Said a crew member quoted in "Inside ‘Roe v. Wade’: A Disturbing Anti-Abortion Film Featuring Milo Yiannopoulos and Tomi Lahren/Currently shooting in New Orleans, the secretive project—the brainchild of heir Nick Loeb, most famous for his embryo battle with ex Sofia Vergara—has been mired in chaos" (The Daily Beast), which says "the cast and crew of Roe v. Wade have been quickly dropping out of the project" and seems designed to inspire mass exile from the project. There's the idea that the cast and crew are people who didn't realize what they were getting into...
[Many of the] members of the supporting cast and crew... were told that the film was a vaguely pro-life project tackling the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case “from another perspective,” only to arrive on set, view the script, and be shocked by the extremity of its point of view. “When I read the first two pages, I was like what the fuck is this?”...... and the subtext I read is: We'll give you a graceful out if you quit now — you just didn't know what you were doing — but if you continue, you'll be a social and professional pariah.
Note: I support abortion rights, but I think the entire debate ought to be presented in public, and that it should never simply become an issue that we leave behind and say is already resolved. New generations deserve to see and understand what has been said and done and to form their own moral, legal, and political ideas on the subject.
Ironically, the constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that women actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion. Look at Planned Parenthood v. Casey (which changed the scope of the Roe v. Wade right in 1992 and then preserved what was left of it based on the principle already-decided cases should stay put):
These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.That is, the Court characterized the decision to have an abortion as a deep contemplation that — like religion or philosophy — inherently belongs to the individual and not to the government. The woman's "personhood" must be preserved, and the question of the "personhood" of the unborn is something for her to think about and make a decision about. If the Court is right — and that's something we may be looking at very intensely in the coming years — then the question of the morality of abortion remains alive.
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189 comments:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Unless you're the father of an unborn child..then no one gives a shit what you think.
Does anybody believe that the writers who wrote, and the people who voted in favor of, the 14th Amendment had any intention of creating a "right" to an abortion?
Men should have the right to not pay child support also.
But women oppose that choice.
So we know it has nothing to do with choice.
Men should have the right to not pay child support also.
Funny how at that point it becomes "all about the welfare of the children" isn't it?
As stated before: women now have a lock on procreation.
So while men can rant and rail, they own the moral choices.
They also have the responsibility. If our birth rates drop off a cliff, ahem...it is not on men (phalluses are freely available...well...EVERYWHERE*)
And the morality seems to be changing. Abortion rates are diminishing, albeit with both sides claiming victory, though the Left has a far less credible claim to that, IMO.
It's hard to scream 'clump of cells' when you hear a heartbeat and see a face and their message has NEVER been about limiting abortions. Instead, they arguably celebrate it.
*Though I get that the mating game seems like buying a last minute dress before an important date at TJ Maxx: you have no idea of how good the 'quality' of the product is before you hit the store, but you got to wear something if you want to make that date.
Makes one wonder how Spielberg got away with making Schindler's List. How dare he. When Government protects the industrial Murder of inconvenient or surplus non-people that is only a free choice.
In the final analysis, feminists have no defense for willfully killing another human being. They just rage against the "unfairness" of human biology, and take their rage out on the unborn. And make the rest of the world watch.
Of course the article is just how you would expect.
They want to ban the movie.
Because Kennedy retired it is totally a sensitive subject.
The only freedom they protect is abortion. Hmmm.
Roe v Wade is an afront to the rule of law and an absolutely disgraceful opinion on multiple levels.
The idea that the government and particularly the federal government would be that pervasive as to involve itself in this decision is repulsive.
But the Supreme Court had to take it one step further and make shit up out of whole cloth.
But the rightists are almost as messed up on this subject. They still want the government to make moral decisions for them.
The worst subject in the world. People just completely lose their minds whenever it comes up.
I need some melatonin.
But the rightists are almost as messed up on this subject. They still want the government to make moral decisions for them.
No we simply want the government to do its job and protect the child's right to life.
I think this article serves a dual purpose. One is as our host pointed out, to try and scare away people in the industry from participating in the film. The other is to try and poison the well ahead of time, so if the film is completed and people hear about it later they will already have a preconceived idea about this film being, 'disturbing'.
Which brings me to a problem I have with the author of the article. If a journalist is going to be confident enough to attach an adjective like 'disturbing' to a subject it is incumbent upon them to explain why it is disturbing. Reading the article the only thing I got for why it is disturbing is that it is pro-life. Also the journalist is short on details on how many people have left, how many is normal for a film like this to leave during production etc. The author points out that Kevin Sorbo left after reading the script, but doesn't explain why. Kevin Sorbo surely isn't afraid of taking on roles that Holloywood mainstream doesn't approve of. The lack of details makes me think the author is trying to fudge the truth. Perhaps Mr. Sorbo left because he just didn't think it would be a good film?
Either way, I have no doubt that the author of this piece had zero intentions of truthfully informing the public about this film in production and just wanted to be an intellectually dishonest asshole.
Jeez... well, clearly this movie is going to be a dumpster-fire if indeed it ever gets finished at all.
Things like this do the pro-life movement little if any good.
No dispassionate law professor can support Roe. There is nothing in the Constitution about when life begins, and it certainly begins by eight months. That's when my younger boy, who is playing NBA 2K18 beside me right now, came out of his mother.
A deeply contemplative decision? The word you are looking for is premeditated.
Ann- you make the same category error that the Court made. Not all decisions that result from deep contemplation are private. One cannot after deep contemplation decide to burn down a house or assassinate a politician. Even the assumption itself that the decision to kill a living human being is always the product of contemplation is flawed. Is it not equally likely the decision is taken as a result of desperation, coercion, ignorance or convenience? Even if we accept the principle, then shouldn’t a woman seeking an abortion have to demonstrate to someone other than the abortionist or institution who has financial stake in the procedure? You wouldn’t accept that argument in contract or tort. Finally, the pro-abortion lobby is unable to articulate a limiting principle. At what physical point does abortion become infanticide? Because every single principle put forward to justify an abortion would also justify killing a fully delivered intact or even a toddler. Think about it.
What traditionalguy said.
Blogger Gahrie said...
But the rightists are almost as messed up on this subject. They still want the government to make moral decisions for them.
“No we simply want the government to do its job and protect the child's right to life.“
It is totally that simple.
What could go wrong with having the government make “simple” moral judgments?
Now that it is settled that everyone who disagrees with gahrie is a baby murderer we can get on to the other government simple stuff.
What other “simple” moral decisions should the government make for us?
The Forrest Gump like meme of "One day everybody was up in arms about separating children from their mothers, and then just like that people were all screaming about anybody stopping them from killing babies." sums it up.
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
How does the father's concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life factor into the birth/abortion decision? That is the $64,000 question (payable in $300 monthly child support payments for 18 years.)
"... then the question of the morality of abortion remains alive."
But, the baby is still most definitely dead.
Another of your posts, professor, about the overwhelming political power of women.
Who are, of course, oppressed.
Drinking is bad.
Simple moral decisions!
Ban drinking.
Too soon?
This is going to be the dumbest discussion ever.
Ever.
I am going to find the melatonin now...
What could go wrong with having the government make “simple” moral judgments?
You mean like murder is wrong, prostitution is wrong, animal abuse is wrong and bakers have to bake cakes for gay weddings?
The most basic and important role of government is protect human life. Unborn children are both human and alive.
I don't oppose abortion, but I do oppose any rhetoric that dehumanizes the unborn baby, especially on the grounds that it is "disturbing."
Drinking is bad.
Simple moral decisions!
Ban drinking.
We have if you're under 21.
"Unless you're the father of an unborn child..then no one gives a shit what you think."
Why wouldn't the woman talk to him as she thinks about what she will do with her body?
Or do you mean no one gives him the right to participate in the decision or to make the final call about what happens inside the other person's body? Sorry, you don't get inside someone else's body without consent.
The man retains full domain over the inside of his own body.
If you don't want to father a child, don't send out the instigators of life. If you want to protect your offspring from getting killed while they are in the interior of another person's body, you need to think a lot more about what you are doing. The option of getting into that private domain of another human being is closed off to you. Think about what is available to you as you make decisions about your own body. You have many options. Here's a challenge: List 5 things that you, as a man, can do with your own body to stay out of the predicament of having your own child killed while it's in transit into this outside world through the gateway that is the woman's body.
"If you want to protect your offspring from getting killed while they are in the interior of another person's body, you need to think a lot more about what you are doing. "
If you don't want to give joint tenancy to the interior of your body, you should also think about what *you* are doing.
List 5 things that you, as a man, can do with your own body to stay out of the predicament of having your own child killed while it's in transit into this outside world through the gateway that is the woman's body.
Overturn Lawrence, Roe and Casey.
Defund Planned Parenthood
Pass right to life laws that protect the unborn.
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
If there was there ever a bigger load of bull, written under the guise of legal reasoning, I don’t know where it is.
Tell me please, dear Professor, what does “the mystery of human life” mean in the binary context of life and death? Is it some mystery what is life and what is death?
And if the right to “define one’s own meaning of the universe” includes the right to declare for oneself it’s meaninglessness, why even attempt to have law or a society at all? Especially since the effects of those who act out in a meaningless universe cannot help but spill over to the rest of us.
We grant people the right to define Darwinism as the dominant historical force shaping reality, then we claim to all be shocked when the strong prey upon the weak.
Any constitutional principle or law that inherently allowance or even plants the seeds of its own foundational destruction is both unjust and ridiculous.
The time for "deep contemplation" about the consequences of sex is BEFORE the sex. Unplanned pregnancy doesn't support an argument of a deep contemplative type of individual. Killed off the democrat voting block, lets import some from anywhere.
Or do you mean no one gives him the right to participate in the decision or to make the final call about what happens inside the other person's body? Sorry, you don't get inside someone else's body without consent.
The consent occurred when the woman agreed to have sex. Why does sex entail responsibilities for men and not women?
Because women must never be made to feel bad about, or responsibility for, anything, ever.
“When I read the first two pages, I was like what the fuck is this?”...
Are we talking Eraserhead or Sharknado?
Shouting Thomas said...
"... then the question of the morality of abortion remains alive."
But, the baby is still most definitely dead.
Another of your posts, professor, about the overwhelming political power of women.
Who are, of course, oppressed.
This is an excellent argument against having the government make moral decisions for us.
That was your intention correct?
Oh dead babies!
What kind of fun could the government have protecting babies! Yes we need a new government program for that one for certain! And a czar and a whole new department!
Federal Government Bureau of Protecting Babies Agents will be armed with ultrasound wands and a complete writ of abrogation of the 4th amendment.
The government is totally the right tool for this job.
Everyone thinks so.
List 5 things that you, as a man, can do with your own body to stay out of the predicament of having your own child killed
By the way it is not just about "my" child...it's about the millions of children who are killed for convivence.
Maybe Planned Parenthood could commission a grand monument honoring the Confederacy as "Nation Founded Upon the Right to Choose."
Chiseled on one side of the base could be, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
Society takes an interest when the fetus is made suffiently cute. It's easy for a film that wants to, to do that.
The parents take an interest when they want a baby, independent of that.
If neither is true, it's not a good idea for the law to intrude, unless it's as a remedy for the the population decline.
, the Court characterized the decision to have an abortion as a deep contemplation that — like religion or philosophy — inherently belongs to the individual and not to the government.
Are these the same women that find it impossible to control their animal instinct to procreate, and demand the government provide them a remedy for the inevitable consequences?
When does the individual rights of men, to their heir, kick in?
The option of getting into that private domain of another human being is closed off to you.
Unless you're a mother or the government trying to force a man to pay for a child, often regardless of whether the child is even his.
If you don't want to father a child, don't send out the instigators of life.
Why doesn't a woman have an obligation not to receive the "instigators of life" unless she wants to bear a child? You already know what I am going to say....
The constitution has no opinion. That has never stopped SCOTUS from ruling on stuff not in their jurisdiction. I mostly blame elected legislators, but power mad judges share the burden.
When does the individual rights of men, to their heir, kick in?
Men have no rights, only responsibilities.
Life is full of shitty and less than optimal choices.
Executions.
Self Defense killings
That the Justice System is not 110% perfect
War.
Welfare.
Chick Flicks
Duty/Pity Sex.
That men are allowed to buy European cut shorts
That fat women are allowed to buy spandex
And on that string of semi-atrocities should be abortions.
Now, if Lupita, a single mom who is making $8 an hour with one kid already suddenly...ahem...has a potential issue...I can hold my nose and say "yes, as a sympathetic human being, I will allow some latitude so Lupita and Consuela's life does not go down the toilet.'
What about Katy. You know Katy. She has had health class since 6th grade. She has HEALTH INSURANCE. She has a FAMILY. She has SAVINGS. She, alas, is on the partner/tenure track and 'the timing just isn't perfect, you know...'
Let's just say my sympathy is...LESS. Particularly since the morality IS questionable.
There is a large difference between 'mildly inconvenient' and 'socially, fiscally, and physically devastating'.
Noting this is not out of bounds.
There is room for CONSENSUS but only as long as you do not allow the fanatics to claim the moral high ground.
3 months.
Two abortions. After that you need to be on Norplant since you clearly are not responsible enough to operate a uterus.
And polling already suggests such a consensus exists...but it isn't allowed to happen because of Ol' Giddy.
Here's a challenge: List 5 things that you, as a man, can do with your own body to stay out of the predicament of having your own child killed while it's in transit into this outside world through the gateway that is the woman's body.
Poke holes in condoms.
Lie about being on birth control.
Masturbate.
Tweet #metoo a lot.
Wear a pussy hat.
Start a tinder account.
Buy a sexbot.
Travel to foreign countries like Thailand where the women are not protected by men they hate and take advantage of at every opportunity. Places where the women are not the most coddled whiny first world...
Sorry I forgot. Back to the worst topic in the world.
Oh yea, I forgot the most important. Life begins when the people say it begins. The stretchable malleable 14th can't be molded into a form that overrules the sanctity of life.
"vaguely pro-life" is March of the Penguins.
Find a nature movie, boys.
This is how it often works, ideas that sound good in theory when people are moral and considerate often fail in practice, where people are more prone to abusing them.
There's a second story here... the power of the movie industry to blacklist.
That industry never really wanted to blacklist Weinstein.
Fag worship and abortion, however, are sacred.
the secretive project...has been mired in chaos"
There's that word again, "chaos," journalists' favorite word to slap on any conservative undertaking--NYT's favorite word for the Trump administration. And, similarly, the source of any chaos is the external sabotage by opponents.
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.
Without Life, there is no Liberty or Happiness. Abortion denies all of these unalienable rights to innocent human beings.
"Or do you mean no one gives him the right to participate in the decision or to make the final call about what happens inside the other person's body?"
When I describe to my European friends the abortion laws in the US, even the most liberal among them remark how our laws are barbaric. This isn't a left/right issue outside the US because even the communists over here express outrage at aborting a baby that is completely viable outside the mother's body. Third trimester abortions are almost unheard of in the rest of the word, except for dire extenuating circumstances. That's because there just aren't any good reasons to carry a baby almost to term before a woman exercises her "right to control her own body." There comes a point where she is exercising that "right" over another person's body, too. The abortion divide in the US would quickly narrow if a gestation limit were placed on the abortion decision, just as it has been in the rest of the world. That something as reasonable as that approach is rejected out of hand by the feminists and the abortion lobbies in the US is an abomination, but it keeps a key election issue alive for the Democrats to demagogue and that is what they are primarily interested in. The rest is just rhetoric and bullshit, much like Althouse's comments here.
“Nothing in the constitution” is an unconstitutional argument under the Ninth Amendment. “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Again, I am for the most part Pro-Life, but we execute people and send them to war.
Because there is a consensus about removing a life as necessary.
The most offensive part of abortion is the REMOVAL of society having a say, not in the choice, per se, but in the mechanisms and limits.
If Free Speech, Gun Control and Search and Seizure can have limits as black letter law, sorry ladies, so does abortion.
And Ol Giddy should let us have that discussion. Except she doesn't.
"Travel to foreign countries like Thailand where the women are not protected by men they hate and take advantage of at every opportunity."
Funny. There is no concern over the Thai prostitutes getting abortions, nor concern over potential heirs born in the 3rd world.
When you close all the clinics in sex tourism locations and start paying child support internationally then it will be finally clear that your prolife stand is more than posturing.
Until all babies matter, your prolife stand seems incomplete.
people always complain that the Democrats are against property rights; but that's
Totally Not True.
A woman's body is property as a land owner's plantation is
And Any person in or on that property belongs to the owner. Just as no one has any right to tell a cotton grower what to do with His property; no one has any right to tell a woman what to do with Hers.
Democrats have ALWAYS been in favor of property rights.
It's the damn Republicans that think that there should be limits on what (or WHO) you can own.
Support Abortion Rights! Repeal the 13th amendment!
in case someone can't tell, i support Mr Lincoln;
Just like my GreatGreat Grandfather (38th Iowa Volunteer Infantry)
Union Forever!
Sigh.
Ms. Althouse is poking the ferrets again to get them to fight. Alas, I fell for it too.
I'm pro-choice but I think abortion is horrible. I'm not saying you are a horrible woman if you have an abortion, but you've done this thing that's really sad. Humanity would be better if we didn't take it casually.
It's a hard thing to discuss because people want to paint the other side of the debate as being one kind of person or another. They can't just believe the other side sees it differently.
But the one pro-choice argument I have to laugh at are the people who say things like, "If men had babies, abortion would always be legal" Like there are millions of men who want to force women to be pregnant and have their babies. Who are these men? Where are these men that love pregnant women and want dozens of kids to pay child support for? They are rare! That isn't it, pro-choicers. Do you really think there are more men that force women into getting pregnant and having babies, or more women who trick men into getting them pregnant?
To the etent that our hostess’s point is merely that there are ways for people to avoid or deal with whatever unfair burdens the law may place upon them, she is of course correct. But that argument can be made about any unfair burden, starting with, for example, “If you don’t want to mother a child, don’t welcome the instigators of life into the interior of your body.” It is undeniable that the biological burdens of childbearing are significant, unsharable, and incommensurable with non-biological burdens such as financial ones. But that does not mean that the legal right to life must be determined to attach at point X and no other. And wherever the law determines that point to be, it will be true that both a mother and a father can avoid the unfairness of that law by either abstaining from sex altogether or keeping those damned instigators under adequate control.
Today’s medical technology is taking care of this issue.
There’s no reason for it since this isn’t the 50s anymore. There are too many other options out there one can take or use before that choice has to be made.
Harder limits like most of Europe has are coming because it always should have been a states rights issue.
If you don't want to father a child, don't send out the instigators of life. If you want to protect your offspring from getting killed while they are in the interior of another person's body, you need to think a lot more about what you are doing.
This is one of those arguments that is both good and bad. As practical advice, it's good. But it could be argued the law doesn't see women as capable of being able to think about what they are doing ahead of time. There is no equal protection for the men after the act- the woman gets to choose what to do and the State will enforce her will upon the man. She isn't choosing just for herself or even just for herself and the baby. She is also making a decision for the man. At the time just before conception, both the man and the woman had equal ability and power to choose.
Ok, yeah. PJ said it better than I did.
Saying you support abortion rights is saying you support infanticide, which is barbarism. Whether the child was conceived as the result of incest, rape, or mutual willingness, the child did not ask to be put there. The child is a living being, with a soul, and completely helpless, an incipient — to put it in prog language — victim who will be eliminated for the convenience of others.
Last controversy I remember about a movie related to abortion was that of “The Silent Scream,” footage of a sonogram detailing the reaction of the person being killed during the abortion procedure, and which the cartoonist Garry Trudeau delighted in mocking in a series of strips — about as clear an illustration of moral depravity I can imagine.
Feminists will never admit it, but they have the blood of scores of millions on their hands. Whatever else their legacy may include, they have that, putting them in quite an exclusive club, with Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot.
Since we are still talking about Justice Kennedy for a few more days, that quote that Althouse (rightly) pulled from the opinion in Planned Parenthood v Casey is some of the purest Kennedy that you will ever see. I think that technically, O'Connor and Stevens claimed co-authorship with Kennedy. But the quoted paragraph is pure Kennedy.
btw, Althouse; does this sentence of yours -- "Sorry, you don't get inside someone else's body without consent." -- still count when the "someone else's body" is the developing body of a child in utero? Do pregnant women get to protect their liberty interests and their privacy at the expense of a living child?
I am no suggesting that it is an easy decision. And indeed, you might be right on the merits of the many divergent interests. But what you cannot convince me of, is that the Constitution speaks to this issue with authority. Not on abortion, not on homosexuality. You could put those things into the Constitution via an amendment if you wished, and if you had a great swath of the majority of Americans to support your goals. But the notion that the Constitution was written to, in part, protect the right to abortions and homosexual sodomy in the face of duly enacted state laws strikes me as a kind of a bad joke.
the constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that women actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion.
Go back in history some, and the argument was the same -- The constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that slave owners actively think for themselves about the morality of owning other human beings.
the constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that women actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion.
Then there are also those who kill family members, co-workers, complete strangers based on the idea that they actively think for themselves about the morality of killing those human beings who are inconvenient for them.
I think the entire debate ought to be presented in public
There's so much repression over this issue. Start with the fact that our media, over 45 years of so-called journalism, have routinely censored photographs of abortion. When you ask why, there's no answer. But of course the answer is that abortion photographs upset us. They upset everybody, but they really upset the women who have had abortions. So that's why we censor abortion photographs, to protect the women from the choices they have already made.
Should we warn the young women (and girls!) who have not yet had abortions, about what an abortion is? No, we cannot warn them. Because in warning them, you upset all the women who have already had abortions. So we keep secrets from the young. Not to protect them. We keep abortion secret because it's awful, and we don't want to acknowledge how bad it is.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
They swiped that from Monty Python.
Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.
I use that concept when someone uses a loud stereo, noisy vehicle or construction equipment as instigators of sound waves which intrude into my body through the gateway of my ears without my permission, and reserve the right to determine the attributes of their personhood without the compulsion of the state in order to preserve my bodily integrity by killing them because they inconvenienced me or might inconvenience me in the future.
Determining the attributes of another person's personhood without the compulsion of the State is fun for all the surviving members of the the whole family! (ages 8 and up).
Frankly, "morality" does not really enter into it, unless law itself is nothing more than morality. It is a matter of right reason and justice under natural law.
Justice White put it very well --
As the Court appropriately recognized in Roe v. Wade, "[t]he pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy," 410 U.S. at 159; the termination of a pregnancy typically involves the destruction of another entity: the fetus.
However one answers the metaphysical or theological question whether the fetus is a "human being" or the legal question whether it is a "person" as that term is used in the Constitution, one must at least recognize, first, that the fetus is an entity that bears in its cells all the genetic information that characterizes a member of the species homo sapiens and distinguishes an individual member of that species from all others, and second, that there is no nonarbitrary line separating a fetus from a child or, indeed, an adult human being. Given that the continued existence and development -- that is to say, the life -- of such an entity are so directly at stake in the woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy, that decision must be recognized as sui generis, different in kind from the others that the Court has protected under the rubric of personal or family privacy and autonomy. . . .
The Court's opinion in Roe itself convincingly refutes the notion that the abortion liberty is deeply rooted in the history or tradition of our people, as does the continuing and deep division of the people themselves over the question of abortion. . . . And again, the fact that many men and women of good will and high commitment to constitutional government place themselves on both sides of the abortion controversy strengthens my own conviction that the values animating the Constitution do not compel recognition of the abortion liberty as fundamental. In so denominating that liberty, the Court engages not in constitutional interpretation, but in the unrestrained imposition of its own extraconstitutional value preferences.
-- Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986)
the constitutional right — which still seems threatened
It is politically crucial for the Constitutional Right to be under threat.
As for "choice" and respecting women -- the history of Roe itself shows what a fraudulent farce those claims are. Norma McCorvey was exploited to the hilt. The people pushing the case could not care less about her as a real person. They only wanted to use her.
The less said about Kennedy's laughable sweet mystery of life excerpt the better.
Abortion is a complicated issue, legally, and I see both sides but I hate the way it's framed by the left and I hate the way the devaluation of life has contributed to the sickening of the culture. What's interesting to me about this story is that the actors and technicians etc., on the movie have presumably worked on all sorts of projects with all types of subjects. I'm sure they've done prior films with lots of murder and evil doings but that's just art and they are just doing their job. Probably most have worked on projects based on a historical matters. I never hear about anyone refusing to work on any other project due to the subject matter or viewpoint. It's their work and they are pros, right? It's like abortion is a religious ritual and they will not commit heresy.
Roe and Casey would have been more intellectually honest if they had simply come out and declared abortion to be justifiable homicide. That would have been abhorrent and evil as well, but at least we could get beyond the pretext of insisting that it does not involve the purposeful killing of innocent human life.
and the question of the "personhood" of the unborn is something for her to think about and make a decision about.
How convenient.
The debate would be different today than when Roe was decided because of the increased knowledge of fetal development made possible by technological advances.
I guess we will need to grant US Citizen status to children conceived in America and not just birthed here, given the life begins at conception stance.
There will be some interesting citizenship cases in the future.
"only to arrive on set, view the script, and be shocked by the extremity of its point of view."
The extremity being that a child is "permitted" to be born.
Now to me, ripping a healthy, developed child from the womb, or burning that child with a saline solution while in the womb, that's extreme.
No, neither the written Constitution nor right reason suggest that existential relativism is a fundamental right. In fact, the idea is self-contradictory. There is, in fact, objective truth. Life, civil society and law all depend upon recognition of objective truth, rather than everyone asserting their own subjective arbitrary views upon the world.
Two plus two equals four. To say that you get to decide for yourself -- and the everyone around you -- that two plus two equals five is to usher in chaos and despotism.
The entity in the womb is either living or she is not. The entity is either human or she is not. The entity is either a separate being from the mother or she is not. You do not get to choose for yourself which of these is true reality. And the true reality recognized throughout history by all civilized people -- except for the last few decades -- is that from the moment of conception, from the joining of a live sperm and live ovum, you have a separate, individual living human being. You have a unique human life. That is the scientific truth. To say otherwise is ideological fantasy.
Civilized society, law and the Constitution do not require -- and cannot long survive -- giving into such fantasy.
Or we could end birthplace citizenship, which is pretty unique in the world, and resolve that little problem easily.
That is, the Court characterized the decision to have an abortion as a deep contemplation that — like religion or philosophy — inherently belongs to the individual
It's profoundly weird that the Supreme Court in Roe talks about abortion like it's a spiritual issue, and that's all it is. They talk about what Catholics believe, what Protestants believe, what Jews believe. Bizarre. As if we have no death statutes that might resolve the life-or-death question. As if there is no importance to the question of infanticide! As if there is no secular reality that we need to think about. The damn Supreme Court doesn't even describe the abortion surgery until decades after the fact. And whenever they describe what an abortion actually is, it's always in an "oops" opinion.
Read Simopoulos v Virginia. The Supreme Court, since 1973, had been defending late-term abortion, which meant they were defending saline abortion, which is when the doctor injects salt into the uterus to kill the baby. With a saline abortion, it takes 24-48 hours for the mother to go into labor and deliver the dead baby. So it's imminently predictable that you will end up with a dead baby in a motel room. And yet the Supreme Court seems shocked by the fact pattern that they themselves put into motion.
By sending Dr. Simopoulos to prison for doing an abortion the Supreme Court had called a constitutional right, the Court pushed the entire industry away from saline abortions. Now the new late-term abortion procedure became the D&E abortion, i.e. surgical abortions.
And then, in 2000, the Supreme Court tries to shift the abortion industry again. We are told, in Stenberg v. Carhart, that the D&E abortion is actually dangerous to women. Here are the medical dangers listed by the Supreme Court to a woman receiving a D&E abortion…
"sharp bone fragments passing through the cervix"
"uterine perforations caused by (the doctor's) instruments"
"Infection-causing fetal and placental tissue in the uterus"
"potentially fatal absorption of fetal tissue into the (bloodstream)"
The Court was again trying to shift the abortion industry, this time into partial-birth abortion. Kill the baby outside the uterus. But this, of course, brought the abortion doctor that much closer to a murder prosecution. (See Kermit Gosnell, who killed newborns because he wasn't in the office when the baby was in the middle of the birth canal).
This ignorance in regard to medical issues and the reality of abortion practice is just one of the many flaws of Roe v. Wade. The case talks about abortion like it's an idea. That's the same logic that allows the Supreme Court to define the unborn child out of existence. She's just a concept. That's why there's no discussion of the baby, her size, her biological factors, whether she's alive or not alive. They simply define her as a non-person, and erase her from the Constitution. And then they are shocked (shocked!) when it's not so easy to erase a baby in a doctor's office.
About the history of Roe -- it should be pointed out too that if one closely reads the opinion, that it is largely grounded not in any women's rights, but in the right of doctors. Bob Woodward's book The Brethren has an interesting history on Blackmun's writing of the opinion.
Post-Roe litigation bears this out -- that the whole enterprise has very little to do with women per se. Most of the subsequent cases were brought not by real women litigants, but by abortionists who presumed to speak for women, rather than letting them speak for themselves. More exploitation.
The other "Mark" said --
I guess we will need to grant US Citizen status to children conceived in America and not just birthed here, given the life begins at conception stance.
Nice try at mockery and snark. The text of the 14th Amendment is clear -
"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."
"Ann- you make the same category error that the Court made. Not all decisions that result from deep contemplation are private. One cannot after deep contemplation decide to burn down a house or assassinate a politician...."
Straw man argument.
It's a decision about what will happen to the inside of an individual's body. The decision inherently belongs to the individual and not the govt.
The Court nevertheless DOES allow the government to intrude. It DOES allow the people's interest in protecting the unborn to outweigh the woman's sovereignty over her own body some of the time. The Court looks at interests on both sides, but gives the woman as much control as it does BECAUSE it sees the decision as philosophical/moral/religious. The community gets to outweigh the woman's choice at the point when the fetus is viable (for reasons that have never been properly explained).
There's nothing the Court wrote or I wrote that says people are entitled to act whenever their actions are based on deep thinking. That would be absurd, which is why you find the straw man so easy to fight.
I don't know why everyone keeps going back to Roe. The decision we should be citing is Casey, which reduced Roe to a smaller right it called the "essence of Roe."
It's profoundly weird that the Supreme Court in Roe talks about abortion like it's a spiritual issue, and that's all it is. They talk about what Catholics believe
And Blackmun seriously distorted (either by ignorance or intentional deceit) what Catholic teaching is -- and also the historical jurisprudence -- for his own purposes.
I don't know why everyone keeps going back to Roe.
You brought it up in the context of the movie.
This is what will happen if Roe v. Wade is reversed
And Kennedy's mystery of life passage was joined by only two others. Three justices do not make a majority. True, in later cases the laughable idea did garner a majority, but no one takes it seriously. It is merely a convenient vehicle to advance an ideology of one-sided relativism.
"The consent occurred when the woman agreed to have sex. Why does sex entail responsibilities for men and not women?"
You're assuming the woman has consented to the sex, which is often not the case. And there are also girls below the "age of consent."
So, adjust to reality if you want to talk about this.
Second, the woman is responsible for her own body, where a lot of things can take place, and where an elaborate process -- pregnancy and childbirth -- can occur. The right of abortion is the idea that the woman gets to decide if she will allow this to happen to her body. The fact that she might have been able to stave off pregnancy at an earlier point in time isn't enough to force her to endure the extremely burdensome process. When she has an abortion, she is making a decision about her own body, and, to follow the reasoning of Casey, she is assessing the morality of what she is doing and determining that she is not committing murder.
To me, the flaw in that Casey reasoning is that nothing stops a woman from having an abortion when she has not thought through the morality of what she is doing or even she really believes it's murder or is enthusiastic and blood-thirsty about murdering.
Mark - in response to my comment it sounds like you are arguing that the 14th Amendment is clear that birth is the point at which personhood is legally granted, not before.
Yet you are arguing the opposite in your own remarks. Which is it?
Casey, which reduced Roe to a smaller right
So, you are saying that Casey partially overruled Roe?
You sure you want to say that?
"Saying you support abortion rights is saying you support infanticide, which is barbarism."
No, it is merely refraining from invading a foreign country that is killing its own people.
RAS743 said...
Last controversy I remember about a movie related to abortion was that of “The Silent Scream,” footage of a sonogram detailing the reaction of the person being killed during the abortion procedure,...
I used to be agnostic about abortion. Bought into the claptrap that as a man, it was none of my business.
Then I saw Silent Scream, and am sickened to this day at what I saw.
The first sentence in the 14th Amendment is about citizenship, not personhood.
And however one wants to try to confuse things by the question of whether the entity in the womb is a "person" as that specific term is used in the Constitution -- as Justice White explained -- whether the entity is separate human life -- a living human being -- is beyond scientific dispute.
And what is more -- rights and liberties are not given to us, nor are they dependent upon, the Constitution, the 14th Amendment or any enacted positive law or the whimsy of judges. They are implicit and inherent in the human being by their very nature. The 13th Amendment did not give freedom to the slaves, it only protected -- finally -- their natural liberty which they always were entitled to have respected.
"So, you are saying that Casey partially overruled Roe?"
Absolutely. Ask any conlawprof.
"You sure you want to say that?"
Of course. As someone who taught the cases for more than 10 years, I am utterly certain of what I am saying. I have closely read the opinions 10+ times and had to talk about them with students who are prepared 10+ times.
I think future generations will look back on this time in our history with the same disgust we have for our ancestors who justified slavery. I believe the answer to abortion lies in science, not morality. Scientists need to invent a convenient, reversible method of sterilization. We sterilize all kids of both sexes at puberty. When someone is willing to accept the responsibility of parenthood anytime he or she has sex, the reversal is performed. We keep a registry of all potentially fertile people that can be searched by the public. No woman becomes pregnant who doesn't want a child. No one gets tricked into getting someone pregnant. Abortions become extremely limited. No "on demand".
You're assuming the person has consented to sit in a cigarette-smokey environment, which is often not the case. And there are also people below the "age of consent".
A person is responsible for their own body, where a lot of things can take place, and where an elaborate process -- inhaling air and converting oxygen to cellular tissues -- can occur.
The right of killing is the idea that the person gets to decide if he will allow this to happen to his body. The fact that he might have been able to stave off breathing smoke at an earlier point in time isn't enough to force him to endure the extremely burdensome process of inhaling cigarette smoke.
When he performs the killing of the tobacco smoker, he is making a decision about his own body, and, to follow the convoluted reasoning of some bonehead, he is assessing the morality of what he is doing and determining that he is not committing murder.
List 5 things that you, as a man, can do with your own body to stay out of the predicament of having your own child killed while it's in transit into this outside world through the gateway that is the woman's body.
I almost laughed out loud at this.
Name 5 things a woman who intends to have sex can do to avoid the decision about killing the baby inside her?
I see girls joining the military every day who have Progesterone implants that last for months.
This reminds me of the New York Times column several years ago by a writer whose girlfriend had an abortion.
The night before the abortion, they had dinner and she declined a glass of wine, "because it might be bad for the baby" she intended to kill the next day.
The writer's lack of self awareness was almost as striking as the girlfriend's lack of understanding of what she was about to do.
Don't get me wrong. I am prochoice. Stupid girls should be able to atone for one mistake. Maybe even two.
But not the young woman grad student I saw some years ago who had had seven abortions.
I think it was Camille Paglia who wrote that abortion was murder but that women's rights were superior. It was just that women had to understand they were committing murder.
I would prefer that abortion be legal up to viability, about 18 to 20 weeks, and that with the third abortion the woman should have her tubes tied.
Casey is ludicrous because it rests heavily on stare decisis but only after it carves Roe v. Wade down into a smaller right, which it calls the "essence of Roe."
The Rehnquist dissent says: "The joint opinion, following its newly minted variation on stare decisis, retains the outer shell of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113"] 410 U.S. 113 (1973), but beats a wholesale retreat from the substance of that case."
Read contemporaneous commentary on the case. People were glad the right was preserved at all, but it wasn't preserved, it was also changed.
It’s one thing to say that there is a right to abort the fetus growing inside your womb. It is quite another to say that abortion at any time prior to the woman delivering her child, by any means, and for any reason (or no reason at all) ought to be permitted. I suspect that this is where Althouse and I part ways.
And Althouse; let us remember what happened when Lawrence v Texas rolled around, and the Court was faced with whether they would apply stare decisis to that case (and thereby uphold the Texas anti-sodomy statute), or whether they'd choose to ignore precedent. They ignored precedent, when it suited them.
Justice Scalia, dissenting in Lawrence and talking about stare decisis:
I begin with the Court’s surprising readiness to reconsider a decision rendered a mere 17 years ago in Bowers v. Hardwick. I do not myself believe in rigid adherence to stare decisis in constitutional cases; but I do believe that we should be consistent rather than manipulative in invoking the doctrine. Today’s opinions in support of reversal do not bother to distinguish–or indeed, even bother to mention–the paean to stare decisis coauthored by three Members of today’s majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There, when stare decisis meant preservation of judicially invented abortion rights, the widespread criticism of Roe was strong reason to reaffirm it:
“ Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe[,] … its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry… . [T]o overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason … would subvert the Court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.” 505 U.S., at 866—867.
Today, however, the widespread opposition to Bowers, a decision resolving an issue as “intensely divisive” as the issue in Roe, is offered as a reason in favor of overruling it. See ante, at 15—16. Gone, too, is any “enquiry” (of the sort conducted in Casey) into whether the decision sought to be overruled has “proven ‘unworkable,’ ” Casey, supra, at 855.
Today’s approach to stare decisis invites us to overrule an erroneously decided precedent (including an “intensely divisive” decision) if: (1) its foundations have been “eroded” by subsequent decisions, ante, at 15; (2) it has been subject to “substantial and continuing” criticism, ibid.; and (3) it has not induced “individual or societal reliance” that counsels against overturning, ante, at 16. The problem is that Roe itself–which today’s majority surely has no disposition to overrule–satisfies these conditions to at least the same degree as Bowers.
That is, the Court characterized the decision to have an abortion as a deep contemplation that — like religion or philosophy — inherently belongs to the individual and not to the government.
AND the decision to support or NOT support the individual in her having an abortion, murdering her child, also belongs to the individual and not to the government.
Taking tax dollars from people who are NOT SUPPORTIVE of abortion and who think it against their religion or philosophy and MAKE them pay for and support the practice of abortion is contrary to the sentence above.
IF people feel that abortion should be supported, they can donate their own money. Build their own clinics. Help abortion as much as they want.
The government, aka taxpayer money, should never be used for this purpose as it has no Common Welfare function...... Maybe, you agree with Margaret Sanger that certain people, like Blacks (or Negros as they were called in her day), mentally deficient (retards), handicapped (cripples), various undesirable ethnicity groups (gypsies, jews) should be culled from the population and that abortion aka killing their unborn children is a Common Welfare goal.
You do realize that was the original purpose? Hitler thought so too.
The question of abortion will go on and on and on. There is no question that it is an act of putting an end to a life. But there is so much more that has to be considered, and each situation is a new consideration. There are times when this might have to be done- to save another life perhaps? There are other times, many other times, when it is simply an inconvenient birth control method. As a society, that's a standard from which you don't recover.
I don't pretend to have society's answer for this. I have my own personal answer and Ann, you are correct to state that we men do have choices to make ahead of time, that could prevent us from ever having to face this dilemma. No excuses, but when you're young and in the middle of the moment, you aren't going over those 5 items in your head. (although in today's society, you might be searching for your consent form before you move forward).
All that said, the action of expropriating my money, by force of government, to be given to Planned Parenthood (how misnamed can an organization possibly be?) for the explicit purpose of funding abortions is anti-liberty, anti-life, and anti-freedom. There are millions of pussy hat wearing people in this country who could shell out $25 annually to support their 'cause' (the cause of ending a life). I should not, and I suspect at some point soon, will not be compelled to do so if I choose not to. PP is not a national need. The government should have NEVER have gotten into the Planned Parenthood funding business. That is an abomination. Abortion is available to anyone who needs/wants it. I have to live with that. But I should NOT have to pay for it.
"If you don't want to give joint tenancy to the interior of your body, you should also think about what *you* are doing."
Yep. Women are being saved from their choices after the fact. Both men and women would do better to remember that sex can always lead to a baby, no matter what protections are taken, and act accordingly.
The pro-abortionists have been screaming now and at every election, that to overrule Roe, even a tiny bit, would be the end of the world. Glad to see that we now have a concession that overruling it more will not be the end.
gspencer said...
"only to arrive on set, view the script, and be shocked by the extremity of its point of view."
The extremity being that a child is "permitted" to be born.
Now to me, ripping a healthy, developed child from the womb, or burning that child with a saline solution while in the womb, that's extreme.
7/7/18, 8:26 AM
DING DING DING!!! I agree 100%
Within marriage a man is still unable to meaningfully be part of “the decision” because the baby forms within the woman. This is the point Althouse hammers. “My body. My decision.” Until birth. Then it is a joint responsibility. My preference is that we come to an agreement on at what point we rule OUT abortion as an option. Like laws in Europe. But that still leaves the decision of whether or not to carry to term in the woman’s hands. Men who want to be fathers can try persuasion but we have no rights to exert. Even within marriage, where a man is legally prohibited from a vasectomy unless the wife consents, we have no legal “voice.” It’s assymetrical for her to have standing to oppose “my body my choice” when I do not have any reciprocal input. Maybe a third trimester line of demarcation can be drawn where the “choice” can be shared within a marriage is a reasonable answer.
Also, I get particularly annoyed that society and the medical community treats pregnancy as the worst thing that could happen to some girl. This is why STD rates have skyrocketed. Herpes is forever people.
Casey is ludicrous because it rests heavily on stare decisis
Casey is ludicrous and appalling because it rests heavily on "raw judicial power," as did Roe.
Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court's interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution. . . .
to overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to reexamine a watershed decision would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question. . . .
To all those who will be so tested by following, the Court implicitly undertakes to remain steadfast, lest in the end a price be paid for nothing. The promise of constancy, once given, binds its maker for as long as the power to stand by the decision survives
The more opposition to Roe -- or its central holding -- that was or is shown, no matter how compelling, no matter how many people who call themselves pro-choice admit that Roe and any "abortion right" cannot be found in the Constitution -- the more the Casey Court was obstinately determined to uphold the evil.
Obstinate judicial tyranny -- which undermined the Court's legitimacy while it insisted that it was seeking to strengthen its legitimacy.
Temujin said it shorter and more succinctly than I
. PP is not a national need. The government should have NEVER have gotten into the Planned Parenthood funding business. That is an abomination. Abortion is available to anyone who needs/wants it. I have to live with that. But I should NOT have to pay for it.
You want abortion. Fine. Pay for it yourself> Go to a willing party: charity, family, friend for the funding. Leave us out of your personal decision.
Ann Althouse said:
"No, it is merely refraining from invading a foreign country that is killing its own people.”
You’re the J.D., I’m just a B.A., but I thought the whole idea of all law is the ordering of society, the governing of relationships among people.
I suppose if you subscribe to the idea that a child in her mother’s womb is not a person, then it”s fine for a woman to do what she wishes with the thing inside her body — the foreign country? — out of respect for her privacy.
If on the other hand you subscribe to the idea that the thing inside her body is a human life, a person, and therefore is among those in our society whose interests, including in continued life (liberty, pursuit of happiness), should be protected, then abortion is wrong. It kills the most innocent of human beings, a child incapable of asserting her own interests and rights, or of defending herself.
If that isn’t barbarism, I don’t know what is. If human life can be taken from a person in that condition, then anything can be done in the name of the law. For its advocates, such taking — Roe vs. Casey is hair-splitting — is of no consequence to our society; to others, it causes profound decadence, a fundamental coarsening.
The Greens like to scold our “throwaway culture.” They and the rest of us need to think far more expansively and deeply about this thing — human life — we”re allowed by law to throw away, and how it is that we as a people permitted our legal system to decide such things in the ways that it has.
There is an argument that child support is a violation of men's rights if they are not married to the mother.
Marriage at the time of conception is one thing.
There are cases, however, of men who are not the biological father being obliged to pay for some cuckoo's egg.
Maybe we should should spend some time on this topic, now that women are so free and powerful.
There are cases, however, of men who are not the biological father being obliged to pay for some cuckoo's egg.
Maybe we should should spend some time on this topic, now that women are so free and powerful.
Why? They're just splooge stooges.
Justice Scalia in Casey --
The Imperial Judiciary lives. It is instructive to compare this Nietzschean vision of us unelected, life-tenured judges -- leading a Volk who will be "tested by following," and whose very "belief in themselves" is mystically bound up in their "understanding" of a Court that "speak[s] before all others for their constitutional ideals" -- with the somewhat more modest role envisioned for these lawyers by the Founders. . . .
the notion that the Court must adhere to a decision for as long as the decision faces "great opposition" and the Court is "under fire" acquires a character of almost czarist arrogance. We are offended by these marchers who descend upon us, every year on the anniversary of Roe, to protest our saying that the Constitution requires what our society has never thought the Constitution requires. These people who refuse to be "tested by following" must be taught a lesson. We have no Cossacks, but at least we can stubbornly refuse to abandon an erroneous opinion that we might otherwise change -- to show how little they intimidate us.
Personally, I would support a moderate law that would allow abortions in the cases of rape, incest, gross genetic problems, and more generally up to about 20 weeks--similar to most of the world.
But, there is NOTHING in the US Constitution that speaks to abortion, and Roe v. Wade was a terrible example of judges trying to find a cover for what they wanted to do regardless of the letter or spirit of the law.
Leave it to the States--anyway, there probably wouldn't be one State that didn't either allow abortions or was adjacent to one that did.
This is really another issue manufactured by the Democrats and media to stoke the ignorant base.
Fur is murder.
The community gets to outweigh the woman's choice at the point when the fetus is viable (for reasons that have never been properly explained).
Where? In the United States you can have an abortion up until the moment before birth.
And the reason why the reasoning has never been explained is because if you do, it becomes clear that the distinction is arbitrary.
More extended Scalia in Casey (because he is spot on in one of the practical reasons that Roe and its progeny (including Casey) desperately need to be overruled) --
Not only did Roe not, as the Court suggests, resolve the deeply divisive issue of abortion; it did more than anything else to nourish it, by elevating it to the national level, where it is infinitely more difficult to resolve. National politics were not plagued by abortion protests, national abortion lobbying, or abortion marches on Congress, before Roe v. Wade was decided. Profound disagreement existed among our citizens over the issue -- as it does over other issues, such as the death penalty -- but that disagreement was being worked out at the state level. As with many other issues, the division of sentiment within each State was not as closely balanced as it was among the population of the Nation as a whole, meaning not only that more people would be satisfied with the results of state-by-state resolution, but also that those results would be more stable. Pre-Roe, moreover, political compromise was possible.
Roe's mandate for abortion on demand destroyed the compromises of the past, rendered compromise impossible for the future, and required the entire issue to be resolved uniformly, at the national level. . . . But to portray Roe as the statesmanlike "settlement" of a divisive issue, a jurisprudential Peace of Westphalia that is worth preserving, is nothing less than Orwellian. Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general, and has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to this Court, in particular, ever since. And by keeping us in the abortion-umpiring business, it is the perpetuation of that disruption, rather than of any pax Roeana that the Court's new majority decrees. . . .
by foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.
We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining.
"Saying you support abortion rights is saying you support infanticide, which is barbarism."
No, it is merely refraining from invading a foreign country that is killing its own people.
****************************
Sorry, Althouse, but comparing regulating one's own citizens to invading another country is not a good analogy. You might better argue either that "condoning" or "permitting" are not the same as "supporting" (although in that case public funding for such as PP will be a problem for you). or argue about when a fetus gains rights as an independent human being. But a bad analogy is a bad analogy.
Leave it to the States
Yes.
It's a decision about what will happen to the inside of an individual's body. The decision inherently belongs to the individual and not the govt.
Why and how is it illegal to sell an organ from your body?
Abortionists feel uncomfortable when the veil of privacy is lifted from the torture and abortion of wholly innocent human lives that are deemed unworthy and subject summary judgment and death. An unprecedented violation of human rights born in and rationalized by cargo cult science.
Perhaps we can limit elective abortion to the first month, before the formation of a coherent nervous system, before the torture begins. This would be consistent with the eighth amendment that binds government to avoid carrying out cruel and unusual punishments. She's still wholly innocent, but... baby steps.
***You're assuming the woman has consented to the sex, which is OFTEN not the case.***
I felt this sentence needed to be highlighted.
"OFTEN" That is a slippery weasel word.
So I decided to look into it.
Below is a breakdown of women's responses that specified reasons that led to their abortion decision (percentage total will not add up to 100% as multiple answers were permissible):
74% felt "having a baby would dramatically change my life" (which includes interrupting education, interfering with job and career, and/or concern over other children or dependents)
73% felt they "can't afford a baby now" (due to various reasons such as being unmarried, being a student, inability to afford childcare or basic needs of life, etc.)
48% "don't want to be a single mother or [were] having relationship problem[s]"
38% "have completed [their] childbearing"
32% were "not ready for a(nother) child"
25% "don't want people to know I had sex or got pregnant"
22% "don't feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child"
14% felt their "husband or partner wants me to have an abortion"
13% said there were "possible problems affecting the health of the fetus"
12% said there were "physical problems with my health"
6% felt their "parents want me to have an abortion"
1% said they were "a victim of rape"
<0.5% "became pregnant as a result of incest"
So...by any objective standard, is 1% 'OFTEN'? So, 6,500 rape abortions divided by 330,000,000 is around 1 in 197,000.
You know...often.
This is an appeal to emotion that Feminists use to bolster their very unpopular stance of abortion absolutism. You will note that Incest, that other chestnut, is even more rare.
But the Benjamins...that is right up there.
Will you kill someone for money? When characterized like that, it isn't so pretty.
It's also just SUPER DUPER to hear Ms. Althouse state that 'men are engaging in non consensual sex often', particularly since rape rate has dropped 50% in the last twenty or thirty years.
Thank you for the kind words.
Human live evolves from conception. It's a decision about what will happen to two human lives. Elective abortion or Pro-Choice is the denial of life deemed unworthy, torture after one month, and summary judgment. Civilized societies and our own laws only support commission of elective abortion in self-defense.
Pro-Choice is two choices too late. #HateLovesAbortion
So...by any objective standard, is 1% 'OFTEN'?
For the good of social progress, the exception sets the rule. At least they're consistent, sort of, kind of, this time.
merely refraining from invading a foreign country that is killing its own people
Merely?
Standing by and doing nothing while others are being butchered -- whether it is at Auschwitz, Cambodia, Rwanda, or the Middle East under ISIS -- as the international community did, is hardly something to be proud of or to support.
You’re an obtuse hypocrite on this subject Althouse. It’s not about the man’s body or the woman’s body. It’s about the choices made that lead up to killing the baby. Options to avoid murdering the baby (the REAL body at stake here) include abstinence, multiple forms of contraception, including the morning after pill, and adoption, as millions of potential parents wish they could do.
Instead, women decide to murder the unborn baby they chose to conceive (either through negligence or overt intention) but now don’t want. This is especially true in late term abortions, which are nothing short of infanticide and morally indefensible. The woman’s body/decision is simply obscene at least at that point. And harvesting fetuses for their body parts for profit reminds one of Joseph Mendeleev, the Nazi “Angel of Death”. You should be soooooooo proud of your choice, Althouse.
On this topic you’re just another hypocritical bullshit artist.
Ever wonder if one of the many millions of human beings slaughtered in the name of the woman’s body could have possibly found a cure for breast cancer?
Abortion means that a third party can, BY THEIR CHOICE, determine if some'thing' is a human being or not, simply by how they feel about that 'thing/person' (Schrödinger's Humanity).
We have a history of letting other people determine whether someone is or is not human. Recently, we've frowned upon that kind of hubris.
But by making this a case of real estate, Ms. Althouse asserts that suborning someone else's humanity suddenly becomes wholesome. So...assert someone is not a human but mere property on a plantation: bad
Assert that in one's uterus isn't a human: good.
As I stated, I am open to a compromise, but the legal and moral gymnastics involved to avoid ANY sense of reflection or responsibility is kind of gross.
To wit, I join Paglia in her assessment on the procedure and how women should view it.
Meanwhile, the more apt analogy is inviting someone into your home, implicitly or explicitly, and then butchering them, claiming that they are trespassing and you are master of your own home.
It's a matter of faith for some. The Twilight faith and Pro-Choice religious/moral philosophy.
The court would have a correct interpretation of religion, science, and the universe, if babies were delivered to a woman's womb by Stork (i.e. spontaneous conception). They are not, and so we must rule that the court has a flawed interpretation of the terms of life in a limited frame of reference in near time and space (i.e. scientific logical domain).
Standing by and doing nothing while others are being butchered
Unfortunately, selective-child or abortion rites is a natural right and has been normalized. Unlike one-child and abortion fields, the restoration of human rights will require civil and religious reform. In the meantime, society can reduce the victims of social progress, and we can stop being accessories before the fact.
In the United States you can have an abortion up until the moment before birth.
That's right. People talk about viability, but it's a sham.
After all, the viability point is 21 weeks, 6 days. That's the earliest (so far) that a premature baby has survived. (And that baby would be dead now if her mom had not lied to her doctors when they asked her how old the baby was).
According to the Guttmacher Institute ( a biased resourced, as they are financed by Planned Parenthood), the percentage of abortions after 21 weeks is 1.2%.
Understand that these age estimates are just that...estimates. They can be off by 1-2 weeks, if the doctor uses an ultrasound. Or they can be off by 1-2 months if there is no ultrasound.
But let us assume that every doctor estimates the unborn child's age exactly right. And nobody is lying.
1.2% of 60,000,000 is 720,000. So if viability is a "rule" it's one that has been broken 720,000 times.
It's a decision about what will happen to the inside of an individual's body. The decision inherently belongs to the individual and not the govt.
Why is suicide illegal?
Why isn't slavery up to the individual? I mean if X, wants to sell themselves into slavery, why not?
Why isn't polygamy up to the individual? Or animal sacrifice?
Roe v. Wade was a terrible decision because it took a non-constitutional issue out of the Democratic process.
Had there been no Roe v. Wade, some blue states would have infanticide and some red states would abortion restrictions. And everyone else would be in-between.
It would've become a settled issue. We'd have Federalism, instead of a Judicial Fiat covering the entire country.
Piling on, I know, but --
"I think the entire debate ought to be presented in public, and that it should never simply become an issue that we leave behind and say is already resolved."
That's so nice of you. Too bad progs disagree, and will scorch the earth to prevent any "debate."
"Ironically, the constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that women actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion."
It is ironic, in the sense that judges are supposed to interpret the law and the Constitution says nothing about abortion, or about women thinking for themselves about morality or anything else (as if that settled a matter involving at least three human beings).
"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
In a philosophy seminar, I'd be happy to discuss these emanations from a fuzzy brain. As a matter of "constitutional law," pertaining to a woman's ability to kill the life within her, it is just an in-your-face egregious insult.
"The woman's "personhood" must be preserved, and the question of the "personhood" of the unborn is something for her to think about and make a decision about."
Personhood involves responsibility. Sex is something for her to think about. States should have the right, if she gets pregnant, to respect her personhood by making her take her responsibility seriously.
The argument is complete and utter nonsense in any case: giving birth to a baby and giving it up for adoption does not infringe on a woman's "personhood."
But I am a proceduralist. As a matter of constitutional law, unless there is a constitutional amendment one way or another, I want the states to decide the legality of abortion. I am sure some people's republics will preserve the status quo.
One more thing.
Several media comments on Kennedy's retirement praised his commitment to federalism.
His abortion and SSM decisions directly refute it.
Althouse must scroll through the comments and wonder how this came to be her community.
People talk about viability, but it's a sham.
After all, the viability point is 21 weeks, 6 days.
Actually, "viability" as currently defined -- but only for nascent human life -- is an arbitrary sham.
At 20 weeks, 15 weeks, 10 weeks, 5 weeks, 1 week, etc., the baby is very much alive. Early on there is a beating heart, bones, muscles, brain, digestive organs. The only things lacking up until late term are skin and fully functioning lungs -- and the reason for that is that baby does not need them until they are born. Without these fully functioning lung capacity and skin, for this reason they are deemed "unviable," not able to survive on their own outside the womb.
Yet there are plenty of adults who have diminished lung capacity -- or complete lack thereof -- and are not thereby denied their humanity. Many have skin disorders that make them susceptible of infection and/or severe sunburn. But they are not thus possible subjects of murder with impunity. Many people are also dependent upon others to feed them, bathe them, clothe them, transport them. In fact, we all depend upon others to some degree -- we are an interdependent species -- no one is entirely autonomous and self-sufficient.
Lots of adults fail the "viability" test. And yet we still respect them as human persons with a right to life.
“Althouse must scroll through the comments and wonder how this came to be her community.”
One would think so, but I doubt it.
Why is it legal and permissible and good to say to an 18 year old boy 'you must go to Guam for as long as we determine, and labor and fight and run the risk of dying for the good of the nation' but it is not legal and permissible and good to say to a woman 'our birth rates are low, so could you give us nine months and a baby, or at least abort it before it starts to show, when 92% of women already accomplish that task'?
Why can the state rule that men must die, but women can't have a baby?
"New generations deserve to see and understand what has been said and done and to form their own moral, legal, and political ideas on the subject."
Oh, really? New generations have rights? Name one.
What new generations?
Judging from the links that have been appearing on Drudge since the film began shooting, the major problems seem to be related to local government bodies withdrawing filming permits and sending in cops to harass the production--like ticketing vehicles and stopping filming--once word got out that it was a pro-life movie. I suspect that Kevin Sorbo got the word that he would "never work in this own again," rather than having a problem with the script.
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Ah, fake news. Gotta love the Left. This is a great script showing how much the lawyers did to get Roe v Wade passed through our Supreme...
When it comes to choosing abortion, "reproductive freedom" -- like it or not -- boils down to female hegemony, not autonomy of the individual vis-a-vis the state.
Darrell said...
Judging from the links that have been appearing on Drudge since the film began shooting, the major problems seem to be related to local government bodies withdrawing filming permits and sending in cops to harass the production--like ticketing vehicles and stopping filming--once word got out that it was a pro-life movie.
That would be a first amendment civil rights violation.
That would be a first amendment civil rights violation.
It would, if we had Law in this country. Same with the FBI felonies that aren't being dealt with in the Trump coup attempt. Or Hillary's felonies.
EDH notes: When it comes to choosing abortion, "reproductive freedom" -- like it or not -- boils down to female hegemony, not autonomy of the individual vis-a-vis the state.
The use of euphemism in this debate should be tossed aside like the disingenuous claptrap it is. Instead of A woman's right to choose it should be stated, A woman's right to kill her unborn child.
gilbar said...people always complain that the Democrats are against property rights; but that's Totally Not True.
A woman's body is property as a land owner's plantation is
And Any person in or on that property belongs to the owner. Just as no one has any right to tell a cotton grower what to do with His property; no one has any right to tell a woman what to do with Hers.
--
Maybe there's an "eminent domain" issue
There is a high likelyhood Roe/Casey gets overturned in the next two years. It will go back to the States.
That will change the legal status. It does not "solve" the problem. Pills that cause abortion are easily available on the internet. Women in Ireland still had abortions.
What can solve the problem are individual people who choose to live in a way that reduces potential evil. Every individual can do their part to contribute by taking certain long-standing advice. If people took these principles seriously, abortion and many other negative things would shrink drastically.
1) People should not have sex outside of marriage.
2) People should choose trustworthy marriage partners who are deserving of life-long sacred promises.
3) People should work hard to be good marriage partners and provide a stable, safe, and loving home for pregnant women and babies.
4) Husbands should reassure their wives they welcome more babies in their home, no matter the health status of the baby, or how many other children have already been born. Pregnant women should be reassured that a unexpected or unhealthy pregnancy and baby will not jeopardize the marriage.
5) People should not get divorced.
These three choices would go a long way to eradicating abortion, and the other attendant evils and negative outcomes that result from lesser choices. Promoting these behaviours would go a long way to eradicating abortion. Some people are YOLO about their own choices, encourage divorce or sex outside of marriage, and then wonder why abortion is common.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/revealed-the-leaked-script-to-roe-v-wade-a-graphic-anti-abortion-propaganda-film
About ten pages in, however, things take a very pro-life turn. The year is 1966, and elderly Margaret Sanger, the world’s preeminent birth-control activist, is speaking to Larry Lader on her deathbed. Just before she passes, her dying words to Lader are as follows: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she says. “Larry, they can’t see this coming.” The reproductive rights movement is thus framed by the film as a racist plot on a par with Hitler’s Final Solution.
This oft-repeated conservative falsehood, shared by everyone from Herman Cain to Ben Carson, stems from the willful misinterpretation of a 1939 letter Sanger wrote wherein she outlined her plan to connect with prominent leaders in the African-American community and allay their possible fears concerning family-planning clinics. Sanger wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
While Sanger did dabble in eugenics, PolitiFact has repeatedly debunked the claims that Sanger bore great racial animosity against African-Americans. The fact-checking website cited Jean H. Baker, author of the biography Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, who maintained that Sanger “was far ahead of her times in terms of opposing racial segregation,” as well as author Edwin Black, who wrote in his book critical of the eugenics’ movement, War Against the Weak, that “Sanger was no racist.”
(above is entirely from article)
The movie production does seem like a shit show if these reports have any validity.
What Dr. Kennedy said. And especially this :
"I think it was Camille Paglia who wrote that abortion was murder but that women's rights were superior. It was just that women had to understand they were committing murder.
I would prefer that abortion be legal up to viability, about 18 to 20 weeks, and that with the third abortion the woman should have her tubes tied."
Promoting these behaviours would go a long way to eradicating abortion.
Ideally, but we are not ideal people. Still, there is the difference between normalization and tolerance, incentive and happenstance.
1) People should not have sex outside of marriage.
The rights and responsibilities of procreation exist outside of a marriage contract. People can have sex outside of marriage, effectively polygamy, at their leisure, but they need to acknowledge the terms of reconciliation, between man and woman, between couples and their Posterity.
2) People should choose trustworthy marriage partners who are deserving of life-long sacred promises.
With the potential of procreation with every sex partner... yeah, we should consider long term rights and responsibilities that accompany our choice.
3) People should work hard to be good marriage partners and provide a stable, safe, and loving home for pregnant women and babies.
Yes. The rights and responsibilities of couples, a man and a woman. (4), too.
5) People should not get divorced.
Certainly not for light and casual causes. We're not children anymore. We should reconcile our differences, and likeness, too.
The reproductive rights movement is thus framed by the film as a racist plot on a par with Hitler’s Final Solution.
Sanger's ideas were evil on a par with Hitler. If you discount the racism angle (and frankly I don't) she was still determined to wipe out large segments of the population (that would have included most Black people anyway) in the name of racial purity.
viability, about 18 to 20 weeks
That is viability ex utero, a particular and peculiar framing. The fetus, offspring, baby is viable from conception until a natural or elective (i.e. Choice or Planned) death.
Sebastian. No more needs be said. Well done.
Ann Althouse said...The fact that she might have been able to stave off pregnancy at an earlier point in time isn't enough to force her to endure the extremely burdensome process. When she has an abortion, she is making a decision about her own body, and, to follow the reasoning of Casey, she is assessing the morality of what she is doing and determining that she is not committing murder.
To me, the flaw in that Casey reasoning is that nothing stops a woman from having an abortion when she has not thought through the morality of what she is doing or even she really believes it's murder or is enthusiastic and blood-thirsty about murdering.
Oh golly, an "extremely burdensome process." You know back in the splooge stooge discussion days you laughed at the idea that a guy being forced to pay for nearly 2 decades to raise a child he didn't want (and took some steps to avoid having) was a burden we should care about--it was more "screw his pitiful whining complaints, he let his sperm out their so whatever burden he later has to bear is all on him." For a woman, though, you're filled with concern, compassion, and sympathy for the 9 months of pregnancy she might have to endure.
I wonder what can explain that discrepancy? We've already dealt with the "body" vs non-body difference (although I note the reflexive body talk is a fun parallel to Leftists like Coates) since it's a man's body that you'll happily draft, his body that you'll imprison for failing to follow your law or pay child support, etc. So what else could account for the difference?
Anyway it's great that women get to think deeply about the issue and have their decision given the power of law (that is to say, to decide whether or not their actions constitute murder) and have nice people like you cheer and respect that decision. It's too bad no one else's deeply thought and deeply reasoned decisions and beliefs are given that kind of respect. I mean--just as a crazy example--some people's beliefs about freedom of association might differ from that of the Supreme Court's but those people's conception of existence (and liberty, and morality, etc) don't overcome what the law says they're required to do. Isn't that funny? Everyone has to bend to the morality the law imposes except women in this one particular case--in this case alone it's "hey, whatever YOU decide is right will be given the full support of the Law."
While Sanger did dabble in eugenics
No, Sanger was no racist. She didn't hate blacks. She was just a white supremacist and believer in racial purity and hygiene.
White supremacy is OK if you are a pro-abortion extremist.
Meanwhile, here is a trivia fact for you --
Pre-war and war time Germany promoted "beneficial" euthanasia for good German people, but Jews were denied such "merciful" deaths. And yet, the same gas showers used at Hadamar for the mentally ill were used at Auschwitz.
The pro-abortion lobby's vicious opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act -- which requires that babies who survive an abortion attempt be given medical treatment -- proves conclusively that what they are asserting is NOT a "right to terminate a pregnancy" or a "woman's right to control her own body." No, what they plainly demand is a "right" to a dead baby.
What's the point of terminating the pregnancy if you still end up with a live baby?
readering said...Althouse must scroll through the comments and wonder how this came to be her community.
--
mind readering
, I would support a moderate law that would allow abortions in the cases of rape, incest, gross genetic problems, and more
Why? In the first two cases, what responsibility does the unborn child have for the crimes committed, that he should be summarily executed? And a gross genetic problem? Are you - or some government panel - going to determine what gross genetic problems make life disposable?
Beware the compromisers.
"Sanger did dabble in eugenics"
Folks like their hobbies..
While Sanger did dabble in eugenics, PolitiFact has repeatedly debunked the claims that Sanger bore great racial animosity against African-Americans
Well, Of Course not! before her death, African-Americans were Forbidden By Law to intermingle with WASPs. Sanger's true concerns were Italians and Irish. She (correctly) deduced that in a generation or two, These races would be intermingling with WASPs. It was Poor Whites that Maggie was after; Black genocide was just a bonus
“When I got pregnant at the age of 16, getting an abortion wasn’t the first idea that popped into my unripened brain.”
That’s how comedian Chelsea Handler begins her recent essay in Playboy on her personal experience with abortion. Handler writes that she was having unprotected sex with her boyfriend at the time, who she describes as not someone she should’ve been having sex with, “never mind unprotected sex,” she said.
When she became pregnant at 16, Handler’s parents brought her to Planned Parenthood. “Of course, the idea that I would have a child and raise it by myself at that age, when I couldn’t even find my way home at night, was ridiculous.” she wrote. “And when it was over, I was relieved in every possible way.”
Handler wrote that when she became pregnant a second time that same year, she had to find the money herself to get an abortion:
I didn’t have just one abortion; I had two in the same year, impregnated by the same guy. I didn’t have the money the second time. I had to scrape together the $230 to pay Planned Parenthood, but it was a safe abortion. Getting unintentionally pregnant more than once is irresponsible, but it’s still necessary to make a thoughtful decision. We all make mistakes all the time. I happened to fuck up twice at the age of 16. I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family. I’m 41 now. I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.
The comedian and actress wrote that she is so grateful that she had access to safe and legal abortion. “Like millions of women, I can live my life without an unplanned child born out of an unhealthy relationship because of Roe v. Wade,” she wrote. “It’s infuriating to hear politicians make bogus promises about overturning this ruling that has protected us for more than 40 years.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chelsea-handler-playboy-essay_us_5773c922e4b0eb90355ce75c
I happened to fuck up twice at the age of 16.
...and then killed two human beings for the sake of convenience.
“Of course, the idea that I would have a child and raise it by myself at that age, when I couldn’t even find my way home at night, was ridiculous.
There's this brand new thing called adoption....
No mention of the parents re 2nd
Chelsea Handler is now 43 and childless.
I wonder just how much she does not regret what she did. What is behind that (very likely) false front?
Providence gave her her children (in an unorthodox manner, but so it happens often enough), but she (and her parents) did not take up her duty when it was before her.
Handler... What is behind that (very likely) false front?
Probably the same special and peculiar interests, and inconvenient truth, that were behind Roe. Pro-Choice is a wicked solution, to an albeit hard, but not intractable, problem.
16 year old Chelsea Handler was having regular unprotected sex; she says she then got: unintentionally pregnant
HELLO !there is a word to describe having regular unprotected sex:
That word is makin' babies
Chelsea, That's How it's Done! That's what you were doing; it was NOT unintentional
Then, to PROVE that it wasn't unintentional....
She kept Makin' Babies, and "somehow"
Got unintentionally pregnant AGAIN
As that Spaniard said in The Princess Bride; You keep using that word, I do no think that word means what you think it does
I wonder if she approves of Dem desire to lower voting age to an "unripened" 16..
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/chelsea-handler-interview-father_n_4636929.html
What’s your guiltiest pleasure?
I don’t have a lot of guilt, but I just bought a set of bunk beds and I put them up in my room upstairs and I slept in them last night for the first time. It’s like a queen bed on the bottom and a queen on top with a ladder and I slept there with my two dogs and I read my book with my little night light. I mean, I felt like a 7-year-old ... it was so cozy and fun. My friends were like, “Why are you getting bunk beds?” And I was like, “Because, I can.” I never had them as a child and I wanted them. I may move into that room.
What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever lied about?
Oh, I lie all the time. It depends on what I’m trying to get out of. Oh, oh! I was in Barcelona and this guy had come to see me from London and I lied to him about having to go to a friend’s surprise party in Barcelona ... I don’t have any friends in Barcelona. I made up her name — her name became Vivian — and she had a husband and she had a daughter by the end of the trip named Molly. All of this to get out of going to dinner with somebody. And my friends were like, “You know you can just say you don’t want to go to dinner, you don’t have to make up an entire family?” But I was like, “It’s just easier that way.” But now that it will be on The Huffington Post, I’m sure we won’t have any problems ...
If you could commit a crime and get away with it, what would it be?
Murder. Yeah, I’d murder my father. There’s an age demo and he’s outlived it. If I could murder him and get away with it, or not murder him, but euthanize him, then I would. He’s not bringing any joy to anyone.
Tell us a joke.
Is it okay to drink while you’re pregnant if you’re planning on giving the baby up for adoption?
Althouse: "Ironically, the constitutional right — which still seems threatened — is based on the idea that women actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion."
Handler: "I didn’t have just one abortion; I had two in the same year, impregnated by the same guy. I didn’t have the money the second time. I had to scrape together the $230 to pay Planned Parenthood, but it was a safe abortion. Getting unintentionally pregnant more than once is irresponsible, but it’s still necessary to make a thoughtful decision. We all make mistakes all the time. I happened to fuck up twice at the age of 16. I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family. I’m 41 now. I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby."
So much for the notion that women actively "think" about the "morality" of abortion.
I mean, shouldn't the prior inquiry be whether the women doing the "thinking" even know what morality is?
Not that it has anything to do with the actual Constitution.
And thanks, Doug.
As I understand it, overturning Roe would merely remove the guarantee of the legal right to abortion in the US as a whole. Before Roe, some states had legalized abortion and some did not, just as with gay marriage. Let the people in each state decide [on both issues]. Some states have a death penalty and some do not. That should also be left for the people in each state, not the courts, to decide.
"Note: I support abortion rights, but I think the entire debate ought to be presented in public, and that it should never simply become an issue that we leave behind and say is already resolved. New generations deserve to see and understand what has been said and done and to form their own moral, legal, and political ideas on the subject." -- Ann Althouse
So where does this lead you? To agreeing with Scalia's dissent (actually dissent and concurrence) in Casey to the effect that abortion is not properly a constitutional right but a "right" to be conferred or withheld by Congress or the individual states? Or to simply encouraging public discussion and for women to actively think for themselves about the morality of abortion?
While I too am pro choice, I believe that Scalia had the better legal argument. The creation of unenumerated constitutional rights is primarily a legislative/political function into which courts should step with extreme caution. I regard Scalia's dissent as one of his most eloquent opinions, comparable to his dissents in the rules of golf and the one (whose title I forget) that essentially begins "Sandy, you stupid ..."
mockturtle:
A ruling compatible and consistent with the Constitution (and a scientific reality) would affirm that people have a right to due process (freedom from cruel and unusual punishments), evolve from conception (and have an unalienable right to life), and overrule Pro-Choice (i.e. selective-child, recycled-child); would overrule political congruence ("=" or selective exclusion) and establish civil unions; and defer to community consensus on capital punishment given some universal criteria to establish guilt (e.g. three independent witnesses - testimony and forensic).
walter:
Paraphrase of Huffington Post headline:
Handler aborted her unworthy babies, enjoyed money and social progress, and now she's going to Disneyland.
Of course, she says she lies all the time.
She's got that going for her...
All of the moral preening of the pro-choice crowd doesn't negate the fact that a human life is terminated, oftentimes in a very brutal way. So spare me the philosophical questions and hypotheses, you're all a bunch of ghouls.
The choice for a woman is whether or not she is going to have unprotected sex. Don't put it all on the man. My wife and I have prevented a pregnancy for almost 30 years without an ounce of contraceptive aid. It can be done.
While I too am pro choice, I believe that Scalia had the better legal argument. The creation of unenumerated constitutional rights is primarily a legislative/political function into which courts should step with extreme caution.
That, or they come from God.
Laws are but a tool for man to apply a moral code agreed upon by the governed.
When law attempts to bend morality to it's will, it will not and cannot be accepted by the governed, and is an unjust law.
Can a woman abort her unborn child and sell the child's organs or body parts -- say, the skin -- after the procedure?
Can a woman abort her unborn child and sell the child's organs or body parts -- say, the skin -- after the procedure?
Nope. But the abortionist apparently can.
So, adjust to reality if you want to talk about this.
The reality, Ann, is that you had an affair, got knocked up, and would readily commit murder to keep your husband from finding out.
What FIDO said at 11:33.
Ask that question to a feminist and demand to know why the patriarchy favors women so strongly when it comes to waging war.
Gharie:
"Can a woman abort her unborn child and sell the child's organs or body parts -- say, the skin -- after the procedure?
Nope. But the abortionist apparently can."
I've been arguing for years that women should be able to designate--part by part, organ by organ, tissue by tissue--what, if any, sections of their dead baby's body they want "donated" and negotiate a discount based on recent market prices.
Eyeballs? $20.00 a piece
Foreskin (highly sought after for anti-aging products), 10.00 per section.
Heart, let's offer $50.00.
And those oocytes, ooooo-weeee, they are worth a lot!
--
Also, in response to the father's not having any say, it's ridiculous that they cannot have a say after 7.5 months. Child is completely viable, not likely t even need the NICU, and that kid has to come out one way or another, so why not give the father the opportunity to keep the baby? Why cut the vocal cord, suck its brains out, and hack it up when she could just deliver and be done with it? We could pass legislation that Mom, having heretofore elected an abortion, be off the hook for child support, and have her parental rights terminated upon birth.
We could pass legislation that Mom, having heretofore elected an abortion, be off the hook for child support, and have her parental rights terminated upon birth.
Which would be more rights than men currently have.
Kinder, Küche, Kirche, or the 3 Ks, is a German slogan translated as "children, kitchen, church". It now has a mostly derogatory connotation, describing what is seen as an antiquated female role model in contemporary Western society. The phrase is vaguely equivalent to the English "barefoot and pregnant" or the Victorian "A woman's place is in the home".
- wikipedia
Pro-Choice sects fail to... avoid reconciling equal in rights and complementary in Nature. This wiki synopsis is the best they can conceive to compensate for a one-dimensional perspective. I wonder how many couples actually adopt either extreme form of synthesis throughout their life.
Seems like Meade will have to bail you out of this one, as in the gay marriage debacle.
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