Abortion Rights
Mao Dezone said “Women hold up half the sky”. I read that recently and it stuck with me. Then I read an editorial that John Irving wrote titled The Long Cruel History of the Anti-Abortion Crusade. Abortion is legal and women should have the right to make decisions about their own bodies.
Countries such as Europe have such a deep history that is part of their future. The US doesn’t operate like that. We are a country that is always looking to the future and rarely thinking about our past. Irving, who wrote Cider House Rules is a book that speaks about the history of abortion. I might have to reread it this summer.
Clearly anti-abortion is about taking rights away from women. The crusaders of this movement (mostly white men) don’t care about what happens to a woman or child who aren’t able to get an abortion because they can’t afford one. Many of the people who are anti-abortion don’t support welfare or any help for unwanted mothers. If they really cared about women not getting pregnant unless they want to have a child, then they would care more about education and birth control options. Their views and rhetoric are only targeted at people who live in underserved communities that do not have the financial wherewithal to have an abortion if they choose to. That is a power play pure and simple.
More women are at the table with their voices from politics to managing companies and starting them. Those voices is the 50% that has been held back due to social norms and a very thick glass ceiling but as times change, that 50% of women who hold up the sky, are one day going to be the leaders and quell the voices of white men who have taken full advantage of their power.
Abortion is a woman’s right to choose and it is important that we make sure that this remains a law. After all, never trust to pious man.
Comments (Archived):
I’ve become very fundamental on this.”How is it anyone’s choice but each individual women to make decisions on their body?”It isn’t and I start with that.
Agree
It’s all rooted in religion. It has nothing to do with men (white or black) and has everything to do with how someone is raised and what they are taught at an early age or in Church.White men? Sure they write the laws but it’s trivial to find pictures of women with ‘stop abortion now’ signs (I just pulled up many before making my comment.)And by the way it does impact men (write to me personally if you want to know how!).You know why this battle has been fought so long and so hard (and will never end)? Because you can’t un-ring the bell of how someone is raised and what they are taught (better known as ‘brainwashing’). Not going to happen.Imagine if someone right now tried to convince you that murder or rape were ‘ok’ even under certain ‘circumstances’. Well that is the thing you are dealing with here. As I explained to my wife when we were discussing this recently the issue is baked into someone’s core beliefs and is not subject to logic, common sense or a new interpretation. (Just like by the way middle east peace go try to solve that by sitting both parties down and talking to them).Think about it in that way and it will make sense what is going on.
The unborn child is the very definition of innocence. That’s a moral statement.The unconditional universal abortion right debate is the MSM’s way to condition (brainwash) society to accept that we are each of us uniquely and solely responsible for our own body and what we do with it, the corporation and its products, and government and its regulations, neither should carry the burden of responsibility (and crucially legal liability) for our wellbeing and health outcomes.
.”We are a country that is always looking to the future and rarely thinking about our past.”Odd statement on the eve of our national holiday celebrating our Declaration of Independence from England in 1776.Tomorrow we celebrate our single most important national decision — made by a bunch of white guys — to challenge our status as a colony of a King with whom we had serious intellectual differences.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Amen.
.The instant in time at which a woman should exercise control over her existence is BEFORE she becomes pregnant. It is demeaning to women to suggest they have no dominion over their own bodies such that they cannot control creating a baby.Women are much smarter than that.Women are certainly smart enough to understand their options — substantially less trying and less expensive options — for contraception rather than abortion.Or, is your argument that women are not smart enough to exercise restraint or contraception?There have been 60,000,000 abortions in the US since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey set up a trimester test including a “bright line” test for abortion during the third trimester.This third trimester test — the fetal viability legal standard — is under attack from pro-abortion forces and has been codified in provocative laws in places like the Commonwealth of Virginia. I use Virginia as an example because the idiotic governor of Virginia, Ralph Norhtam, a freakin’ pediatric doctor, suggests that a baby can be aborted in the Commonwealth not only to the instant of delivery, but can be set on a table to die after it is accidentally delivered alive.Dems once said that they wanted abortion to be safe, legal, and rare.With the fetal viability standard, that seemed to be a truce that could be met, but something changed and now abortion advocates want to drown the fetal viability standard. You will recall that Kermit Gosnell was imprisoned for violating the fetal viability standard in Philadelphia.Gosnell was a ghoul who ran something called the Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia. He and his associates were charged with:1. Eight counts of murder;2. 24 felony counts of performing illegal abortions after the Pennsylvania 24-week fetal viability bright line standard;3. 227 misdemeanor charges of violating the Pennsylvania 24-hour informed consent law.Not only did he kill 7 babies who were “born alive” meaning they had somehow survived an abortion attempt, but he killed a patient which resulted in his manslaughter conviction. He was convicted of her murder, the murder of the 7 viable infants, as well as 21/24 of the illegal abortion charges, and 221/227 of the informed consent violations.He was sentenced to life without any chance of parole.That was not the full extent of his ghoulish behavior. He also was cited for performing abortions without any nurses in the recovery room, for employing unlicensed persons to conduct medical procedures, failing to provide post-operative care (a patient died of excessive bleeding and he failed to order her to return for additional care.)This was all just within the last decade.When his place was finally raided by the FBI and state police the conditions were described as horrific, unsanitary, filthy, and barbaric. He was the subject of more than 40 complaints and lawsuits.Abortion is an assault on life. No abortion supporter appears to dispute that, they rely instead upon some fictitious “right” that a woman alone possesses as if it were not true that a fetus is the joinder of a male sperm and a female egg.This is an argument about life and death that is being camouflaged as a debate over women’s rights.Women have an absolute right to control their own behavior, to exercise contraception, to engage in behavior that ensure they will not become pregnant. They are smart enough to do all of that.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
“…the idiotic governor of Virginia, Ralph Norhtam, a freakin’ pediatric doctor, suggests that a baby can be aborted in the Commonwealth not only to the instant of delivery, but can be set on a table to die after it is accidentally delivered alive.”Source? Either printed in a medical journal or on unedited tape. If not, apologize to all of us for lying.
Woah
.To keep it real, can we make a small wager?What would you be comfortable with?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
“What would you be comfortable with?”The source? Either printed in a medical journal or on unedited tape. If not, apologize to all of us for lying. Which is what I asked for.
.Dude, the bet? How much?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
That’s strange. I’ve never heard of a medical journal by the name of “themusingofthebigredca…”Maybe you are confused about what constitutes a medical journal. It seems you suffer from a great deal of confusion.
.OK, I’ll let you out of your intellectual misery @JimmieBallgame:disqusA man would have stepped to the line and wagered $1000, but that’s not you. What medical journal do you know that publishes political news, amigo?https://www.vox.com/2019/2/…Here’s your boy Gov Northam going all in on abortion after live birth. Kind of ghoulish.He and I went to the same school and I know him well.He is the guy in the blackface scandal in Virginia, a real piece of work.Do you need wiring instructions to send me the money?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
This sort of reminds of Kamala Harris’ argument against Biden in the debate. She’s fighting for the Federal Government to create and enforce laws that protect basic human rights, of which many believe (not all) that abortion is one of. The larger question she’s posing — when is it not good enough to leave things to individual states to decide? Alabama for instance. This makes her candidacy really interesting.
It certainly does.
.The US Constitution — Article VI, Clause 2 — lays out the Supremacy Clause that deals with the supremacy of Federal laws over state laws.It is not quite that easy though because the “several states” granted “enumerated powers” to the Federal government (an enumerated power is to control interstate commerce, as an example) and through the years, the SCOTUS has identified and dealt with “implied and inferred” powers.An example of an implied power is the recognition in Roe v Wade of a woman’s right to privacy. It is not codified in the actual wording of the Constitution, but was “discovered” by the SCOTUS when they heard this case. It is, most charitably, case law.Lots of liberal legal experts agree with conservative legal experts that — solely as a matter of legal reasoning — Roe v Wade is a poorly reasoned and poorly written decision. That does not imply that a liberal lawyer disavows its conclusion, but rather that the arguments are not strong or conclusive.In fact, Roe v Wade is solely about what states can and cannot do as it relates to the issue of abortion. It has to be taken in conjunction with Planned Parenthood v Case. In R v W and in PP v C — the notion of “fetal viability” was recognized.The way this works is that the SCOTUS does not “make” a law and the Congress cannot “make” a law as the issue is solely within the purview of the several states who ratified the US Constitution.What the SCOTUS did was to notify the states that they would have to adhere to certain Constitutional norms or guardrails when they make laws related to a woman’s right of privacy. They did this by dividing a pregnancy into trimesters with different guard rails for each trimester.What is overlooked is that in the same rulings, the SCOTUS introduced the concept of “fetal viability” which was a guard against states enacting laws that eroded this standard. Fetal viability tracks with the trimester approach as it is generally assumed a first trimester baby is not viable while a third trimester baby is viable.In PP v C, this concept of fetal viability was further fleshed out. This is why Roe v Wade has to be read with PP v C in order to get a clear read of what the SCOTUS intended and has said.With the development of neo-natal care, the bright line for fetal viability has slowly been lowered. Right now, the original 22-24 weeks looks like at worst 18 and maybe as low as 14.None of these laws — the heartbeat laws or the unfettered abortion laws until the time of delivery — will pass constitutional muster as they fail to adhere to the SCOTUS decisions. They are, essentially, “laws in waiting” — waiting for the SCOTUS to take up a Roe v Wade/Planned Parenthood v Casey type case that will overturn or reaffirm the “stare decisis” aspect of these cases.You will note that every judicial nominee is asked, “Do you think Roe v Wade is settled law?” This goes to the issue of stare decisis, a controlling precedent. Everybody answers “yes” while learned folks know the real answer is, “Well, it depends on what cases come before us.”The SCOTUS just recently overturned several well known cases that were long established precedents. They justify abandoning or overturning stare decisis because the underlying cases are considered to have been erroneously or poorly decided.What these state laws do do is to invite further scrutiny. The SCOTUS will finally settle things by hearing a case that is dispositive of the entire discussion and will either overturn or reaffirm Roe v W and PP v Casey.The left is in a funny position because now is not the time that they would expect to garner a favorable decision, given the makeup of the Court right now. It will only get worse when RBG is replaced.So, bottom line is that neither the Congress nor Kamala Harris can pass a law to “fix” this issue regardless of how long they blow smoke up the world’s collective ass.Even if Kamala Harris were elected, it takes the US Congress to pass a law, not the President.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Thanks for this. To be clear, I wasn’t suggesting a new POTUS or Harris could do this single-handedly, but rather that if given the bully pulpit, she could bring it up as an issue for the nation to debate.
.Don’t you think the “debate” is already underway?Fifteen states have passed either heartbeat or unlimited abortion laws in the last 12 months.The prolife forces are looking for a good Roe v Wade type case at the appellate level. There are 6 cases that fit for them.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Clearly anti-abortion is about taking rights away from women.This post showed up in my inbox via Twitter. Twitter’s algorithm has figured out that I care what you think or at least your tweets. :)I don’t think this is clear at all. An anti-abortion perspective is not always simplistic. Some of us who have deep respect for a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body face excruciating perplexity when this is juxtaposed against a profound value for human life even at its earliest stages.I recognize that you are probably referring to “anti-abortion” strictly in the legal sense. There are many who are “anti-abortion” morally but do not want to remove the legal right.One way I have personally chosen to exercise my convictions is by supporting http://www.clarishealth.org in providing substantive help to women for whom pregnancy is a dilemma. This particular LA-based organization provides a wide range of services including and beyond pregnancy support including a medical clinic (pregnancy tests, basic pre-natal care, pap tests, STD treatment, etc.) and a range of social services to women in the area of sexual and emotional health, and meeting material needs. They do not advise or encourage abortion, but never judge those who make this decision or have done so in the past.This is another example of women taking leadership in addressing abortion and women’s reproductive health. (Claris does provide limited services to men and has a few men on the board.)
Great that you do this. Planned Parenthood does more medical care than abortion.
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