According to my Dad, whose parents were from OK, the term “Okie” is an insult.
That’s why abortion should be discouraged or encouraged, depending upon the socio-economic circumstances of the parent(s).
Tell that to Merle Haggard.
Heh. I guess “Oklahoman from Muskogee” doesn’t work too well, does it?
‘Pro-choice’ is perfectly good, and I think describes you. Pro-choice means you believe you can choose to give birth.
I call the other side ‘Anti-Choice’ because it is more accurate than ‘Pro-Life’ for their beliefs.
Don’t be a sucker…
They always pull this stuff during elections. Gay marriage, abortions, bathrooms, etc.
How many times in your life would anyone get an abortion or get married? 1/2 the population will NEVER get an abortion [men].
How many days of the week do you need a job and good economy which provides jobs?
(NOTICE they don’t like to talk about these real issues during elections? They try to change the subject!)
Approximately 1/3 of women get an abortion during their lifetimes, and for every abortion, a man was involved. Often married to the woman getting the abortion. They are not uncommon at all.
Not being able to obtain an abortion is a catastrophe for a woman. Women who seek out abortions and can’t get one are extremely likely to end up living in poverty surviving on government handouts- handouts the GOP keeps trying to get rid of. Or they try a DIY abortion in order to avoid this fate and therefore they may end up badly injured or dead. It’s a very important issue.
This describes these idiotic laws banning abortions after 19 or 20 weeks quite well. In a normal, wanted pregnancy, most women undergo an ultrasound at 20 weeks. This is when most severe fetal anomalies are discovered. Anomalies that are incompatible with life. Most couples faced with this situation choose to abort and start over with a new pregnancy. If these laws are in place, you have women being forced to carry severely malformed fetuses to term. Once born, they will die. And they will probably suffer a lot of pain or discomfort during their brief life. Unlike a 20 week old fetus, that is incapable of feeling pain.
That is not pro-life, that is just valuing birth.
kayaker:
I spent two days there last summer, and my experience was the exact opposite.
It seems silly that the President’s office is explicitly tasked with enforcing the law of the land, and yet he has no ability to enforce the Constitutional law of the land.
It seems like he should be able to arrest all of the people who voted for this as willfully attempting to break the law. It’s a clear slam-dunk that they have done so. The only problem being that there’s no actual crime which is “Passing a blatantly illegal law”.
Why, it’s almost as if their actual goal was to make life hard for women who get pregnant out of wedlock …
I am thinking to post the following to petitions.whitehouse.gov. Does anyone have any better phrasing? (I’m right at the character limit):
No matter how obvious it it, the court system still has to decide if a particular law is unconstitutional.
You can’t, and really shouldn’t want to, bypass the system.
The governor has vetoed the bill.
Well, well. Once in a while we get a Sensible Republican Idea Of The Day (or SRIOTD). Given what we’ve read about the gov’s strong pro-life / anti-abortion record, it seems that sensible critical thinking can sometimes still prevail.
Yes, it is a shame that Republicans are pro-life on abortion and not much else, and against social programs. It’s hard to see my fellow Catholics voting on that issue alone when Republicans cause so much other destruction. I guess I am a pro-life democrat or even (gasp) socialist. And at least in our state, Catholic Charities is one of the main providers of social services at all stages of life, pre- and post-birth.
Well, first of all, the person proposing your law would be the first victim of it: the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause expressly forbids the federal government from imposing any penalty whatsoever on a Congressman or Senator for the actions they take proposing laws.
And I’ll just point out that this does appear “expressly,” in the Constitution, as opposed to the right to an abortion, which is grounded in Constitutional guarantees but does not “expressly” appear in the Constitution.
So your proposal would ignore the actual written text of the Constitution to further your goal of protecting an unwritten, inferred Constitutional guarantee. If I were you, I’d think up another adjective to replace “expressly,” in your proposal.
Such a law at the state level would also have barred a state legislator from introducing measures aimed at ending segregation in the states, if those segregation measures were based on the state constitution.
And I believe all or virtually all state and territorial constitutions and organizing acts provide the same immunity of both penal and civil action to a state/territorial legislator for what they do or say in the process of their level of legislative work (even if it involves slandering someone on a floor speech for the record, or writing down a blatant lie among the “findings” of a report, it’s up to someone else in the legislative body to move to strike that and to the legislative body itself to censure the misconduct and discipline the member). If the proposal is unconstitutional it’s up to the check and balances structure to catch it and stop it.
Essentially it’s a rule so that the state does not get to arrest, nor the citizenry to sue a legislator who “violates the constitution” by proposing and voting for something that they think violates their preferred protection, be it privacy, keeping and bearing arms, unwarranted searches, establishment of religion, etc.
The counterbalance to that is that there is no legally enforceable “don’t be a troll/jerk” provision to it; so the Oklahoman representatives *were *likely thinking “oh sure, it’ll get shot down; but our voters will know where we stand when the primary rolls around, and by the time it makes it to court it will have had the chilling effect; that’s a win”.
You say that as though the courts are uninvolved in criminal prosecutions. There would be nothing to stop the representatives from pushing their side up to the Supreme Court, it would simply be government vs. government paying the bill.
Don’t the state legislators and senators have to take a vow to uphold the constitution? If they pass a blatantly unconstitutional law can they be impeached on the grounds they broke their vow?