Letters to the Editor
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Ugh.
Please, Traister, at least read the decision before you comment on it. It really blows my mind that so few people haven't taken the time to do so, and with your very first paragraph, you prove that you are one of those people.
the case in which the Supreme Court decided that any state or federal laws restricting or outlawing abortion were in violation of a constitutional right to privacy
That's not what they decided, at all. They decided that before a fetus is viable, the individual right to privacy trumped the states' right to restrict abortion.
I urge everyone here to read the opinion. It was a wise and considered decision. I've had many arguments with conservative friends that started with, basically, "um... okay, maybe we shouldn't outlaw abortion, but 'right to privacy', wtf?"
If you read the decision, you find out exactly wtf. Women have the right to private medical counsel. States have the right to protect life. Those rights are in conflict, and the decision attempted to balance that conflict. People on both sides of the debate misunderstand the decision. It's vital that we take the time to educate ourselves, to better argue our point of view. Please do so, now:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html
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Anniversary of the Firing of the Starting Gun
Roe v. Wade is undeniably important and it is well both to celebrate it and to be concerned over its fate as the Supreme Court becomes more and more likely to overturn it. ("Conservatism" is the enemy du jour, but a true conservative would not be rooting for an overturn of this ruling).
Roe was only the first shot in a battle that has yet to be waged. It was important, certainly, and in my humble opinion must be preserved, but it also is long over due for the rest of the business to be completed that Roe only started; that is a human's right not only to control over his or her body and its privacy, but over his or her right to live or not to live, given reasonable cause. It is the vanguard of issues having to do not only with privacy, the protection of life and of healthcare in general, but also the responsibility of healthcare providers under the law, and of the right of a human being to live or to end his/her life; it is part of a long-ignored and/or thwarted movement to get the government's nose out of our bedrooms, our living rooms, our private and personal lives and affairs.
To lose this one very important foothold would be more than a tragedy and a travesty; it would set back the rights of individuals to live their lives as they will, where others are not adversely affected in their persons and their own peace.
Props to Renegade Iconoclast for providing a link to the ruling for those legions who know next to nothing about the actual ruling and its intentions. Roe v. wade becomes all the more significant when it is fully understood, including the painstaking process by which it was reached. That it could be struck down in a single-page decision is a terrifying thought, but we are likely closer to that possibility right now than we have been at any time since 1973.
Had we all been actively persuing the consumation of the rest of the deal over the past 35 years we might well have evolved a little more than we have, but reading law is so dry and boring. It's little wonder, then, that we have wound up living through the surreal experience of the past seven years. We may just have to pay for our apathy even as the winds of change clean out the White House. The Supreme Court doesn't permit opportunity for that kind of regular turnover.
Instead of celebrating perhaps we should all be brushing up on the rights we think we have and how we might lose those we actually do have. Thirty five years and this is all we have to show?
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And yet feminists have failed to maintain support for abortion
Although abortion remains a common experience for women of childbearing women, advocacy groups remain on the defensive. Sadly, they trot out the same slogans and fail to engage the mass of women in the US. the same is true of feminism, as a whole. It became a clubby world of in-group infighting (e.g., what to do with lesbianism), rather than the mass movement that women were waiting for. Abortion remains commonplace, but threatened and feminiism and NARAL have no idea how to engage the mass of women who should be supporting abortion rights.
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everything except the timing
Pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on everything except the timing; i.e., the time to decide when to have a child is before fertilization, not after. The abortion issue is not a confrontation between misogynistic oppressors of women and fanatical "baby-killers," rather it is a rational, secular debate on when human rights should begin.
Pro-life author Paul Nowak asks his readers to try and get pro-choicers to determine when they think human rights should begin; implying that since life begins at fertilization, all other criteria (viability, birth, etc.) are arbitrary. The real question in the abortion debate is not the seemingly absurd scenario of giving full human rights to human zygotes, but rather the thorny question of how to protect those rights without violating a new mother's privacy and civil liberties.
Writer and activist Jay Sykes, who led Eugene McCarthy's 1968 antiwar campaign and later served as head of the state's American Civil Liberties Union wrote: "It is on the abortion issue that the moral bankruptcy of contemporary liberalism is most clearly exposed," because the arguments in support of abortion "could, without much refinement, be used to justify the legalization of infanticide."
Instead of packing the courts with conservatives, I think pro-lifers should be pushing for a Constitutional Amendment to extend human rights to the unborn. The central issues in the abortion debate are the “personhood” or moral status of the unborn, and the extent of individual and marital privacy.
Stephen Douglas has been quoted as having said in debate with Abraham Lincoln that human slavery be resolved through the democratic process. Let the people decide: if they “want slavery, they shall have it; if they prohibit slavery, it shall be prohibited.”
Whether or not democracy is the ideal form of government is not the issue here, but since we live in a democracy, what is wrong with Douglas’ statement? It was through the democratic process that we gave women the right to vote, gave 18 year olds the right to vote, and even attempted the Equal Rights Amendment. Isn’t this how we should extend human rights to the unborn? Isn’t this how we should give rights to animals?
Pro-lifers compare Roe v. Wade to the Dred Scott decision of 1857. In both cases, rights were denied to an entire class of humans based upon an arbitrary criterion, such as developmental status or the color of the skin. The conclusion author Paul Nowak draws from this in Guerilla Apologetics for Life Issues is that the Supreme Court is not infallible.
Roe v. Wade was decided in part by denying rights to the unborn, but also by assuming a right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut assumed a right to marital privacy regarding the use of contraception) not clearly spelled out in the Constitution.
Can we overturn Roe without overturning Griswold?
Is the solution to the abortion crisis to pack the Court with conservatives who might also oppose things like church-state separation (in the Newdow case regarding the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Scalia had to excuse himself from the case, because he doesn’t believe in complete church-state separation) and deny us contraception and a right to privacy (Griswold)…or is the solution to enact a Constitutional Amendment to extend human rights to the unborn?
And again, as Paul Nowak says, the Supreme Court is not infallible. The views of the Court are constantly changing. In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld a sodomy law. A few years ago, they reversed themselves, which outraged the religious right, but pleased lesbians and gays, the parents and friends of lesbians and gays, and political liberals.
I cannot understand how pro-life liberals and pro-life Democrats, most of whom respect the private nonviolent behavior of consenting adults, most of whom support church-state separation, and most of whom support contraception and better sex education as the most effective way to prevent unplanned pregnancies, would want to align themselves with pro-life conservatives and pro-life Republicans in order to pack the courts with conservatives in the hopes of eventually overturning Roe v. Wade.
It’s my conviction that we do have a fundamental right to privacy, and I cannot advocate putting the women of America unwillingly under electronic surveillance, probing their past without their consent, denying them contraception, or even going through their personal effects (although the Fourth Amendment does protect us against unwarranted search and seizure). There must be a better way.
Until we pro-life Democrats have enough numbers to change our Party platform to one calling for a Human Life Amendment (as is the case with the Republican Party), I think we should be advocating: easy access to contraception; better, more comprehensive sex education; real social support for pregnant women and children; and reasonable restrictions on abortion (e.g., a ban on partial-birth abortion, parental notification or consent, 24 hour waiting periods, informed consent or “women’s right to know” laws, etc.)
Doing this would dramatically reduce the abortion rate, which would please both pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike within our Party. It would also be consistent with Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” position. If “safe, legal and rare” becomes the new mantra in the Democratic Party with regards to abortion, I will consider it real progress from the 1970s, when pro-choice bumper stickers read: “Abortion is every woman’s choice.”
Again, instead of packing the courts with conservatives in the hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade, I favor grassroots activism and educating the American public about when human life begins, prenatal development, etc. in order to get them to eventually support a Constitutional Amendment to extend human rights to the unborn.
And again, pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on everything except the timing.