Considering the fact that the framers of the Constitution did not know about embryos and conception, it's pretty safe to say.
Considering that abortion was classified as murder during the time the framers lived, I'd say you are wrong. Liberty, in the context of the constitution, means freedom from confinement ("The condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor."), hence no man shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. That does not mean that peoples actions could not be restricted, just that you can't imprison them without trial. Since being forced to carry a baby to term is not confinment, it does not take away the liberty of the mother, any more than not allowing someone to murder Karl Maline takes away their liberty. A slave does have his liberties taken away, and even then, most did not kill themselves, so I don't know where you are going with that. The slaves apparently did value a life without liberty. It is irrelevent in any case because a preggo woman is hardly comparable to a slave. There is no clause in the constitution that states a person can sacrifice peoples lives in exchange for avoiding 0-9 months of inconvienence.
"more humane"? What some people see as humane other people don't. It is inherently subjective. So why should we shove the opinions of some down the throats of others on subjectivity? Lets just preserve everybody's rights and find solutions to problems that don't impede people's rights. And what is that? Prevent the unwanted pregnancies.
Yes and no. One of the reasons why up to 75% of embryos fail to implant is because the woman's body recognizes it as a foreign body to be ejected. FYI: Most birth control pills work not by preventing conception but by preventing implantation. That's why a mega dose of birth control works the same as RU-486. This debate has helped me understand one thing about the pro-life's sides concern about medical science involving embryos, its not just that its the killing of the embryos but also that I don't think medical science has overall helped the pro-life side. While we have sonograms and ways of keeping fetus' alive earlier and earlier things like IVF and cloning show that their is nothing inherently magical about the process of conception and that human reproduction and be taken out of the hands of nature. I've noticed Mad Max and Rhester have cited an innate naturality about conception and pregnancy as being the primary reason for protecting the process. Yet now that we can do conception outside of human of body and then pretty much (technically) do whatever to the embryos, implant them, freeze them, harvest them for stem cells, or throw them away. The process can no longer be considered natural. Further with cloning the process need not even require a two biological parents. By the time we develop artificial wombs we could totally remove the natural element from the process altogether.
I think that's an important point but not one that has absolute bearing. The framers had some conflicted ideas regarding the personhood since they allowed slavery and in slave states a white killing a slave wouldn't have been considered murder. For that matter murder wasn't a Constitutional issue but a state issue. Also if the framers considered fetus' as people it seems logical they would've considered giving them rights. Perhaps there would've been another 3/5 compromise regarding pregnant woman. They count for 1-3/5 person. I think this goes to the heart of Roe is whether there can be a Constitutionally derived right to privacy. Even though I think Roe was a bad decision I think a right of privacy to the use of ones own body logically must be derived. The framers lived before there were such things as blood and organ transplantation or biological support technology. If we don't believe that their is a right to ones own body then the state could compel people to donate blood or organs. The next point is that So IMO from the pro-life side I see two big hurdles. 1. To prove that a fetus is a human with personhood, without this I think its a non-starter since we're arguing rights of a person vs. a non-person. 2. To prove that there is a compelling reason why the rights of that fetus should take precedence of the right of the woman to her body. The Constitution has no enumerated right or duty to pregnancy, or to life for that matter. Nothing Constitutionally compels a woman to bring a pregnancy to term or to abort it.
Preventing unwanted pregnancies? What is there to talk about? No one objects to that! The issue is what will happen when that fails. We have all kinds of laws. We don't all agree with every one of them, yet we get them shoved down our throats. Here is one law where one side sees a life being held in the balance to save or to discard. Is it too much to ask to swallow this one more law? Quit acting like this is unique or even hugely inconveniencing to anyone, please!
The only way abortion is "protected" by the Constitution is by judicial fiat. Roe v. Wade utilized tortured analysis to state that if you take a few of the amendments and read them together that certainly there must be this nebulous right of privacy through which abortion must be legal. Since Roe, the decision has been revisited and limited numerous times. You should really read the subsequent opinions parsing it out further and backtacking to give further instances where the state can intervene, notification, etc. In the end, it could be argued that the difficulty the court experiences and the wrangling they have had with this issue stems from imperfect analysis of the Constitution to make the law fit the facts at a point in time in order to read something into it that was not clearly there.
Abortion of a fetus, NOT an embryo (since they would never even know if an embryo is ejected). But now I'm mincing words. As Sishir Chang said, it's not specified whether a fetus would be classified as a full human. Also, you quoted me for your second paragraph even though I never said those statements. Please don't do that.
You make it sound like a dirty idea that the judiciary should make a ruling on a subject. The judiciary is there, by design, to interpret the Constitution. So you don't want to play by the rules when it doesn't suit you, huh? Fiat: 1. An arbitrary order or decree. 2. Authorization or sanction: government fiat. Your word choice is interesting. Yes, it IS a judicial fiat since the Supreme Court is authorized to do exactly what it did. Funny that you chose to apply definition #1 when #2 is functionally exactly what it is.
EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you starting to see my point? Problem is the Pro-Life camp has spent so much time fighting the legal battle that gillions of "babies have died" because relatively little effort has been made to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In my opinion, the effort spent was applied in the wrong area. Just imagine how many abortions could have been prevented if all that effort was redirected towards prevention!!!
Uh....no. There are multiple definitions to liberty and you grabbed the wrong one, conveniently for you. Let me cut/paste for you the two that DO apply (since it even mentions the bill of rights in that very definition...so its applicability is self-evident): Liberty: 2. Freedom from unjust or undue governmental control. 3. A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference: the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights. IE...the government has no right to tell a woman what to do with her own body since that certainly would represent undue control and interference. Again, your premise deprives man of her liberties in exchange for the liberties of non-man. See the disparity here?
You are delusional if you cannot see that many of the same groups that oppose abortion also oppose any kind of real sex education, much less contraception, for young people. How would it be a "fail[ure]" if we reduced abortions by half or more? We could do it if we worked together instead of fighting each other. And when those laws take away people's rights, we need to be careful and as certain as possible that the law would positively impact the problem, which a ban on elective abortions would not. Yes, it is WAY to much for you to expect people to swallow a law that takes away their right to make medical decisions based on YOUR opinion and the "ifs" and "mights" that go with it. Quit acting like you know what is best for other people. This is their decision to make, not yours. If you want to have a real impact on abortion rates, fund or work for causes that reduce unwanted pregnancies or that try to convince people not to have abortion. Just don't expect people to accept you rolling over their rights because of your opinion.
Probably about the same proportional amount of pro-Life people oppose sex education as pro-Choice people are proponents of Partial-Birth Abortion. Both sides have extremists. Next! The "failure" I referenced is those pregnancies that get conceived even after the "benefit" of sex education and all it brings to the table. You just want to cast me in as poor a light as you can, don't you? How do you know that a limitation on abortion would not positively affect that number of unwanted pregnancies? With that goes the assumption that people have no will power and no cognitive powers. Isn't that kind of insulting? Or are we going with the Drug War/Prohibition argument again? I should think that that argument would only apply to sex addicts... And the little girl in utero pipes up: "What about me?" I am only making a decisioin about what is best for the child. I could give a rat's ass about the abortive mother-- unless her very life is at stake. Again, you take an irrevelancy and try to pin it on me. Please try and be more aware and respectful of what I actually say rather than re-casting it in as unflattering a light as you can conjure up... Someone has to speak for the little ones without a voice. When is your little toaster due?
