Althouse: "The court said it was taking no position on 'whether Indiana may prohibit the knowing provision of sex-, race-, and disability selective abortions by abortion providers.'"

May 28, 2019

"The court said it was taking no position on 'whether Indiana may prohibit the knowing provision of sex-, race-, and disability selective abortions by abortion providers.'"

"It said that since the 7th Circuit is the only appeals court to have considered the issue, 'we follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional courts of appeals.' Justice Clarence Thomas, in a 20-page statement, said the court will eventually have to decide the question of what he called 'eugenic abortions.' 'The Court’s decision to allow further percolation should not be interpreted as agreement' with the 7th Circuit, Thomas wrote. He included a long history of the birth-control movement. 'Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement. No other justice joined Thomas."

Writes Robert Barnes in "Supreme Court compromise on Indiana abortion law keeps issue off its docket" (WaPo).

I don't agree that preventing the state from looking into the minds of abortion-choosers "would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement." It would only continue to constitutionalize the woman's right to make her own decision about going forward with a pregnancy and not impose an exception for when the decision is based on a reason that is legislatively designated as wrong. There are many bad reasons for having an abortion, and we could try to sort through what is good and what is bad, but the long-established right is to leave it to the one who is pregnant to go through the reasons and make a decision.

ADDED: I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person.

189 comments:

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: 'Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement. No other justice joined Thomas."

But Justice Thomas is correct. The use of abortion as a tool for eugenics has a long history. Ask the Chinese, ask the Germans, ask Margaret Sanger.; 5/28/19, 10:26 AM
Ken B said...: The most beautiful sound in the world is the thud of sacred cows colliding.

Feminists some time ago tried to ban amniocentesis to prevent woman aborting female fetuses.; 5/28/19, 10:28 AM
Fernandinande said...: The woman must actually feel that what she is destroying is not a person, because it is a person.; 5/28/19, 10:28 AM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: And for those that call it a fetus, or a clump of cells, or a parasite. It is a human being with separate DNA. A human being killed for, usually, convenience.

I may be long gone by then, but some day people will look back on this period of history with the same disgrace they look at Nazis and slavery.; 5/28/19, 10:29 AM
Ann Althouse said...: There's a difference between "eugenics" and "the 20th-century eugenics movement." The latter is held in such low regard that we normally just avoid using the word "eugenics." If you choose a good-looking and intelligent and loving spouse because you're hoping for high-quality offspring, is that eugenics? If you avoid drinking alcohol during pregnancy, are you practicing eugenics?; 5/28/19, 10:30 AM
MikeR said...: "I may be long gone by then, but some day people will look back on this period of history with the same disgrace they look at Nazis and slavery."
Vegans say that too. It's good that the people of the future always agree with me.; 5/28/19, 10:32 AM
Anonymous said...: I think that destroying an entity because of the person-specific characteristics of that entity is very close to an admission that that entity is actually a person. Abortion because the father is a different race than you would prefer? Because they have 3 chromosomes instead of the standard pair at 21? Sure seems like you're saying "I want a baby, I just don't want this baby."; 5/28/19, 10:33 AM
gspencer said...: "The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

Right. Once you get by that bit of messiness, everything else is pretty easy. So what exactly is she destroying so her mind remains at ease for all the haunting days to come? "Clump of cells" and "product of conception" are no longer cutting it.

But what if she actually believes that what she's destroying is a person and still wants the murder done.

Julius Streicher paved the way for dehumanizing "others." It made their task/solution easier.; 5/28/19, 10:34 AM
Jersey Fled said...: If we use the rule that Ann proposed, I suspect that 2/3 of all abortions would go away.; 5/28/19, 10:34 AM
Ann Althouse said...: It seems to me "the 20th-century eugenics movement" refers to a problem of groups of people trying to control the quality of the larger population. Things individuals do within their own families shouldn't get swept under that label.

In any case, the Constitution -- if the court struck down the Indiana law -- would not be getting into the activity of trying to control who could reproduce. It would simply be reserving the decisionmaking to the individual who is pregnant.

If wanting a particular sort of child for yourself is eugenics, better confess that you're a eugenicist too.

It dilutes the term to the point of meaninglessness.; 5/28/19, 10:35 AM
Fernandinande said...: The use of abortion as a tool for eugenics has a long history.

Eugenics without abortion has a longer history.

++

"A study of 78 parents of Down's syndrome children shows that, while most were in favour of abortion for a handicapped fetus, they were divided equally on whether euthanasia (no distinction made between active and passive euthanasia) was an acceptable practice.

Only a third considered an average Down's syndrome child could be a suitable candidate for euthanasia. While parents argued that the degree of handicap of the child was the crucial factor in making this decision, in fact the social class of the parents themselves was the only variable which was statistically significantly related to their opinions.

Differences arose from the parents' lack of agreement on what constituted a sufficiently severe handicap."
++

It reminds me of that punch-line: "Now we know what you are, we're just haggling over a price."; 5/28/19, 10:37 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I don't agree that preventing the state from looking into the minds of abortion-choosers would "would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement." It would only continue to constitutionalize the woman's right to make her own decision about going forward with a pregnancy...

It's a shame the founders didn't come up with some formal process by which things could be constitutionalized, so that we would know what had and what had not become part of the Constitution.; 5/28/19, 10:37 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "The woman must actually feel that what she is destroying is not a person, because it is a person."

That doesn't make sense to me.

X is true ≠ I believe X is true.

X could be false and I could believe it true, and X could be true and I could believe it false. The question as I have put it does not depend on the fact of whether the unborn entity is a person. And I am talking about what is in the cases. The cases have the Court refusing to say when a fetus is a person and finding a right in the woman to form her own beliefs. I think it's very much like the right to freedom of religion. Your right to believe in whatever religion you want is completely disaggregated from the question whether the religion is true. (That is the subject of my #1 favorite Supreme Court opinion — Justice Jackson's concurring opinion in Ballard.; 5/28/19, 10:39 AM
Fernandinande said...: If wanting a particular sort of child for yourself is eugenics, better confess that you're a eugenicist too.

Everyone who non-randomly picks a mate to reproduce with is practicing eugenics. Eugenics is a good thing, not something to "confess" to.; 5/28/19, 10:41 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: In 1967, Sainted Governor Ronnie Reagan signed a bill legalizing abortion in California.

He claims it was a mistake, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But it is the law, and most sane folks who disagree with it, still respect it and abide by it.

My point? Roe v Wade is a ridiculous decision. The majority made up an interpretation of the Constitution to find a "right" they wanted to be there. It's not. The US Constitution is silent on abortion.

Like most tough decisions, the people should decide whether to legalize or criminalize abortion.

I do hope SCOTUS overturns Roe. The Left will freak out, of course, but abortion will still be legal and available in Cal, NY, Ill and probably 25 states in our country.; 5/28/19, 10:45 AM
Fernandinande said...: That doesn't make sense to me.

To tell you the truth, I'm not surprised.

But notice I changed "believe" to "feel", and you're still addressing "believe", which, as you used the word, really means "feel" since it doesn't represent a rational belief.; 5/28/19, 10:45 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: It's best not to make women have to state an excuse for their choice.

If rape was an only exception you could expect the rate of 'rapes' to skyrocket to absurd numbers. Like every one-in-four college girls, maybe.

I am Laslo.; 5/28/19, 10:46 AM
tim maguire said...: How can there be race, sex, or disability-based abortion? Everyone knows, and the law enshrines, that fetuses aren't people so, obviously, there is no fact about the fetus that can tell you anything about the person who will be born later in some magical switcheroo in which the fetus ceases to exist and a human pops into being.

Obviously.; 5/28/19, 10:47 AM
Lyssa said...: Althouse, I’m not sure I’m entirely wrapping my head around your addition. I’d love to see you expand on it some.; 5/28/19, 10:47 AM
Jersey Fled said...: According to a study by the Guttmacher Organization (2011 data) the top three reasons women gave for having an abortion (about 75%) were:

"The most common reasons—each cited by three-fourths of patients—were concern for or responsibility to other individuals; the inability to afford raising a child; and the belief that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents. Half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.7"

That doesn't line up real well with the idea that they didn't really think it was human anyway.; 5/28/19, 10:47 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: "The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

"I think it's very much like the right to freedom of religion. Your right to believe in whatever religion you want is completely disaggregated from the question whether the religion is true."

This is not a workable standard. Courts would next be involved in determining whether the belief is "sincerely held". Need evidence and cross examination to test the sincerity. Impossible to do with every abortion decision. It would be an utter disaster.; 5/28/19, 10:49 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: In any case, the Constitution... would not be getting into the activity of trying to control who could reproduce. It would simply be reserving the decisionmaking to the individual who is pregnant.

The Constitution would be doing that?!?

Talk about diluting a term to the point of meaninglessness...; 5/28/19, 10:49 AM
rhhardin said...: Holding that a fetus is a person is dogmatizing a religious doctrine. Ordinary langauge says a fetus is not a person, or even a human. It's human (not wolf) but not a human. You can say it's a human in embryo.

The dogmatized picture is that there's a soul factory that drops souls into fertilized eggs and so the egg has a soul.

What's backwards is that religion comes from ethics, not the reverse. It's a poeticization of ethics. Dogmatizing leaves the ethics behind.

The bright line will eventually be where the ethics kicks in, namely when the fetus is cute, as shown in a sonogram. Cute means you go out of your way to care for it, an ethical reaction.

As far a exactly when it's human, I'd say you learn to be a human. One way you learn is by being treated as a human, and you notice that only after you're born.; 5/28/19, 10:53 AM
jimbino said...: "Eugenics" must mean "selective breeding" of the sort we regularly and casually apply to raising horses, dogs, pigeons and parakeets. It should not be applied to drinking alcohol while pregnant until alcohol is found to alter the DNA of the fetus.

re: A rule that "the woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person" is fraught with error.

First, while "believe" has a long history of use in religion, and it is science or legislative/judicial fiat that will ultimately determine whether the fetus is a "person" or not.

Second, any person, not just a pregnant woman, has the right in self-defense to kill another person that insists on touching him or her for nine months, all the while threatening death or serious bodily injury.; 5/28/19, 10:55 AM
rhhardin said...: I'd say abortion will eventually be outlawed on population replacement grounds, namely accidents don't happen enough anymore to maintain the population and so it's a social good. Women have to pay their dues.; 5/28/19, 10:55 AM
Birches said...: Most abortions of disabled children would stop if doctors stopped treating it as the default. Having a law on the books, even if it was never prosecuted could probably help that mentality changed.; 5/28/19, 10:57 AM
Dave Begley said...: For once I agree with Liz Warren. Congress should pass a law.; 5/28/19, 10:58 AM
wwww said...: As a practical matter, these types of specific laws are unenforceable. In practice it's impossible to determine if an abortion is done on the basis of sex selection. Maybe they want a girl? Maybe they want a boy? The ultrasound tech can't read minds.

What countries do, to stop this sort of thing, is ban ultrasound knowledge of sex. They prohibit doctors and ultrasound techs from revealing the sex to parents. But Americans enjoy knowing the sex early on, holding gender reveal parties with pink and blue cake--friends and family all want to know if it's going to be a boy or a girl. I can't imagine hiding ultrasound results from parents would go over well.; 5/28/19, 10:58 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "If we use the rule that Ann proposed, I suspect that 2/3 of all abortions would go away."

I'd like to see this idea talked about, but I believe the reason it is not pursued is that it's obvious where the problem will be: Who knows what is in the mind of the woman? How will you attempt to extract this information? Just ask her to sign a statement that she believes what she should believe? You'll only screen out the people who are scrupulous about lying. This is the same problem you encounter when you try to make things depend on having the right religion: You make a lot of people into liars and fakers and you only burden honest people.; 5/28/19, 11:02 AM
BamaBadgOR said...: "I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

I either have not read or have forgotten the case law on this point. Any and all other info would be much appreciated. How is this determination to be made and who is involved in the process besides the woman, if only to verify her belief?; 5/28/19, 11:04 AM
Nonapod said...: This is the problem I have with any law that is based on having knowledge about what's going on in another person's head. How do we know for sure what anyone believes? How do we establish that someone did or didn't believe something? After all, people lie. They especially lie to themselves.; 5/28/19, 11:06 AM
Original Mike said...: As a practical matter, I don't see why this matters. If sex-selection abortion is illegal, the woman will just lie. She'd probably lie anyways. Sex-selection abortion is not exactly ethical.; 5/28/19, 11:11 AM
wwww said...: "You make a lot of people into liars and fakers and you only burden honest people."

Laws that encourage lying change the relationship between citizens and the government into something more similar to subjects and rulers. People act differently in low-trust nations vs. high-trust nations. In low-trust nations, lying to the government is a common strategy to navigate the untrustworthy governmental institutions.; 5/28/19, 11:11 AM
JAORE said...: Try the optics on this:

Abortions are illegal even for the case of rape.....unless the father is black. Then rip that little dark clump o' tissue OUT!

Horrifying, ain't it?

Constitutional - at least the "black" part? Maybe. After all we can abort based on the sex of the child and sex/gender is a protected classification.; 5/28/19, 11:13 AM
Ann Althouse said...: @Lyssa

The key language, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, is: "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."

It's like freedom of religion -- freedom of conscience. You have the fundamental right to form your own beliefs about "existence" and "meaning" and "the mystery of human life." The government can't impose its answer on you. The right to abortion really does depend on whether the fetus is a person, but the woman must be free to decide the answer to that question.

Here's the next paragraph (for more context):

"These considerations begin our analysis of the woman's interest in terminating her pregnancy but cannot end it, for this reason: though the abortion decision may originate within the zone of conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic exercise. Abortion is a unique act. It is an act fraught with consequences for others: for the woman who must live with the implications of her decision; for the persons who perform and assist in the procedure; for the spouse, family, and society which must confront the knowledge that these procedures exist, procedures some deem nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life; and, depending on one's beliefs, for the life or potential life that is aborted. Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society."; 5/28/19, 11:14 AM
TJM said...: I can't imagine why liberals are so thrilled to murder the unborn. Their enthusiasm is baffling since they LOVE hardened criminals on death row and fight to save their miserable lives. They also claim that Europeans are far more sophisticated than Americans. But the sophisticated Europeans would find our abortion laws appalling. In Europe you can't get one after 20 weeks, only Red China has the same approach as the US; 5/28/19, 11:15 AM
rcocean said...: What can you say about all this nonsense. Its no different than school prayer, busing, and a hundred other cases. The SCOTUS and Federal judges just decided they were going involve themselves and decide what the correct policy for 300 million Americans despite NOTHING regarding this is in the Constitution.

Roe v. Wade was just legislating from the Bench, just as all the Obama judges issuing injunctions against Trump is thinly disguied Liberal activism. Abortion and all these other issues should be decided BY THE PEOPLE's Representatives. There's nothing in the constitution that requires the Federal judiciary to decide this issues. That's why these endless, well case law says this, precedent says that, are so meaningless. We ALL know that Liberal Judges find whatever legal argle-bargle they need to, to justify their POLITICAL ruling.; 5/28/19, 11:15 AM
Darkisland said...: At least Ann is consistent here. There are many people who are not. They favor a woman's right to kill the fetus for any reason and at any time UNLESS it is a girl baby.

I never saw the logic in that myself.

Now if we can only find that elusive gay gene...

And I wonder if there is a transexual gene? Perhaps we could eliminate that problem too.

In all seriousness, sex selective abortion is a real problem in some countries. China for example. India for another.

Girl babies are being aborted and too many boys are being born. This is really going to screw up the demographics of those countries. In the case of China it is already screwing up the demographics and not in a good way.

John Henry; 5/28/19, 11:15 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "This is not a workable standard. Courts would next be involved in determining whether the belief is "sincerely held". Need evidence and cross examination to test the sincerity. Impossible to do with every abortion decision. It would be an utter disaster."

I agree (and say that in a later comment).; 5/28/19, 11:15 AM
rcocean said...: If anyone's paying attention, the liberals in Federal Judiciary are trying to do everything possible to help the Democrats in 2020, by finding Republican drawn district maps "Unconstitutional" - weirdly when the Democrats were drawing the maps, no one noticed it was "Unconstitutional".

The democrat activists in judges robes are also trying to declare every Republican effort to purge the roles of non-citizens and fraudulent double voters "Unconstitutional" - as if restricting the vote to US Citizens and those eligible to vote was against US laws! So far, i've seen ZERO push-back from the R's in Congress, but that's to be expected. Romney, McConnell, etc. only care about pleasing the Big Donors and getting them $$$.; 5/28/19, 11:21 AM
Darkisland said...: Blogger Ann Althouse said...

If you choose a good-looking and intelligent and loving spouse because you're hoping for high-quality offspring, is that eugenics?

Of course it is. I wonder, in the real world, how many people choose a mate based on what kind of babies they will make together. I suppose it may be on the list of reasons somewhere but I suspect that, for most men and most women, it will be way down the list and not very important.

If you avoid drinking alcohol during pregnancy, are you practicing eugenics?

Now I think you are being silly. If I buckle my child into a car seat, am I practicing eugenics? If make them eat their vegetables am I practicing eugenics?

John Henry; 5/28/19, 11:26 AM
gahrie said...: but the long-established right

1973 is long established?; 5/28/19, 11:27 AM
gahrie said...: It's like freedom of religion -- freedom of conscience. You have the fundamental right to form your own beliefs about "existence" and "meaning" and "the mystery of human life." The government can't impose its answer on you.

So if I worship Moloch the government can't stop me from sacrificing a child?; 5/28/19, 11:31 AM
Darkisland said...: Blogger TJM said...

In Europe you can't get one after 20 weeks

It varies by country but there are very few European countries where a woman can get an abortion past the first trimester. (With some physical health exceptions)

In Germany, abortions are technically illegal though permitted in the first trimester provided the mother gets counseling and waits 3 days.

In most European countries both doctor AND woman will be prosecuted for having an illegal abortion. Past time limit, without counseling, eliding the waiting period etc.

John Henry; 5/28/19, 11:34 AM
Michael K said...: I suspect that, for most men and most women, it will be way down the list and not very important.

I gave my wife a book titled, "Why Men Are the Way They Are", when we were having marital troubles many years ago.

Selective mating is probably as old as language. Men choose pretty women and women choose men who look like providers to feed the kids. Many of the physical attributes we consider attractive in women are indicators of fertility.

Things have gotten a bit out of whack in recent years with women working and earning more than men sometimes. However, there is pretty good research that suggests these high earning women tend to seek even higher earning men so the old drives still exist.

I do see a trend among my female medical students to seek men in occupations that will help with child rearing, if they don't marry other doctors. Policemen and paramedics are popular. Shift work is a plus in those situations,.; 5/28/19, 11:35 AM
Wince said...: People, people.

The should be no eugenics, or me-genics.

It should be we-genics.; 5/28/19, 11:36 AM
Lincolntf said...: Doesn't "Hate Crime" legislation require the Court to decide what a person's beliefs are before passing judgment?; 5/28/19, 11:37 AM
Bobb said...: The subjective decision on who should be considered a human is certainly an interesting standard. It's not like anyone would subjectively consider Jews, Blacks or Native Americans not to be human.; 5/28/19, 11:40 AM
stlcdr said...: Legislating morality.

Once they have discovered the ‘gay gene’ you can just abort the child because they are going to be gay. It’s for the grand children, don’t you know.; 5/28/19, 11:42 AM
n.n said...: The eugenics of interest is elective abortion or selective-child ("Pro-Choice"), perhaps past the first month following the presumptive development of consciousness, one-child variant, and preventing couples from copulating ("sexual relations") and conceiving a child. That said, is planned parenthood, including: selective-child (and recycled-child) constitutional under the Twilight Amendment? What happens to the mother's rites, and the child's life, once the latter reaches the age or state of "viability"? I wonder how long this twilight faith and hope will endure. We're not children anymore. There needs to be a reconciliation of rights and responsibilities.; 5/28/19, 11:43 AM
Darkisland said...: In the late 40's Robert Heinlein started writing a series of "Future History" stories, later collected as "The Past Through Tomorrow"

The first story was about the Howard Families (Foundation?). It was a private organization that sought out people who came from particularly long lived ancestors. It put them in touch with each other and encouraged, with money, marriages. The goal was go create group of people who would live hundreds of years.

Other folks got jealous of the "Methuselah People" and, essentially, kicked them off the planet.

Very interesting speculation on eugenics, how it might work and what might be the results.

The 30 or so stories still hold up very well 70 years later.

For that matter, anything by Heinlein holds up pretty well. I am especially fond of "All progress is made by a lazy man looking for an easier way" and have adopted it as my professional motto.

Sarah Hoyt was just blogging about him this morning

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/09/30/lieutenant-wouldnt-like/?fbclid=IwAR2yjyldP-XhDlAK6CncJOc65ZrllmNSCRat5Jnli_RU8CAoyxEI1T7nP7c

John Henry; 5/28/19, 11:45 AM
n.n said...: subjectively consider Jews, Blacks or Native Americans not to be human.

Selective-Jew had a popular historical progression. The black and native American blocs had a less monolithic development.; 5/28/19, 11:47 AM
jimbino said...: nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life

I find it weird to speak of the fetus as "innocent human life." What makes it so innocent? What makes a child innocent? This thoughtless repeating of "innocent" is typical of those who wish to regard the fetus as a "person" and believe in the fantastic notion of "original sin."

Does original sin start at the moment of birth, sometime after the fetus becomes a person?; 5/28/19, 11:50 AM
stlcdr said...: I see Mr John Henry beat me to the Gay part. I was surprised that hasn’t been brought up earlier. Perhaps ‘eugenics’ captures this situation, but it seems like a fairly ‘soft’ word (which it isn’t, of course). But that’s exactly where this is going. There’s no answer that will satisfy everyone.; 5/28/19, 11:51 AM
Ken B said...: Here in a nutshell is the conservative case for the abortion status quo: strictly regulating the early pregnancies of women requires a massively invasive state. A similar argument can be made against having the state evaluate each woman's decision. The truly conservative position is, if abortion is to be allowed then it must be the woman who makes the decision. That is also the right position. It might not be the GOP position of course.; 5/28/19, 11:52 AM
Achilles said...: I am so glad everyone wants the government to make this decision.

Doesn't matter if you are on the right or the left. One side wants the government to ban it and the other side wants to force you to pay for it.

You are all wrong.

And until you support giving men the right to choose not to pay child support you are just a raging hypocrite Ann.

I want to thank the US Supreme Court for the Roe v. Wade decision proving the Court is a hollow institution without a single decent principle full of God-Priests who just make up whatever they want.

Clarence Thomas is a hero.; 5/28/19, 11:53 AM
narciso said...: Except the government is already involved giving planned parenthood hundreds of millions of dollars, how much do adoption services get.; 5/28/19, 11:55 AM
Ken B said...: This btw has been a favorite point of mine. I ask those who think the argument is just “my body my choice” if they wo7ld support a woman choosing to abort just a black man's fetus, or just a fetus with a supposed gay gene. A lot of people are completely thrown. (My point is not to argue against abortion rights but to point out they do not apply their own arguments to issues like legalizing drugs or prostitution.); 5/28/19, 11:56 AM
AlbertAnonymous said...: "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."

Does the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment give me the right to define my own concept of health insurance? GMAFB. This is the crap that leftists do because they “want” the constitution/law to be a certain way or say a certain thing. It doesn’t, but they want it to and they have to be right because they’re our elite betters. Fuckers!

It gives lefty women the right to abort their children. It gives lefty men the right to marry other men. They just make that shit up.

But my right to decide for myself if, and what kind of, health insurance I want to buy? No! That’s not part of my personal liberty I guess.; 5/28/19, 11:58 AM
Otto said...: So a whore named Norma Leah Nelson found out she was pregnant. Now that was a problem because she couldn't go on whoring for drug money she desperately needed. But luckily the supreme court had passed the Althouse resolution stating that a woman can have an abortion if the woman doesn't consider that thing inside her a person. So the whore Norma just filled out a government form stating such and voila she was able to get an abortion free via government funds.
What bullshit.; 5/28/19, 11:59 AM
narciso said...: Yet the second amendment which is enshrined in the bill of rights was a dead letter for seventy years, negative liberties are not allowed; 5/28/19, 12:04 PM
Jupiter said...: "ADDED: I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

You are saying that, as a matter of case law, there is a constitutional right that only belongs to people with certain beliefs? If she ponders on the matter for a while, maybe yes, maybe no, does the constitutional right flicker in and out of existence?; 5/28/19, 12:13 PM
Obadiah said...: Recently I had occasion to re-read Scalia's dissent in the Casey decision. There's so much wit and passion in his writing. Here's a favorite: "It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one, when we amend its provisions so breezily."; 5/28/19, 12:13 PM
Jupiter said...: Maybe it's only 3/5 of a constitutional right?; 5/28/19, 12:13 PM
Meade said...: Hell ya, sure, but would you step up and travel back and provide safe legal abortion to pregnant Mrs. Hitler if you could?; 5/28/19, 12:17 PM
Not an oldster. said...: Trouble is... You start with Mrs Hitler, but you can eventually work your way down to Mrs Meade...

No forced abortions, period; 5/28/19, 12:17 PM
Not an oldster. said...: A man is a man is a man...

Even the evil men or those horribly disabled.; 5/28/19, 12:20 PM
CWJ said...: "The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

No doubt. That is truly the logic of the situation, but wow that's cold.; 5/28/19, 12:20 PM
Meade said...: "but you can eventually work your way down to Mrs Meade..."

Knowing her as I do, hell ya, I'd travel back in time and let the choice be her's.; 5/28/19, 12:21 PM
gilbar said...: but, but! but!;
Naomi Wolf argued that the movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as a form of homicide and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continues, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."

I think that this is Also being argued by one of our posters, that said that a woman has a right to 'kill in self defense' ANYONE that inconveniences her, in ANY WAY. That an Imposition on a woman, justifies cold blooded murder; 5/28/19, 12:25 PM
Achilles said...: narciso said...
Except the government is already involved giving planned parenthood hundreds of millions of dollars, how much do adoption services get.

You people want the government to have that power.

Then you get mad when it uses that power in a way that upsets you because other people disagree with you.

I wish I could say I believed that we would all grow up and take these powers back for the individual to make their own choice and do the right thing.

But many people just want to be serfs.; 5/28/19, 12:36 PM
narciso said...: I dont, but by virtue of roe and Casey, it does because the logic is one needs one to implement the other, and tell me of how an abattoir like gisnells gets away for decades.; 5/28/19, 12:38 PM
Steve Austin Showed Up For Work. said...: More than half of aborted fetuses are female.; 5/28/19, 12:42 PM
Kirk Parker said...: BAG,

" The US Constitution is silent on abortion. "

Not really; doesn't the Tenth Amendment cover the subject quite adequately?; 5/28/19, 12:44 PM
James K said...: You people want the government to have that power.

Then you get mad when it uses that power in a way that upsets you because other people disagree with you.

Qui custodiet ipsos custodes.

But yes, we want a government (not necessarily the federal government) to have the power to prevent people from killing each other, stealing, etc.

The only disagreement is over who gets the status of "people." The notion that it should be left to the feelings (beliefs) of the pregnant woman whether the fetus has that status presumably would mean that abortion is permissible up to the moment of birth. Otherwise someone else or the government imposes a cutoff date.; 5/28/19, 12:48 PM
Darkisland said...: Blogger narciso said...

Yet the second amendment which is enshrined in the bill of rights was a dead letter for seventy years, negative liberties are not allowed

Not sure it was a dead letter. For 170 years or more, more or less until the JFK assassination, nobody paid much attention to 2A. There was no need. We were allowed to own pretty much any kind of weaponry.

I went to HS in Tysons Corner VA and people carried guns to school. To particpate in shooting club, to work on in shop class, to go squirrel hunting after school and nobody thought anything of it in 1965-66.

There was an arms dealership in Alexandria that had a whole lot full of weaponry. Some of my buddies and I went by and priced a 37mm anti-tank cannon because it looked cool. They would have been happy to sell us one, with ammo, but we had no money. Could have bought a 75mm howitzer and a truck to tow it with but it was way out of our budget.

It is only when people started to take the right away that 2A became important and controversial.

John Henry; 5/28/19, 12:53 PM
My name goes here. said...: "Holding that a fetus is a person is dogmatizing a religious doctrine. Ordinary langauge says a fetus is not a person, or even a human. It's human (not wolf) but not a human. You can say it's a human in embryo."

Abortion kills human life, that is a biological fact, not a theological tenet. The only question is when does "it" become a person? Possibly another question could be when does "it" get protections like it were a person?; 5/28/19, 12:57 PM
tim maguire said...: Meade said...
Hell ya, sure, but would you step up and travel back and provide safe legal abortion to pregnant Mrs. Hitler if you could?

We always assume WWII and the final solution would have been avoided if Hitler were eliminated before he became chancellor, but is there any reason to believe that is true?; 5/28/19, 12:58 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Maybe the courts are the wrong venue for restrictionists. Consider that it has been long established that strip clubs and porn shops have a first ammendment right to exist. In theory. If you actually try to open one, you will somehow find that there is a zoning problem with every parcel you check...; 5/28/19, 1:05 PM
Rick said...: Second, any person, not just a pregnant woman, has the right in self-defense to kill another person that insists on touching him or her for nine months, all the while threatening death or serious bodily injury.

This is a silly argument. The baby is only "touching" the woman as a predictable result of voluntary actions. Can a woman grab a man and then claim he assaulted her? Normal people recognize this as absurd no matter what the nuts pretend Title IX says.; 5/28/19, 1:07 PM
SeanF said...: jimbino: Second, any person, not just a pregnant woman, has the right in self-defense to kill another person that insists on touching him or her for nine months, all the while threatening death or serious bodily injury.

Not just self-defense, but defense of others.

But that would mean I'd be legally justified in using violent force to prevent a woman from killing her baby, wouldn't it?; 5/28/19, 1:14 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: @Kirk,

I do love the 10th Amendment, but I always viewed it as a limitation on Federal power. In the context of abortion, I don't view it as empowering a Federal court to hamper state power.; 5/28/19, 1:17 PM
Hagar said...: According to Senator Ma'am, when you take it home from the hospital.

Planned Parenthood to require a notarized statement that the woman requesting an abortion did not consider it to be a "person"?; 5/28/19, 1:21 PM
Michael K said...: jimbino is back with another crazy comment.

Ever hear of birth control, big guy ?; 5/28/19, 1:30 PM
narciso said...: well I was going by us v miller to heller, that's 70 years, and that was the span of time between decision, yes the dodd bill, after the kennedy assassination, did restrict things, then the 1968 omnibus crime bill, then the 1994 one,; 5/28/19, 1:33 PM
Fen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/28/19, 1:35 PM
Flowers said...: Bigger decision today.
Today, the Supreme Court took an action which might seem relatively insignificant against a larger backdrop, but which is actually profoundly important.

In upholding Indiana’s fetal disposal law which required dignified burial of fetal remains, it overturned a federal appeals court which defined those remains as akin to all other industrial waste products.

The Supreme court upheld Indiana’s determination that aborted fetuses are human beings, entitled to one, last sign of respect at the end of their prematurely terminated lives.

The highest court in the land agreed that Indiana’s law, respectful and cognizant of the humanity of the aborted child, was constitutional. This is not a small thing. This is everything.

Our battle lies in highlighting the humanity of the unborn child. Every victory, every step forward is premised on this solemn obligation.

So today, we moved one step further away from the abyss. The constitution recognizes the humanity of the aborted child. And on this we can build to the point where it recognizes the humanity of the living, breathing, child.

Step by step. This was a big one.; 5/28/19, 1:36 PM
Michael K said...: And until you support giving men the right to choose not to pay child support you are just a raging hypocrite Ann.

How about men who are NOT the father ?

“I never thought in my whole life I would have to defend myself of something that I am innocent of,” he said.

Texas’ family code, chapter 161, states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proves otherwise. In Cornejo’s case, that amounts to some $65,000.; 5/28/19, 1:36 PM
Fen said...: I find it weird to speak of the fetus as "innocent human life." What makes it so innocent? What makes a child innocent? This thoughtless repeating of "innocent" is typical of those who wish to regard the fetus as a "person" and believe in the fantastic notion of "original sin."

Typically, the Left attempts to deconstruct words that keep getting in their way
(ie."Socialism. What does it really mean and is it really so bad?").

In·no·cent

adjective
1) not guilty of a crime or offense.
2) not responsible for or directly involved in an event yet suffering its consequences.

noun
1) a pure, guileless, or naive person.
2) a person involved by chance in a situation, especially a victim of crime or war.

Women know that intercourse carries the risk of pregnancy, yet they CHOOSE to take that risk. They also know that birth control is not 100% effective, but they CHOOSE to take that risk too.

Women need to start being held responsible for the reproductive CHOICES they make. Because when another human life becomes involved in their decision, their right should be limited, just as their rights are limited in any other situation involving another person.; 5/28/19, 1:38 PM
Fen said...: Last time the Democrats declared people to be "sub-human", Abraham Lincoln thought those that support slavery should feel the lash on their own back.

I propose we do the same with those who support abortion.

Who wants to go first?; 5/28/19, 1:44 PM
Anonymous said...: John Henry: At least Ann is consistent here. There are many people who are not. They favor a woman's right to kill the fetus for any reason and at any time UNLESS it is a girl baby.

I never saw the logic in that myself.

I'd bet that the set of people with coherent, logical views on abortion is a very small subset of the set of people with views on abortion, on either side.

But please note that there is nothing *inherently* illogical or incoherent about supporting very liberal abortion laws and yet wanting to prohibit sex-selective abortions. Ditto for granting of a "rape and incest" exception while wanting to otherwise ban abortions. It's just that most people's arguments for these things *are* incoherent and illogical in the context of what they claim to believe about the wrongness or acceptability of abortion.; 5/28/19, 1:44 PM
jeremyabrams said...: The professor's preferred usage is: "A woman goes forward with a pregnancy." Using the word "pregnancy" focuses on the woman, and deflects from the larger reality, that there is a developing human life within her that is in her body but is not at all a part of her body.; 5/28/19, 1:45 PM
jeremyabrams said...: If mom can end a pregnancy because it's a girl or boy, she can end a pregnancy because the fetus contains a "gay" gene, if such exists and is ever identified.; 5/28/19, 1:47 PM
Narr said...: Hitler had/has some collateral descendents, a nephew and some children of his. They're Americans--his nephew William Patrick Hitler was a USN veteran IIRC. They of course changed the name, but also, by report, have all chosen not to have children.

I don't have a problem with that, but it strikes me as deterministic, and a distorted echo of Onkel Adi's own distorted understanding of Mendel and Darwin.

As for abortion in America today, it's simply not practical (and for my money, not advisable) to have the government devote more resources to policing fetus production. And if we make it through another few decades technology may have rendered all this moot anyway.

Narr
IF a woman has a right to choose, she can choose what to choose; 5/28/19, 1:49 PM
ConradBibby said...: "Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice."

The problem with this reasoning is that the state actually isn't forcing ANY woman to have a baby: It's still a woman's choice whether or not to get pregnant. The only imposition on a woman's liberty is forcing her to make her decision concerning childbirth before rather than after she becomes pregnant. That may be inconvenient and somewhat burdensome, but balanced against the interests of an unborn-but-sentient human baby not to have its brains sucked out by a vacuum or its limbs plucked off, I don't think forcing a woman to make her choice PRE-pregnancy is all that unreasonable.

BTW, all the talk in Casey about how unfair it is for the state to impose on the mother the pain and sacrifice of pregnancy and childbirth ignores the fact that the state routinely imposes sacrifices and responsibilities on parents AFTER a child is born. So Casey strikes me as intellectually dishonest in pretending that a mother should get ultimate say over what happens to the child because it's the mother who will have to shoulder the burden of protecting him or her. In fact, the state reserves the right to protect children by regulating parental conduct and there's no logical reason why the same philosophy should not apply to unborn children.

As for the idea that a woman's subjective belief in the personhood or non-personhood of the fetus should control, how do we reconcile that with laws against cruelty to animals? We don't let people pull the limbs off dogs and cats even though everyone agrees they are not "persons." Also, whether or not a particular pregnant woman thinks she is carrying a human being or simply a clump of lifeless cells inside of her, it's obvious that, outside the context of abortion, most woman and society as a whole do think of a fetus as an unborn child. For example, there have been laws enacted that treat the killing of a pregnant woman (by third parties) as a double homicide. Woman and families often talk to their unborn children and talk about them in human terms. They post sonogram pictures on their refrigerators. It's really ONLY in the context of the abortion debate that a fetus is not thought of as a person.; 5/28/19, 1:57 PM
Mark said...: According to a study by the Guttmacher Organization (2011 data) the top three reasons women gave for having an abortion (about 75%) were:

"The most common reasons—each cited by three-fourths of patients—were concern for or responsibility to other individuals; the inability to afford raising a child; and the belief that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents. Half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.7"

That doesn't line up real well with the idea that they didn't really think it was human anyway.

And also, none of those reasons pertain to "bodily autonomy" or "I'll do what I want with my body " or "I don't want to be pregnant."; 5/28/19, 2:04 PM
Mark said...: Holding that a fetus is a person is dogmatizing a religious doctrine. Ordinary langauge says a fetus is not a person, or even a human.

Only among the rabid pro-abortionists post-1973 is that ordinary language.; 5/28/19, 2:08 PM
n.n said...: The People and our Posterity... The latter has not changed since people recognized: man + woman = (equal, not "=") child.

Ever hear of birth control, big guy ?

The second choice.

states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proves otherwise

Only under a twilight faith and pro-choice religion.

So today, we moved one step further away from the abyss. The constitution recognizes the humanity of the aborted child. And on this we can build to the point where it recognizes the humanity of the living, breathing, child.

Baby steps... into the past before social progress.

another few decades technology may have rendered all this moot anyway

It may. The Civil War, too. In the meantime...; 5/28/19, 2:11 PM
jimbino said...: @Fen

In·no·cent

adjective
1) not guilty of a crime or offense.
2) not responsible for or directly involved in an event yet suffering its consequences.

noun
1) a pure, guileless, or naive person.
2) a person involved by chance in a situation, especially a victim of crime or war.

Your definition, if accepted, would apply in spades to the Virgin Mary (history's only example of a person with no original sin), who alone would have saved the world a lot of grief by choosing abortion.

It would specifically NOT apply to a fetus carrying original sin.; 5/28/19, 2:11 PM
JackWayne said...: These arguments will become moot when artificial wombs are used extensively.; 5/28/19, 2:14 PM
iowantwo said...: Our Host said,
The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person.

When a baby is a person deserving protection of life, is not a "belief". It is a determination that can only be make by the people...Not Judges.

In this case, the people, through their elected representatives, made a determination.
Judges short circuited democracy, and told them, we judges know better.; 5/28/19, 2:16 PM
Michael K said...: jimbino doubles down on crazy.

Abortion does seem to make people nutso.; 5/28/19, 2:18 PM
n.n said...: "Fetus" is a technical term of art that identifies and characterizes a stage in human development ("evolution"). The social term is "baby", the Constitutional term is "Posterity", unless the child is deemed unworthy or her abortion is calculated to be for-profit. The wicked solution is a myopic treatment of human and civil rights, that reduces a child to a "burden", a woman to a beast, and a man to a "donor".; 5/28/19, 2:18 PM
walter said...: Baby ripped from murdered Chicago teen

Baby ripped from murdered Chicago teen opens eyes

Sadly..similar to this earlier event one state up:
Wisconsin Woman Accused of Abduction, Cutting Out Fetus; 5/28/19, 2:20 PM
Meade said...: "Abortion kills human life, that is a biological fact, not a theological tenet. "

Not only human life, but abortion kills a huge amount of mitochondrial life.; 5/28/19, 2:25 PM
walter said...: From the 2nd "abduction" story:
"Annette Morales-Rodriguez, 33, faces one count each of first-degree intentional homicide while armed and first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child.."; 5/28/19, 2:27 PM
chickelit said...: @jimbino: Put down the bong and for heaven’s get out of whichever Nat’l Park you’re in before you get busted again.; 5/28/19, 2:39 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: eu -good genos -birth

isnt 'practicing eugenics' in the sense of enhancing what will/does exist
is different than destroying what already exists?

Is this 'clump of cells' living?
Does this 'clump of cells' have human DNA ?
If it is living, and human, is it a living human ?; 5/28/19, 2:43 PM
walter said...: I was surprised when I heard about the Chicago incident no one (conservative Milwaukee talk radio included) was remotely alluding to the one so similar in Milwaukee that was seared in my memory. The 2 cities aren't far from each other.; 5/28/19, 2:44 PM
rhhardin said...: Abortion kills human life, that is a biological fact, not a theological tenet. The only question is when does "it" become a person? Possibly another question could be when does "it" get protections like it were a person?

The difference is between its being "a human" and "human" (i.e. not wolf).

Legally it's a person when born; as to abortion law, it will be protected when it's cute (sonogram). States' choice.

The latter not based on personhood but on whether society ought to take an interest in protecting it. They're different things.

You'd want to protect society's instinct to protect what's cute.; 5/28/19, 2:44 PM
mikee said...: "The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

Regarding abortion, I would suggest that a safer, more rational method for our society to adopt would be for anyone undergoing an abortion to be required to acknowledge they are indeed killing a human being, and to accept their responsibility for doing so, in order to be allowed to proceed to termination of their pregnancy. This would satisfy the anti-abortionists regarding their insistence on the humanity of the fetus, while allowing an abortion to proceed legally, with government's permission and the rest of society's forgiveness. And this would help us avoid the eugenicist's mission creep from abortion to killing members of society for state convenience or irrational reasons, as is seen in North Korea and China today.; 5/28/19, 2:46 PM
rhhardin said...: If it is living, and human, is it a living human ?

Living human. Not "a living human." Two adjectives vs adjective and noun. The "a" forces "human" to be a noun.; 5/28/19, 2:49 PM
Patrick Henry said...: I've yet to see our hostess explain why the "choice" isn't to have sex, or not. Or to use birth control, or not. To engage in behavior where the natural consequence could be a pregnancy, or not. We can leave out the very rare exception when the choice to have sex was taken from the girl/woman. I'm talking about the reason for most abortions - the desire to avoid the consequences of their previous choices. It appears that those that favor post-choice birth control (abortion) want the government to sanction their avoidance of, or give the semblance of cover for, the consequences of their choices.; 5/28/19, 2:54 PM
rhhardin said...: You can get a nicer argument with "soul," surprising since it would seem to invoke religion of some kind.

Notice that "soul" when not part of theology refers to relations to others. The body separates people and the soul binds people to others. It's just how it's used.

"He has no soul..."

Now a fetus that has parents that want him, they've built the nursery and bought a tiny baseball and mitt, has a soul because he has relations to others. If you want to see if a fetus has a soul, look not at him but at his parents. That's where the relations will be, if any.

If he's not wanted, he has no relations to others, and has no soul.

That common usage will inhabit any thinking done about the matter, except for plonking dogmatic denials.

G.B.Shaw and William Earnest Henley took commanding possession of their souls in that way - but you could say of either in that mood that he has no soul.; 5/28/19, 2:58 PM
rhhardin said...: Birth control doesn't always work. IUDs sometimes come out with the baby.; 5/28/19, 3:00 PM
readering said...: An odd thing about this discussion is that eugenics 100 years ago was associated with contraception, not abortion, in part because there was much more likelihood of promoting contraception as a means to affect the distribution of who was born than abortion.; 5/28/19, 3:01 PM
walter said...: Blogger rhhardin said...
Legally it's a person when born
--
Although I just posted an example of homicide charges re "unborn child"; 5/28/19, 3:14 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: @rhhardin
if 'human' can be both a noun and adjective, do you feel that delegitimizes the question?; 5/28/19, 3:32 PM
wildswan said...: "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."

If you talk to women having abortions, (and to many citizens) you find that they believe that the state has determined that the fetus is not a person. Whereas Roe v. Wade says that the woman must have determined on her own without state coercion of any kind that her unborn child is not a person. The "choice" is not actually legally the right to have an abortion on demand; it is really the right to decide whether the child is a person. There's a kind of tossing the responsibility back and forth in a hidden way at all moments in the abortion transaction.; 5/28/19, 3:39 PM
gadfly said...: " The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

Althouse is the legal expert here, but she is talking in circles.

"There are many bad reasons for having an abortion, and we could try to sort through what is good and what is bad, but the long-established right is to leave it to the one who is pregnant to go through the reasons and make a decision."

The "right of privacy" was inserted into the Fourth Amendment by a liberal Supreme Court in Roe to accommodate the killing of babies. Pro-abortionists may wish that making government seizures illegal stretches all the way to privacy - but that is not what the Fourth says. Privacy was a known concept long before the 18th Century, so writing "privacy", if the word is appropriate to describe the right to murder, could have easily been done by the founders.

Common Law has always treated homicide as a capital crime - so the violation of this law - even when renamed "infanticide" is simply illegal. Having broken the law, the Supremes can just as easily fix the mistake.

This monstrous mistake is similar, but really far worse than the invented government rule that sitting Presidents cannot be tried and convicted for criminal law violations.; 5/28/19, 3:45 PM
Scott M said...: If you choose a good-looking and intelligent and loving spouse because you're hoping for high-quality offspring, is that eugenics?

No, because you're not killing ugly, dumb, bitter people, you're simply not choosing them as a spouse. This is not ending the life of an extant human being. This is the probability of some potential human, flickering in and out of existence based on your whims. A sort of Paul Atreides without the Golden Path.; 5/28/19, 4:05 PM
Achilles said...: Kirk Parker said...
BAG,

" The US Constitution is silent on abortion. "

Not really; doesn't the Tenth Amendment cover the subject quite adequately?

10th Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But look at all the people here who hate the constitution trying to have the feds ban abortion.

They just want to be serfs again.; 5/28/19, 4:08 PM
wildswan said...: Eugenics requires three conscious beliefs. First, That the means of evolution is natural selection operating in gradual way. Second, That social policies should operate in the same direction as natural selection. As a corollary every brand of eugenics (there have been several) has a stated means of determining the direction of natural selection. The most common in the US since 1945 has been finding the groups with highest average IQ. Third. Every brand of eugenics has determined on a means of pushing society through social policies in the direction natural selection wants to go.

If you are just hoping for happy, healthy children and to that end avoiding poisonous men and foods - that isn't eugenics.

On Darwin. You can believe in evolution without thinking that it applies to human beings as if they were just another animal. And you can believe in evolution without thinking that it is gradual - you could think it moves in jumps by chromosome re-arrangements. This the defacto theory in actual zoology and botany at the present.

In the US IQ was chosen by American eugenicists after 1945 as the key indicator of the direction of evolution. IQ was a proxy for race since it was already known how IQ tests distributed racial groups and that African-Americans were at the bottom so far as those tests went.

In the US birth control - contraception and abortion - were chosen by the American Eugenics Society as the means of pushing society in the US and globally in the supposed direction of natural selection. Consequently abortion is heavily promoted as a means of avoiding poverty both here and abroad. Every attempt to prevent using public funds for abortion or contraception is met by Planned Parenthood objecting that minority women need these services. This social marketing and these subsidies result in disproportionate numbers of African-Americans using abortion and this in turn is diminishing their numbers.

The legal argument used by Blackmun was developed by Glanville Williams, an English law professor, in the book, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law. Williams was an ardent eugenicist. Blackmun was an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by Margaret Sanger and other eugenicists.

After WW II it was necessary to promote eugenics under cover of other reasons, a policy called crypto-eugenics by the eugenicists who adopted it. That is why many people end up supporting eugenic policies, such as abortion on demand without thinking about their demographic consequences and the racial implications of those consequences; 5/28/19, 4:13 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: The ability for fetuses to live outside the womb at earlier time periods is changing the perception of what’s an acceptable time period for abortions.

And what happens when artificial wombs for human happen...; 5/28/19, 4:15 PM
My name goes here. said...: rhhardin,

I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I do want to make sure I am clear. When you say: 'Living human. Not "a living human." Two adjectives vs adjective and noun. The "a" forces "human" to be a noun.'

it is a living (adjective) human (adjective) (noun).

what do you think goes into that blank?

In this story: https://www.todaysparent.com/pregnancy/giving-birth/this-baby-was-born-twice-yep-you-read-that-correctly/

They took the out of the mother to surgically fix spinda bifida, then put the the back into the mom-person and then a baby (I am assuming that's the right word) was delivered via c-section.

What do you think is the correct word to put into blank A and blank B? (anyone else that wants to can answer that question as well); 5/28/19, 4:17 PM
wildswan said...: There is a discussion of the Sanctity of Life and The Criminal law here:

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8627&context=ylj

"In any event, Williams is positive in his views and has not hesitated to express his convictions on what the law ought to be. His more important conclusions are: (1) The law should not interfere with the dissemination of contraceptive information through birth control clinics or by physicians. Nor should the law prohibit the sale of contraceptives. (2) Voluntary sterilization should not be prohibited by law whether for eugenic, social, therapeutic or personal reasons. (3) The legal hazards surrounding artificial insemination should
be removed. (4) Women who procure their own abortion and qualified surgeons who perform it for them should not be subject to the criminal law. (5) Infanticide should be dealt with as a psychiatric and social problem and not as a problem for the criminal law. (6) Suicide and attempted suicide should cease to be criminal offenses. Secondary parties who unselfishly aid another to commit suicide or who take the life of another upon his request should be exempt
from criminal sanctions. (7) "[E]uthanasia, the merciful extinction of life, is morally permissible and indeed mandatory where it is performed upon a dying patient with his consent and is the only way of relieving his suffering. According to this view . . . a man is entitled to demand the release of death from hopeless and helpless pain, and a physician who gives this release is entitled to moral and legal absolution for his act."; 5/28/19, 4:24 PM
Gahrie said...: How about men who are NOT the father ?

According to some, they are just splooge stooges, and not worthy of any consideration.; 5/28/19, 4:28 PM
n.n said...: So, under the Twilight faith and Pro-Choice religion, what happens to the mother and child once the latter reaches the age or state of viability, and Gosnell's little chamber of abortions is no longer a choice? The collateral damage is no longer limited to the child and mother henceforth, but the mother's life is at risk by virtue of the cruel and unusual measures to relieve her "burden."; 5/28/19, 4:28 PM
stevew said...: The foundation of the disagreement comes from whether you believe this is true or false:

The gestating human (fetus, embryo, child) is an individual being with rights of its own, including a right to life.

If this is true then the abortion dispute is over whose rights prevail, the mother's or the baby's.

If false then the mother may do whatever it is she chooses with her pregnancy without interference from society or the state.

I don't know how you settle that disagreement. How does one convince another that what they believe is a baby, and so worthy of protecting, isn't?

The pro-life crowd doesn't help their argument when they agree to allow exceptions to their abortion bans for pregnancies that arise from rape and incest. The pro-choice crowd similarly disables their position when they take issue with aborting based on certain specific characteristics (gay, female, etc.).

No way this can be resolved at the Federal level.; 5/28/19, 4:31 PM
wildswan said...: Anybody know where to find Justice Thomas's opinion?; 5/28/19, 4:31 PM
Gahrie said...: The overseer must actually believe that what he is whipping to death is not a person.; 5/28/19, 4:32 PM
Birkel said...: We'll never know what's in the mind of the woman. -- Althouse paraphrase

Good.
Now do hostile work environment law.
Now do hate crimes.

Shall we continue?; 5/28/19, 4:38 PM
AlbertAnonymous said...: rhhardin said:

"Now a fetus that has parents that want him, they've built the nursery and bought a tiny baseball and mitt, has a soul because he has relations to others. If you want to see if a fetus has a soul, look not at him but at his parents. That's where the relations will be, if any.

If he's not wanted, he has no relations to others, and has no soul.

That common usage will inhabit any thinking done about the matter, except for plonking dogmatic denials."

Seriously? The Child's "relations to others" (or lack thereof) are determined by whether the parents want the child? If the parent wants the baby, the baby has "relations" but if the parents don't want the baby, then the baby has no "relations"? No relations no soul. no soul no right to live?

The baby's existence doesn't impact in any way whether the parents want/don't want the baby? The baby's inanimate? causes no change to mom/dad? that there's the relations. same as an unwanted baby i suppose. Baby impacts mom's/dad's life/thought/hopes/dreams and maybe they want it gone out of convenience or whatever. But the baby has still had an impact on that other person, therefore relations.

But even if you disagree and believe the "relations" is a one way ratchet that only appears if the parent(s) independently on their own "want" the baby, apply that same standard to a parent who doesn't want a one-day old child or one-year old child. Or a child who no longer wants his/her bed ridden father or mother. Not wanted, no relations; no relations, no soul; no soul ... ok to kill pop!

Sorry, not buying this BS. And it has zero to do with "dogma" or dogmatic denials, plonking or otherwise...; 5/28/19, 4:39 PM
Kirk Parker said...: BAG,

Achilles gets it -- the Tenth means no branch of the federal government has any authority over abortion (outside of military bases and anywhere else that is part of no state or territory.); 5/28/19, 4:42 PM
Gahrie said...: Privacy was a known concept long before the 18th Century, so writing "privacy", if the word is appropriate to describe the right to murder, could have easily been done by the founders.

Which is why we ended up with all of that "emanations" and "penumbras" bullshit.; 5/28/19, 4:44 PM
Gahrie said...: I find it weird to speak of the fetus as "innocent human life." What makes it so innocent? What makes a child innocent?

The fact that they haven't harmed anyone in any way.; 5/28/19, 5:00 PM
Sebastian said...: "there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

Where exactly does the Constitution say any such thing?; 5/28/19, 5:01 PM
rhhardin said...: But even if you disagree and believe the "relations" is a one way ratchet that only appears if the parent(s) independently on their own "want" the baby, apply that same standard to a parent who doesn't want a one-day old child or one-year old child. Or a child who no longer wants his/her bed ridden father or mother. Not wanted, no relations; no relations, no soul; no soul ... ok to kill pop!

At birth, society has relations with the baby, and that's common language and that's in the law. Then the baby has a soul regardless what the parents think. It's a legal person.

I think that's best left alone, but in addition, to protect society's instinct to protect what is cute, the abortion line ought to be where the sonogram shows a cute fetus. Killing it, though, would be something other than murder. It would be a crime against social order of some kind. A differnt crime.

Trying to put religious dogma into the law (it's a person if it's cute) would come to a bad end. Keep the motivations separate.; 5/28/19, 5:12 PM
jimbino said...: @Sebastion

...the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion...Where exactly does the Constitution say any such thing?

As the Declaration of Independence explains, Human Rights are natural rights--rights that a constitution and laws can only ratify, not create. Much like the assertion that you do not need to believe in the Bible, regardless of what it says.

For much the same reason, a woman's right to kill a fetus in self-defense is not dependent on any notion of the Supreme Court, which is limited to ratifying it.; 5/28/19, 5:13 PM
hombre said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/28/19, 5:15 PM
rhhardin said...: They took the out of the mother to surgically fix spinda bifida, then put the the back into the mom-person and then a baby (I am assuming that's the right word) was delivered via c-section.

What do you think is the correct word to put into blank A and blank B? (anyone else that wants to can answer that question as well)

I'd say it's a human, by what ordinary language would do with the unusual situation.
If it was outside the mother, society has relations with it. That it's temporarily put back in the mother wouldn't change that.

The key is to follow what ordinary language does with the situation and make sure the law does not conflict with it. Otherwise the law is from some dogmatization and will not work out well.; 5/28/19, 5:16 PM
mtrobertslaw said...: But exactly is meant by "a person"? If a woman considering abortion must believe the life within her is not a "person", where does she get the knowledge of all the characteristics a living organism must posses to be considered a person? There is only one ethical principle the justifies abortion and it goes all the way back to ancient Greece: Justice is the Will of the Stronger.; 5/28/19, 5:21 PM
hombre said...: “ADDED: I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person.”

Woman: “But Judge, I thought that thing in my womb was a unicorn.” Judge: “Oh. Well in that case ....”; 5/28/19, 5:22 PM
rhhardin said...: @rhhardin
if 'human' can be both a noun and adjective, do you feel that delegitimizes the question?

On the contrary it's important to see which it is in the particular case.

It's human, not wolf.
It's a human, not a wolf.

The former argues about an unknown tissue sample (predicate adjective), the latter about an unknown animal (noun complement).; 5/28/19, 5:23 PM
Sebastian said...: "cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice"

Count the ways of Kennedy's crap. Giving birth is no sacrifice. The Constitution is silent on whether the Federal government through its judicial overlords should insist on anything. The people have ample reason to regulate the "sacrifice"--as the court itself did. It is, in any case, the people's choice.

"Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role"

OMG. OMG. OMFG. A mere blog comment is not enough to explain how much I despise this a**hole.

"The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society."

To a large extent: notice the weasel word? Of course, what we are talking about is not the destiny of "the woman" but the destiny of the baby. Nothing in the Constitution gives priority to "her spiritual imperatives" over any other consideration. Nothing.; 5/28/19, 5:24 PM
rhhardin said...: Blogger rhhardin said...
Legally it's a person when born
--
Although I just posted an example of homicide charges re "unborn child"

Right, that's what you don't want to happen. The law is misguided.; 5/28/19, 5:25 PM
n.n said...: Rape is involuntary exploitation. Incest is, presumably, superior exploitation a la boss and intern. Perhaps elective abortion before what is believed to be the origin of consciousness around the fifth week. The best advice in both edge cases is adoption. The issue in both cases is reconciliation of rights and responsibilities. The wicked solution under the Twilight faith and Pro-Choice religion are not the first, second, or even third choice.; 5/28/19, 5:33 PM
Saint Croix said...: Anybody know where to find Justice Thomas's opinion?

Here you go.; 5/28/19, 5:36 PM
wildswan said...: "there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

I believe this is the present state of the law. Roe v. Wade had said the decision was for the doctor to make at all stages including the first trimester but Casey changed that. Roe v. Wade said: "For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." But then in Casey v. Planned Parenthood quoted Eisendtadt v. Baird. "[i]f the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." This right of privacy comes from an interpretation of the 14th Amendment.; 5/28/19, 5:42 PM
wildswan said...: However Roe v. Wade said: The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."

But in a pluralistic society, it is presently held, it must be the woman who decides whether she thinks the unborn human being is a person because that conviction is based on religion or personal philosophy. That is: women are responsible for the choice. But, in fact, most women think that the Supreme Court decided that the fetus was not a person and that is why the woman could abort up till birth. And, it can be asked, why does the father have no say? Why do his religious convictions not matter.; 5/28/19, 5:53 PM
wildswan said...: Thanks St Croix.; 5/28/19, 5:54 PM
Richard Dolan said...: The part of the Indiana law that was not invalidated is mostly virtue signalling for the purpose of setting up a court challenge to the Casey framework. But it's not really intended to have any impact on the practice of abortion as it currently exists. The reason is simple: When a woman elects an abortion and finds a doctor willing to do it (not hard these days), who is there to say she can't proceed because her motive is on the prohibited list? That's a scenario that is very unlikely ever to arise.; 5/28/19, 5:56 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Justice Clarence Thomas shaking the judicial cage, juxtaposed with talk of the 10th Amendment, means I should bring forward (for a second time now) excerpts from historian Walter Russell Mead's powerful piece (from almost a decade back) on Clarence Thomas as the Frodo Baggins of the right — as Clarence trudges to the brink and metaphorically throws the key (or controlling ring) to America's liberal “Blue Empire” into the lava lake, destined for obliteration.

Please see Mead's fascinating perspective from 2011 of Thomas' (together with what might be called “Thomism's”) huge real impact thus far already (e.g., in the realm of the 2nd Amendment — but beyond that (potentially, enormously) upon a possible future Supreme Court (whose time is, perhaps, soon — or even now).

In so doing Walter Russell Mead dissects (liberal!) Jeffrey Toobin’s earlier (as Mead expresses it) “gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker.”

As Mead writes: [quoting…]

Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.

In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.

Writes Toobin: [sub-quoting…]

In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

[/unQuote] [still quoting Mead…]

This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years. It is hard to think of other revisions as radical as the declownification of Clarence Thomas […]. There are few articles of faith as firmly fixed in the liberal canon as the belief that Clarence Thomas is, to put it as bluntly as many liberals do, a dunce and a worm. […] Not only does the liberal mind perceive him as a disgusting lump of ungoverned sexual impulse; he is seen as an intellectual cipher. […]

At most liberals have long seen Thomas as the Sancho Panza to [the late] Justice Antonin Scalia’s Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger. No, says Toobin: the intellectual influence runs the other way. Thomas is the consistently clear and purposeful theorist that history will remember as an intellectual pioneer; Scalia the less clear-minded colleague who is gradually following in Thomas’ tracks.

If Toobin’s revionist take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work. […]

Back in Pundit High, they used to teach a fair amount about constitutional history in the US history course […]. The way we learned them, the Second and Tenth amendments were as dead as the three fifths clause: so dead that there was no point in asking why they died or what they were doing there. […]

{Continued on the next page: page 2}; 5/28/19, 5:59 PM
Michael McNeil said...: {Continued from previous page: page 2}

Continuing with Walter Russell Mead: [quoting…]

Those were the operating assumptions my generation took with us to college and beyond; they are still the conventional wisdom among most American intellectuals and journalists today.

What we didn’t know, and what the world at large didn’t know until very recently, was that the New Deal constitution was not as permanent or unalterable as it looked. Intellectually its foundations were shaky, and after two decades of a Clarence Thomas-led assault, the constitutional doctrines that permitted the rise of the powerful federal government could be close to collapse.

In the case of the Second Amendment, the collapse has already come. Back in my Pundit High days, anyone who dared to suggest that the Bill of Rights gave individuals the right to bear arms would have been laughed out of the class as an ignorant yahoo. These days, that is the accepted view of the US Supreme Court and most of the legal profession. The resurrection of the Second Amendment proves that the “dead letter” clauses of the Constitution can come back to life — and suggests that Clarence Thomas understands how this can be done. […]

The real problem will come if Thomas can figure out how to get the Tenth Amendment back into constitutional thought in a serious way. The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb. […]

As Toobin tells the story, the revival of the Second Amendment was the first great triumph of the new approach. Thomas and others assembled a mountain of evidence that convinced increasing numbers of legal scholars that the Second Amendment must be read as conferring an individual right to bear arms — not merely a generic endorsement of the right of each state to maintain a militia. More, this right was intended as political: to check the power of the state to overawe and crush the people. As a result, the once seemingly unstoppable movement toward gun control has gone into reverse gear.

The startling possibility now beginning to dawn on some observers is that these same methods applied to the Tenth Amendment would lead to a much more far reaching revision to constitutional doctrine. […]

Unleashing the Tenth Amendment would move the constitutional status quo back towards the early 1930s when the “Nine Old Men” struck down one New Deal law after another. For Toobin and most New Yorker readers, it is hard to imagine an idea that more radically and totally runs against everything they believe. […]

It’s hard to argue with Toobin that Thomas has moved the ball down field in his quest for a new era of constitutional jurisprudence. […] Jeffrey Toobin is announcing to the liberal world that Clarence Thomas has morphed from a comic figure of fun to a determined super-villain who might reverse seventy years of liberal dominance of the federal bench and turn the clock back to 1930 if not 1789.

The fantasy is still far fetched, and it is notoriously hard for political movements to get and hold power long enough to shift the balance on the Supreme Court, but that Thomas has accomplished as much as he has shows how far the country has drifted from the old days when liberals were confident that the Supreme Court would find new ways to fit its judicial philosophy to the demands of the blue social model.

[/unQuote]

Mead elsewhere goes on to suggest: [quoting…]

With a couple more allies on the Supreme Court* Justice Thomas could get pretty close to the lava pits of Mount Doom. [!]

[/unQuote

Thus: Walter Russell Mead.

____
(*Such as Justice Neil Gorsuch is perhaps now proving to be.)

(The foregoing provides the gist of Walter Russell Mead's piece, in my humble opinion, but please do read the whole thing.); 5/28/19, 6:00 PM
wildswan said...: Judge Thomas has got it right on eugenics. And we should always remember that Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, had the leisure to develop his theories because he inherited the money his family made in the North Atlantic slave trade.; 5/28/19, 6:10 PM
Unknown said...: > There are many bad reasons for having [a gun], and we could try to sort through what is good and what is bad, but the long-established right is to leave it to the one who is [concerned] to go through the reasons and make a decision.; 5/28/19, 6:15 PM
Michael K said...: RBG scolded Thomas today for calling a pregnant woman a "mother."

She is worried. I hope it keeps her up at night.; 5/28/19, 6:16 PM
Saint Croix said...: Roe v. Wade was inspired by eugenics. Specifically, Harry Blackmun wanted abortion so that our society could limit the reproduction of poor people.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about Blackmun's motivation in a notorious interview she gave to the New York Times.

“Frankly I had thought at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion."

Indeed, Blackmun was furious that the Court failed to order that free abortions must be provided to poor women.

As he wrote in Beal v. Doe, "the cost of a nontherapeutic abortion is far less than the cost of maternity care and delivery, and holds no comparison whatsoever with the welfare costs that will burden the State for the new indigents and their support in the long, long years ahead.”

Blackmun's plan was to eliminate the poor, via abortion. The modern liberal practice of killing babies with handicaps is an uglier form of socialism. Indeed, that's how Hitler started. But the eugenics plan was right there from the beginning.; 5/28/19, 6:28 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: "But look at all the people here who hate the constitution trying to have the feds ban abortion."

Not I. Abortion is clearly not a Federal issue. The individual states should make the decision to criminalize or legalize.; 5/28/19, 6:28 PM
Saint Croix said...: RBG scolded Thomas today for calling a pregnant woman a "mother."

She also objects to calling an abortion doctor an "abortion doctor."; 5/28/19, 6:29 PM
Saint Croix said...: Abortion is clearly not a Federal issue.

"No state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

To have nine attorneys go into a room and say they don't know what a person is--and we fought a civil war to put that language in the Constitution--is obscene. It's fucking obscene. To say with a straight face that a corporation is a person, and a baby is not one? Such dishonesty inspires violence and bloodshed.

If you can't respect our laws, you have no business sitting on a Supreme Court. If you don't know what a person is, quit.

A person is a live human being. A live human being is a person. The idea that rich and powerful people can define a class of human beings as non-people? I have nothing but contempt for these liars.; 5/28/19, 6:35 PM
Unknown said...: Some amendments are more Equal than others.

If feminazis want "equal pay" and "paid abortion on demand, after birth"

they should do the work to get amend the Constitution

(as women did with the 18th amendment)

rather than by judicial fiat; 5/28/19, 6:41 PM
Saint Croix said...: The reason the Supreme Court said a corporation is a "person" is money.

And the reason the Supreme Court said an unborn child is a "non-person" is money.

The Court has way more respect for money, than it does for people, or our Constitution.

For the love of money is the root of all evil...; 5/28/19, 6:43 PM
Otto said...: RBG - another ugly liberal woman lawyer from NYC.

"RBG scolded Thomas today ......" Not only ugly but also a racist.; 5/28/19, 6:50 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Justice Thomas' concurrence is a tour de force. He is a national treasure.; 5/28/19, 6:51 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Contrary to public myth, the Supreme Court did not say that “a corporation is a person.” The Supreme Court held that a corporation is made up of people (its owners), and those people have the right to speak — through their corporation.; 5/28/19, 6:54 PM
stephen cooper said...: Bay Area Guy - yes he is. Thomas and Alito are the intellectual stars of the current court.; 5/28/19, 7:18 PM
Skyler said...: "the long-established right"

Your definition of long-established differs from mine. It's never been "established," it has always been hotly disputed. And it's not very long ago that the decision was foisted on the people who largely disagreed with it.; 5/28/19, 7:33 PM
gilbar said...: i'll get mis-quoted AGAIN, BUT
It's Weird that jimbino Continues to argue that the justification for abortion is
IF, AND ONLY IF The woman truly feels that she will DIE if she does not abort

I realize that he is too intellectually challenged to realize what he is saying; but you have NO RIGHT to kill in self defense if you aren't in danger of your LIFE.

If i'm walking down the street, and a guy asks me for a cigarette; i can't legally kill him. If he pulls a knife, and holds it in his hands; i can't legally kill him.
My life has to BE in danger. I can't say; "Oh, i thought that Maybe, he Might attack me with the knife. . . I have to be able to prove to a jury, that i thought he WAS attacking me with the knife. Jimbo, if you think i'm wrong, try shooting the next person you see; when the police come and arrest you; say: " Oh, i was doing it in self defense"

If your life is not in a clear and present danger; you have no right of self defense.
IF you find a person sitting in your chair in your living room; you have no right of self defense. If a man touches your ass; you have no right of self defense.

So, Jimbo, is repeatedly saying that the Only Justification for abortion is if there is a clear and present danger to the mother. Jimbo, doesn't see this; 5/28/19, 7:36 PM
Saint Croix said...: the Supreme Court did not say that “a corporation is a person.”

Yeah they did, over 100 years ago.

The Supreme Court was a lot quicker to protect corporations than they were to protect black people, let's put it that way. And they're in the baby-killing business now. But go ahead and tell me how a corporation is flesh and blood.; 5/28/19, 7:50 PM
walter said...: Blogger Michael K said...RBG scolded Thomas today for calling a pregnant woman a "mother."
--
They're not mother mothers.
Bipedal incubators; 5/28/19, 8:07 PM
Seeing Red said...: My cousin was over. Catholic and Pro-life.

She got sent something about Alabama’s vote.

Basically, Alabama is a sanctuary state.

Lololol; 5/28/19, 8:09 PM
Michael K said...: Bipedal incubators

Not quite yet. I think Carson's fetal surgery for spina bifida is a serious impediment for the Court, or at least RBG.; 5/28/19, 8:21 PM
walter said...: If Mother is inappropriate, how should the Father be referred to?

"Texas’ family code, chapter 161, states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proves otherwise. In Cornejo’s case, that amounts to some $65,000."

A stooge splooge stooge?; 5/28/19, 8:33 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: A Constitutional determination that the State has an interest in preserving the dignity of the remains--requiring an aborted fetus be disposed of via cremation or burial--makes absolutely no sense.
The State doesn't have an interest in the fetus at any point--since as Professor Althouse says that problem is solved by simply saying "it is only the woman who has any power of decision--she alone has an interest in what happens" what possible justification can there be for the State stepping in, AFTER THE FACT, and making legal demands of how the medical waste be disposed of?? It's not a medical need--any aseptic disposal method meets that criteria.

How can the State have an interest in preserving the dignity, in disposal, of a thing the State otherwise has no interest in? Ridiculous farce.; 5/28/19, 8:47 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Althouse said...Things individuals do within their own families shouldn't get swept under that label.

That's useful. Want only male babies? No problem. Want only heterosexual babies? Give it 8 or 9 years and a simple maternal blood test will give you all the info you need to make the "right" choice. Only the woman has the power to decide and any decision she makes, for any reason (or no reason at all) is unassailable in terms of morality. Useful!; 5/28/19, 8:52 PM
n.n said...: "Texas’ family code, chapter 161, states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proves otherwise. In Cornejo’s case, that amounts to some $65,000."

A stooge splooge stooge?

Don't have sexual relations with an ethical woman with loose eggs.; 5/28/19, 9:13 PM
n.n said...: Carson's fetal surgery for spina bifida is a serious impediment for the Court

A positive development for a child, mother, father, and our Posterity.; 5/28/19, 9:15 PM
n.n said...: A corporation has two, three, fifteen fathers and mothers. Politically congruent ("="), but there has been progress since then, and we're back to two: couples and couplets, and corporations have been grandfathered in.; 5/28/19, 9:19 PM
FIDO said...: This is nonsense and exceptionalism under the law.

I may have a libertarian 'belief' that taxes are wrong and illegal. The State does not give a whit to my beliefs on this matter, no matter how vehement this belief)

A rather nasty racist (perhaps a Muslim) may not believe a non-believer is a 'real person', or a person who is due consideration to life, liberty and property. The Law and the State has no problems infringing on the actions of people who wish to act on those 'beliefs', religious or otherwise.

'Belief' has rather strong limits to how it can dictate behaviors in comparison to the law.

Except for women. Althouse wants to keep the 'reality' of who is and is not a person in the grip of women without any say from the State, men, and any other woman who disagrees with her. Because 5 people said so.

Hmm.

The State has an interest in the size of its population. At a certain point, they can and will act.; 5/28/19, 9:30 PM
GRW3 said...: Gee, it would be nice if the Supremes would send a note down to the district and circuit courts that only they have the right to make a national decision.; 5/28/19, 9:44 PM
Fen said...: "The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person."

Did that sound better to you in the original German?; 5/28/19, 10:02 PM
Narr said...: FIDO@930: Grant that the State has an interest in the size of its population. But it also has, or may have, an interest in the health of its population, the education of its population etc. Grant that at a certain point they can and will act on all these interests.

Are you casting the issue now as one of, let's pull one out of the ether, "compelling State interest"? If so, imagine a scenario in which it is established scientifically that a certain condition--say a mutation of a deadly pathogen that can only transmit through fetal tissues, or a like nightmare--would there be a reason not to support a State effort to abort such pregnancies? Would a woman's belief in the sacredness, or even just the desirability, of the potential child figure in any way?

I don't have any good clear morally scrupulous and ethically unassailable principles for this, or for many other areas of life where I am not directly affected by the choices others make. I certainly wouldn't argue on either historical or philosophical grounds that States will not define and pursue their interests.

Narr
It's a given; 5/28/19, 10:02 PM
Fen said...: "I may be long gone by then, but some day people will look back on this period of history with the same disgrace they look at Nazis and slavery."

MikeR: Vegans say that too. It's good that the people of the future always agree with me.

Cute, but you're still missing the larger point.

Slavery was justified by defining Africans as subhuman apes.
Genocide was justified by defining Native Americans as subhuman savages.
Holocaust was justified by defining Jews as subhuman parasites.

We are horrified by what humankind has done, yet...

Abortion is justified by defining the Fetus as subhuman tissue

...we keep returning the error.

If you are against slavery, genocide and the holocaust... but for abortion... you have zero intellectual integrity.; 5/28/19, 10:12 PM
Fen said...: I realize that he is too intellectually challenged to realize what he is saying; but you have NO RIGHT to kill in self defense if you aren't in danger of your LIFE.

I have a bag of popcorn ready for when he tries to shoehorn abortion into a Stand Your Ground defense. "..she couldn't flee the encounter because the fetus stalked her for the last 6 months!"

:)

Remember the kind of people you are dealing with - the despicable attacks on Kavanaugh during his confirmation came from those that worship at the Altar of Abortion. They will say and do anything, even murder their own children, in pursuit of a good fuck.; 5/28/19, 10:18 PM
Narayanan said...: I'm curious about origin and historical precedent of the phrase *State has an interest*

To me this is reifying The State and contrary to American project of self government.

Change my mind.; 5/29/19, 12:53 AM
n.n said...: when he tries to shoehorn abortion into a Stand Your Ground defense. "

There is an ethical imperative that the child should be planned because... don't blame the victim, no judgment, no labels, feminist rites. In Stork They Trust.; 5/29/19, 1:15 AM
Gahrie said...: I'm curious about origin and historical precedent of the phrase *State has an interest*

It's a legal term of art having to do with various legal issues. In this case it deals with whether or not the state has any standing* when it comes to regulating abortion.

*"In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case."; 5/29/19, 9:13 AM
Narr said...: Narayanan and Gahrie: yes, that's what I'm getting at.

Rest assured that there is no danger that I will be passing or enforcing any laws, when I say that when it comes to abortion I trust women, their families, and their doctors far more than I trust The State.

Narr
It's the coldest of cold monsters; 5/29/19, 10:59 AM