Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

1: That's fine. I have no problem with someone being of the opinion that a certain supreme court case ought to be overturned, even if that person is the president or his judicial adviser. Neither of those people actually have the ability to overturn a court case, or even to influence the opinion of the present court. They do not control the court in any way, aside from being able to nominate replacement justices when a sitting justice voluntarily decides to retire.

At present, no sitting justice has indicated that they are planning on retiring any time soon. And if the nomination of one justice is enough to bring down the whole country, then we're pretty fucked regardless of whether abortion is legal.


2: You seem to presuppose that, if the court were to overturn Roe-v-Wade that this would be both inherently wrong and would also have a greatly negative impact on America as a whole. I have seen no evidence to support such a conclusion. Neither permitting abortion nor denying abortion will seriously affect the security or economic well-being of the United States, and THAT is what the President's job is.


3: You seem to be ignoring (or at least hand-waving over) the fact that one of the principle duties of the court is to re-evaluate prior decisions in the light of present-day social attitudes and constitutional interpretations. For instance, a prior ruling which supported the rights of slave-owners might reasonably be expected to be overturned by a present-day court. A judgement which lays forth the guidelines for when it is and is not acceptable to terminate the life of a human is also likely to be reviewed from time to time, regardless of whether said human has been convicted of a capitol crime (what we call the death penalty), or has not been born yet.



The question of "wrong" is, of course, a matter of opinion. It hinges greatly on whether one believes that it is desirable to promote infanticide. Obama has, of course, made his own position on this quite unambiguously clear. In 2003, he was the only member of the Illinois state legislature to oppose a state bill which would guarantee medical care for babies born alive despite failed late-term abortion attempts. (And that wasn't just some trivial little rider- that was the whole bill.)


But in the end, it simply doesn't matter. It's certainly not an issue worth electing a president over. I don't care whether the president personally enjoys performing late-term abortions with a coat hanger out of the back of a van on weekends. It's not relevant to his day job.




You are entitled to hold this opinion.

I would have to contrast it against:


A: The fact that the sitting president has demonstrated through his actions that he opposes civil liberty, supports statism (centralized government control over economic planning and policy), opposes domestic energy independence, supports the expansion of socialist-style controls over / the encroachment of the Federal government into areas of life (healthcare, education, tax policy, etc) which have heretofore been private matters, matters of free-market exchange, or matters of policy reserved for the States, and has done nothing at all as a matter of international affairs to learn from the Euro-Asian style of protectionist trade policy, and how it might be economically beneficial in the long-term to the US in the same way that it has benefited Germany, France, Japan, China, etc.



B: The reality that, while concepts such as "civil rights" and "fair voting" sound great in a fourth-grade student report, the practical reality of the situation is that America, as a whole, would likely be much better off in an environment in which voting was treated as a privilege that must be earned, and in which "civil rights" did not include the right to demand free services from the state, the right to demand that other people's freedom of expression should be curtailed, the right to demand preferential treatment, etc.

I'll give you an example. Right now, Wells-Fargo has just paid $175m to settle a case brought against them by a group of African-Americans who claim that Wells-Fargo discriminated against them BY GIVING THEM LOANS! Specifically, that the bank offered mortgage loans to borrowers who would not otherwise have qualified for them, on the grounds of their race.

Got that? Wells-Fargo wasn't DENYING loans to people because they were black, they were GIVING LOANS to black people, whereas they would have DENIED the same loan to a WHITE PERSON.

AND THE BLACK PEOPLE WHO WERE GIVEN THE LOANS ARE NOW CLAIMING THAT THIS UNFAIRLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST THEM!


That's the kind of civil rights protection that does not make us better as a nation.





In the end, presidential elections are usually about choosing the lesser of two evils. No single individual can, by definition, be perfect or have acted in a way that pleases every single member of the electorate at every point in their life.

The current president has, quite simply, demonstrated by his actions that he is "more evil" than the republican nominee, insofar as matters which are relevant to the authority of a president.





Please explain, specifically, how this would happen.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Savington

iTrader: (31)

9.5/10

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/...5-8522c7e1a40e

Savington

iTrader: (31)

On one hand, we have a split SCOTUS and the next president will be appointing one, possibly two Justices. In that way, it's entirely possible for a voter's choice of president to alter that particular decision.

On the other hand, expecting a voter who claims that "ROMNEY WILL PERSONALLY OVERTURN ROE V. WADE" to actually understand the nuances of the President-SCOTUS connection is far-fetched at best.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

I heard romney was going to get up in there, pick up roe vs wade, and flip it over.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

I'm curious, Bob -- if it's not a matter of life and death, then why should there be a federal law? Why doesn't it fall under the purview of states' authority?

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Fixed that for you.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

abortion is a tax, therefore is constitutional.

Benjamin Franklin said it best: "The only things certain in life are death and taxes."

bbundy

It is a cival and constitutional right to privacy.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Ban money!

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

+1

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No it isn't.

You have the right to be secure in your person and property against unlawful search and seizure by the government.

So if you're preggers and you don't want the government to know about it, you have the right to deny a government agent from entering your home without your consent, and the court may not grant a search warrant of your home for the purpose of discovering whether or not you are pregnant. You also have the right to wear baggy, loose-fitting clothes, the right to stay inside your house all day watching Oprah and eating ice cream while refusing to go outside, etc etc.

That's it, dude.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Well, you're right. I was trying to speak narrowly to whether the issue of abortion constituted an actual matter of human life (in which case, a federal ban would be warranted) or simply another medical procedure (in which case, there's no reason it shouldn't remain a state matter), I ended up being more imprecise in my language rather than less.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I understand what you were saying. But there are two key things to consider:


1: Matters of human life or death ARE customarily handled at the state level, not the federal level. For instance, laws which "ban" murder (eg: kidnapping someone and beating them to death with an axe) are state laws, and if you are arrested for murder, you are prosecuted by the state attorney's office and then sentenced to a state prison. The federal courts are not typically involved in such mundane affairs.



2: The principle problem with the question of abortion lies in the fact that there is not general agreement as to whether it is or is not a matter of human life or death in the first place.


Those who are "pro choice" would tend to support the argument that it is simply a medical procedure which affects no person apart from the mother, and thus not even worthy of consideration by the courts.


By contrast, those who are "pro life" would tend to argue that an unborn human is alive, and has the same civil rights and protections (eg, the right to not be murdered) as a human who has been born. While there is not universal consensus as to exactly when the transition between "not being alive" and "being alive" occurs, there is a general consensus that it does not occur at the arbitrary boundary of "birth."

This position is not unsupportable by logical analysis:

If I was born as a result of full-term, natural delivery, then by the standard of a "pro choice" argument, it took between 39 and 40 weeks from the time that I was first fertilized until the time that I became "alive".

But what if I was born prematurely or delivered early via caesarian section? Given present-day medical technology, roughly half of all babies born at 24 weeks survive.

Here is a baby who was born at 29 weeks:



Does she (the baby) have to wait an additional 10 weeks until she is legally recognized as being alive?

If so, then it should be perfectly legal for the lady in the picture (or the nurse in the background, or anyone else for that matter) to drop the baby into a bucket of water and then go get a sandwich. That would not be murder.





I'm not taking a stance here which is pro or anti-abortion, I'm simply explaining why the question is more complex than you made it out to be. You need to at least acknowledge the fact that not everyone makes the same underlying assumptions as you do. For some, the question of abortion has nothing at all to do with the rights of the mother- it is about protecting the rights of what they consider to be a living person inside of her.




FURTHERMORE: Overturning the Roe v. Wade decision would not, as some assume, cause abortion to become illegal. It would merely return TO THE STATES full authority to regulate it.

Thus, a "states rights" supporter (regardless of what name they give to themselves) must, by definition, be opposed to Roe v. Wade and support its overturn, as the very nature of this decision is to take away the authority of the states to create and support their own criminal codes.





FURTHER-FURTHERMORE: It's still irrelevant to a presidential debate.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Actually, I think you're making my case for me, just more clearly than I did.

When I said

I'm arguing along the same lines as you -- that the issue of when life begins ultimately boils down to the legal question of whether an unborn fetus can have rights which must be protected by the court.

If that's true, then it may be appropriate for the court to rule on it.

If that's not true, then there's no matter appropriate for the court to consider, and should be returned to the states' authority.

That's my point -- I recognize that the assumptions on each side of the debate vary -- but I reject that either set of assumptions can properly lead to a situation in which the Supreme Court could possibly rule in favor of protecting the right to abort.

I don't know if I've cleared up what I was trying to say in the first place or not (or if it was already clear and I simply misunderstood your response), but there it is.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No, I think it was I who did the misunderstanding.

I read your previous post as implying that there was no debate about whether or not abortion constituted the taking of a human life, and that the only issue being debated was whether or not state laws prohibiting abortion constituted a violation of the 14th amendment.

That, incidentally, was the core issue at hand in Roe v. Wade. I must tip my hat to whoever originally came up with that argument, as it's an exceedingly clever interpretation of the due process clause.


My point was simply that, regardless of due process, it is universally held that the protection of life supersedes the protection of liberty. If I attempt to take away your life, then the court will take away my liberty by throwing me in prison. This concept is not generally a controversial one.

So for those people who oppose abortion in general, their argument is quite simply the following:

1: Yes, women have a right to control their own bodies.

2: People, in general, also have a right not to be murdered.

3: An unborn child is alive, and thus, has a right not to be murdered.

4: Abortion is murder, and thus:

5: Preventing abortions from occurring outweighs the interest of protecting the woman's right to control her body, insofar as such rights conflict with the rights of the child to be alive.


#5, in particular, must be read and understood comprehensively and in context. It does not deny that the woman has rights, it merely assigns a priority to those rights in comparison to the more significant right of the child to be protected against murder.


Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which I am driving a car. We'll say that I'm in Germany on an unrestricted section of the Autobahn, to make things simpler.

Assuming I am insured and hold a valid license, I have the right to drive my car. This is a protected liberty.

HOWEVER, there are some restrictions on this liberty. I may not drive on the wrong side of the road, nor may I drive in a manner that causes pedestrians to be killed.

The rights of pedestrians and other motorists to be safe from being hit and killed by my takes priority over my right to drive a car however I want to.

The same argument applies here.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Nice exposition. And yes, as someone who has personally argued along those lines, it's frustrating when someone thinks an appropriate counterargument is to accuse me of not caring about women's rights.

curly

iTrader: (25)

Ironically, my fiance was born at 29 weeks, and is currently a nurse in the NICU you see above (well, one like it).

It goes far, FAR beyond just "half of babies survive after 24 weeks". Most are quite literally dropped at the door of the NICU and left to die by their crack ***** mothers who have no business getting preggers in the first place.

If they were all picturesque births like the mother pictured kangarooing her baby, I'd be pro-life.

Thankfully, the way the laws are now, all babies, because they're literally the most innocent people in the world, are medically covered. A case like a 24 week baby is a guarantee 16 week minimum stay, generating ~$10,000 a night for the hospital. It goes down for the babies my GF describes as needing "really expensive babysitters", but their unit can hold 46 babies. Good money. Some of them are really, really sad cases though, and you wish they didn't have to suffer through it.