from the Fourteenth Ammendment to the USA constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" would presumably apply to the mother. And in Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court held that this part applies to a woman seeking abortion: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States". The court believed that these "priveleges" and "immunities" included and implied a "right to privacy", which protected a woman getting an abortion, although the court admitted that "the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy." (section VIII of the ruling). It should be mentioned that this specific reasoning might not necessarily apply to an alleged right of abortion doctors to practice abortion. But the second part of the section in the constitutional ammendment also reads: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Obviously the law differentiates between "persons" and "citizens". Citizens have to be born, persons do not. That means that if a State provides protection to people under its laws (for example by making murder illegal), the law must also protect all "persons" equally. That is why supporters of abortion are so anxious to try to take away the personhood of this group of people who have not yet been born. In Roe versus Wade, the court held that: But with this line of reasoning, the court could have also defeated the whole original purpose of the Fourteenth Ammendment, and denied Blacks rights by questioning their personhood. The court also believed that: So the court apparently made a connection, asserting that the fetus has to have the capability to survive separated from the mother for the State to have the right to protect the fetus. And yet no real justification is given for this connection. It seems that the Supreme Court's ruling was not consistent with the Fourtheenth Ammendment, but rather relied on a plethora of outside legal history to justify abortion. If the personhood of the fetus can be denied, there is no fundamental legal reason why the personhood and rights of everyone else could not similarly be potentially denied.
You kind of screwed up there.....by your own interpretation of the 14th Amendment.....those protections would appy to those the Amendment names are covered by them.... "All persons born..."
BTW, you lost 40 years ago....you've lost ever since....and you're going to keep losing. churchmouse can drag up every poll showing "61% of Americans say they are pro-life"....but there is NOT ONE legitimate poll that shows that Americans want to make abortion totally illegal again as you want. Not one.
This post is the end of the thread. The language is plain and clear in the amendment itself. If it wasn't, the pro-life movement would have already seized upon this, and very likely could have achieved some victories with it. As it stands, the third word of the amendment clearly divides pre-birth from post-birth.
Good post. The Supreme Court basically admitted that its own ruling on Roe v. Wade was arbitrary. If no definition of "person" is given in the Fourteenth Amendment, then there is nothing to concretely define a person as "beginning at viability." In fact, the ruling essentially says that a person can be defined as simply however the current sitting justices view the matter. Which means there is nothing other than public opinion to stop them from ruling that any group of adults is not human either. Welcome to Nazi Germany.
Anders cited the 14th Amendment, which clearly says it extends protections to.. "All persons born..." By what stretch of the imagination do you consider this a "good post" for yours and his viewpoint?!?!?
The unborn might not be citizens, but the law says that the State cannot deprive any person of life, not "any citizen". It also says that any person cannot be denied equal protection of the laws. Obviously a person cannot have been born without having existed prior to the birth.
The Court also stated in its ruling: Looks like the court has trying to have the best of both worlds, asserting that the unborn are not persons, but that they are "potential life" which can, if the State so chooses, override the rights of the mother when they can survive outside of the womb. I do not understand how they can view an unborn baby as just a "potential life" the moment before birth. It seems like absurd legal logic they used to try to justify their position on the isssue. Admitting an unborn human could be a person would have been very inconvenient for them, in light of the Fourteenth Ammendment. Yet they also did not want to allow unborn babies to be killed in the eighth month of life.
As has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions, though I am starting to suspect you really couldn't careless about the facts, one of the important parts of this is at the moment the point of viability is set at 24 weeks, and, again, as you well know abortion, apart from for medical reasons, is illegal after 24 weeks in almost all countries where abortion is legal. I've already given you figures on another thread that 75% of preterm babies born die within a very short time, of the rest most have some sort of disability ranging from severe to slight. Just because you can't see the reasons why the law is the way it is doesn't make it wrong . .well it does to you, but you are not a trained lawyer or doctor are you so all you have is an opinion based on your own assumptions.
No. But the Supreme Court sabotaged its own ruling in the opinion they wrote. No logical impartial person would be able to make sense of their reasoning.
Seems OK to me. A fetus does not have the same rights as a born person. Pretty cut & dry if you ask me.
Shouldn't be too difficult, as there is no specific law actually guaranteeing the right to an abortion.
Not exactly, but it is also unconstitutional to make it illegal. That's why some states can get away with absurd limitation or intentionally invasive and unnecessary medical procedures (which you appear to be in favor of based on your other thread), but no state can outright ban it. If something is not specifically illegal, than it is legal. If there is no law against it, there does not need to be a law for it in order for people to be able to do it.
If the argument was really that simple, then the lifers would have taken it to court and abortion would be illegal. So why isn't it?
No, not true at all. The pro-abortion majority on the Supreme Court was just grasping at straws. The passing of laws to ban abortion is not specifically against the law. It has merely become against court precedent. Not the same thing. There is already a law against murder. So there really does not have to be a law specifically made against abortion to prosecute those who commit it.
Doesn't matter what your opinion of them or their decision is, their court ruling effectively makes it unconstitutional to make abortion outright illegal. And if someone did try to pass a law that made abortion illegal, all the people challenging it would have to do is point to Roe V Wade and that law would be overturned. Well, yeah you do, because abortion isn't murder. You really think you're the first person to think of that strategy?
Let us have a look at the Supreme court judges when Roe vs Wade was decided Chief Justice - Warren E. Burger - Republican - Voted in Favor Associate Justices William O. Douglas - Democrat - Voted in favor William J. Brennan, Jr. - Democrat - Voted in favor Potter Stewart - Republican - Voted in favor Byron White - Republican - Voted against Thurgood Marshall - Democrat - Voted in favor Harry Blackmun - Republican - Voted in favor Lewis F. Powell, Jr. - Moderate-to-Liberal - Voted in favor William Rehnquist - Republican - Voted against So at the time of Roe, there were 5 Republican Judges (Including the Chief Justice), 4 Democrat Judges & 1 Moderate. IF the Republican judges had voted as per party politics the vote would have been tied, why do you think they didn't vote that way, could it be that they made the decision based on the evidence before them?
That is not really true. There are still state laws on the books making abortion illegal. Someone could theoretically still be prosecuted in a State court under these laws, though I doubt there are State judges who would take on the case or issue a warrant. And the Supreme Court basically only has as much power as the laws allow them to have. Although there are all sorts of laws that have been passed that give them a huge amount of arbitrary discretionary power. One of the peculiar things about a court is that they can essentially choose to not punish something that is illegal, or conversely, they can effectively criminalize something that is not actually illegal.
Dredging up a two year old thread again I see As usual you are wrong, state law does not over rule federal law, what Roe did was basically make all of these state laws banning abortion unenforceable ergo they are moot laws, they mean nothing and no state could EVER hope to get a conviction from them. Abortion does not just rely on the privacy issue found in the 14th amendment .. the argument has moved on a long way since 1973. There is no "arbitrary discretionary power" when it comes to the equal protection clause, due process, consent laws and self-defence laws. Name something that they "essentially choose to not punish" even though it is illegal .. you seem to forget that in the absence of a law stopping something it is legal, it is not until a law is passed stopping something does it become illegal. Oh and as you have decided to resurrect this thread, perhaps you would answer the following that was in response to your assertion Let us have a look at the Supreme court judges when Roe vs Wade was decided Chief Justice - Warren E. Burger - Republican - Voted in Favor Associate Justices William O. Douglas - Democrat - Voted in favor William J. Brennan, Jr. - Democrat - Voted in favor Potter Stewart - Republican - Voted in favor Byron White - Republican - Voted against Thurgood Marshall - Democrat - Voted in favor Harry Blackmun - Republican - Voted in favor Lewis F. Powell, Jr. - Moderate-to-Liberal - Voted in favor William Rehnquist - Republican - Voted against So at the time of Roe, there were 5 Republican Judges (Including the Chief Justice), 4 Democrat Judges & 1 Moderate. IF the Republican judges had voted as per party politics the vote would have been tied, why do you think they didn't vote that way, could it be that they made the decision based on the evidence before them?
There is no federal law explicitly stating that women have a right to an abortion. There are, however, other broad federal laws that give the federal courts a tremendous amount of discretionary powers, from which basically derives their ability to enforce a ruling. Whether the use of these broad discretionary powers (and the laws themselves which delegate this power) are constitutionally appropriate, is a question open to debate. basically correct There is what the laws and Constitution say, and then there is how things work in practice. One can only speculate what might happen if a State court did not choose to follow a Supreme Court ruling, probably it would result in something similar to Brown v. Board of Education.
There are federal laws that do not allow the states to place an undue burden on the woman's right to abortion. The undue burden standard is a constitutional test fashioned by the Supreme Court of the United States. The test, first developed in the late 19th century, is widely used in American constitutional law. In short, the Undue Burden standard states that the Legislature cannot make a particular law that is too burdensome or restrictive of one's fundamental rights. Abortion falls under this, and as such is seen as a fundamental right. There is little that is broad about the equal protection clause, consent laws and self-defence laws. I hope they do, makes it all the easier to have abortion legal at any time, for any reason and the state paying for it
Pro-lifers have the right to force their views on someone to prevent that person from forcing their views on someone else. It's really not that different than the issue of slavery was, in this regard. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed to ban slavery by preventing people from being excluded from the equal protection of the laws. People back then recognised that certain classes of people were being denied basic human rights. Unfortunately, this has not been enough to stop abortion. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court had denied the rights of Blacks by finding that they were not 'citizens'. 116 year later the Supreme Court sidestepped the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, denying the rights of the unborn by finding that they were not 'people'. The fact that the court in Roe v. Wade not only used the Fourteenth Amendment to justify their opinion, but also denied its equal application to the unborn has incredible irony.
