Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

I won’t be posting for a while. I’ve got things I gotta work out here. So all my readers [Mike], you’ll no longer have your weekly line of snark.

Sorry.

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Yeh that’s definitely spelled wrong, but I don’t care. These people are awesome!! They did the Zelda theme and Mortal Kombat…. ah so good! You’ve got some competition there, Mike

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As we approach the 1 year anniversary to the election, it’s important to reflect on the past year. A lot of people have been doing that lately… and… well let’s just say America has a message for our President. Back in June this message was “We strongly disapprove of your actions as President, as I blogged about 3 months ago [Timing Is Everything]. Now that message is this:

Fuck you Mr. President! Besides the 39% approval rating, based on the state-by-state results, Bush would win a grand total of SEVEN states [2 were tied statistically]: Alaska, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming [Mississippi and Montana are tied]. How many electoral votes is that? 30 [39 with the ties]? Can we redo the election on november 8th, please? Bush is a lameduck president. Time to roast the duck.

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This is how every such debate should go down. Fucking brilliant.

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Yay for JibJab!

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I awoke this morning to find that a thick fog had settled over campus during the night. It was a deep, unyielding fog, obscuring even the Golden Dome. It gave the campus an eerie feel; there was a contemplative silence, a kind of peace gripping the place. This was truly the calm before the storm.

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Ah, thank you Doug Eddings. You just proved my point.

For those of you who don’t know Doug Eddings, let me explain. He was the home plate umpire for last night’s Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the Chicago White Sox and the L.A. Angels of Anaheim, in Chicago. The game was tied in the bottom of the 9th with an 0-2 count, 2 outs. The third pitch was very low, the batter swung… and then the fun began. The umpire signaled third strike, continued watching the batter, and held his fist in the air to signal 3rd out. The batter took one step towards the dugout, then broke for first, as one would do when a called third strike hits the dirt. Upon reaching first, he is ruled safe. The Angels [fielders] had been heading to the dugout, thinking the game over. They were pissed, understandably. The White Sox scored on the next batter to win the game. So what does this have to do with “my point”?

In a blog post several months ago, I called my state’s junior Senator Rick “Man-on-Dog” Santorum “dumb on baseball” because he said the game of baseball would suck if the umpire was the most important player on the field. I argued, from first-hand experience, that the umpire is the most important “player” on the field… and even though the analogy is poor between the Supreme Court and an umpire [Court doesn’t just settle disputes between the two branches after all], I decided to play his little game and explain why a good umpire must be a “loose constructionist” when it comes to calling a game… and here is a perfect example of that.

According to the reporters at ESPN’s Sportscenter, the head of umpires for MLB has said that there is no rule requiring that the umpire say “no catch”; or say anything at all for that matter! Furthermore, his hand motions were consistent; he always motioned 3rd strike-out, even when the ball hit the dirt. Strictly speaking, he is well within the rulebook. That doesn’t mean he ruled correctly, however. I am not criticizing the call; he thought the ball hit the dirt, the replay is inconclusive; therefore, we refer to the two rules of umpiring: 1. The Umpire is always right; 2. When the Umpire is wrong, refer to Rule 1. The ball hit the dirt. However, I am allowed, as a fellow umpire, to critique Mr. Eddings handling of the call.

Mr. Eddings, you did the biggest no-no in umpiring: you were unclear. An umpire must always make his calls clear and understandable. It’s not that you made the wrong call; it’s that you applied it poorly. Using the same rules [more or less] that your colleagues use, that college umpires use, that I and thousands of little league umpires use, you made the same call that all of us, in your position, would have made; but you did it differently than I, and likely many of our colleagues, would have.

So you see, Ralph Boyd: the umpire is the most important “player” on the field. And yes: Santorum is dumb on baseball.

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I was going to write something today… but how dare I try to take the place of Mrs. Shepard. Her letter is here.

Hate is a learned behavior. If a child is taught to hate and fear diversity, then the next place he or she expresses that hate is at school. Ten percent of all hate crimes occur at schools and colleges . Bullying in our nation’s schools has resulted in countless acts of violence. The cycle continues until that child who is filled with hate becomes an adult citizen in your community and begins to teach others to hate.

Please help your children understand diversity without fearing it. Be an example of acceptance and compassion. The consequences of hate hurt everyone. It hurts not only the victim - it hurts their family and friends. It destroys the families of the perpetrators. Lives are lost, lives are ruined and lives are changed forever.

~Judy Shepard

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Today marks seven years since the brutal attack. I’ll have a longer post on this on the 12th.

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I’m back, on yet another rant on why moderates and undecided folks on abortion should stick with the pro-choice movement. Normally, I rail against the rest of the “pro-life” [sic] movement because the rest of its agenda is so radical, so far out-there. Today, I have my other theme: its leaders are idiots. I did a survey on a Religious Reich site called the “Christian Worldview Network”, and they signed me up for their emailed newsletter. Oh joy. So in today’s email [which as a side note was entitled “Is Bill Bennet a Racists? [sic]”] they had an article- excuse me, “dissertation”- by one Steven Voigt on Roe v. Wade. I cringed when I saw that. Why? Simple: the pro-life movement tends to completely misunderstand and misrepresent this case and its decision. With some trepidation, I clicked through…

Strolling through the festive atmosphere in the Living Constitution Hall of Fame, where the sign over the door says, “We Make the Law and Judge it too,� you can find Roe v. Wade enshrined as the greatest instance of judicial activism. Down the street and around the corner in the Judicial Activism Hall of Shame, Roe v. Wade is likewise the main exhibit, except there, the mood of the onlookers is noticeably more somber, knowing, and reflective.

Already, it’s incoherent. What the fuck is he talking about? I think it’s supposed to be some variant of the “living constitution BAAAD, strict construction GOOOD!” that conservatives go on and on about [when it suits them… but I digress]. Using Roe v. Wade as the example that living constitution folks like to hold up as their shining example is most definitely a strawman argument. I’d say Griswold v. Connecticut would be the best example.

In Roe v. Wade,1 in a split decision,2 the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute, which prohibited abortion except when it is performed to save a pregnant mother’s life. In the opinion, the Court created a nebulous right to privacy, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment implicitly includes a right to abort an unborn child.

You may be wondering what those numbers are in the paragraph. They’re footnotes that should be superscripts, but as I forget my html on this, I’ll edit it later in the interest of plowing forward. I could probably find 3 things wrong with every sentence, but to be brief, I’ll stick to two that jump out. First regards “split decision” and footnote 2. As anyone with any knowledge of the case [which most people, particularly pro-lifers, lack] or for God’s sake a search engine knows, Roe v. Wade was decided 7-2. Seven. Two. That’s not a split decision. Is Mr. Voigt simply mistaken? Sadly, no! Going to the footnote shows that Mr. Voigt knows who voted for the decision and who voted against. So it’s even worse than ignorance: he’s lying. My second point is about the “Court creat[ing] a nebulous right to privacy” in this case. That’s also a lie. A big, big lie. Anyone being honest and with any knowledge of important cases would know that the right to privacy was created in Griswold v. Connecticut. So Mr. Voigt has now lied twice and used one Strawman argument. He’s on a roll!

If any law student or a practitioner of law objectively reads Roe v. Wade, the opinion must surely seem like a proclamation from planet Bizarro World. The opinion is unlike all other legal opinions that law students study in school and that lawyers encounter in practice. It suffers from next to no analysis of legal precedent. It contains no examination of the Constitution or of legislative intent. It includes no discussion of the proper role of the judiciary in our tripartite system of governance.

If Mr. Voigt sez it, it must be true! Here’s the text of the decision itself. Here’s part V:

The principal thrust of appellant’s attack on the Texas statutes is that they improperly invade a right, said to be possessed by the pregnant woman, to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Appellant would discover this right in the concept of personal “liberty” embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause; or in personal, marital, familial, and sexual privacy said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); id., at 460 (WHITE, J., concurring in result); or among those rights reserved to the people by the Ninth Amendment, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring). Before addressing this claim, we feel it desirable briefly to survey, in several aspects, the history of abortion, for such insight as that history may afford us, and then to examine the state purposes and interests behind the criminal abortion laws.

Hm… cites precedents… and then procedes to discuss the history of abortion and abortion laws. Furthermore, much of the previous sections discussed whether or not the plaintiffs had the right to bring their case before the court: a discussion on the place of the judiciary! *Gasp!* Did Mr. Voigt just lie again? Sadly, yes!

If we take the issue of abortion off the table and simply examine what the Roe v. Wade Court did, everyone – yes, every citizen who cares about our fundamental structure of governance regardless of their position on abortion – must agree that the Roe v. Wade Court treaded where it should never go. The Court improperly thrust itself into the legislative realm.

*blinks* um… isn’t the Supreme Court supposed to over-rule state and federal laws which are unconstitutional? I mean, that’s kind of been the precedent for the Court since the Marshall Court. Right?

When I say that liberals should be just as concerned as conservatives about Roe v. Wade, it is for an important reason. The Court wielded the Constitution as never intended – as an offensive tool - brandishing a Constitutional amendment as pen and paper to issue legislation from the bench. When a court mandates new social law under the guise of Constitutional interpretation, its decisions could cut either way – to the left or the right. And, such judicial activism is unassailable by the other branches. In other words, when a court dons the legislative cap, that court eclipses our system of checks and balances and upsets our structure of governance. Nothing could be more alien to our Constitution. Nothing from our courts could be more dangerous.

*sigh* The Court did not issue a law: it over-ruled an existing one and set standards for what other laws could and couldn’t do. It does that all the bloody time [Lawrence v. Texas, Griswold, Brown v. Board, etc ad naseum]. That is its job.

In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state legislatures limiting abortion. In 1868, there was no question of the validity of these 36 statutes. It was not until Roe v. Wade in 1973 – over one hundred years after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment - that the Court suddenly decided that the amendment includes an implicit restriction precluding legislation that regulates abortion.

There were also segregation laws after the 14th was passed. However, the Court “waited” until 1954 to suddenly decide that the amendment includes and implicit restriction precluding legislation that regulates the races. See, I can be a “lawyer from a premier law firm” too!

To get to where it wanted to be, the Supreme Court plucked-and-pasted a hodgepodge of favorable social theory, selective religious concepts, ancient mythology, and a misleading sliver of common law. The trouble is, in all of these areas, to put it bluntly - the Court got it wrong.

I’m sorry, I don’t even know what the fuck he’s talking about here. Could someone please interpret this? Go read the decision that I linked to before, and you tell me if it has any of the above.

The Roe v. Wade Court used a broad brush review of common law to support its holding. In fact, its highly selective use of common law is disingenuous. The Court excluded the vast library of common law that would oppose its view on abortion.

Of course, the Court has NEVER ruled something which overturned previous decisions…

For example, the Court opined that Sir William Blackstone viewed abortion after a woman who is quick with child (after the unborn child begins to move in the mother’s womb) as mere manslaughter. The Court also opined that Blackstone believed laws on abortion were becoming more liberal. In fact, Blackstone’s discussion of an unborn child is much more complex than the Court would have everyone believe. For example, the Court neglected to mention that Blackstone wrote that “[a]n infant . . . in the mother’s womb, is supposed to born for many purposes.�3 The Court also lost sight of the fact that Blackstone did indeed view abortion as a criminal offense, albeit one with lesser punishment than homicide of a grown man or woman.

The discussion of common law is in section VI of the decision that I linked. To be honest, I don’t see a reference to Blackstone, but if it’s in there, it certainly isn’t a critical part of their decision. And, like I said before, going against common law is certainly not uncommon.

Voigt goes on about this. My response is the same as above: this was discussing the history of abortion laws, not the formation of the crux of their reasoning.

The Roe v. Wade Court’s invocation of theology is perplexing, because it failed to examine scripture and instead offered conclusory assertions about the purported official positions of various faiths. The Court surmised that “a large segment of the Protestant community� believes that life does not begin until birth and that this is also the “predominant� view of the Jewish faith. The Court stated that while the Roman Catholic church now holds that life begins at conception, its official position has changed throughout history.

Voigt goes on [and onnnn] about this too, so I’m going to take down this Strawman with just the lead-in. The Bible is vague on the issue. Here’s Religious Tolerance’s discussion on it. Also, the Bible is not the Supreme Law of the land: The Constitution is. He also complains that the Court references what the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Persians thought. Well hell, they all existed around the same time that the books of the Bible were written, what’s the problem? The purpose of these references were to discuss the divergence of thought surrounding the issue of when human life begins. Voigt never, in the ENTIRE article, discusses this main isse. This issue, in fact, is one of the key elements of the decision. Voigt, of course, lines up and knocks down his strawman.

He then bitches about the cite of the ABA and not any other organizations. The ABA is the leading legal association. Furthermore, directly above it, the decision discusses the generally anti-abortion attitudes of the AMA, the premier medical association, as well as a recent “polarization in the medical community”. This is also in the HISTORY section of the decision, not in the argument part. Voigt, so far, has actually failed to address one single argument in the decision.

Marching lockstep with the fringe social views of ultra-radical feminist theory, the Roe v. Wade Court stated that children “may force[] upon the woman a distressful life and future,� can cause “psychological harm,� and tax “mental and physical health.� Most disturbing, the Court penned that there is also “distress, for all concerned, associated with [an] unwanted child . . ..�14 The calloused rhetoric speaks for itself, so I need not respond except to make two observations.

This is the lead-in, and I’ll address the whole section only quoting this. He’s taking these quotes somewhat out of context, but here he’s not being grossly unfair. That being said… this is not the main crux of the decision. This is an argument, no doubt, but nonetheless a side argument. It’s one I also tend not to agree with. That doesn’t mean we throw out Roe though. I’ll explain why at the end.

In the trial following the Boston Massacre of 1770, young lawyer John Adams thrilled the audience when he argued, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.�16 Noticeably absent from Roe v. Wade are facts.

Actually your column is missing a lot of facts, and it’s getting lots of “facts” wrong. 7-2 is not a split decision.

The Court did not discuss the proliferation of abortion in modern times. Today, there are countless methods of abortion, from pills to suction devices to partly delivering children and then puncturing their skulls. Like never before in history, abortion is available, widespread, and even encouraged by some. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1999, there were an astonishing 256 abortions for every 1,000 live births.17 In addition, abortion today is rarely the result of medical necessity to save the mother’s life or performed following rape. One study from 1988 revealed that only 1% of women who had abortions said they did so following rape. 3% had an abortion for medical reasons related to the mother.18 Similarly, a study from 2002 showed that only 1% of abortions followed rape or incest.19

*sigh* almost no abortions happen with the methods he presents. They’re also exclusive to third-trimester, a time the Court says may be regulated by states. But he doesn’t tell you that. Oh, and morning-after pills aren’t abortion pills, jackass.

Furthermore, the Court failed to discuss the development of an unborn child. At day 22 of a pregnancy, a child’s heart begins to beat with its own blood. At week 11, a baby can grasp objects placed in its hand. At week 17, a baby can have dream (REM) sleep.20

Liiiiar. It brings up the fact, very early in the decision, that the defendents used the well-documented development of an embryo/fetus as a core part of their argument. This guy really likes deceiving his readers, doesn’t he?

The Court failed to consider testimony of women who have had abortions and are courageous enough to step forward and speak of the impact of abortion on their lives.

*sigh* from the decision: “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One’s philosophy, one’s experiences, one’s exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one’s religious training, one’s attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one’s thinking and conclusions about abortion.” I’m sorry, what were you saying Mr. Voigt? I couldn’t hear you over all the bullshit you were spewing.

He then goes on to talk about women who regret having abortions and the psychological trauma they faced. Three things here. first, I feel very deeply for these women, that they made a choice they now regret. Second, having a friend who made this decision, a lot of that trauma comes from “friends” and family members who look down on you for your decision, who ostracize you and make you feel worthless. Thirdly, Voigt fails to discuss the women who have abortions and don’t regret their decision. Didn’t you castigate the Court for the same thing? Pot, kettle.

He then goes on a tirade about the Declaration and how the decision doesn’t rely on it at all. “Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”. Of course, this ignores the central argument of Roe v. Wade. Mr. Voigt really doesn’t like discussing the strongest part of the decision does he?

Now is a perilous Age when our courts have eclipsed their rightful role reserved under the Constitution. In The Federalist No. 47, James Madison wrote, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.�

You have to be shitting me. This from the group that rejoices now that the Republicans control every branch of government. Pot, you remember Kettle don’t you?

Thomas Jefferson asserted that of any of the three branches, the judiciary would pose the greatest danger to our nation if it were to eclipse its role under the Constitution. He stated:

“Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their power is more dangerous, as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corrections of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.26″

uh… he’s saying that the constitution has erected “no such tribunal”. He isn’t calling the Supreme Court the biggest threat to the nation…

Sadly, as Roe v. Wade and the legion of cases following it reveal, in these wayward days, we are realizing our founding fathers’ terrible fear of one branch of government encroaching upon the other two. Indeed, with the judiciary on the march, we are today witnessing Jefferson’s words come alive from the parchment.

To puzzle out the cause for the growing imbalance, we can look to the left-leaning lawyers who dominate the legal profession, we can look to judges who believe in a living Constitution, or we can look to our academic institutions where the Constitution and the writings of our founding fathers are unused, forgotten, and set aside to collect dust. Or . . . we can look to them all, and simply ask “Why?�

I agree. Thomas Paine’s works should be considered precedence for any future Court decisions. And the three branches are supposed to be in some form of conflict: it’s called “checks and balances” for a reason.

This fall in law schools all across the nation, a new crop of law students will examine, discuss, debate, dissect, and analyze Roe v. Wade. This year, like last year and ten years and twenty years ago, the same ideologically skewed textbooks will guide these discussions. I need go no farther than my Constitutional Law textbook from years ago, where the book’s discussion points include page after page of casting abortion as an issue of “sex discrimination.� For example, the book questions whether “laws forbidding abortion . . . turn a biological difference with no necessary social consequences . . . into a social disadvantage.� And so on and so on, page after page, clubbing students with political propaganda and radical social theory.

Were those rhetorical questions or discussion-provoking discussions? Because if they’re the latter, then those kinds of questions BELONG in textbooks. My U.S. History textbook had plenty of those, and then discussed the answers given by different groups over time. It’s called “broadening your knowledge”.

This fall, as the talk turns to Roe v. Wade, I challenge each and every law school and all Constitutional law professors to toss aside the fringe left-wing ideology in textbooks. Leave the textbooks at the door. Better yet, chuck ‘em in the garbage. If the books have failed us, let us make our own materials for the curriculum. Go to the Constitution. Pull out a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Study the writings of common law scholars and our founding fathers. Do not for a moment assume that the professors who wrote those textbooks have all of the answers.

Of course, to fully understand Roe, you’d have to, you know, read the entire decision, and have a basic understanding of the cases, laws, and precedents it cites. I wouldn’t throw away those lawbooks if I were you.

Consider the proper role of our judiciary in our tripartite system of governance. Was the Roe v. Wade Court justified in creating this privacy right, reaching far beyond any case precedent and leagues beyond the plain wording of the Constitution? How will a court that legislates from the bench affect society? How will it impact democratic and representative principles of self-governance? Was it proper for the Roe v. Wade to selectively cite only common law citations that would seem to support the decision, ignoring even a discussion of anything contrary to the holding? Has Roe v. Wade tarnished our view of the Supreme Court? Do scientific advances regarding the development of unborn children merit a reconsideration of the opinion? How would our founding fathers react to this opinion of the Court?

Again, the courts serve to over-rule the legislature and executive branches when they are unconstitutional; again, Roe is not the basis of the privacy right, Griswold is. The Court did not legislate from the bench; it set guidelines for what was and wasn’t constitutional. How would the founding fathers have reacted to blacks voting and being citizens; how would they react to the view that this is a Christian nation?

Voigt closes with a plea for “free thinking”. Along those lines, I’d like to address something he doesn’t: Roe v. Wade.

In this lengthy “dissertation” on the case, NOT ONCE does he reference or cite the main supports for the decision. So I’m here to provide them for you:

Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection. We seek earnestly to do this, and, because we do, we [410 U.S. 113, 117] have inquired into, and in this opinion place some emphasis upon, medical and medical-legal history and what that history reveals about man’s attitudes toward the abortion procedure over the centuries. We bear in mind, too, Mr. Justice Holmes’ admonition in his now-vindicated dissent in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905):

“[The Constitution] is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”

[snip]

The principal thrust of appellant’s attack on the Texas statutes is that they improperly invade a right, said to be possessed by the pregnant woman, to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Appellant would discover this right in the concept of personal “liberty” embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause; or in personal, marital, familial, and sexual privacy said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); id., at 460 (WHITE, J., concurring in result); or among those rights reserved to the people by the Ninth Amendment, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring).

[snip]

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

[snip]

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant’s arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman’s sole determination, are unpersuasive. The [410 U.S. 113, 154] Court’s decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court’s decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

[snip]

In the recent abortion cases, cited above, courts have recognized these principles. Those striking down state laws have generally scrutinized the State’s interests in protecting health and potential life, and have concluded that neither interest justified broad limitations on the reasons for which a physician and his pregnant patient might decide that she should have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. Courts sustaining state laws have held that the State’s determinations to protect health or prenatal life are dominant and constitutionally justifiable.

[snip]

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, [410 U.S. 113, 157] for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. 51 On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument 52 that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. [410 U.S. 113, 160]

It should be sufficient to note briefly the wide divergence of thinking on this most sensitive and difficult question.

[snip]

Substantial problems for precise definition of this view are posed, however, by new embryological data that purport to indicate that conception is a “process” over time, rather than an event, and by new medical techniques such as menstrual extraction, the “morning-after” pill, implantation of embryos, artificial insemination, and even artificial wombs. 62

[snip]

In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches [410 U.S. 113, 163] term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes “compelling.”

[snip]

To summarize and to repeat:

1. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life [410 U.S. 113, 165] may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.

2. The State may define the term “physician,” as it has been employed in the preceding paragraphs of this Part XI of this opinion, to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined.

In Doe v. Bolton, post, p. 179, procedural requirements contained in one of the modern abortion statutes are considered. That opinion and this one, of course, are to be read together. 67

This holding, we feel, is consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved, with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present day. The decision leaves the State free to place increasing restrictions on abortion as the period of pregnancy lengthens, so long as those restrictions are tailored to the recognized state interests. The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment up to the points where important [410 U.S. 113, 166] state interests provide compelling justifications for intervention. Up to those points, the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician. If an individual practitioner abuses the privilege of exercising proper medical judgment, the usual remedies, judicial and intra-professional, are available.

Voigt doesn’t address any of the elements addressed above. NONE. This is why I have so little respect for the pro-life movement: they can’t engage in an honest discussion about Roe. Their movement is founded on lies, misdirections, and sleight-of-hands. And even though abortion itself is an issue that I mentally struggle over whenever I think about it, I cannot bring myself to support these lunatics.

Note: “Sadly, no!” and other phrases are the trademarked property of Sadly, No!

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