Why abortion rights matter ... even to those who think abortion is immoral

[LuckyTheDog]

Some talking points:

There seriously is NO way to enforce a total ban on abortion without giving the government powers nobody wants it to have. Citizens of free societies have a "goes without saying" right to basic privacy in places like the doctor's office. Taking that away would be judicial activism at its worst. Should all pregnancies be reported to the state? Should all miscarriages be investigated by the cops? Where does the Constitution give the government the right to impose measures like that?
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All former bans on abortion were unenforceable. The better-off just traveled to where it was legal. Others paid illegal abortionists, often with tragic consequences.
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Criminalizing abortion is probably the worst way to reduce the number of abortions performed. The choice in Roe was to rule as they did or to do one of the following:

1) Give the government the extreme powers it would need to enforce abortion bans (none of which are granted to it in the Constitution) or...

2) Sanction meaningless laws that can't be enforced -- thus eroding the entire concept of the rule of the law.

-----------------------

Remember, the crux of Roe isn't so much the "right to an abortion" as it is the right to privacy. The court ruled that, till the fetus is viable, the government has no role or interest the outcome of the pregnancy. The court left it TO THE PEOPLE to decide the moral issue for themselves. That is as it should be, given that the Constitution does not give the feds the right to do otherwise.

[norml]

1. Because outlawing abortion won't make it go away.

It will just make it more expensive and dangerous.

[Nikki Stone 1]

2. Recommended

This is very important. Thank you.

[ourbluenation]

3. my favorite response is this...

"Don't believe in abortion? Then DON'T HAVE ONE!"

[madeline_con]

4. That's not good enough...

for some people. They insist that if they don't want one, no one else gets one! :mad:

(BTW, what's with that dumb look they get when I ask what type of parent a person who doesn't want kids will make?)

[Aimah]

5. I agree

I think of myself as a fairly religious person. I don't think I'd ever get an abortion if it was ever an option. I don't think the restraints that I've set for myself should be forced on others. Just as with evolution. I'm progressive enough to believe that evolution is possible and God can be author of it. But I don't believe in teaching creationism in school. If you want your kids to learn that then they should go to a religious school, home schooled or their parents should fill in at home. I just don't believe in enforcing my own personal beliefs on others.

[tocqueville]

6. I still don't understand why it's so difficult TO PASS A LAW

in Congress, permitting abortion under certain circumstances and restricting it to pure medical cases after the "viability limit".

The law expresses the will of the majority of the citizens. And in that case nobody is OBLIGED to abort if they don't want to.

It's very interesting that you name that Roe it is basically a judicial construction around "the right to privacy"...

Which has been a way to avoid the real questions... which doesn't work anymore. Because if a Bush-like fundie regime were to subsist and with hand picked judges things can be rewritten...

It's much more difficult to do it with a LAW passed in congress.

[NinetySix]

7. Those are not "talking points," but points of logic.

You're absolutely right about the implications to the Government's ability to regulate pregnancy in such an event. But it goes even further than that: if the Government can dictate what a citizen cannot do with his/her own person, it can also dictate what must be done.

Imagine the reaction of conservatives if the Government could not only outlaw fast food and junk food, but could enforce a healthy, balanced diet, for the "greater good." We'd all be a lot healthier, right? But what of Liberty?

Or what if laws could be passed requiring that a certain amount of labor MUST be performed each day (or week or year)? Our country would become a more efficient, productive one, wouldn't it? But again, what of free choice?

The right to an abortion does indeed go to our (Constitutionally implied) right to privacy, but what is more, that right undergirds our very status as free individuals, unfettered by edicts of the State, even beneficent ones.

As for me, give me Liberty or give me death.

[tocqueville]

8. the government requires from you that you drive

on a certain side of the road and don't drink...

it regulates your food so it's not totally polluted

it regulates your medicines so they are efficient and not snake oil...

it can draft you to war if an enemy threatens you ...

why because the interests of the many override the interests of the few (even if those can be kept safe to a certain extent).

It's the point of living in a community, a society...

else full liberty can be achieved on an empty island

That's why a government can regulate pregnancy in a way it's both acceptable for the individual AND society

Your post represents only an anarchist point o view. And so far it hasn't been viable. Because if you put 2 anarchists together and a common bathroom, you have a society...

[DELUSIONAL]

10. It is a RIGHT TO PRIVACY ISSUE

You and your government can get the hell out of my business.

And my body is my business.

[tocqueville]

12. there is no EXPLICIT right to privacy in the US constitution

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 12, states:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Most countries have laws protecting privacy. In some countries this is part of their constitution, such as France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. If the privacy of an individual is breached, the individual may bring a lawsuit asking for monetary damages. However, in the United Kingdom, recent cases involving celebrities such as David Beckham, however, have resulted in defeat as the information has been determined in the courts to be in the public interest<2>.

In various civil cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has found that the Constitution contains "penumbras" that implicitly grant a right to privacy against government intrusion; such cases include Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) (which allowed parents/guardians to educate their children), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) (which explicitly recognised the right to privacy), Roe v. Wade (1973) (which prevented states from legislating against abortion), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (which prevented states from legislating against sodomy). On the other hand, the Supreme Court, in California v. Greenwood (1988), decided that trash does not carry a privacy expectation. The penumbral privacy right has also not been found to apply to government intrusion into individuals' financial data as it applies to the income tax, their residency data as it applies to the Census, or age data as once applied to conscription and now applies to registration for the non-existent draft.

As the U.S. constitution does not explicitly grant a right to privacy, its application by the Court to privacy cases seems quite arbitrary and the right to privacy is a hotly debated issue — strict constructionists argue that there is no such right and civil libertarians argue that the right invalidates many types of surveillance, such as CCTV cameras and wiretaps.

Most states in the U.S. grant a right to privacy and recognise four torts:

Intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairs;
Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts;
Publicity which places a person in a false light in the public eye; and
Appropriation of name or likeness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#Privacy_laws

PENUMBRAL :

The origins of our modern "Right to Privacy" are found in what are known as penumbras of constitutional rights or penumbral rights. A penumbra is a partial shadow between regions of complete darkness and complete illumination, as in an eclipse. In law, penumbra refers to an area in which something exists in a lesser or uncertain degree. Penumbral rights are rights that the Constitution does not specifically mention, but may be implied by the rights that are enumerated
_______________________________________________________________

which means that though the right to privacy is in general MUCH STRONGER IN EUROPE it has never been used as a MAJOR argument to justify the right to abortion.

The motivations in Europe are that abortion is a social and medical right, because it improves women's well being. Besides women have a right to dispose of their bodies WHICH IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT.

FOr me the "privacy" argument is only a smokescreen to avoid to discuss the real HUMAN AND SOCIAL ISSUES.

[jmm]

11. The interests of the community are not serve when

half the population has their right to privacy striped away and the religious beliefs of others forced upon them.

[NinetySix]

14. Liberty is not anarchy,

and the love of Liberty is the foundation of our Great Experiment. I rebut your points:

"the government requires from you that you drive on a certain side of the road and don't drink..."

This is not the regulation of one's person, but of one's actions. The Government also prevents you from discharging firearms in public or inciting violence. Protecting public safety is one of the functions we assign to our Government.

it regulates your food so it's not totally polluted

Again, this does not go to the control over the persons of individual citizens, but is a regulation of corporate behavior for the protection of the public well-being.

it regulates your medicines so they are efficient and not snake oil...

Same as above.

it can draft you to war if an enemy threatens you ...

This is certainly an example of the Government's ability to exercise control over an individual's person, and an important one. The difference here, however, is that this power (when properly utilized) insures our society against foreign enemies who might otherwise strip us of our liberties and impose their own, alien order upon us without the consent of the governed.

Although an important example, file this one under "civic duties." While the draft as such may be conscienced due to its existential aspect, it is solely a necessary evil, and should not be emulated for more mundane ends. Civic duties are vital to the well-being of our society, but Liberty is paramount.



edit:sp

[colinmom71]

15. Those are invalid analogies...

The first three examples you mention are not at all related to issues of individual privacy. The driving example is an issue of greater public safety - regulations that do not unreasonably and unduely impact an individual's conduct while performing a *public* action (driving a vehicle). The second and third examples aren't even regulations over individual conduct. They are regulations over public business matters which impact the health and well being of the members of society as a whole.

As for your assertion that the interests of the many override the interests of the few, that is not true in a rights based perspective of law such as we have here in the US. Our law is written in a conservatively Liberal manner - that a just society recognizes the right of the individual to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, so long as their actions do not harm others' same rights (this is the Liberal aspect). Our governance can only restrict conduct that is proven to have a negative impact upon society (this is where the conservatism comes in - limiting governmental powers from too broadly impacting individual liberty rights). Rights are inherent to personhood, and those rights cannot be abrogated or encroached upon without valid and reasonable evidence of a harmful impact upon other persons and/or society in general.

Going back to your driving example, as individual persons we have the right and liberty to drive where ever we want. Thanks to that right, I could hop in my car now and drive to Mrs. Winner's to buy a chicken biscuit (damn, now I'm hungry!) simply because I want to do so. But because other people have the same right, it is only reasonable to institute public safety regulations/laws in order to ensure everyone drives in an orderly manner to avoid accidents or actions that can result in harm to others lives or property. Yes, these laws somewhat impact my right to drive where I please, but they do not either impede or negatively impact my exercize of that right...

The same is applicable in regards to abortion, albeit in a more strictly limited sense. There *are* already laws that regulate abortion in the similar vein of contributing to public safety, though again they are essentially business regulations regarding the environment in which abortion services can be provided, such as the requirement for a licensed physician to perform the procedure, regulations on where abortions are performed, etc. These reasonable regulations have been addressed as valid by Roe v. Wade and subsequent related decisions, so long as those regulations aren't manipulated in order to make abortion access burdensome.

But in so far as the individual's right to access abortion is concerned, there has been no demonstrable harmful impact upon society where an individual woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy. I have yet to see a valid example of how an individual's action over her own body has a harmful societal impact to the point of warranting restrictions or proscriptions of safely provided medical abortion services. Absent a compelling societal interest, the individual right to access abortion services should not be infringed upon by the government.

This is not an anarchist point of view. Rather, it is a reasonable point of view which demands state actions to be just and respectful of the rights of individuals to conduct their lives as they best can.

[NinetySix]

17. Well said, colinmom.

n/t

[tocqueville]

21. BTW liberalism has its limits

When viewed outside the twentieth century American box, liberalism is not the antithesis of contemporary conservatism but its political backbone. Such a liberalism harkens back to the revolutionary bourgeois political economy of Adam Smith, Kant's cosmopolitanism, the willed reason of Rousseau, Hume's practical empiricism, and of course John Locke's juridical politics of property and rights. (pgs 30-31)

The political self-understanding that emerged forms the backbone of U.S. politics:

A society of individual property owners, free and independent before the law and with equal recourse to it, who met in the competitive marketplace, and who enjoyed the rights to a democratic vote and vote unashamedly in their own self-interest (pg 32).

http://cntodd.blogspot.com/2005/02/book-review-endgame-of-globalization.html

The authour shows that the latest conception when combined to nationalism inevitably leads to war, but that's another question.

ON the internal level the own self interest is always in conflict with the interest of the many. That's why a state (government) has to regulate it. Or else you'll have a warlord society in the end.

European "liberals" are less willing to extend freedom to people who require others the wearing of the burqa, arranged marriage, and female circumcision, which they see as contradictory to individual freedom (especially for women). Many European liberals now think that the state should actively promote 'western values', 'European values' and/or 'Enlightenment values'.

so a bit less individual freedom is more freedom for everybody, SPECIALLY THE WEAK ONES.

[NinetySix]

23. I'm not certain how your point is relevant to our previous discussion.

I think I see some of the pertinence of the last two paragraphs, but I don't espouse the rights of citizens to impose their ideas or beliefs on others.

Burqas and arranged marriages are fine so long as they are freely chosen by the willing members of a sect who will be affected by them, as all citizens must be permitted to worship freely. Otherwise, they are unacceptable, as they undermine individual liberties. It is hard to imagine how female circumcision, which is essentially the mutilation of an infant, can be viewed in a similar fashion, as the rights of those undergoing the procedure are being patently violated.

Analogously, if David Koresh has religious beliefs that entail following a particular orthodox way of life, then he is entitled to such doctrine under the First Amendment. If others choose to adopt that as their way as well, then they are also entitled. But the moment he begins to molest children as he claimed is the "right" of the returned messiah, he violates the rights reserved to those children under the Constitution, and he has trespassed beyond his entitlement.

But these issues all seem to have something to do with the issue of consent. How is that inconsistent with what I said above? And why do you bring up self-interest? I mentioned civic responsibility, something which one may shirk, but at the peril of a civilized society. Surely that is consistent with what you are saying? Or perhaps you're subtly pointing out areas of agreement between us?

[LuckyTheDog]

18. Yep

Very good.

The Constitution does not HAVE to be explicit about the right to privacy. Why? Because, conversely, nowhere does it give the government the right to violate privacy. And in cases like that, the benefit of the doubt goes to the people. Free people have a "goes-without-saying" right to basic privacy.

[tocqueville]

20. Give me a paper on it....

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 12, states:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

This is PART of many European Constitutions, just to remind rulers where their rule stops...

when it's not written, it's worthless. And your government can violate privacy whenever it wants, its' left to the "appreciation" of a judge appointed for LIFE. By a PRESIDENT (executive power).

Same reasoning : torture is OK, a judge "appreciates it" etc.. etc..

Well it "goes without a saying" that people have a basic right not to be tortured.

[tocqueville]

19. My analogies were in response to using "privacy" as...

an argument in response to eating junkfood and "forced" labour for the common interest. As such they are valid. I didn't claim the right to privacy for such topics, the poster did.

"As for your assertion that the interests of the many override the interests of the few, that is not true in a rights based perspective of law such as we have here in the US. Our law is written in a conservatively Liberal manner - that a just society recognizes the right of the individual to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, so long as their actions do not harm others' same rights (this is the Liberal aspect). Our governance can only restrict conduct that is proven to have a negative impact upon society (this is where the conservatism comes in - limiting governmental powers from too broadly impacting individual liberty rights). Rights are inherent to personhood, and those rights cannot be abrogated or encroached upon without valid and reasonable evidence of a harmful impact upon other persons and/or society in general"

I never denied it, your freedom stops where the freedom of other starts. That's why you are not free to play loud music whenever you want, unless your neighbours agree or are deaf.

But freedom is not privacy. Privacy means that infrigement of the private sphere is regulated for moral or society reasons. And that differs depending of culture or religion.

The US constitution doesn't grant any right to privacy, it's a penumbral right, that is to say the appreciation of a judge which is very weird from an European point of view.

The right to abortion in Europe is considered not as a question of privacy, but as a SOCIAL RIGHT. Which is completely different. A woman has the right to abort because the right to her own body, but ALSO because a denial to abortion would cause SOCIAL AND MEDICAL harm to the woman (women) and to society (inducing criminality, diseases etc...). It's obvious that the second aspect is completely out of the motivation in the US. That's why the US is the only country to have at least in theory a right to abortion OTHER than for medical reasons in the later stages of pregnancy. And thus giving arguments to the fundies.

I still think that the "privacy argument" is a smoke screen to avoid to pass a law in congress.

[NinetySix]

25. I see in part what you're aiming at.

But recall, the United States' Constitution was the first such document of its kind, ratified in the late 18th Century. European constitutions followed much later. The specific term "privacy" which you are searching for is not contained in the former document for an altogether different reason: the term, closely related to the term "privy" was not considered in its modern context of one's control over personal matters, but carried a connotation of excretory functions, which for obvious reasons, are typically carried out alone.

It is hard to imagine what the Founding Fathers would have made of the term during their own day, and it is likely that it would have been judged incongruous with their intent, despite the fact that it is perfectly in keeping with what we mean today. Such is the nature of evolving languages.

But clearly, what we mean today by "privacy" is entailed in Amendment four of the Bill of Rights, which asserts a citizen's right to "security in their person, houses papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Security rather than privacy? A matter of semantics, perhaps. But what do we mean by privacy beyond a citizen's security in his own person, which is what I was saying above?

Furthermore, Amendment nine states, "the ennumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Rights, therefore, are not granted from above by the document, but belong to the people themselves who assert those rights. Amendment nine makes it clear that the Bill of Rights is amended to the Constitution as a convenient reminder to the Government whence those rights are derived.

So although "privacy" is not cited verbatim as a right, it is clear that it is directly indicated per se by these passages, which are crucial and integral to the document.

[gumby]

26. Excuse me, but over half the population

is NOT the equivalent of what side of the road you drive on.

In case you haven't noticed, the regulations on "corporate" infractions have been eliminated.

Your argument resides firmly in the walnut-lined halls of sexism.

Shall I argue the gubmits regulation of your "extra" kidney?

[proud patriot]

9. My MIL is very anti abortion but, Votes Dem because

She's says "it's none of the Government's business"
"God gave us free will to sin or not sin" and
"religion has business in Government"

she thinks god will judge you as he sees fit
not what anybody else thinks and no one has
the business to judge based on scripture.

I love her :loveya:

[nolabels]

13. It's just another part of wanting absolute power absolutely

The hypothetical from Bill B. explains it perfectly. He would reason it would be okay to abort black babies as long as it was something the government was doing.

The thing I notice most about fundamentalist is they rarely reason things through to their hypothetical conclusions or have much going for them in the way of introspection

[Freedom_from_Chains]

16. However, I have found this to be just to complex of an argument

for the average RW christian to grasp. You can't get much beyond, "You're killing babies," or you lose them completly.

[grannylib]

22. Not to mention that part of the so-called right-to-life agenda is getting

rid of the most reliable forms of birth control (after abstinence). Most consider the Pill, the IUD, even condoms or foam to be mini-abortions, so the problem will only get worse, not better, and will disproportionately affect the poor, as do most rePiglican policies.

[BlueIris]

24. Kick.

On principle.