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Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
just heard some Bush/Supreme Court/ Roe v Wade discussion on the news today and it got me thinking.
If Bush is successful and gets a Supreme Court judge to overturn R-v-W will a woman who gets an abortion be arrested and tried for murder?
If so-
What if she leaves the country and gets one? Then what?
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Well, Bush has said he wanted to make fetal homicide a crime. http://www.wf-f.org/FetalHomicideBill.html
I'm worried too about these things. I just hope he sticks to what he knows best (creating war and unemployment) and lets me keep my rights.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Roe v. Wade was bad law. It was probably a good thing for the country to have some resolution on the issue, but the rights of an embryo/fetus/unborn child are not within the framework of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is supposed to interpret and apply the Constitution, not make up new laws on their own. The making of laws is properly with the Legislature. So that's why Roe v. Wade, even though it may have been a good thing, was bad law.
One Supreme Court Justice cannot overturn Roe v. Wade. It takes a majority of the nine Justices sitting, and usually all nine are sitting. It takes 5-4.
Reagan, Nixon, perhaps Ford - I can't remember - and Bush I all had their chances at appointing Supreme Court Justices. Note that seven out of the nine present Justices were appointed by Republicans. Note that Roe v. Wade is still intact.
In order to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court would need conservative Justices who would call for "strict construction" of the Constitution, who would see the issue of abortion as outside the broad principles of the Constitution. But there's a flip side to that concept. "Conservative" also generally means that you follow the principles of respect of precedence. In other words, there is law already in place, and the conservative does not try to overturn prevailing law.
So it's hit or miss. There's no guarantee that 1) Bush will appoint an anti-abortion justice; 2) that he could get an anti-abortion justice past the confirmation process (getting "Borked," as they say); 3) that any justice appointed will follow some Presidential leash to some desired outcome. Justices are independent.
The ultimate answer is that should Roe v. Wade be overturned, it would then properly fall to state legislatures to set their own abortion laws. You wouldn't have to leave the country if an abortion was illegal in your home town - you'd go to another state where it's legal.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
I highly doubt that a woman's right to abortion in the first trimester will ever be struck down. However, there is a lot of contradiction and gray areas in regard to fetal rights (if they exist) which need to be sorted out. It's fairly ridiculous to charge a person who kills a pregnant woman with two murder charges under the Lacey Law if a fetus isn't considered to have rights. On the other hand, if a fetus DOES have rights, then how can an abortion be justified ? The Lacey Law was the first step down a slippery slope, and you can actually blame Democratic congressmen who introduced it without thinking about the potential ramifications for taking that first step.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
I also wonder if it does become murder to have an abortion, will capital punishment be the prefered sentance under the new Fundy government we now have in place
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Thank you Jay for the clarification- I didn't want to touch this thread with a ten-foot pole! Asking for trouble.
Sadly, in some states, it's as if abortion is illegal, it's so hard to obtain for impoverished and poor women.
Proof on Christian conservative dunderheadness...my last vociferously anti-abortion boyfriends were still fucking me outside of wedlock, with not much of a thought to what would happen if they knocked me up. I think I need to stop sleeping with the enemy.....
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Capital punishment is reliant on murder with aggravating circumstances, ie; murder commited in the process of another crime or to cover up the commision of another crime. Then you have to swing this past a jury of peers.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by Tigerlilly
I also wonder if it does become murder to have an abortion, will capital punishment be the prefered sentance under the new Fundy government we now have in place
Oh for God's sakes... ::)
If the Fundies even suggested resorting to such ridiculous extremes, the people would most likely get rid of them democratically. If they actually carried such tyrannical justice out, the people would most likely get rid of them the way the Romanians got rid of Ceausescu, and befittingly so.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Well I hope you're right- but whats going on in todays government leads me to think otherwise. But thankfully for now it's just hypothetical discussion. I hope it stays that way.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
^ No, what's happening in American government doesn't lead you to think otherwise; there's no rational basis for that. You think that way because your panties are in a twist over the winner of the election.
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Reagan, Nixon, perhaps Ford - I can't remember - and Bush I all had their chances at appointing Supreme Court Justices. Note that seven out of the nine present Justices were appointed by Republicans. Note that Roe v. Wade is still intact.
But, but, but I though those evil corporatist GOPers wanted to destroy Roe V. Wade just to antagonize poor, defenseless women? ::)
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In order to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court would need conservative Justices who would call for "strict construction" of the Constitution, who would see the issue of abortion as outside the broad principles of the Constitution. But there's a flip side to that concept. "Conservative" also generally means that you follow the principles of respect of precedence. In other words, there is law already in place, and the conservative does not try to overturn prevailing law.
This is why there is no real threat.
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So it's hit or miss. There's no guarantee that 1) Bush will appoint an anti-abortion justice; 2) that he could get an anti-abortion justice past the confirmation process (getting "Borked," as they say); 3) that any justice appointed will follow some Presidential leash to some desired outcome. Justices are independent.
Not to mention that if GWB wants to stack the rest of the bench and the Federal jurist system with Federalist judges, the easiest way to do it is by not making abortion a singularly important issue. Hell, by ignoring abortion, he can place a lot more judges with relative freedom and success at the level of the Senate Judiciary Committee, since he still has to deal with Leahy.
[QUOTEThe ultimate answer is that should Roe v. Wade be overturned, it would then properly fall to state legislatures to set their own abortion laws. You wouldn't have to leave the country if an abortion was illegal in your home town - you'd go to another state where it's legal[/QUOTE]
Agreed. There's that whole 10th Amendment thing that people have long since forgotten. Someday that amendment will matter again...
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by Casual Observer
^ No, what's happening in American government doesn't lead you to think otherwise;
Spoken like a true conservative ::)
wanting to tell someone else what they can think or believe .
So Sorry:neener: but I get to think, feel and believe anything I want, despite what you think is an acceptable or correct point of view for me to have.
Its called free will-- you should try it sometime. LOL!
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by Tigerlilly
just heard some Bush/Supreme Court/ Roe v Wade discussion on the news today and it got me thinking.
If Bush is successful and gets a Supreme Court judge to overturn R-v-W will a woman who gets an abortion be arrested and tried for murder?
If so-
What if she leaves the country and gets one? Then what?
If Roe is overturned, women will have lost the Constitutional right to obtain an abortion, which means it will then be up to the States to decide whether or not it will be legal via statutory provisions in their particular State. As for leaving the country and getting one, the general answer is "no," you are not liable for acts defined as crimes in the U.S. when committed overseas. However, that may werll be changing, as there have been several new laws enacted in recent years that putrport to do just that, i.e., make a U.S. citizen liable for an act they engage in while out of the country. None have been tested inj court thus far, so it remains to be seen how far the Court will allow this to go - BUT, the conservative wing of the Court has shown a marked propensity towards extraterritorial jurisdiction over the past decade when presented with somewhat similar issues involving drug-related matters.
Jay - as for Court "making law," they didn't... they were presented with a straightforward question they could no longer duck, i.e., does she have a constitutional right or not. If they cannot answer questions of that nature in the same manner as they dealt with Roe, a good 80% of what they've had to deal with under the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments over the past 50 years would have to be thrown out. All they do is set the baseline yea or nea - everything else is still left to the States to decide.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
I don't agree completely with a woman's right to choose but I would hate to think that if it were made illegal, women everywhere would be dying again because of botched "back-alley abortions." The main reason I have problems with it though is that some are using it as a last-ditch method of birth control. There are other ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy, widely available.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Yes, there are many methods of birth control, widely available.
But if the only method of birth control being taught in high schools is abstinence, kids are not going to know about these methods, are they?
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
^ Nope :(
how do we get the hardcore rightwing to understand that ?
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As for leaving the country and getting one, the general answer is "no," you are not liable for acts defined as crimes in the U.S. when committed overseas. However, that may werll be changing, as there have been several new laws enacted in recent years that putrport to do just that, i.e., make a U.S. citizen liable for an act they engage in while out of the country. None have been tested inj court thus far, so it remains to be seen how far the Court will allow this to go - BUT, the conservative wing of the Court has shown a marked propensity towards extraterritorial jurisdiction over the past decade when presented with somewhat similar issues involving drug-related matters.
Oh and GrnBeret:thanx: for answering my question !
Knowledge is Power:flower:
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Just what this country needs, more teenage mothers to be living off the system! :(
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by RedZ28
I don't agree completely with a woman's right to choose but I would hate to think that if it were made illegal, women everywhere would be dying again because of botched "back-alley abortions." The main reason I have problems with it though is that some are using it as a last-ditch method of birth control. There are other ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy, widely available.
Yea, and there are less objectionable methods of "after-the-fact" resolution in existence as well too (i.e., RU-486), but government has barred availability of those as well.
I'd have a lot less problem with those working so hard to bar abortion if they were lining up to adopt all the unwanted children and allowing liberal use of preventative measures such as sex education in the schools, dispensation of birth control to teenage girls without parental notification, etc., but when they offer nothing more than "just say no" as an alternative......
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
RU-486. Partial-ban abortion. Stem cell research. They've become political buzzwords thanks to our lovely media. Now these words are used by parties and CNN for sensationalistic speeches instead of actually solving the problem that these words are related to :(
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Well, stem cell technically has nothing to do with it, but its related as the term has become politicized (sp?) and no one really understands it.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by GnBeret
Jay - as for Court "making law," they didn't... they were presented with a straightforward question they could no longer duck, i.e., does she have a constitutional right or not. If they cannot answer questions of that nature in the same manner as they dealt with Roe, a good 80% of what they've had to deal with under the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments over the past 50 years would have to be thrown out. All they do is set the baseline yea or nea - everything else is still left to the States to decide.
Not exactly. They were presented with whether the Texas abortion criminal statutes were too broad or otherwise unconstitutional. In its tortuous reasoning, the Supreme Court went through ancient Greece, Jewish law, medical tradition, twists of common law, Dorland's Medical Dictionary, various Protestant and Catholic views.
They ultimately felt compelled to address the protection of prenatal life. In doing so, they established a definition of life, divided by trimester, completely apart from any Constitutional foundation.
There is no provision in the Constitution to define life. One could argue it logically falls to the conscience of the people in the various states. The Supreme Court had to invent a class of person and stretch the 14th and other amendments to encompass the mother up until viability, at which point the states could encompass and protect the prenatal child - I think.
I'll let the rest of the Court speak for itself in its findings:
(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. (Translation: 1-3 months, up to mom and doc.)
(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. (Translation: 4-6 months, states can regulate abortion as it affects mom's health.)
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life 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. (Translation: 7-9 months, states can prohibit abortion except when mom's in danger.)
How they got that out of the Constitution is a real stretch. I'm not saying it's a bad way to go. It certainly gave the country some resolution. I'm saying it's bad law, given the purposes of the Supreme Court, and a bad example of judicial activism.
One final word by the Court: "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."
No mention of the U.S. Constitution and following case law. Even the Supreme Court admitted, in so many words, that its decision wasn't Constitutionally based.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
I'm thinking - please correct me if I'm wrong - that restrictions of RU486 survived the eight years of the Clinton Administration.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
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Originally Posted by Jay Zeno
Not exactly. They were presented with whether the Texas abortion criminal statutes were too broad or otherwise unconstitutional. In its tortuous reasoning, the Supreme Court went through ancient Greece, Jewish law, medical tradition, twists of common law, Dorland's Medical Dictionary, various Protestant and Catholic views.
They ultimately felt compelled to address the protection of prenatal life. In doing so, they established a definition of life, divided by trimester, completely apart from any Constitutional foundation.
There is no provision in the Constitution to define life. One could argue it logically falls to the conscience of the people in the various states. The Supreme Court had to invent a class of person and stretch the 14th and other amendments to encompass the mother up until viability, at which point the states could encompass and protect the prenatal child - I think.
I'll let the rest of the Court speak for itself in its findings:
(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. (Translation: 1-3 months, up to mom and doc.)
(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. (Translation: 4-6 months, states can regulate abortion as it affects mom's health.)
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life 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. (Translation: 7-9 months, states can prohibit abortion except when mom's in danger.)
How they got that out of the Constitution is a real stretch. I'm not saying it's a bad way to go. It certainly gave the country some resolution. I'm saying it's bad law, given the purposes of the Supreme Court, and a bad example of judicial activism.
One final word by the Court: "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."
No mention of the U.S. Constitution and following case law. Even the Supreme Court admitted, in so many words, that its decision wasn't Constitutionally based.
Unfair. That's neither what they did nor how they did it - and between the pejorative characterizations of their methodology and the failure to even acknowledge their extended explanation of the Constitutional basis for their decision, it paints a wholly inaccurate picture of the Court's decision. While the decision is admittedly not one of their better efforts and, as one Justice recently noted, has ultimately proven to be on a collision course with itself due to advances in medical science, it nevertheless was decided on the basis of a standard due process analysis which balanced the conflicting rights and interests of the individual and the State.
The Court's "tortuous reasoning" began with an examination of the accepted bases of modern law in this country for several reasons - the most compelling being to establish the historical fact that women enjoyed far greater rights in this area at the time of the adoption of the Constitution than they did under the laws of most of the States at the time of the submission of this case for decision, i.e., to refute any assertions re "what did they likely intend when the Constitution was adopted."
The Court then explained the purported bases for States' criminalization of abortion, as well as the asserted bases for the individual's claim of Constitutional protection from any such stautes. In sum, the only valid basis for the States' laws that the Court could devine was protection of the unborn child - but, lacking any basis in either law or medicine for according the unborn child "person" status under the law prior to "viability," could find no "compelling state interest" in the abridgement of the individual's right to make decisions regarding her own body (a Constitutional right falling under the right to privacy, which had previously been recognized in a well-established line of Supreme Court cases) under the due process clause, applicable to the States via the 14th Amendment. As such, the Court recognized the individual's right under the Constitution, BUT, as is the case with most such rights, then further explained that it was not absolute, i.e., at some point (in this case, "viability," albeit on a sliding scale) the State's interests in the unborn child become compelling enough to infringe and, ultimately, all but override same.
And it's only after devoting many pages, replete with case cites and footnotes documenting the bases for their reasoning, that they come full circle and, in effort to make clear that they've looked high and low for arguments and reasons both pro and con, offer the quote you claim demonstrates the lack of any real Constitutional basis for their decision.
All in all, you can disagree with their decision - and I don't disagree with your assertion re the States deciding being a viable alternative - but it's simply not fair to attack the decision as lacking any real basis and/or being an example of the Court "making law."
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
We can agree to disagree, Grn, just like real lawyers do on this decision.
I would describe my characterizations as critical, not pejorative. But that's just me.
I was being too wordy as it was. So I summarized their decision as I interpreted it, and I interpret it as tortuous, particularly within the framework of the Constitution. You interpret it as solidly Constitutional. That's fine. We disagree.
And then I quoted - I thought verbatim - their bottom line and their own attendant paragraph to their own bottom line. I was using their own words, not taken out of context, to make my point.
The bottom line of what I'm saying is that they presented a Constitutional decision based upon definitions, using trimesters and a historical/spiritual/scientific-derived conclusion of protected life, that have no solid Constitutional basis. To me, that's judicial activism. To others, it may be the height of juridical brilliance.
At any rate, it's what the law is, whether one likes the results or not, and there's a great deal to be said for some degree of uniformity - Constitutionally based or not.
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Fwiiw, I remember the situation re abortion before Roe v Wade (before 1973). Abortion laws varied widely from state-to-state, but I don't recall that any defined abortion as murder at that time. As a practical matter, wealthy and/or appropriately educated women traveled as needed to obtain medical abortions when they wanted them, but poor or ignorant women plus adolescent girls afraid to let their parents or others know that they were pregnant often sufferred unsafe illegal abortions or endured pregnancies that they did not want.
Times were also tougher for women then because birth control options were fewer and, in some states, less easily available than they are now.
Anyway, my guess is that abortion would not become murder in at least the vast majority of states if Roe v Wade were overturned, but a constitutional ammendment defining a fetus as a human being with legal rights is another matter entirely.
-Ww
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Re: Will an abortion be murder legaly if Roe v Wade is over turned ?
Big discussion at the hospital i work. Try as they may, they can not stop abortion. Being first trimester or second, it will be shot down.
Pamela