I plan on making repeated donations for the defeat of a guy named Stupak next time the primaries come along. And if that doesn’t work, for his defeat by the Republican challenger.
“Fair compromise” is a zone approached when we continue to allow the restrictions on abortion allowed by Roe and Webster while mandating that an abortion provider must be present in every hospital if Medicare, Medicaid, or UHC reimbursal or any sort of federal funding can be applied there. (I’m OK with the abortion services being ‘provided’ by external referral to an organization across town, but it should have to be within 30 miles or so).
Obviously, and I can’t believe I have to point this out, the difference here is a tax on income, vs a tax on the person. For this to be constitutional, it would have to be evenly distributed across the population, as per the 16th amendment. If a state has 10% of the population, they’d have to pay 10% of the tax. This bill isn’t written like that; it exempts individuals under 100% of the poverty line, exempts illegals… ie constitutionally fatal to this bill.
And this is what most pro-life people can’t seem to understand. See, I’m not in favor of abortion. But the problem is that making abortion illegal won’t do much to prevent abortion.
And if abortion is made illegal, what penalties for procuring or performing an abortion does Curtis imagine? The death penalty?
As for the notion of a costitutional amendment banning abortion, that’s just impossible. How are you going to get that to pass in 3/4ths of the State houses?
Thing is, we have legal abortion in this country, and most people are pretty much in favor of the status quo. Even if Roe v. Wade were overturned, that still wouldn’t illegalize abortion, it would just make criminalization of abortion constitutional. You’d still have to actually criminalize it state by state. And while you’ll find some states where this is possible, in most states it won’t be. You think New York and California are going to criminalize abortion?
You can find plenty of people who are against abortion (like, say, me), but don’t think the best way to oppose abortion is criminalization.
You can kick and scream all you want, Dio, but unless you plan to offer a link to the aforementioned adjudication, you’ll forgive me if I continue to doubt you.
Oh, not this capitation nonsense. I can’t believe anybody is actually making this argument. The government has the power to raise or lower your taxes based on your individual behavior. It does it all the time. This is being implemented as an income tax, pure and simple, and as such, does not have to be evenly distributed across the population.
And I can’t believe that I have to point this out too, but the 16th amendment doesn’t require even apportionment.
Huh? You’ve got it backwards. The 16th Amendment was passed explictly to defeat this type of argument, that income taxes were unconstitutional because they weren’t apportioned equally among the states. Since the 16th Amendment to the Constitution allows taxation without apportionment, and the 16th Amendment is part of the constitution, then taxation without apportionment is constitutional.
Just in case you missed it, here’s the text of the 16th Amendment again:
No, you don’t get to declare a tax you don’t like a capitation tax by fiat. There is no legal difference between this and any other way our income tax code is used.
I have no idea what you’re talking about here. The tax is clearly tied to income. It’s capped at 2% of income. ETA: It’s capped at 2% or $2250 (adjusted annually).
Right. If the tax is tied to 2% of your income, that is somehow not tied to your income. These arguments have reached a point of nonsense.
Optional entry. You get the choice of paying additional tax or buying insurance. Just like you get the choice of paying additional tax or buying a mortgage.
(Note that there is a usage variance; some will call any induced abortion “therapeutic,” in contrast to spontaneous abortion.)
“Life of the mother” is far too narrow. I could live with a law, not a constitutional amendment, prohibiting elective abortions, but not medically indicated therapeutic abortions.
As for immigration reform, that depends on what it is. It might be something I want or something else I don’t want & have to put up with.
In fact, the OP sounds like a bizarre kind of extortion. “We’ll let you have health care (which benefits everybody) in exchange for immigration reform (which we want) & banning abortions in most cases (which only some of us & practically none of you want), ain’t that a deal?!”
They are a very far right “news” site, known for outright lies and publishing such things as as an article calling for a military coup against Obama. They don’t qualify as a cite for much of anything but how loony the Right is.
Who decides what “afford” means? The last quote I got for a policy (which I was ultimately denied for pre-existing conditions) would’ve run me $10,600 a year. For me, a single individual. That’s about 1/3 of my take-home pay every year. I could afford that if I sold my car and rode a bike everywhere (not physically possible) and took in two boarders to help pay the mortgage and never bought new clothes or ate a meal in a restaurant. Ever. But technically it’s less money than I earn, so I could afford it.
If you don’t know anything about the source of your cite, you shouldn’t use it as a cite.
He has a democrat challenger already in the race, Connie Saltonstall.
I already have the same abortion rights as a woman has. A woman who is not pregnant has no say in any abortion, just like I have no say in any abortion. If I want to get an abortion, or to make a meaningful decision not to have an abortion, I better figure out how to get pregnant, just like a woman does.
And her campaign already has some of my donation money. I’ll probably wait a while to see if she looks like the strongest Dem challenger before repeating the process, but if I don’t give her more it will be because I give it to another challenger.
So on your way home from work you are hit by a drunk driver with no insurance. You suffer head trauma as well as a punctured lung and spleen, multiple fractured bones and lacerations. After many hours in several surgeries you are in a coma for 6 weeks. When you wake up you are handed a bill for over $400.000.
When was it you planned on buying insurance?
Not rocket science indeed.
No. I don’t believe that the Religious Right’s view that a clump of cells constitutes an American citizen whose rights supersede a pregnant adult American citizen.
If a ‘deal with the devil’ could be struck for the betterment of most Americans I still wouldn’t want to do it at the expense of the few.