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So what? Sex is not being pregnant. They are two different acts.

I get that you believe that, but the states have nothing to do with it. In fact, most states have their own constitutions, but guess which one trumps which?

 

Before 1868 or after?

 

By their ruling, but not so much by their reasoning. If the State has an interest in both preserving the life of the mother and the 'potentiality of human life', isn't it the State's job to determine where the balance points of those interests lie? Unless such points can be medically documented, that is. Basically, what the Supreme Court said is, 'You have the right to make such a law, and have due interest in making it, but we're placing these arbitrary* restrictions on you for the purposes of preserving Right to Privacy.'

Beyond that, though, I still don't understand how a woman's 'qualified right to terminate her pregnancy' falls under Privacy. When the court said:

they as much as admitted it themselves. What gives the individual the right to an abortion, even under regulation, but not the right to make their own choices concerning vaccination or sterilization?

Perhaps most worrying in this ruling is:

Wherein the highest justices of the land fall into the classic folly of the debate: ignoring adoption. They clearly assume that any mother not allowed an abortion would be forced into nearly two decades of service to her offspring. This was not the case then, nor is it the case now.

*I say 'arbitrary' based on the complete lack of medical ability to define such a 'compelling point' of these interests, and the complete lack of any Constitutional or legal basis for determining them outside of medicine.

I understand that, but it's not medically or scientifically justifiable. By those standards, the foetus is a seperate organism from the moment of conception. The law, having no other method of defining such, should refer to them, not make up it's own, and especially not make up it's own through a judicial body and not a legislative one.

Is all drunkeness involuntary drunkeness, then? After all, the act of drinking and the result of being drunk are two seperate things. My point is that pregnancy is a result of the woman's own choices (again, usually). I don't see where involuntary servitude comes in.

You're missing my point, Chandos. Short of this stretch of logic that extends the Right to Privacy, the US Constitution doesn't say anything about it, except in the vague and general language of the 10th Amendment, wherein the US Constitution gives all other rights not already defined to the States or the People.

I get that the Court's ruling based on Privacy overrides the 10th Amendment, I'm just saying it's an illogical and seemingly arbitrary decision and, without it, the 10th Amendment would be the deciding piece of the Constitution.

 

The same can be said for almost any level of government. You have yet to show "why" this would be specific to just the states and not the Constitution itself.

It's a very poor point. You have yet to prove that it was the woman's intention to get pregnant. In the instance of the drunk, a person chooses to become drunk. For instance, someone may have only 3 drinks and not become drunk, but if he chooses to have ten drinks, then he made a choice to become drunk. There no such thing as being a little pregnant. The day that men can become pregnant is the day that there will no longer be any doubt over the matter of choice.

The 13th Amendment is pretty clear on the issue of involuntary servitude. The state cannot force women to be "child breeders" against their will.

 

Yes they do. And they ruled that based on the risks associated to the mother by getting an abortion, that balance point is located at the end of the first trimester.

It is medically documented. The risk of getting an abortion to the life of the mother is less in the first trimester than continuing the pregnancy. That was the Court's exact logic.

The quote you excerpted explains why they did not feel that the right to get an abortion was unlimited. It was explaining why they felt it was OK in the first trimester, questionable in the second trimester, and should only be done in extreme circumstances in the third trimester. It wasn't intended to show why it falls under privacy - but specifically, as you said, the "qualified right to terminate her pregnancy".

People are not allowed to make their own choices regarding vaccination or sterilization? Since when? I don't think that there are any forced sterilizations going on, and some parents chose not to vaccinate themselves or their children based on religious beliefs. Those children are still allowed in public schools, and every year cause minor outbreaks of diseases that could be controlled via vaccination.

That's certainly an option, but so is getting an abortion... You obviously see adoption as preferrable, but not everyone agrees with you. The legality of adoption was not being ruled upon. So of course they didn't mention that. The case was based on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, not whether or not it was legal to put the child up for adoption. It had nothing to do with the case at hand.

It's not arbitrary, and as I already said, they did use a medical basis for determining this point, based on the risks to the health of the mother. You are free to disagree with their assessment, but it is false to claim that it was arbitrary, or that there is a lack of medical information available to define this point. An abortion poses less of a risk to the health of the mother than continuing pregnancy in the first trimester. An abortion is less safe than continuing the pregancy in the third trimester, with the second trimester somewhere in between. That's defining the point on a medical basis dependent on the health of the mother.

It doesn't really override the 10th Amendment. The didn't say the 10th Amendment was bad. They merely point out that the rights provided by the 14th Amendment are more applicable in this case.

 

Thinking about it more, I was going to say that the drunk person rarely chooses to do what they do once drunk (eg. drive a car). That being said, if they kill someone, they're tried for involunatry manslaughter, so I'm not sure it's the best arguement. Still, they are held to account for their own actions and the recognized possible outcomes of it (i.e. they can't get off by saying they didn't choose to drive).

So the question comes down to the above. If a woman chooses to have unprotected sex, knowing that pregnancy is a possible outcome, can the government hold her responsible for that outcome? It does in other situations where people take recognized risks, even when the outcome is an involuntary one.

But the states didn't make that decision, the Supreme Court did.

The statistics I've seen show that serious complications occur in roughly 1% of early abortions, and 2% of later abortions. I wasn't able to find out how many of those result in death, just that it is a risk. For comparative statistics, I couldn't find rates of complications of pregnancies, just mother mortality rates (1/100,000 in the US). Can you find anything better for me (a serious question, I've tried)?

That's true, but I didn't see any actual explanation of why it did fall under the Right to Privacy, other than cases where people's sexual practices have so fallen. I would link a medical procedure like an abortion more with a medical procedure like a vaccination (for terms of privacy) than with an individual's sexual activity.

The ruling cited two cases where they had rejected the idea that these issues fell under Right to Privacy. I don't know what the cases covered, or how commonly the issues that raised them come up (I suspect the vaccination one was with the Polio vaccine). The point is that, according to Supreme Court rulings, the government could mandate these things.

They were specifically considering the 'involuntary servitude' of pregnancy. In doing so, they seemed to feel that just being pregnant was insufficiant 'involuntary servitude' to violate the Constitution, and instead saw fit to include the 'involuntary servitude' of childrearing in their calculations. My point was that childrearing isn't involuntary. If you don't want to do it, you can just give the child up. If the pregnancy itself isn't enough, then pregnancy isn't enough.

Sorry, my choice of 'overrides' may have been a bit off. I was speaking in a mathematical sense, where one variable may 'override' another in a calculation. Both are present, and fully expressed, but one is so much more significant in X situation that it is the determining factor for order of magnitude.

 

Yes, they are held accountable, because it is illegal to drink and drive, and you don't have to be "drunk," to be held accountable.

Because it is NOT the govenment's business if she choose's to have sex - it's not your business, it's not my business, nor is it the business of politicians. It is not against the law for two consenting adults to have sex. This is an issue of basic personal liberty. It is also a separate issue regarding the choice to remain pregnant or not. The issue here is if women should be forced to bear childern; not if whether or not they can have sex, or what kind of sex there is between two consenting adults.

 

You're missing my point. My point is that, even though they don't 'choose' to drive while drunk (i.e. they can claim to be mentally incapacitated), they are still held accountable because they chose to put themselves in that state.

... I don't think anyone was suggesting otherwise. Whether they choose to go through with the pregnancy or terminate it, however, is the government's business (or at least can be if the gov't wants it to be). Likewise, it's not illegal to drink, and frankly I don't think it's the business of politicians if someone does drink. It is their business, however, what those people do after they drink.

 

You don't have a point, if that's what you are trying to say.

No it isn't. The law of the land says otherwise. That's just your opinon because you don't like women having the choice in an abortion. Most EVERYONE is against the idea of abortion; it's just that some value the liberty of half the human race.

 

Why not? The situation seems highly analogous to me. A man who chooses to get drunk and then, as a consequence of that drunkeness, commits a crime, is held 100% responsable for the crime, even though he lacked the capacity to form intent and could otherwise claim to have been mentally impaired at the time. The reason is simply because he chose to become mentally impaired, and thus chose to take responsability for anything he'd do while in that state. The courts have ruled on this. In the case of a woman getting pregnant, she chose to have unprotected sex (disregarding rape as a seperate case here) knowing pregnancy was a risk. The courts have precedent to hold her accountable for the unintended, but forseeable, consequences of her actions. Now, whether there's precedent against it or not, I don't know. I'm just showing that the logic is there.

Actually, the law of the land says it is the government's business, provided it's done in the second or third trimester (in the second, it's the government's business to determine if it's legal or not). That directly shows, and the Supreme Court agrees, that the government has a vested interest in the matter. Namely in the 'potential for human life'.

 

Having sex and being pregnant are NOT crimes. Will you stop to read what you are saying? In regards to having sex and being pregnant, and committing a crime, it doesn't even make any sense. The only thing you are saying is that doing one thing, may cause something else: Like drinking a beer and then having to pee as a consequence. That makes about as much sense as what you are saying.

Having an abortion is still legal if certain steps are taken correctly, so getting an abortion is still legal. Of course, just about any medical procedure is the government's business, but sex between two consenting adults is NOT the government's business, as I stated in my post. In fact, I stated they were two different acts. The Supreme Court also has a vested interest in personal liberty, and trying to keep the church's hands out of people's sex lives, if you want to look at it from that point of view.

 

Having sex and being pregnant aren't crimes, but having an abortion can be one. Being drunk and even peeing while drunk aren't crimes. Peeing in public, however, is, even if you're drunk.

I don't know why you keep bringing this up. I agree, sex is not the government's business (well, unless she's getting paid for it). Abortion, however, can be. Again, like the drinking analogy, drinking isn't the government's business. Even being drunk isn't. Driving drunk, peeing on a cop car, etc. are.

Anti-abortion laws aren't strictly a religious matter, though thanks for bringing up the old prejudices. There are religions and churchs that approve of them, and there are secular organizations that oppose them.

Yes, the Court has a vested interest in preserving people's personal liberties, but is abortion one of those liberties, and if so, why? Remember, it's not the Court's job to decide what's a liberty, what get's to be protected, and what isn't. That's the legislature's job. The Court's job is just to enforce it, and interpret it when necessary.

 

Which would only be relevant if the 10th Amendment were used as justification. It wasn't.

I do not feel at all inclined to look up this information. It seems reasonable to me that late term abortions are more risky than early term abortions, and thus I do not have an issue with accepting that late term abortions pose a greater risk to health than continuing the pregnancy, while early term abortions do not. As an aside, your 1% figure seems impossibly high. If even an early term abortion had a 1000-fold greater chance of resulting in serious consequences than a pregnancy, abortion WOULD be illegal.

I will let the former SC Justice John Marshall Harlan II answer this for you. (He's dead now, but he was a justice in the 60s and 70s, and wrote extensively on this subject, both in his court opinions and elsewhere):

I added the bolded bracketed info - Harlan didn't write that part. In summation, Right to Privacy is an issue of personal liberty, which is granted under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Or get an abortion...

Most certainly, as Justice Harlan's quote above indicates.

Because it falls under right to privacy, as provided by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Remember, the mother is a citizen of the US, and is covered by the 14th Amendment. Like it or not, the fetus is not a citizen ([edit] or for that matter, even a person under current law [/edit]), and thus does not receive those protections.

I don't know, when I see the SC considering the breadth and scope of the 14th Amendment, what it covers, and what it doesn't, that sure sounds to me like they are interpreting the law.

 

And that has nothing to do with sex, as much as some people would like to stick their noses into other people's sex lives.

Then we can agree to keep women having sex out of it and just focus on abortion; that suits me just fine.

Because you are forcing women to become breeders. It is more than just forced labor, since it is forced upon a particular class of individual, by virtue of status of their birth. Not only are women forced into the servitude of the male half of society by becoming breeders but women would be denied legal rights, to not only the fetus (which has the use of their bodies), but by society as an entire unit. They would lose the guarantee of personal liberty, because they would be in forced servitude to the government, the male half of society and the fetus itself.

On the other hand, when a woman CHOOSES to become a mother, she allows the fetus the use of her body until it becomes a baby, capable of sustaining itself outside of her body. This is a very careful and personal choice that a woman has to make, and it is a high expression of liberty that she not be forced by the tyranny of the government to make a decision against her will or judgment.

 

I'm sorry, Chandos, but that's pure . No one is forcing the women to have unprotected sex. They choose that. Just like no one forces you to have a drink, you choose to. All I'm doing is trying to move the point of choice to a position where it doesn't involve extinguishing an existing or eminently potential (depending on your point of view) human life. I'm not removing the choice to have a baby at all, and you know it. I'm just asking women to take responsability for their choices.

As a comparison, how do you feel about a man's rights over the unborn child, or a born child. Can the man force an abortion on the woman if he doesn't want to be a father? Assuming no (which I think is a safe assumption), can he refuse to pay child support if the mother wants to keep the baby, just because he doesn't want it? I think the common answer here is 'no'. Isn't he being forced into involuntary servitude in a similar way, then? And this time, it's not just for 9 months, but for 18 years!

If the point of choice is conception for the man, there's no problem with it being the same for the woman. If the woman can change her mind later on, why can't the man?

 

Getting away from abortion, I want to go back to the founding fathers (or whatever you want to call them) discussion. For me it is an extremely complicated issue. Here's why:

My faith teaches that the Constitution is an inspired document -- that is to say, the text was not written directly by the hand of God, but that those who worked on it were at times influenced by the Almighty. Fair enough.

That does not mean by extension that the Founders (which is the term I will use for the rest of this post) are God-like. They were human, just like the rest of us, prone to flaws and failings and really, really stupid decisions* -- again, just like the rest of us. Fair enough.

When I hear Americans refer to the Founders in hushed, reverential tones, it makes me a little uncomfortable. Granted they were great -- and maybe even inspired -- men, but that's all they were. Respect for their intellectual prowess, personal courage, social integrity, and political acumen is totally understandable, but come on!

By the same token, when I hear people talk about them using terms like "a bunch of old, white, Christian slaveholders", I also get uncomfortable. There is nothing inherently wrong with being either old, white, or Christian, and slaveholding was common in those days and did not have the same stigma it has today*. It is the height of arrogance -- and foolishness -- to judge individuals in the past using the societal standards of the present. To go out of your way to mock great (yet fallible) men is just as much an error in logic and morality as paying them too much respect.

Bottom line, when discussing something I think that the opinions and writings of the Founders should carry some weight, they should not be the end-all and be-all of the discussion.

*I am referring, of course, to the Founder*** who had secret tunnels built to the slave quarters so he could boink his slave women. By reasoning both modern and old, a bad idea, which is why he didn't just walk over in plain sight. Just plain stupid!

**This doesn't mean that in an absolute sense slavery isn't wrong, but that is something that we know now using our current philosophical systems -- it was most assuredly NOT something that was universally accepted in the 1770s.

*** His name escapes me!

 

I thought we agreed that sex was a separate issue? Why are you bringing sex into this?

Fine, if he can get pregnant and have one himself.

As someone who believes in personal liberty, no, he should not be forced. But by the same right, if he chooses not to be a father, then he should give up his rights. In other words, he can't have his cake and eat it to.

You are only preaching to the choir when it comes to the issue of choice.

There is no mention in the Constitution of God. Later, when Alexander Hamilton was asked about that point, he quipped, "We must have forgot." But that aside, I never heard this notion before. But the Constitution is based on a number of sources including English models and notion of checks and balances and opposing forces acting against each other to prevent any force from gaining too much power within the system.

First, most of them were still fairly young in 1776 and in their middle-years by 1787. Ben Franklin was already quite "old" however at the Signing and the Framing. There is no question they were white. Some were Christian, some were not. Certainly they all had Christian influences in their lives. Thomas Paine for instance, was a self-described deist. If you mean only the pantheon, LKD, then even that is a mixed bag, and Jefferson was often accused by his political opponents of being a deist, although he was always vague on his personal beliefs, probably intentionally. But you can say that they were "Christian" in a general sense, but hardly devote. Not all of them were slave-holders, and Hamilton never owned slaves, nor did John Adams.

I am compelely biased in this sense, since I have a deep admiration and strong affection for all of them. IMO, the Revolutionary generation is America's greatest generation. While they are not the "end all," for the reasons that Drew has pointed out, and were flawed for many of the same reasons, they were an excellent beginning to an ongoing and still unfolding story - a story that includes Lincoln, FDR and MLK. What I would ask you to consider though, LKD, is to compare them to what we have a the current moment.

 

Like Chandos, I had never heard this idea before. I'm familiar with the idea of an inspired document, of course, but the Constitution as one? I can't disagree strongly enough. Both it and the Declaration of Independance were thoroughly human documents, at times directly contradicting Christian principles (not so familiar with LDS principles). I'll agree it's the most stable and reliable form of government humanity has ever made, but largely due to the fact that it assumes everyone is a corrupt b**tard and tells everyone else to look over their shoulder. Seriously, though, the Founding Fathers knew full well that the government they crafted would sooner or later (and probably sooner) fall into the hands of the same kind of incompetent, petty, self-centered, egotistical sods that ruined Babylon, Greece, Rome, and every other nation in the world (most recently in their eyes: England). With that knowledge in mind, they set about building a system that would prevent any one person from amassing too much power and always made sure there would be other people carefully watching them.

Because it's a causal issue. You don't get pregnant without it, and you can't have an abortion without being pregnant. Just like drinking and being drunk are prerequesets to drunk driving. One can be legislated when the others aren't.

So you argue that a dead-beat dad should be able to just forget he ever had a child with a woman and go on his life as if it never happened? Well, it would make the law consistent. Unfortunately, the courts don't seem to agree with you. I wonder what the Supreme Court would say if they were brought such a case.

I don't know that I can agree that they were the greatest, especially not altogether. I'll agree they had the advantage of some of the greatest minds and hearts in our nation's history, and that those minds managed to fill positions of power, but even there I think there are others that challenge them for the position of 'greatest'. Lincoln, FDR, MLK, and a few others come to mind. I think, rather, that desperate times call for more than just desperate measures, but also the best and the worst people can offer, so in times of revolution those in positions of influence will inevitably be seen as some of the greatest or worst humans in history.

The way I see it, though, is that they set out the bulk of our modern Constitution, and in interpreting that Constitution, we should look at things from their position. If we don't like that view, we can change the Constitution, they were wise enough to allow for that inevitability. We shouldn't just re-read things from a different point of view because it suits our liking, however.

To link this to the abortion issue, the reading of a Right to Privacy into the Constitution is no stretch, as numerous ammendments hint at it, protect pieces of it, and obviously show that the Founders and those that crafted the document after them valued it. To logically extend it to a singular coherant Right to Privacy is not much of a stretch, and still well within the authors' points of view. To extend that Right to cover certain medical procedures, on the other hand, strikes me as a very modern re-reading of it. The same with seeing pregnancy as a form of 'involuntary servitude'.

 

I never heard of this either. Perhaps LKD can enlighten us and give a bit more detail. We know he is a Mormon, but as most of us here are not, it would be helpful if he can explain what he means by the influence that God had on the Founders.

 

Le sigh. I should have shut the eff up, as I now feel a little too Gnarffy, and that is NOT the role I wish to play on these boards.

So to state at the beginning, this is not a proselyting attempt. Nor is it open season on Mormons -- to paraphrase Disciple of the Watch (who once commented when referencing his religious views) "if you have any problems with Mormonism, keep it to yourself -- I've heard it all before and am not interested in a debate on the matter." I merely seek to elaborate on what I believe so people understand where I am coming from. Got that? Good. Everybody settled in with a bag of Doritos and the beverage of your choice? Excellent. Here we go!

The earthly founder of the LDS faith, Joseph Smith, once stated that the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution were divinely inspired documents. What he meant by that was that God worked in small, mysterious ways to influence the authors to write a document unlike any other that was in accordance with God's will.

Now, some say that the Constitution contradicted Christian theology. The Mormon argument is that any Christian theology contradicted therein was theology that had become corrupted and was not God's will.

It is my understanding that one of the primary goals of the Founders was to create a strong political entity that nevertheless had great respect for freedom. The Founders, as much as they were able, were very interested in the principle of freedom and the principle of rights for the individual. The Book of Mormon states:

"when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." Mosiah 2:19

Now I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the Founders were serving others when they framed the Constitution. Many people, (Chandos among them, I would hazard) believe that both their contemporaries and future generations owe the Founders a debt of gratitude for the principles that were laid out in the Constitution. Those founders were serving the interests of people everywhere.

So whether they knew it or not, or believed in the Christian worldview or not, or even believed in God or not, my position is that they were influenced, subtly, by God to make that document the bastion of freedom that it is today.

And that's a good thing, as my friend Martha Stewart would say.

Now please, please, for the love of all that is interesting (notice I didn't say holy) don't turn this into a Mormon bashing thread. I know all the criticisms, both the valid ones and the rhetorical smears. I'm just explaining what I meant. That's it.

Moving on to Chandos' point, I am very much in agreement with you that the Founderswere great men. I hope you didn't think I was slagging them -- I wasn't. I was paraphrasing the criticisms that many modern people have made -- Drew didn't mention some of the ones I've heard before, but he did say this:

I know what he was getting at with this quote, and he defended it quite nicely. Hell, I even repped (positively!) the guy for it, because it was awesome. On sober analysis, though, the fact that they were both white and landowning is not something that makes me toss out their opinions on matters like the ones Drew mentioned. I do consider their worldview and today's when weighing their opinions.

I think that a middle road balance is necessary -- one that respects them for their abilities and such, but also one that takes into account that the world they lived in was very, very different from ours now.

I really hope that coherently explains my position, and I want to re-iterate, I kinda wish I'd not mentioned that as it muddied the issue a little.