'I was born out of
wedlock (and against the advice that my mother received from her doctor) and
therefore abortion is a personal issue for me. If one accepts the
position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it
as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That
was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or
treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore
outside of your right to be concerned. What happens to the mind of a
person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life
of a baby without a pang of conscience?'
- Reverend Jesse Jackson, How
We Respect Life Is The Overriding Moral Issue, Right to Life
News, January 1977
In
Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), Chief Justice Roger Taney
wrote that slaves could be moved across state lines, were the individual property
of their owners regardless of the state in which the latter moved the former,
and that blacks were not citizens under the Constitution. The despicable
Taney wrote:
'[Negroes were to be] regarded as being of an inferior order and
altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior that
they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'
These
were not persons, according to the Court, but property...and the Constitution,
allegedly, recognised an individual right to own slaves.
Both
assertions were demonstrably untrue and, frankly, evil.
In
Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), in a 7-2 decision, Justice Harry
Blackmun writing for the majority found an individual right to terminate a
pregnancy because the unborn are not 'people' under the Constitution and women
have a right to nearly inviolable rights to do with their bodies (property) as
they see fit...although such reasoning does not transfer to the right of any
person to sell an organ. Moreover, the majority ruled that the Texas
statute at issue, which had been on the books for more than a century and made
abortion a crime except where 'procured or attempted by medical advice for the
purpose of saving the life of the mother,' violated the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. For the record, the Due Process of the Fourteenth
Amendment provides that no state shall 'deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law.' Obviously, that irony was lost on
the 7 Supreme Court Justices in the majority.
That
is fundamentally the same decision that the Court made in Roe when it
held that the unborn child had no rights we were bound to respect; that life in
the womb could be snuffed out by someone else's choice.
So,
let's see if I have this straight:
On
the one hand, a kidney is NOT
property and NO ONE,
including women, have a right to dispose of it as they see fit without
government permission. Let the record reflect that a kidney does not have
a heartbeat or its own DNA.
On
the other hand, a foetus is relegated to the property of a woman and she can
destroy it without government permission. Let the record reflect the fact
that a foetus not only has a heartbeat and its own DNA, it has a face, fingers,
and feet. A wart it is not. A kidney it is not. A 'collection
of cells' it is not. Furthermore, it is no more the 'product of
conception' than the billions of people that have been born and inhabited this
planet.
Of course Roe does not condemn millions to a lifetime of slavery, but rather to no life at all -- or, if one prefers, termination. (Euphemism is the first sign that an advocate feels queasy about what she's really advocating.)
As
Ed Whelan said in his testimony before Congress, 'Roe v Wade marks the
second time in American history that the Supreme Court has invoked 'substantive
due process' to deny American citizens the authority to protect the basic
rights of an entire class of human beings. The first time, of course, was the
Court’s infamous 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case.
The
Court in Roe devised the now famous, infamous, and not exactly
scientifically sound trimester system. The majority opinion broke down a
pregnancy as follows:
‘(a) For the stage prior to
approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its
effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s
attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to
approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its
interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion
procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to
viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human
life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it
is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life
or health of the mother.’
-
Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. at 164-165 (1973)
In
Planned Parenthood v Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), the Court rejected the
trimester system saying '[w]e reject the trimester framework, which we do not
consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe, which in all
actuality can result in even more abortions even though the Court upheld
‘reasonable restrictions,’ such as parental notification, mandatory waiting
periods, maternal informed consent, and bans at viability. Casey,
however, would also allow abortion on demand at any time of a woman’s
pregnancy, including the date on which she is due, which is what Governor Cuomo
attempted in his ‘women’s health and equality’ legislation recently. To
get an idea of how radical this stance is, Cuomo’s proposed legislation
couldn’t even get passed by the legislature of his very blue state. Nevertheless,
let it be firmly understood that Casey drops the pretence used by the Roe
Court and drew the legal reasoning behind ‘choice’ ever more closer to Dred
Scott…and Plessy v Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), for that matter.
The
Court scuttlebutt has long been that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the
majority (5/4) opinion in Casey, was ‘this close’ to joining the 4
dissenting justices in voting to overturn Roe. Interestingly, in
attempting to thread the needle, he actually move both the Court and the holding
in Roe nearer to the Taney and Fuller Courts, which were behind two of
the most obviously despicable and constitutionally untenable decisions ever
rendered by the highest court in the land: Dred Scott and Plessy.
Now,
one may assume that I am somewhat 'out there' pointing out the eerie
similarities between Roe and Dred Scott, but I am far from alone
nor is such an observation made by only 'right-wing, extremist loons.'
'One
of the most curious things about Roe, is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen,
the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.'
-
Laurence Tribe, liberal Harvard Law professor,
87
Harvard Law Review 1, 7 (1973)
'The
failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like
a set of hospital rules and regulations. Neither historian, nor layman, nor
lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are
part of the Constitution.'
-
Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor and Watergate special counsel, The Role
of the Supreme Court in American Government, Oxford University Press, 1976
'[Roe
v Wade and Bush v Gore*] represent opposite sides of the same currency of
judicial activism in areas more appropriately left to the political
processes. Judges have no special competency, qualifications or mandate
to decide between equally compelling moral claims, as in the abortion
controversy. Clear governing constitutional principles are not present in
either case.'
-
Alan Dershowitz, professor of law, Harvard Law School
'Blackmun’s
[Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach,
arbitrariness, textual indifference.'
-
William Saletan, Unbecoming Justice Blackmun, Legal
Affairs, May/June 2005.
'I
dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to
support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new
constitutional right for pregnant mothers. As an exercise of raw judicial
power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my
view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of
judicial review....'
-Justice
Byron White dissenting in Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton, 22 January
1973
'As
a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on
the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to
choose, as someone who believes such a right was granted elsewhere in the
Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe's
author like a grandfather. Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no
reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe’s announcement,
no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.'
-
Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun,
The Lingering Problems with Roe v Wade, and Why the
Recent Senate Hearings on Michael McConnell’s Nomination Only Underlined Them,
FindLaw Legal Commentary, 3 October 2002
'What
is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded … a protection
more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords
the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is
frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from
the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific
problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they
included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in
terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected
vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I
believe … is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of
the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the
values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial,
even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so
obviously lacking.
[Roe
is] bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives
almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.'
-
John Hart Ely, The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v Wade, 82 Yale
Law Journal 920, 935-937
'Whatever
the case, the very basis of the Roe v Wade decision -- the one that grounds
abortion rights in the Constitution -- strikes many people now as faintly
ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of
privacy. Abortion is a different matter. It entails so much more than
mere birth control -- issues that have roiled the country ever since the Roe
decision was handed down in 1973 -- and so much more than mere privacy. As a
layman, it's hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the
decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding
of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many
people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science.
Roe , with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it,
and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers. I'm
pro-choice, I repeat -- but it would relieve us all from having to defend a
Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than
argument. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say
for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the
argument -- but a bit of our soul as well.'
-
Richard Cohen, Support Choice, Not Roe, The Washington
Post, 20 October 2005
'Roe,
I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not
gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the court. Heavy-handed
judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked,
not resolved, conflict.'
-
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
'I
generally favor permissive abortion laws. And despite my lack of enthusiasm for
Roe, I wouldn't favor overturning the decision as a jurisprudential matter. A
generation of women has grown up thinking of reproductive freedom as a
constitutional right, and the Court should not casually take away rights that
it has determined the Constitution guarantees. Stability in law—particularly
constitutional law—is critically important; the Supreme Court would do well to
remember that. Still, the liberal commitment to Roe has been deeply
unhealthy—for American democracy, for liberalism, and even for the cause of
abortion rights itself.
Since
its inception Roe has had a deep legitimacy problem, stemming from its weakness
as a legal opinion. Conservatives who fulminate that the Court made up the
right to abortion, which appears explicitly nowhere in the Constitution, are
being simplistic—but they're not entirely wrong. In the years since the
decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to
an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship
notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky; abortion
policy is a question that the Constitution—even broadly construed—cannot
convincingly be read to resolve.
You
might say ' Hang on a second. This is a constitutional right at stake. You
don't argue that blacks should place their civil rights at the mercy of the
majority. Why should women? Isn't fighting for fundamental rights a matter of
principle?'
Indeed
it would be, if the right to abortion — like minority civil and voting rights —
were unambiguously protected by the Constitution. But let's be frank: it isn't.
The right to abortion remains a highly debatable proposition, both
jurisprudentially and morally. The mere fact that liberals have to devote so
much political energy to pretending that the right exists beyond democratic
debate proves that it doesn't.
Lots
of fundamental rights are protected by legal authorities other than the
Constitution. For instance, the right not to be fired by a private employer
because of one's race or religion is statutory, not constitutional. The right
to abortion is in no way degraded by the fact that state laws may prove the
best means of guaranteeing it. That simply reflects the absence of a national
consensus about whether the right exists and, if so, what its limits should
be.’
-
Benjamin Wittes, editorial writer at The Washington Post and the author
of Starr: A Reassessment (2002), Letting Go of Roe, 1 January 2005
'[I]t
is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of
constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be
hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who
support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will
embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a
constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its
fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.'
-
Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
'The
opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and
unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention
of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process
the opinion simply fails to convince.'
-
Joseph W Dellapenna, Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law
'In
the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of
rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too
quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states
to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of
judges.'
-
Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor and Felix Frankfurter
Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
'We
all pick up tabs (being referred to as the 'author of the abortion decision').
I'll carry this one to my grave.'
-
Justice Harry Blackmun, interview with the Associate Press, 1983
All
of the above are/were pro-choice.
As
Paul Greenberg succinctly wrote in his comparison of Dred Scott and Roe:
'Yes, there might still be some who didn't approve of slavery,
and perhaps even demonstrated against it, but suppose they were outnumbered by
far? Not necessarily by fervent disciples of human slavery, but by the mass of
citizens who felt uneasy when the subject came up. These Americans might never
own a slave themselves, but they wouldn't want to interfere with another
citizen's right to own one. It was a free country, wasn't it? So
inflammatory an issue, so personal a choice, it would be explained, should be
left to individual conscience, not dictated by an all-knowing state. For Dred
Scott would have made it clear that slaves were only property, chattel, and as
devoid of human rights as, well, as the human fetus today. Any scientific
evidence to the contrary would be swept aside in favor of the citizen's right
to choose.'
At
its core, this issue is one of whether there are really rights to 'life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' or, if those 'rights' can be trumped by
the decision of another because of 'choice.' In his concurring
opinion in Roe, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote:
'Plainly, the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution
requires abortion on demand.'
But,
if abortion is the equivalent of contraception, a foetus has no constitutional
protections, and a woman has an inviolable right to control her body, then why
shouldn’t abortion on demand be a constitutional right? Why did the Court
in Roe hold back? Is it possible that not even the 7 justices in
the majority believed that a foetus was nothing more than just a ‘potential
human life,’ which was the sophistic foundation upon which they constructed
their incoherent, inconsistent, and schizophrenic House of Roe?
I
understand fully the physical, emotional, and financial burdens and demands
that pregnancy and motherhood place on a woman. I understand the
socio-economic factors. I understand that an unwanted pregnancy can
disrupt a life plan. I understand that principled, rational and even
moral people can disagree. Yes, I really do understand all of
these. Yet, none is a sufficient rebuttal.
Convenience
is not a legal basis or defence. If it were, then murdering the one's
spouse would be legal since becoming a widow(er) is much preferable financially
than is a pricey divorce.
Emotion
cannot be justification for ending a human life. If it were, then
murdering the man, who violently sodomised your 3 year-old would be legal.
Disruption of one's life plan cannot be cause to kill another for, if it were, then a teacher, who gave one a failing grade, the boss, who refused to promote, or the banker, who turned down a loan, would all be fair game.
Fair-minded disagreement cannot justify abortion either. If it could, then there would be no crime in calling a 4 week-old baby a 'foetus' and murdering it.
Do we really want to allow an individual's whims to decide whether a 'thing' is human or property in the hands? Isn't that what differentiated a slave owner from an abolitionist?
When
the only difference standing between a 7th month-old foetus' life and death is
the decision of its mother, how can we argue that life is precious and life is
not a subjective concept?
How can we argue with a straight face that a wanted pregnancy is
a ‘healthy and natural’ experience, as was once argued by Dr Bernard Nathanson, a pioneer in
the abortion rights movement, the founder of NARAL, and abortionist before he
renounced abortion and became a force to be reckoned with as a champion of
life, but an unwanted pregnancy is a disease
necessitating medical intervention to terminate it under the banner of ‘women’s
health’?
When
we permit the sole factor in the determination of what is life to be whether
its mum is an exuberant woman anxiously awaiting the birth of her unborn baby
or a woman, whose sole goal is to rid herself of her
property, her ‘foetus’ as soon as possible, do we not diminish
human life?
What's
the difference between a viable, but unborn child, and the sick or aged, who
can no longer care for themselves?
Can
we not opine that neither is very useful to society and, indeed, place a burden
on it?
Can
we not argue that our 90 year-old grandfathers with Alzheimer's are
inconvenient, an emotional drain, who impose physical and financial burdens
that disrupt our life plans?
Seriously,
to paraphrase a certain Secretary of State, what difference, at that point,
would it make that he has been born and the foetus hasn't?
Are
not the arguments for ending either life the same?
If the government were to require women to carry a tumour or other bodily growth, that would be a form of slavery; however, that is not the case with abortion. As I noted above, a foetus is quite different than any other 'growth' that may develop on or in the body. Unlike, say, a fibroid, a foetus is a human being in early development. In fact, many states like California, the unlawful killing of a foetus, with malice aforethought, is murder (See California Penal Code §187) and, in cases like that of Danny Ray Poplin, Jr, where the mother survived and only the 'foetus' was killed, it is FIRST-DEGREE MURDER and carries a 50-year to life sentence.
How
does it make sense that any action taken by another to cause a woman to
miscarry her foetus can be an ‘unjust and unlawful taking of human life’ to
such a degree that it constitutes first-degree murder, but that same foetus,
which, as indicated, would otherwise be considered a human life in any other
situation, is not classified as a human life if the woman carrying it decides
to kill it? One doesn’t have to be an advocate of criminally punishing
the mother to point out the absurdity and the apparent desire to willfully
suspend disbelief in the notion that some sort of physical, chemical,
biological, emotional, or spiritual event occurs that changes a ‘foetal human
life’ into just a ‘foetus’ that can be destroyed because its mother has made a
‘choice.’ I’ve heard of ‘magic vaginas,’ but I must admit – and, I am far
from some country bumpkin unschooled in the ways of the world – that I’ve never
heard of a ‘magic uterus’ that can change one thing into another simply based
upon the whims of the woman whose organ it is.
I
don’t know, but maybe the Left could consult with these uteri and their
Womb-a-Matic Magic Wands™ can cause money to grow on trees. Most
certainly, we are going to need some manna from sexual organ heaven to fund the
ever-expanding welfare state and overall government, along with paying off the
$17 trillion and growing national debt, considering the fact that the fertility
rate of the United States has almost reached the level of parity with Europe,
which decided several decades ago to commit suicide-by-demographics.
'In
1972, even as Roe was under consideration by the Supreme Court,' as
Ramesh Ponnuru observed in his book The Party of Death: The Democrats, the
Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, 'the Massachusetts
House by a landslide vote of 178 to 46 passed a measure that would have
bestowed the full legal rights of children on foetuses from the moment of
conception.'
Imagine
that. One the eve of the worst decision since Dred Scott where
Justice Blackmun equated abortion with contraception, which it most certainly
is not, the very liberal state of Massachusetts was on the verge of 'awarding'
full legal rights to unborn children of any age. The liberals of the deep
blue Bay State didn’t resort to schizophrenic pretzelisation in a quest to argue
that all unborn children are equal, but some are more equal than others.
No, they recognized that the foetus in the womb was an unborn child
deserving of dignity, recognition, and constitutional protections. I
believe that Teddy Kennedy will be ice-skating on the Rivers Styx and Kokytos
before we ever see Massachusetts liberals argue that the unborn deserve, at
minimum, what they demand for Mumia Abu Jamal.
There is no need to invoke religion in the abortion argument because science and technology are quite sufficient on which to base the fundamental question of 'Who gets to decide whether a human life should be ended without due process of law?'
Suppose
Dred Scott had remained as entrenched, even as celebrated, as Roe v
Wade is today?
I
mean, if it were 'safe, legal, and rare...' /
'Another area that
concerns me greatly, namely because I know how it has been used with regard to
race, is the psycholinguistics involved in this whole issue of abortion. If
something can be dehumanized through the rhetoric used to describe it, then the
major battle has been won. … Those advocates of taking life prior to birth do
not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. They further never talk
about aborting a baby because that would imply something human. Rather they
talk about aborting the fetus. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore can
be justified.'
- Reverend Jesse Jackson,
How
We Respect Life Is The Overriding Moral Issue, Right to Life
News, January 1977
UPDATE
1:
If
you think Texas' law is extreme, see how the secular, social democracies in Europe and elsewhere treat abortion and...
UPDATE 2:
The
following was entered into the Congressional Record as Senate Testimony by
Edward Whelan on Roe v Wade, 22 June 2005:
The
defects of Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe are manifest and
legion. A brief review of lowlights is nonetheless warranted:
- Blackmun’s rambling world-history tour of “man’s attitudes toward the abortion procedure over the centuries,” 410 U.S. at 117, wanders from the ancient Persian Empire to the position of the American Public Health Association in 1970 and of the American Bar Association in 1972. Yet, even apart from how unreliable and misleading Blackmun’s tour has been shown to be, it fails to address squarely the most relevant history—the state of abortion regulation at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. As then-Justice Rehnquist’s dissent points out, as of 1868 “there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion,” including the Texas statute the Court struck down in Roe. See 410 U.S. at 174-175 & n. 1.
- Blackmun’s opinion modestly states:
‘We need not resolve the
difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective
disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any
consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is
not in a position to speculate as to the answer.’ 410 U.S. at 159.
But
while feigning not to decide the question of when a human life begins—a
question that is in fact rather simple as a matter of biology—the Court in
essence ruled illegitimate any legislative determination that unborn human
beings are deserving of protection from abortion.
- A critical step in Roe is the bare assertion, unsupported by any argument or authority, that the “right of privacy” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” 410 U.S. at 153.
- In explaining the abortion regime that he was inventing, Blackmun stated:
‘This holding, we feel,
is consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved,
with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of
the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present
day.’ 410
U.S. at 165.
This language openly
reveals that Roe is a policymaker’s balancing of considerations, not an
authentic judicial interpretation of the Constitution.’
UPDATE 3:
Dispelling
the myth furthered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other abortion
advocates that states were moving in the direction of legalising abortion in
all cases, Russell Hittinger has summarised the actual state of play in the
years just before Roe and his data proves that the Americans public and
their elected leaders did not look at unborn children as 'collections of cells'
or 'products of conception.'
The
following is from Ramesh Ponnuru's book The Party of Death: The Democrats,
the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life:
In 1963, Alan Guttmacher admitted that any change in the
abortion laws that suggested the non-humanity of the fetus would ‘be voted down
by the body politic.’
In
1967, 'reform' measures, usually concerning therapeutic exceptions, were turned
aside in Arizona, Georgia, New York, Indiana, North Dakota, New Mexico, [and]
Nebraska... In 1969, such bills failed to emerge from committee in Iowa and
Minnesota, and were defeated outright in Nevada and Illinois. In 1970,
exceptions based on therapeutic reasons were defeated in Vermont and
Massachusetts.
The
facts bear him out.
In 1971, on the eve of Roe v Wade, repeal bills were voted down in Montana, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado, Massachusetts ... Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Ohio, and North Dakota. In 1972, even as Roe was under consideration by the Supreme Court, 'the Massachusetts House by a landslide vote of 178 to 46 passed a measure that would have bestowed the full legal rights of children on foetuses from the moment of conception. At the same time, the supreme courts of South Dakota and Missouri upheld their states' anti-abortion laws. It was surely telling that during the very month that Justice Blackmun finished the draft of his Roe opinion, 61% of the voters in Michigan and 77% in North Dakota by referenda voted down repeal.
To
be sure, reformers and repealers won a few legislative victories prior to Roe.
In 1967, Colorado liberalised its law, but it placed restrictions on abortion
that were much more severe than anything permitted by post-Roe Federal
courts. Reform legislation also passed in North Carolina [1967], but with
the rejection of mental health exceptions. California [1967], Georgia
[1968], and South Carolina [1970] changed, but did not repeal, their abortion
laws. The two most significant legislative victories for the repealers
took place in 1970 in New York and Hawaii. These victories, however, were
narrow and contentious, and did not approximate the percentage of pro-life
victories in other states at the same time. At the time of Roe,
there was evidence that the tide of opinion in New York had shifted back
towards laws protecting the unborn.
Russell Hittinger, Abortion Before Roe, First Things, October 1994, pp 14-15. Hittinger's account is drawn from David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality (University of California Press, 1998), esp pp 316-19, 325, 329, 347-48, 370-71, 412, 483, 496, 544-47, 566-67, 577.
Russell Hittinger, Abortion Before Roe, First Things, October 1994, pp 14-15. Hittinger's account is drawn from David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality (University of California Press, 1998), esp pp 316-19, 325, 329, 347-48, 370-71, 412, 483, 496, 544-47, 566-67, 577.
UPDATE 4:
I
thought that it would be interesting to look at some well-known Democrats and
their old stances on abortion, along with letting the radicalism of one Senator
Barbara Boxer speak for itself and put an exclamation point on the ending of
this post…
'While the deep concern of a woman bearing an
unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling
that the legalisation of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value
which our civilisation places on human life... When history looks back to this
era it should recognise this generation as one which cared about human beings
enough to halt the practise of war, to provide a decent living for every family
and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of
conception.'
- Senator Edward Kennedy,
1971
'I am opposed to abortion
and to government funding of abortions.'
- Governor Bill Clinton,
1986
In
1984, Congressman Albert Gore, Jr, voted for
the Civil Rights Act of 1984, which would have 'protected unborn children from
the moment of conception,' as he described it. This vote
was one of several that Gore cast for the pro-life position.
Not
that he would probably admit it, but Joe
Biden once voted to amend the Constitution in order to reverse Roe
v Wade.
In
1977, former Speaker Dick Gephardt
co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, which he called
'unjust.'
'[Republicans have] been successful at
painting the view of the pro-choice movement as abortion on demand - and
nothing could be farther from the truth.’
-
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrats Weigh De-emphasizing
Abortion as an Issue, The New York Times, 24 December 2004
'All these issues that put us into the
extreme and not the mainstream really hurt us with the heartland of the
country. Even I have trouble explaining to my family that we are not
about killing babies.’
-
Donna Brazile, campaign manager of Gore's 2000 campaign, Democrats Weigh De-emphasizing
Abortion as an Issue, The New York Times, 24 December 2004
'I personally don't think that we
should have late-term abortions or partial-birth abortions. I think
that's a moral blind spot.'
-
Congressman Timothy J Roemer (D-IN), former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of
India and one-time candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee,
who was backed by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid
'As a social liberal party with
economic liberal and economic conservative wings, the Democrats are doomed to
perpetual minority status. As an economic liberal party with social
conservative and social liberal wings, the Democrats might have a chance...
Between 1968 and 2004, the Democrats went from dominating US government at all
levels to being the minority party at all levels. Their 36 year downfall
was a direct result of the fact that they define themselves by social
liberalism... Social liberals can be the minority in a majority party. Or
social liberals can be the minority in a majority party. But social
liberals can't be the majority in a majority party - not in the United States,
not in the foreseeable future. There just aren't enough social liberals
in the American electorate.'
-
Michael Lind, The Only Way That Democrats Can
Regain A Majority, Talking Points Memo and The New Republic, 8
August 2005
Senator Dick Durbin
used to claim that he served as the 'Master of Ceremony' five times at the
annual pro-life rallies held at the State of Illinois' capitol in
Springfield. He voted in favour of
amending the Constitution to overturn Roe and
maintained that abortion should be illegal and the landmark abortion case be
overturned throughout the 1980s.
In
October of 1999, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was on the Senate
floor expounding the virtues of and need for a ban on partial-birth abortion.
What follows is the colloquy between Senators Santorum and Barbara Boxer that
developed when Santorum just wanted an answer to the question of when a baby is
'born.'
Mr SANTORUM:
I think the Senator
from California would say that she and I, the Senator from Illinois, the
Senators from Arkansas and Kansas, we are all protected by the Constitution
with the right to life.
Would
you agree with that, Senator from California? Do you answer that question?
Mrs BOXER: I support the Roe
v. Wade decision.
Mr SANTORUM: Do
you agree any child who is born has the right to life, is protected by the
Constitution once that child is born?
Mrs BOXER: I agree with
the Roe v. Wade decision, and what you are doing goes against it and
will harm the women of this country. And I will address that when I get the
floor.
Mr SANTORUM: But I would
like to ask you this question. You agree, once the child is born, separated
from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be
killed? Do you agree with that?
Mrs BOXER: I
would make this statement. That this Constitution as it currently is–some want
to amend it to say life begins at conception. I think when you bring your baby
home, when your baby is born–and there is no such thing as partial-birth–the
baby belongs to your family and has the rights. But I am not willing to amend
the Constitution to say that a fetus is a person, which I know you would. But
we will get to that later. . . .
I
think what my friend is doing, by asking me these questions, is off point. My
friend wants to tell the doctors in this country what to do. My friend from
Pennsylvania says they are rogue doctors. The AMA will tell you they no longer
support the bill. The American Nurses don’t support the bill. The obstetricians
and gynecologists don’t support the bill. So my friend can ask me my philosophy
all day; on my own time I will talk about it.
Mr SANTORUM: If
I may reclaim my time, first of all, the AMA still believes this is bad
medicine. They do not support the criminal penalties provisions in this bill,
but they still believe–I think you know that to be the case–this procedure is
not medically necessary, and they stand by that statement.
I
ask the Senator from California, again, you believe–you said “once the baby
comes home.” Obviously, you don’t mean they have to take the baby out of the
hospital for it to be protected by the Constitution. Once the baby is separated
from the mother, you would agree–completely separated from the mother–you would
agree that baby is entitled to constitutional protection?
Mrs BOXER: I
will tell you why I don’t want to engage in this. You had the same conversation
with a colleague of mine, and I never saw such a twisting of his remarks.
Mr SANTORUM: Let me be
clear, then. Let’s try to be clear.
Mrs BOXER:
I am going to
be clear when I get the floor. What you are trying to do is take away the
rights of women and their families and their doctors to have a procedure. And
now you are trying to turn the question into, When does life begin? I will talk
about that on my own time.
[.
. .]
Mr SANTORUM: Once
the baby is born, is completely separated from the mother, you will support
that that baby has, in fact, the right to life and cannot be killed? You accept
that; right?
Mrs BOXER:
I don’t believe
in killing any human being. That is absolutely correct. Nor do you, I am sure.
Mr SANTORUM: So you would accept
the fact that once the baby is separated from the mother, that baby cannot be
killed?
[.
. .]
Mrs BOXER: Define
“separation.” You answer that question.
Mr SANTORUM: Let’s define
that. Let’s say the baby is completely separated; in other words, no part of
the baby is inside the mother.
Mrs BOXER: You mean the
baby has been birthed and is now in the mother’s arms? It is a human being? It
takes a second, it takes a minute—
Mr SANTORUM: Say
it is in the obstetrician’s hands.
Mrs BOXER:
I had two
babies, and within seconds of them being born—-
Mr SANTORUM:
We had six.
Mrs BOXER: You
didn’t have any.
Mr SANTORUM: My wife and I
did. We do things together in my family.
Mrs BOXER: Your wife gave
birth. I gave birth. I can tell you, I know when the baby was born.
Mr SANTORUM: Good.
All I am asking you is, once the baby leaves the mother’s birth canal and is
through the vaginal orifice and is in the hands of the obstetrician, you would
agree you cannot then abort the baby?
Mrs BOXER:
I would say when the baby is born, the baby is born and would then have
every right of every other human being living in this country, and I don’t know
why this would even be a question.
Mr SANTORUM: Because
we are talking about a situation here where the baby is almost born. So I ask
the question of the Senator from California, if the baby was born except for
the baby’s foot, if the baby’s foot was inside the mother but the rest of the
baby was outside, could that baby be killed?
Mrs BOXER: The
baby is born when the baby is born.
Mr DURBIN: Will
the Senator yield?
Mrs BOXER: That is the
answer to the question.
Mr SANTORUM: I
am asking for you to define for me what that is.
Mrs BOXER:
I can’t believe
the Senator from Pennsylvania has a question with it. I have never been
troubled by this question. You give birth to a baby. The baby is there, and it
is born, and that is my answer to the question.
Mr SANTORUM:
What we are talking about here with partial birth, as the Senator from
California knows, is the baby is in the process of being born—
Mrs BOXER:
In the process
of being born. This is why this conversation makes no sense, because to me it
is obvious when a baby is born; to you it isn’t obvious.
Mr SANTORUM: Maybe you can
make it obvious to me. What you are suggesting is if the baby’s foot is still
inside of the mother, that baby can then still be killed.
Mrs BOXER: I am not
suggesting that.
Mr. SANTORUM:
I am asking.
Mrs BOXER:
I am absolutely not suggesting that. You asked me a question, in essence,
when the baby is born.
Mr SANTORUM: I am asking you
again. Can you answer that?
Mrs BOXER: I
will answer the question when the baby is born. The baby is born when the baby
is outside the mother’s body. The baby is born.
Mr SANTORUM: I
am not going to put words in your mouth—
Mrs BOXER: I
hope not.
Mr SANTORUM: But, again,
what you are suggesting is if the baby’s toe is inside the mother, you can, in
fact, kill that baby.
Mrs BOXER:
Absolutely not.
Mr SANTORUM: OK.
So if the baby’s toe is in, you can’t kill the baby. How about if the baby’s
foot is in?
Mrs BOXER: You
are the one who is making these statements.
Mr SANTORUM:
We are trying to draw a line here.
Mrs BOXER: I am not
answering these questions.
Mr SANTORUM: If the head is
inside the mother, you can kill the baby.
Mrs BOXER:
My friend is losing his temper. Let me say to my friend once again–and he is
laughing—
Mr SANTORUM:
I am not laughing.
Mrs BOXER: Let me say,
this woman is not laughing right now because if this bill was the law of the
land, she might either be dead or infertile. So if the Senator wants to laugh
about this, he can laugh all he wants.
Mr SANTORUM:
Reclaiming my time, Mr. President. All I suggest is I was not laughing
about the discussions. It is a very serious discussion.
Mrs BOXER: Well, you were.
Mr SANTORUM: I
was smiling at your characterization of my demeanor. I have not lost my temper.
I think I am, frankly, very composed at this point. What I will say–and the
Senator is walking away–is the Senator said, again, the baby is born when the
baby is born. I said: If the foot is still inside the mother? She said: Well,
no, you can’t kill the baby. If the foot is inside, you can’t, but if the head
is the only thing inside, you can.
Here
is the line. See this is where it gets a little funny.
Mrs BOXER: Parliamentary
inquiry, Mr. President. Let the RECORD show that I did not say what the Senator
from Pennsylvania said that I did. Thank you.
Mr SANTORUM: Mr. President,
I hate to do this, but could we have the clerk read back what the Senator from
California said with respect to that question?
I
understand it will take some time for us to do that. I will be happy–
Mrs BOXER: I
say to my friend, I know what I said. I am saying your characterization of what
I said is incorrect. I didn’t talk about the head or the foot. That was what my
colleague talked about. And I don’t appreciate it being misquoted on the floor
over a subject that involves the health and life of the women of this country
and the children of this country and the families of this country.
Mr SANTORUM: It
also involves–and that is the point I think the Senator from California is
missing–it also involves when in the process–that is why people on both sides
of the abortion issue support this bill, because it also involves what is
infanticide and what is not. A lot of people who agree with you on the issue of
abortion say this is too close to infanticide. This is a baby who is outside
the mother.
A
question for my Hot Air readers, does Barbara Boxer remind you anyone?
Like, nonpartisan, perchance? On the day that he backed himself into a
corner and claimed to be a graduate of Harvard Law School, but incapable of
answering the most basic legal questions?
Related:
When It Comes To Abortion, Progressives Can Be Counted On
To Fully Reveal Their Racism And Ignorance
http://tinyurl.com/kbzj6nf
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