See Op-ed cartoon by Ted Rall of Nov. 11, 2011 for his drawing of this – In particular, the 2nd panel.
That may be. But here’s the problem: If the legislature passes a new law, another legislature later can amend or repeal it. Or a court can whack it.
When “we the people” have an initiative and pass it, then it may (depending on how it was written) become part of the state constitution. Then the legislature can’t ever repeal it. (I’m not entirely sure how that works – maybe a 66% supermajority or something like that can.) For example, California is broke today in large part due to Proposition 13, passed by voter initiative in 1978 – and the legislature can’t do much about it.
When a proposition becomes part of the state constitution, maybe a court can still whack it, if it violates the United States Constitution, or maybe if it violated federal statues. (IANAL nor a politician – can somebody help me out here if I’ve got it all wrong?) But the legislature’s hand are tied pretty much forever.
What I’m reading is, the MS proposition in point here was to become part of the state constitution. If it’s like CA, that would have made it nigh untouchable.
We oppose it.
No. Subtle differences in the wording of a law, and differences in the legal systems in play, make a huge difference. A civil law jurisdiction and a common law jurisdiction would likely not end up treating identically worded laws identically.
Well, there’s your answer. Unless you’re now going to doubt that religion plays a role in politics.
We can’t know what effect a law will have until we pass it and see. Which is not a viable strategy. Therefore we must rely on analogous situations and on precepts, such as the precept that a legislature or populace will not pass laws to no effect, and the precept that the other branches of government will take the law’s intent into account when fact patterns the law covers come into play, so as to not subvert the will of the people.
Definition of a parasite:
An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.
Tell me how that does not describe an embryo/fetus. One of my complaints about the anti-abortion group is how they misuse words.
As for the miscarriage claim, the law is that any death not attended by a physician does have to be investigated. If a fetus is a person, then they certainly qualifies.
Back in the day of illegal abortion, any woman who went to the emergency room claiming a miscarriage had better had some fetal tissue in her. If not, the doctors were obligated to turn her over to the cops for questioning.