Moving The Movement
Was Roe vs. Wade, once seen as a great victory for reproductive freedom, actually the beginning of the end for the women's movement? In her review of Jeanne Flavin's Our Bodies, Our Crimes, in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt laments that the Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade "victories carried within them the seeds of their own demise, for they were not grounded in women's moral and legal agency for which the law should provide protection equal to men's." In other words, the Court should have used the equal protection clause instead of the privacy clause of the Constitution.
It is not necessarily the case, however, that had the Court chosen another route reproductive rights would be more secure today. Abortion opponents are as creative as they are relentless-no doubt they could have come up with an equally powerful offensive against an alternative defense. The battle to control women, their fertility, and their sexuality is as old as the story of Adam and Eve. One or two Supreme Court cases by themselves could hardly settle the matter once and for all.
To be sure, reproductive rights--including but not limited to abortion--are on terribly shaky constitutional ground these days, and efforts to fortify those rights in the courts certainly must continue. But where I would like to see the reproductive rights movement focus more of its energy is on protecting the rights of marginalized women and girls. While constant assaults by the radical right are to blame for the terrible setbacks in access to reproductive health services, it is possible to see in retrospect that some strategic decisions by defenders of reproductive rights that made sense at the time may not have benefited the movement or its constituency in the long run. Simply put, there are women and girls whom the pro-choice movement left behind-whether through complacency, negotiation and compromise, or rhetoric that failed to resonate.
For example, while women of color have been disproportionately burdened by abortion restrictions, they also endure other unacceptable health disparities, with HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, and maternal and infant mortality rates that eclipse those of white women. Moreover, the failure of the pro-choice movement to prevent or repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicaid money from being spent on abortion in most circumstances, was and still is seen by many as a betrayal of poor women and women of color.
This is not to point fingers but simply to acknowledge that to stay relevant, a movement must periodically take stock and recognize where it is on course and where it may have missed the boat. Abortion is important, but it is not always the issue that will be of primary importance to diverse communities. The reproductive rights movement must be able to do more than simply assert its arguments with greater force; it must reexamine and recast them when necessary to reach and expand its constituency. Reproductive justice can provide the framework necessary to do so.
While Feldt advocates for reproductive justice, she does not draw a meaningful distinction between the complimentary but discrete concepts of reproductive justice and reproductive rights; in fact, she seems to conflate the two. "Reproductive justice" is a relatively new term, developed by women of color advocates who found that existing constructs of reproductive rights did not speak to their realities. This perspective emphasizes the right to be a parent as much as the right not to be a parent and recognizes the ways race, ethnicity, immigration status, class, sexuality, and disability affect access to reproductive health care. Applying this framework in a constitutional setting means examining the effect of a law on the most vulnerable among us--the disenfranchised, the poor, and the marginalized.
The women's movement should not stop arguing that reproductive rights are bound up in the rights to privacy and equality, as well as several other constitutional rights. But it must also work to ensure that the Court not only recognizes those rights but guarantees them. Reproductive rights encompass so much more than the right to abortion. Advocates must connect the right to rear one's child to the right to marriage equality; the right to be free of sexual violence to the right to a healthy workplace for women and men of reproductive age. These are all part of the same bundle of rights that honor self-determination, autonomy, equality, and dignity.
We should not limit our work to arguments based on the privacy or the equal protection clause alone. There are numerous routes we can pursue in support of reproductive justice--both within and outside of the Supreme Court--and we should pursue them all.
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A longer version of this article appears in the Spring 2009 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
Jessica Arons is the director of the Women's Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress.
Jessica,
Your article touches on an issue that has been a frustration of mine for nearly thirty years. Roe v Wade was a bit before my time, but I was actively involved in the effort towards the ERA. The frustration comes from the quiet withdrawal of support for the ERA once the Roe v Wade court decision was won. It was less obvious at the time - one of the advantages of hindsight - that many women and other equality advocates reduced their efforts towards the ERA significantly simply because the unilateral abortion decision provided by Roe v Wade gave women tremendous power over men. Why continue to demand equality when you suddenly find yourself with so much power? If equality between men and women, including a much stronger political base for reproductive choice, were the true goal, then the Roe v Wade victory would have been consolidated with at least a similar, though reduced, right for men. No person should be able to force parenthood upon another person without their express consent. Providing men with a first-trimester decision to agree to parenthood would provide women with better information about whether to proceed with the pregnancy. It also would provide our justice system with a better moral basis for pursuing fathers who fail to meet their agreed to obligations to their children. The benefit in terms of securing the reproductive rights choice for ALL people should be obvious. Yes, the Roe v Wade decision caused a significant reduction in the efforts towards equality, resulting in the very challenges you describe in your article.
March 13, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's not the way I remember it happening. In my experience Roe v Wade galvanized the movement as never before, it became more imperative that the ERA was passed, more so than at any time since the Women's movement began pressing for the amendment in the 1870s. The ERA wasn't abandoned, the women's movement could no longer afford the fight without the resources and help from other movements. The right fought it to a standstill and without support and finance the ERA movement could no longer continue.
March 13, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bev,
Likely we remember the issue from differing perspectives. The long term hindsight is somewhat revealing. The ERA was elegant in simplicity; would have been more so if they had eliminated the iditotic Section 2 "interpretation" clause which was never necessary and only clouded the clarity of the amendment. Then, NOW in July 1995 redrafted the amendment in a way guaranteed to ensure it would never succeed; though it had failed at this point and perhaps they felt it no longer mattered what the wording included. http://www.now.org/issues/economic/cea/draft.html
March 14, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a slightly different take re: The ERA.
I remember the attempt at passage. I watched with interest, as it fell short. And I wondered...
I wondered what would have happened had the first sentence simply read "Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied." That's right - make it universal - all are equal before the law, full stop.
What's the difference, you may ask?
Since those days, we have seen an unending parade of people, most if not all very well-intentioned, seeking protection or redress in some specific manner. And what this has done is set up "protected classes", which, while an admirable sentiment, has in fact served to further the interests of those who would divide and rule. Where is the universality? Why should someone who is outside a specific defined group then care about what the result of an action that does not pertain to them is? And don't tell me "Because it's the right thing to do.", because that goes away very quickly in the real world. Abstractions are fine until they're far enough removed and more immediate matters are pressing.
Had this been a universal, inclusive declaration, I wonder how things might have differed.
March 13, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
RS said: Roe v Wade was a bit before my time, but I was actively involved in the effort towards the ERA.
??? The ERA passed the House and Senate and was sent to the states for ratification in 1972. Roe v Wade was decided in 1973.
RS said: If equality between men and women, including a much stronger political base for reproductive choice, were the true goal, then the Roe v Wade victory would have been consolidated with at least a similar, though reduced, right for men.
??? The 'true' goal is equality of rights under the law... Nowhere in the amendment does it provide for "equality between men and women." As for a consolidated, if reduced, right for men, it's hard to imagine they would have accepted such a demotion.
Are you sure we're talking about the same amendment?
March 13, 2009 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, the ERA effort was initiated in 1972, when I was 13. Roe v Wade concluded in 1973 with the Supreme Court decision, after a signficant fight to get it to the court. ERA concluded during the Reagan administration following my graduation from college, though I do not remember the exact point where it expired, 1984 I believe. The text you posted is correct, and I have maintained since that time the Section 2 harmed the effort as it introduced a lack of clarity and questions about how the old men on Congress would intepret and "enforce" a Constitutional amendment when it is clearly the responsibility of the Courts to enforce the Constitution. As far as the difference between Roe v Wade and the ERA, it should be obvious the ERA would extend reproductive choice to men even if only a veto capacity upon their own parenthood. The woman must, obviously, maintain a superior ultimate decision since it is her body, but not be able to impose her decision upon another.
March 14, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ERA was first introduced in 1923, it has never been abandoned. It has been ratified by 35 states, only three more states are needed for ratification, but that is where the fight is - in the states' legislatures. The states' legislations are the most difficult and costly part of the fight.
March 14, 2009 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're not talking about two different amds. I think people don't realize that there are three major processes in attaching an amd to the constitution. We are three states away from ratification.
March 14, 2009 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
BevD, the remark about different amendments was directed to RS.
Only 3 states away if Congress will still recognize the states that ratified earlier. My crystal ball says that result will be best gained with a Democratic majority.
March 16, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only thing I would quibble with is that there is no "privacy clause" in the Constitution. That is why opponents of abortion have claimed that "activist judges" made up "the right to privacy" and that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional on those grounds. Abortion proponents have tried to construct an "inherent right" to privacy, but no specific right was enumerated.
March 13, 2009 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the right to abortion was legally grounded in the equal protection clause, the anti-choice movement's work would be simple: legally establish the concept of the "unborn" individual, and those "individuals" would themselves be afforded "equal protection" from abortion, no? What say the cafe?
March 13, 2009 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
And...they might also insist on equality for human beings (unable to communicate because of their level of development) rooted in their right to choose to live unhindered by a claimed right to take their lives because of their level of development.
March 16, 2009 12:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Women don't have reproductive rights and to divert and dilute the movement to include social issues that can better be solved by attachment to other movements is a surefire way of outright destroying the reproductive rights movement.
It didn't work when the womens' suffrage movement diverted to include abolition and voting rights for black males - it fact, it set the movement back, used up energy and resources only to be abandoned by the very movements that women put so much time, energy and resources into to further those causes and was so divisive that it split the women's suffrage movement and almost caused its destruction.
It surprises me that any woman would make the claim that our reproductive rights are "shaky" so we should divert to include other issues and rights - the rights are "shaky" then we don't have them, we are marginal women and girls. You cannot divert a movement from its goal and expect that movement to achieve its goal.
Feldt is correct - reproductive justice is reproductive rights - without a secured right you cannot have justice, because that justice isn't secured to any right, it is always at the whim and mercy of the party in power. The claim that the reproductive movement failed to prevent the passage of the Hyde amendment is a case in point - much of the resources at the time were dedicated to preventing its passage, to claim that the reproductive rights movement did nothing is not only false but a buyin to the right's meme that the women's movement is not relevant in the lives of women of colour or those living in poverty - that canard has thrown against the wall since the beginning of the women's movement in this country and continues to be used today to divide and divert the movement.
The Hyde amendment's repeal has been a dead issue, not because the reproductive rights movement doesn't care, but because there are no secured rights of women, it could not be repealed because the movement was hostage to the party in power.
I fail to see how the right to be a parent is in jeopardy. In fact, I fail to see how it can be classified as a "right" - there is no constitutional ground on which to construct the right to be a parent and economic and health care rights can be better addressed by those movements who are dedicated to those issues and who have better command of resources than the reproductive rights movement has.
I see this as inevitable, over and over again in our history, the women's rights movement has been diverted and guilted into serving every other cause than that of women alone - abolition, suffrage for all men, unions, working conditions, everything other than what the movement was for in the beginning - to secure the rights of women. Now the movement is being called on to appeal to diverse communities in order to stay "relevant". Relevant to what? To all the causes and issues of diverse communities, to work as an aid society for all issues, other than the original goal which still has not been secured on any grounds, the right to privacy or equality? It will happen though, because we have a whole new generation who think that because a few battles have been one the war is over and their only job now is to divvy up the spoils.
March 13, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
" to claim that the reproductive rights movement did nothing is not only false but a buyin to the right's meme that the women's movement is not relevant in the lives of women of colour or those living in poverty - that canard has thrown against the wall since the beginning of the women's movement"
Well, if you can't access the "right" because you can't afford the "right," then it's not a "right."
Right?
"we have a whole new generation who think that because a few battles have been one the war is over and their only job now is to divvy up the spoils."
What spoils?
March 13, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the right was secured, then the Hyde amd. would have been unconstitional, because there is no secured right, there is no basis to fight the amd on constitutional grounds.
March 14, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Reproductive Justice" and "reproductive rights," are nothing of the sort unless they include the rights of the Reproduced.
If not, they are no better than the racial laws of Hitler: designed to sound jurisprudential or activist, but merely fascism disguised as legal correctness.
March 16, 2009 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is no Privacy Clause of the Constitution.
According to some people, including some current and former Justices of the Supreme Court, there are privacy "rights" in the Constitution which are not enumerated. Shrug.
I've always been far more impressed by the Equal Protection justification for abortion than the privacy theory. It at least has a Constitutional basis.
That said, I think that whether abortion is legal or not ought to be a political rather than a Constitutional issue, and I think the women's movement could do better than hiding behind the Equal Protection Clause.
The problem isn't that the women's movement won judicial decisions on the wrong theory. The problem is that the women's movement relied on hiding under the robes of the Supremes at all.
March 13, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mean like Brown v. Board of Education?
March 13, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
El Pres said: That said, I think that whether abortion is legal or not ought to be a political rather than a Constitutional issue, and I think the women's movement could do better than hiding behind the Equal Protection Clause.
Actually, it shouldn't be an issue at all - political or Constitutional.
El Pres said: The problem isn't that the women's movement won judicial decisions on the wrong theory. The problem is that the women's movement relied on hiding under the robes of the Supremes at all.
The problem is that we had to do any of those things in order to have the right to make our own reproductive decisions. And you want to get picky on how we do it? Screw that noise.
March 13, 2009 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, except that pro-choice advocates have been arguing (if you can call that arguing) that recent decisions are "paternalistic." However if, and this seems to me to be the case, Roe v. Wade was just kind of thrown together to generate protection from prosecution from existing abortion laws without having recourse to, or having constituted, some fundamental right, then it is Roe v. Wade that is the paternalistic decision, the gift of a patriarchal court.
I think it's better to look these possibilities in the face. Any real threat to Roe v. Wade is not going to come from the bible belt effusions (and even less those of the Church of Rome) that people use to distract attention from the legal, modern political, and scientific discourses that really govern the decision. (I find this disingenuous strategy very annoying, by the way).
March 14, 2009 7:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Actually, it shouldn't be an issue at all - political or Constitutional."
I agree.
"The problem is that we had to do any of those things in order to have the right to make our own reproductive decisions. And you want to get picky on how we do it? Screw that noise."
Probably. But I'm criticizing the strategy for its (lack of) effectiveness, not criticizing the effort. Government interferes with all sorts of decisions; the abortion cases are revolutionary in that they're about the only time courts have limited government since the 30's.
March 16, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
But I'm criticizing the strategy for its (lack of) effectiveness, not criticizing the effort.
Abortion has been safe and legal in all 50 states for 37 years now, so it seems pretty effective from where I stand. I don't believe for a minute that the anti-abortion crowd would be satisfied if the state legislatures had done the deed rather than SCOTUS.
Abortion is a fail-safe issue for the Republican party. It wouldn't matter if the Roe v Wade decision had been made long ago and had came down from the mountain as the 11th Commandment, its opponents would still howl.
March 16, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Again, we're talking at cross purposes. My original post was replying to the actual blog entry, which was about general "women's movement" processes rather than abortion specifically. As usual, abortion has conquered the comments section...
Certainly I'd agree abortion being safe and legal has been a "win". I even think it's a Good Thing. But that wasn't what the O.P. was talking about.
March 16, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, there is no enumerated right to privacy in the constitution, the right is based on the Fourth amd, by precedent the right to privacy is grounded in this amd. As Brandeis put it, it is "the right to be left alone" which must be inherent in all democratic and civil societies. The government has no more right to seize control of your body than they have the right to control or seize your property and papers. That is the material point in grounding reproductive rights in privacy.
March 14, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
With elective abortion, it seems odd to say that a living human conceived under intentional risk by the mother and father can argue that the unborn child's existence is a greater intrusion on mom's privacy (already there and invited) than a doctor inserting abortifacient tools into her and yanking her dismembered son or daughter out of her body while the entire O.R. looks on.
Quite a spectacle, that.
Contrast a birth: a joyous occasion once all the false fears are dispelled and people take full interest in his or her life.
March 16, 2009 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're missing the point - the amd. guarantees the right to one's person and simply cannot seize control of anyone's body for any enforced purpose.
March 16, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
El presidente said it Ms. Arons, there's no privacy clause in the Bill of Rights. It's a right implied by various amendments such as the Fourth. That is one reason why Feldt considered it weak.
And it is.
It is weak not just because it has no direct constitutional language to protect it. It is also weak because it is wrong-headed law. It takes an enumerated right, life, found in the language of both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and puts it on a scale with privacy, an implied right. It effectively pits the judgment of 9 justices appointed by a minority of elected executives over the right to life claim of millions upon millions of people of every generation since the decision. That is a vast power for which there had better be intrinsic justice.
Yet the justice that Feldt argues ought to apply, equal protection, is not some point of justice of women versus unborn children clamoring for their bodily leasehold. Instead, it is a claim for women something it is said men already have, a battle of the genders. So it is actually making the right to life issues immaterial by omission. That itself is a negation of the constitutionality of the right to life not by reason, but by strategy. And I'd argue that her preferred approach would violate the due process rights of the unborn and those whose beliefs imbue the unborn with humane importance.
Any pro-choicer with the will to bring their child to term would imbue their own unborn child with humanity and life as an afterthought of their own will.
What the so-called feminist view here really represents is legal positivism, a form of authoritarianism accorded a special class of individuals over that of others which in the main they knowingly invited to dwell within the realty of the womb.
That's arguably a bad precedent because it opens the door to ideological courts of the future to take an express right and dilute it with a right they infer from multiple rights.
Let's say we have a conflict of rights here.
March 13, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, the last two paragraphs were inadvertently left at the end out of order. "That's arguably bad precedent" refers to the privacy strategy behind the modern eugenics movement.
March 13, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
You come to a valid logical conclusion based on your premises (pun intended), but several of those are unfounded assumptions. Primarily, your argument tacitly gives rights to "tenants" who may or may not have been invited to reside, and who make no monthly payment to the landlady, and whose very existence may have been the result of coersion or outright crime. These tenants are actually no more than small amalgamations of cells early in their residency, and by the time they are worthy of consideration for citizenship, the law already protects them.
Eugenics is a bogeyman who scares few aside from you and Ratzinger. Catholics pretend that abortion is a tool of a non-existent eugenics conspiracy, but in fact it's almost exactly the other way around: Eugenics is a tool used by a vast international anti-abortion, anti-feminist cabal run by religious extremists.
For the past eight years, we have seen the christo-facists in this country begin to dismantle our right to expect security in our homes and the inviolate nature of our private communications. I fear that you are correct when you assert that there is no guarantee of privacy in the Constitution, but there damn well ought to be.
March 13, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I too value the right to privacy, though I think there are much better reasons for such a right than to tie it to the abortion battle. I increasingly seek to protect my privacy, especially in terms of my physical location and communications. The work I do frees me from being tied to offices and also involves tremendous amounts of travel. I prefer not to be hindered by the multiple political jurisdictions seeking to exert control over those passing through. Proposals such as those for attaching GPS locators to personal vehicles, etc. truly give me pause and I am one who will do all I can to deny my personal information to the multitudes of control freaks in our society.
March 13, 2009 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
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March 13, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Tankard.
Since you took on the eugenics bogeyman, I'd like to expand the 'tenants' part that you so nicely introduced.
The anti-abortion crowd wants to assign rights to the unborn that are equal to the born, including the right to life. Or, in Mike's case, somehow we have "due process rights of the unborn and those whose beliefs imbue the unborn with humane importance."
OK, then. Please tell me where it is permissible for an already born person to attach itself to my body, against my will, in order to ensure its survival. Just because that already born person has a right to life (and due process rights?), it does not follow it has the right to use my body for the purpose of continuing that life (and its due process rights?). The right to life stops at the right to life (I have no idea about the due process rights) and nowhere does it say that there might be special circumstances that takes them beyond that.
Now if this is true outside the womb, then by extrapolation it is also true inside the womb.
Thanks, Tankard.
March 13, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Shell, for reminding us that parasites place no particular obligation on their hosts.
March 14, 2009 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, LL-Tenant law is one way of looking at it. That's the leasehold point. The other, more accurate and alluded to in my comment, is the duty of care to invitees on private property. That's not a tenancy.
What is the duty of care? It depends in part on persons coming onto the land. If a trespasser, the duty of care is less. If a licensee, the duty of care is more. If a social or business invitee, yet more. However, there is even more to it than that. The one being invited is a blood descendant of the owner of the property. In some sense, you have hauled the unborn's private property onto your own, and hooked her or him up to one's natural resources. Once all of that is done, there is a special relationship that increases the duty of care considerably...it becomes fiduciary.
However, you mention an invitee there by coercion. That is the rape case, and it is so infinitesimal the case compared to the droves of dead resulting from elective abortions of invited, unborn human lives (ejections from the property, destroying hospitality, evictions on the order of Grisham's Street Lawyer scenario, analogized to the womb "estate").
Feldt's advocacy for equal protection has other problems. For instance, the assumption that a man has no duty to his unborn child. That assumption comes from a man's lack of right or capacity to bear the unborn on his own 'property' / body. Yet that is not a legally imposed inequality -- that is nature's rule, and there is no reason a father of an unborn child ought to be treated less a parent of that unborn child than a father of a born child is less a father of the born child.
The fact that men are traditionally burdened by the child support orders in marriage dissolutions is the law's best offer at this point. However, I would definitely-definitely argue that men should be responsible for spousal or co-parental support during pregnancy for the mother of the unborn should there be an ethical societal norm that miraculously turns back the extensive nihilism that has overtaken partisan liberal social politics.
Hospitality, duty, special relationship. These should all figure into the equation.
Tankard you reveal sympathy for eugenic anti-ethos by your discussion of the "worthiness" of a human life measured in the number of cells. This is an argument of dependence, utility, appearance, development and arrogance of power. It is an argument sharing premises with the more brutal principles of Plato's Republic.
March 14, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't recall the Supreme Court finding a hospitality clause in the Constitution, Mike, but it's an amusing conceit.
However, once again your comment is replete with unsupported assumptions, such as:
As to (booga booga) eugenics, this seems to be the Catholic definition: eugenics: A woman's every act of control over her body without the permission of a religious extremist male.
And inasmuch as the number of cells in an organism goes a long way in determining its complexity, its capability, and its survivability, that number (when considered in orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude) does indeed make an excellent benchmark for measuring what might charmingly be called "worthiness." Or perhaps the Church would like to extend humanity to paramecia?
March 14, 2009 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
You repeatedly fail to recognize the scientific and humane distinctions between human unborn life and that of microbes and parasites. That failure is intentional. And that intention is to devalue a very real unborn human life so that it will become easier for your conscience to advocate the destruction of millions of human lives.
Such advocacy rests on the view that human beings are mere material units at the mercy of the state, or worse, a state so stupid that it buys arguments like yours in support of genocide.
March 16, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
MW7 said: The other, more accurate and alluded to in my comment, is the duty of care to invitees on private property.
Careful, Mike. If you bring private property into your argument, it seems like you're wandering back into dangerous territory, from your standpoint. Because next thing you know, I'll be bringing up a right to privacy on my private property, from my standpoint.
Also, in your first post you wrote this about privacy as an implied right:
It is weak not just because it has no direct constitutional language to protect it. It is also weak because it is wrong-headed law. It takes an enumerated right, life, found in the language of both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and puts it on a scale with privacy, an implied right.
Yet in your second post, look what you invited in:
Hospitality, duty, special relationship. These should all figure into the equation.
Once again, the best way to decrease the number of abortions is by providing full access to birth control. This recent report claims "1.94 million unintended pregnancies and 810,000 abortions are prevented each year by publicly funded family planning services."
March 14, 2009 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
No way, Shell. The Catholic Church reminds us that the only acceptable forms of birth control are the ones that don't work. This is ex cathedra doctrine as is therefore The Word Of God(tm).
March 14, 2009 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here Seashell, we have to address a pivot point.
The report refers to pregnancies terminated by abortion as "unintended pregnancies" however, with elective abortion (nearly all cases), the very real risk of pregnancy is intentionally accepted. That cannot mean abortion is "unintended" or unintentional. It is at least knowing (equivalent to intentional). Choice is a misnomer where knowing risk is chosen and "choice" shifted to the secondary tier of decision: whether to cover up one's firstly chosen risk by destroying the evidence of the risked unborn life and the stigma of bringing a child to earth without all of the social planets aligned.
The report makes false assumptions that shield people from responsible they must have.
March 16, 2009 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
MW7 said: The report refers to pregnancies terminated by abortion as "unintended pregnancies" however, with elective abortion (nearly all cases), the very real risk of pregnancy is intentionally accepted.
Mike, the risk was there before Roe V Wade. Pre Roe, about one third of American women had an abortion. Post Roe, about one third of American women have had, or will have, an abortion.
Unless sterile, pregnancy is always a risk.
The false assumptions are not coming from the report.
March 16, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your reading about the history of eugenics and the fascist sympathizers in US history is weak. Your failure to account for the American Eugenics Society changing its name after WWII to get away from the eugenic crimes of Hitler is also well-established in ignorance. It never went away.
Here is some background reading. Wait til you scroll down and see the photographs from the "Fitter Families Contest":
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/a/aes.htm
Or here:
http://www.eugenicsinstitute.com/American_Eugenics_Society
March 16, 2009 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
How many members in those societies, Mike? Compare and contrast the number of Catholics.
OOGA BOOGA!
March 16, 2009 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops! forgot to ask: It's mighty risky for a dedicated Catholic to raise the topic of Hitler, isn't it? If I recall correctly, Hitler was a Catholic himself, and the Church is fairly notorious for its failure to condemn him.
OOGA BOOGA BOOOOGAH!
March 16, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink