And how many Republicans voted against her because of this? She didn’t need to state her views on Roe. Those veiws were well known.
Orthodoxy? That’s all the settled law of the land means to you? Just some manifestation of a political creed? That opposition to the law has the sounder basis, so much so that it’s barely an ideology at all?
The anti-Roe position is the activist, ideologically-driven one, seeking to overturn the long-settled law of the land, against precedent and for that matter against public will. Yet its defenders are the ideologues.
Contrary to your remarkable assertion, if the Democrats had pushed the defend-the-law position nearly as much as the anti-abortion zealots had pushed their activism, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would have been rejected out of hand.
[quote=Please show me where I’ve ever said otherwise.[/quote]
Right in the post I was responding to.
Well, that settles that, then.
It was, right up until you starting irresponsibly throwing around words like “rigid orthodoxy”, “hypocritical”, and “disingenuous”. Now clean up your act, please.
The point is that Republicans asked about abortion as much as Democrats did with Roberts and Alito. As to how many Republicans voted against her, I believe it was three. I am not entirely sure why more didn’t, but I doubt it was due to respect of the President’s perogative in nominating Justices. Afterall, it was the Republicans that started, or at least greatly increased the prevelence, of refusing to vote on Judicial nominees.
Is there any reason they can’t just ask about substantive due process directly? Would a nominee reasonably be able to say he couldn’t answer in the way he could when asked about specific cases? I can’t see that *Roe *is a good proxy for substantive due process, since you yourself admit it was poorly decided. I don’t think that’s what Feinstein et al have in mind when they use that as a litmus test-- I think they can’t accept that any other view regarding *Roe *is valid.
I’m not sure it really affects the ongoing debate, but I wish I could be so sanguine. If this Supreme Court overturned Roe, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the GOP-controlled Congress at least try to pass a law outlawing abortion nationally. And if they succeeded, I think they’d be one vote away from getting a Supreme Court that would uphold such a law.
I haven’t done the math, but aren’t there enough pro-choice Repblicans to prevent that from happening? But let’s say it did happen. How long do you think the GOP would maintain control of Congress? A significant majority of Americans want abortion to be legal in the 1st trimester. But right now that doesn’t get refelcted in Congress, because abortion law is determined largely in the realm of the judiciary.
I’m just waiting for a pro-choice Republican to vote pro-choice when it counts - like the cloture vote on Alito.
I keep on thinking that if the GOP does something bad enough, then people will have to vote for the Dems, no matter how lukewarm and wishywashy they may be. I keep on being disappointed.
You may be right, but I’d be most reluctant to stake the future of abortion rights on it.
The thing that amazes me about many people who call them selves pro-life are the first to vote for some one who tells them they are lowering taxes by cutting out social services for the poor. Most that I know do not mind the fact that many unborn, born, women and innocent men die when we go to war. They say war is justified and innocent people die, but it is an unintended death. How can there be a war without innocents dying or being maimed? We know when we go to war there is a great possibility of that happening.
I just heard it takes $48,000.00 to raise a child to adulthood. Are any of the pro life people willing to go without anything to help those families,or raise the chid them selves ?
I believe there are many pro choice people who are pro-life of the already born.
Monavis
I may be a whore, but I’ll promise to support SDP, penumbras, and emanations til the day I die if I actually got the Constitutional right mentioned above.
$48K? That’s so cute! I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more than that, and my kid is perfectly healthy and normal and only fourteen. I can’t imagine how much harder it is for people whose children have special needs of any kind.
Seriously, though… it does seem that an awful lot of people who want to ban abortion also want to decimate welfare, eliminate subsidized child care, and generally make it as difficult as possible for a woman to support her child. I can only assume that these people are sad that they missed the golden age of the orphanages.
I’m certain that the Emancipation Proclamation created such aggrievements. Most of them got over it.
I’m guessing that something would be worked out. People currently drive accross state lines to procure alcohol and other services, including the services of a prositute in Nevada, with little concern.
Probably true. However, to many it is not a religious issue. The central question[s] will always be: “When does [human] life begin?” and, “Is there a circumstance where there isn’t equal protection under the Law?”
I would add that on both sides of this, brilliance, rank stupidity,vagueness and specificity appear to be equally distributed.
I really doubt your premise. I’m hard pressed to believe a scenario that would allow a woman getting a [legal] abortion in NY to be prosecuted when she gets back home to ND. IANAL, but I think you’re building a straw man.
I agree with your premise however—those who are pro-life would see Roe overturned, at best, as a partial victory. I think many might actually see it as a loss----that it is much harder to fight the issue state by state, and impossible in states like NY and Cal.
I think they may actually be frightened by thr conclusion that, in the end, it is just a matter or state’s rights. Fighting one battle is hard enough—Fifty battles are unwinnable.
Rather than an issue of states rights, they’d rather see the [legal] conclusion drawn that life begins at conception and those embryos are humans, and should be protected under the law, ergo banned entirely.
I have no dog in this fight, but it is no more legitimate to characterize those who are pro-life as heartless, anti-child, anti-woman, and evil than it is for the pro-life crowd to characterize the pro-choice crowd as irresponsible, morally bankrupt, unrestrained, and evil.
It sure is fun though! :rolleyes:
It took a civil war (i.e. a military solution) to resolve that crisis. I’m not sure the abortion to slavery analogy is anything less than a complete worst case scenario.
But the motive for anti-abortion advocates for even asking that second question is a religious belief that life begins at conception and that this life must be protected.
The second paragraph was the scenario I was speculating about, not that a citizen of a state would be prosecuted in their home state for receiving an abortion elsewhere. A woman driving/flying between states to receive a legal abortion in another state would place her in interstate commerce, and thus under the power and authority of Congress. This would allow Congress to ban abortion either completely or merely restrict it to citizens of states where abortion is already legal.
Hopefully, there will be no civil wars. Still, as difficult as the transition could/would be, we’d get through it. We did alright before Roe; we’d survive without it.
This is not [entirely] true. The question as to whether a fetus is a human being is not just a religious question. It is a medical question, it is an intellectual question, it is a science question, it is a cultural question, it is a political question, it is a moral question and ultimately it is a legal question. Scott Peterson was convicted in secular environment for killing what was deemed to be an unborn child.
I don’t think so, but that remains to be seen if SD is successful. The woman is not practicicing interstate commerce best as I can tell. She’s a consumer. You trying to tell me that the men who visist the Bunny Ranch in Nevada to procure the services of a prositute can/are prosecuted when they go back home? I don’t see your fear seeing the light of day.
Unless they are those things, and it sure looks like it to me.
Some of will, some of us won’t. Consider a pregnant woman who dies because she can’t get medical care, because the hospital is terrified that if she miscarries they be shut down for “abortion”; she might disagree that things are “all right”. And no, it’s not a straw man; I understand it’s fairly common in Third World hospital dependent on American aid.
Perhaps, but it’s not a very hard question. Claiming that a fetus is a person not only leads to silly conclusions like claiming that tumors and the brain dead are legally human, it fundamentally denigrates humanity. A fetus is just a lump of mindless flesh; if you define it as a person, you proclaim that walking, talking people are no more important than so many lumps of flesh. Which is precisely the attitude that anti-abortion people seem to have towards the rest of us, in my experience.
Which was nothing but an attempt to chip away at abortion rights IMHO; no different than that judge who wears robes with the 10 Commandments on them.
How often are men prosecuted at all for visiting a prostitute, and where is it regarded as murder ? Even if your analogy holds, I can see a state doing what some areas have done with the customers of prostitutes; publish the photo and name of the “criminal”, possibly with an address. Then they can sit back while the anti abortionists harrass, assault or kill her.
Survival isn’t the question (err, aside from the status of the fetus). My original point in saying that perhaps it is best to let the Supreme Court decide the issue is that they have the ability to change their minds much easier than a legislative act by Congress. Even if the Court does change its mind, it can always change it back when a new administration and new members of the Court come in.
When life begins is both a medical and a religious question. In the absence of any clear answer from the medical community, however, it becomes a religious/moral question.
The Supreme Court has been extremely broad in defining Congress’ Commerce Clause powers. Currently, Congress can regulate:
1) the channels of commerce (roads, rivers, etc.),
2) the instrumentalities of commerce (cars, trains, trucks, boats, etc.), and
3) action that substantially affects interstate commerce
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995)
It is this third category where Congress gets a good deal of its power. For instance, the SC has ruled that Congress can regulate restaurants which get a substantial amount of their supplies by interstate transactions (Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964)), hotels catering to interstate guests (Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. U. S. , 379 U.S. 241 (1964)), and even a farmer who grows some wheat for their own personal consumption (since by growing it, the farmer is not buying the wheat from interstate producers) (Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)).
While the Rehnquist Court limited this power slightly (in Lopez) for the first time since the New Deal, the Commerce Clause powers are still extremely broad. It would be hard to believe that driving or flying out-of-state, thus purchasing a plane ticket or paying for gas, and then paying for an abortion and other medical expenses in a different state would NOT be seen as something that substantially affects interstate commerce.
It’s fun to fling poo, but there’s no denying that pro-life legislators, by and large, have voted against welfare programs and subsidized child care when the opportunity has arisen. Perhaps DianaG’s characterization that they missed the golden age of the orphanages was off-base, except I remember Newt Gingrich making a big deal, ca. 1995, about how they were great and should be brought back.
Feel free to provide evidence for the pro-choice crowd’s irresponsibility and moral bankruptcy.
This is a beautiful freshman civics texbook definition. It’ll get you an “A” on your first test and not much more.
Yeah, I’m sure the intent of the legislators in constructing this statute was to criminally prosecute all children under 17 who have sex…or make out.
And in what way is this a rebuttal of the point?
And in what way is this a rebuttal of the point?