the unborn child can be called a human being. However, the definition of life is well-known and taught in our public school system. In fact, all you really have to do is pick up a dictionary, open it up to the "L" section, and browse through the words in alphebetical order until you come to the word "life". While there are many different uses of the word (ie. referring to the life a person lived, or a person's sex life), the appropriate one here is this one:
"The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
Once it has passed the stage from a collection of fertilized cells into a multi-celluar organism (a fetus would qualify), then one has to conclude that the baby is alive. What, do you think the baby just sits there comatose in a woman's stomach? No, you don't. In fact, you know better. Babies are so active in the womb that they will "kick". While a baby does not comprehend much, it is indeed alive.
However, the right to life is only guaranteed to "persons" in the Constitution.
Amendment XIV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:
"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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So does an unborn child fit the definition of person?
This one's murky. It's hard to understand what the intended definiton of a person was in this context. We have no idea if the writers meant to include unborn babies. So I can understand the Court coming to the conclusion that, due to the usage of the word person in the Constitution, one must conclude that a person is someone who has been born.
Here's an interesting question, though. If, in 1776, a man created a poison that would kill a pregnant woman's baby without harming the mother, used it on a woman, and then was caught, for what would they have charged this man?
The answer to that question would be telling as to how our founding fathers would have defined the word "person" if they had felt that it was neccessary to do so.
However, the Court had a valid reason for not ruling that an unborn child is a person. I'll let that one go. Next point.
The Supreme Court declared that our laws had only given legal rights to viable unborn children. It cited cases of civil liability, where parents would sue for the death of a child and would win only if the child was viable, as a precedent that unborn children didn't have legal rights.
This really isn't relevant for the purposes of overturning a state law. The issue on hand was does an unborn child have a right to life. By ruling that a woman has a right to an abortion, the Supreme Court decided that it did not. I think that is using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law.
Moreever, the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion outright either. Therefore, the Supreme Court had to figure out if any of the other constitutionally protected rights applied here.
The Supreme Court alleged that it found one. Boy, was it ever a doozy. The Supreme Court ruled that abortion is protected under the right to privacy.
That's right. A woman has a right to abort a child because she is entitled to privacy.
Good god, does that make ANY sense?
Let's examine.
From Roe v. Wade:
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation."
Wow.
First off, the Supreme Court isn't properly assessing where the choice lies in this matter. Here's a hint: it's not whether or not a woman should abort a child. It's whether or not a woman should have sex. Except for rape, you can't just point at a woman and "force" her to get pregnant. She has to be a willing accomplice. So this decision isn't about giving women the right to choose. It's about giving women the right to not accept accountability for their choices. That's not a Constitutionally protected right, no matter how much you scream about it.
Here's the big flaw in Roe v. Wade, the one that completely destroys its basis as constitutional.
If a woman carries within her a fertilized egg, that's still a part of her body. It's a collection of cells, and a person has every right to do with their cells just about what they will.
However, once the fertilized egg becomes a multi-celluar organism, then it is no longer a part of the woman's body. Instead, it is an underdeveloped lifeform that is supported by the mother. However, it is very much a seperate body.
Finally, even the Supreme Court that decided Roe v. Wade conceded that a woman does not have an unlimited right to do as she pleases with her body. I'll qutoe Roe v. Wade again:
"...it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions."
So even the very justices that came up with Roe v. Wade agree that a woman does not have an unlimited right to what she pleases with her body, and that it doesn't bear a close relationship to the right of privacy? Then on what basis did the Supreme Court rule that abortion was legal on?
The only ground left for Roe v. Wade to stand on is that the state has no compelling interest to interfere in the abortion of pregnancies before viability, and thus is a private decision.
However, in quoting previous Supreme Court decisions that defined the "right to privacy" (a right not directly in the constituion but inferred from it), it states the following:
These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.
So the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that abortion is a fundamental right, implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.
This is insanity.
The proper ruling would've been to establish that the right to liberty includes the right to do as one wishes with the cells of their body. Therefore, abortion of a child before it becomes a fetus is Constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment's right to liberty. However, the state has not just a compelling interest, but an obligation to defend the interests of the unborn baby, an organism that not only possesses its own body but also its own will. That baby has a right to not be killed, which is precisely what abortion is: the killing of a child. Maybe it's not legally murder, but it's still killing. No woman has a right to kill an unborn baby. Period.
Also, just because a fetus has no legal rights does not mean that the states cannot give them legal protection under the law. To argue otherwise would be to argue that we can kill all the animals in the world, because they have no rights under the Constitution. Any of you liberal pro-choicers wanna go there?
Didn't think so.
As for the argument that to not abort a baby is to force a woman to endure childbirth....sorry, but no. Pregnancy is a risk one takes when having sex. Either use any and all birth control methods you can without fail, or else take it on the chin when you get pregnant (and you will get pregnant).
It all comes down to this: do women have the right to have sex without any consequences? Do women have the right to kill a baby, even an unborn one, just because it is inconvienent?
The answer, thank god, is no.
Therefore, abortion is not, and should not be, a constitional right.
First, reader participation time.
Here's an exercise for ya'll: go and read this article on AOL News. It gives an account on the question of whether or not the U.S. forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power through threats of violence. I want you to compare the U.S. Embassy's translation of Aristide's letter with an independent translation done by an Indiana University linguistics professor. Then, take what you've gathered from comparing the two translations and apply it to Aristide's statements quoted in the article. When you've done all of this, tell me the first conclusion that leaps into your mind. The comment link is as always below this entry.
Now, I've been putting off discussing this topic because far more interesting issues have come up. However, nothing right now is too compelling, so now's the best time. It's also very relevant when you consider that the country is divided over an alleged civil rights issue, gay marriage.
So we're going to talk about that other of inflammatory "civil rights" issues, abortion.
It's funny how pro-choicers have claimed this as a civil rights issue, while feverently denying that unborn babies have any civil rights. Well, not so much funny as poignant, but you get the picture. I am now going to show why a woman's right to choose is a misnomer. Pro-lifers don't have it entirely right either, but they are far closer to the truth than "pro-choice" advocates.
I'm going to do this in two parts. Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that is currently the U.S. position on the issue, is so complicated that it needs to be dissected seperately from whether or not abortion should be legal. I spent the night reading the entire Supreme Court ruling (and let me tell you, reading all that legalese can give one a headache), so I assure you: I come prepared for this.
Let's shed the light on Roe v. Wade.
First off, the bare basics. (Don't Mess With) Texas passed a law that outlawed abortion except when health concerns were involved. A woman (Roe) seeking an abortion sued, on the basis that she had a right to have an abortion. The decision went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in January of 1973, they ruled on the matter.
Roe v. Wade rules that abortions are protected under the right of privacy, but are subject to regulation if the state has a compelling interest. The state does not have such an interest if a fetus has not reached viability. U.S. law had rarely given fetuses any rights or status under the law, and then only when the fetus was viable. A person is not clearly defined by the Constitution, but the Fourteenth Amendment uses the phrase "persons born or naturalized", and the other two uses of the word can only be applied post-birth. Finally, the court did not presume to enforce a definition of life upon everyone since the science, theology, and philosphy communites of the time could not agree on an answer.
So they ruled that the state has no compelling interest in regulating abortion during the first trimester, limited health-related interests in the second, and full power of regulation in the third.
Summary mode over. Let's now analyze. And good god, where do I begin? There's a lot of nonsense to go through.
We'll start with the dividing of abortion rights into three trimesters. Simply put, the Supreme Court had no business coming up with this scheme. The court rules that the states' compelling interest in regulating abortion begins with viability. If that was the case, the correct action for the court to take would've been to strike down the Texas law, and declare that a state can only ban abortions of a viable child, exempting when the mother's life is in danger. Instead, it decided to create a new, trimester-based law. The problem is, creating laws is not the Supreme Court's job. That's the job of the peoples' elected officials.
The Court also put forth the position that one cannot force one definition of life upon a woman who believes in another.
I wonder in amazement at how our Supremeist of courts could get so easily confused.
First off, the Court has every right to force a definition of life upon a woman. Life is very clearly specified in the Constitution as a protected right. It is the Court's duty to figure out what the writers of the Constitution defined life as. Here's the thing: there's no question an unborn baby possesses life. There has never been any agreement as to what point in the reproductive process the unborn child can be called a human being. However, the definition of life is well-known and taught in our public school system. In fact, all you really have to do is pick up a dictionary, open it up to the "L" section, and browse through the words in alphebetical order until you come to the word "life". While there are many different uses of the word (ie. referring to the life a person lived, or a person's sex life), the appropriate one here is this one:
"The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
Once it has passed the stage from a collection of fertilized cells into a multi-celluar organism (a fetus would qualify), then one has to conclude that the baby is alive. What, do you think the baby just sits there comatose in a woman's stomach? No, you don't. In fact, you know better. Babies are so active in the womb that they will "kick". While a baby does not comprehend much, it is indeed alive.
However, the right to life is only guaranteed to "persons" in the Constitution.
Amendment XIV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:
"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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So does an unborn child fit the definition of person?
This one's murky. It's hard to understand what the intended definiton of a person was in this context. We have no idea if the writers meant to include unborn babies. So I can understand the Court coming to the conclusion that, due to the usage of the word person in the Constitution, one must conclude that a person is someone who has been born.
Here's an interesting question, though. If, in 1776, a man created a poison that would kill a pregnant woman's baby without harming the mother, used it on a woman, and then was caught, for what would they have charged this man?
The answer to that question would be telling as to how our founding fathers would have defined the word "person" if they had felt that it was neccessary to do so.
However, the Court had a valid reason for not ruling that an unborn child is a person. I'll let that one go. Next point.
The Supreme Court declared that our laws had only given legal rights to viable unborn children. It cited cases of civil liability, where parents would sue for the death of a child and would win only if the child was viable, as a precedent that unborn children didn't have legal rights.
This really isn't relevant for the purposes of overturning a state law. The issue on hand was does an unborn child have a right to life. By ruling that a woman has a right to an abortion, the Supreme Court decided that it did not. I think that is using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law.
Moreever, the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion outright either. Therefore, the Supreme Court had to figure out if any of the other constitutionally protected rights applied here.
The Supreme Court alleged that it found one. Boy, was it ever a doozy. The Supreme Court ruled that abortion is protected under the right to privacy.
That's right. A woman has a right to abort a child because she is entitled to privacy.
Good god, does that make ANY sense?
Let's examine.
From Roe v. Wade:
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation."
Wow.
First off, the Supreme Court isn't properly assessing where the choice lies in this matter. Here's a hint: it's not whether or not a woman should abort a child. It's whether or not a woman should have sex. Except for rape, you can't just point at a woman and "force" her to get pregnant. She has to be a willing accomplice. So this decision isn't about giving women the right to choose. It's about giving women the right to not accept accountability for their choices. That's not a Constitutionally protected right, no matter how much you scream about it.
Here's the big flaw in Roe v. Wade, the one that completely destroys its basis as constitutional.
If a woman carries within her a fertilized egg, that's still a part of her body. It's a collection of cells, and a person has every right to do with their cells just about what they will.
However, once the fertilized egg becomes a multi-celluar organism, then it is no longer a part of the woman's body. Instead, it is an underdeveloped lifeform that is supported by the mother. However, it is very much a seperate body.
Finally, even the Supreme Court that decided Roe v. Wade conceded that a woman does not have an unlimited right to do as she pleases with her body. I'll qutoe Roe v. Wade again:
"...it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions."
So even the very justices that came up with Roe v. Wade agree that a woman does not have an unlimited right to what she pleases with her body, and that it doesn't bear a close relationship to the right of privacy? Then on what basis did the Supreme Court rule that abortion was legal on?
The only ground left for Roe v. Wade to stand on is that the state has no compelling interest to interfere in the abortion of pregnancies before viability, and thus is a private decision.
However, in quoting previous Supreme Court decisions that defined the "right to privacy" (a right not directly in the constituion but inferred from it), it states the following:
These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.
So the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that abortion is a fundamental right, implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.
This is insanity.
The proper ruling would've been to establish that the right to liberty includes the right to do as one wishes with the cells of their body. Therefore, abortion of a child before it becomes a fetus is Constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment's right to liberty. However, the state has not just a compelling interest, but an obligation to defend the interests of the unborn baby, an organism that not only possesses its own body but also its own will. That baby has a right to not be killed, which is precisely what abortion is: the killing of a child. Maybe it's not legally murder, but it's still killing. No woman has a right to kill an unborn baby. Period.
Also, just because a fetus has no legal rights does not mean that the states cannot give them legal protection under the law. To argue otherwise would be to argue that we can kill all the animals in the world, because they have no rights under the Constitution. Any of you liberal pro-choicers wanna go there?
Didn't think so.
As for the argument that to not abort a baby is to force a woman to endure childbirth....sorry, but no. Pregnancy is a risk one takes when having sex. Either use any and all birth control methods you can without fail, or else take it on the chin when you get pregnant (and you will get pregnant).
It all comes down to this: do women have the right to have sex without any consequences? Do women have the right to kill a baby, even an unborn one, just because it is inconvienent?
The answer, thank god, is no.
Therefore, abortion is not, and should not be, a constitional right.
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