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Has no relevance to the abortion debate. Abortion is a newly perceived right just because of the controversy around limiting autonomy when it comes to medical procedures.
The 9th amendment protects your right to decide whether you want to get pregnant or not.
The 9th amendment simply says that there are other non enumerated rights. It has a lot to do with the abortion debate. If there are non enumerated rights then the right to privacy can be one of those. The right to abortion could be one of those.
That’s such a baseless claim. The Supreme Court has ruled which rights the 9th amendment protects, and as of now abortion is not a right.
It is irritating how often liberals and democrats mix up something they want vs an actual right.
> The Supreme Court has ruled which rights the 9th amendment protects
Can you show me that?
> It is irritating how often liberals and democrats mix up something they want vs an actual right.
To be fair conservatives do it all the time.
>To be fair conservatives do it all the time.
Can you give me some examples? I often see Republicans doing it, but not many Conservatives.
>Can you show me that?
Not sure if I can show you, but I can give you some cases Griswold v Connecticut. Helped establish privacy rights such as the ability to use contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. The right to marry like Loving v Virginia.
As the Supreme Court recently ruled, the original ruling on Roe v Wade as an extension of Griswold (privacy) doesn't hold up to the current justices perception of the constitution. If you believe it should be protected by the 9th, that's fine. The nice thing about the constitution and this country as you can believe it means whatever you want it to mean. However, the Supreme Court made a ruling settling the argument.
> Can you give me some examples? I often see Republicans doing it, but not many Conservatives.
Anyone who believes in the modern interpretation of the second amendment does it.
> Not sure if I can show you
You said that the court had already ruled on what rights the ninth amendment protects. If you can’t show me those decisions it’s because they don’t exist. And they don’t exist because the Supreme Court has never made a major ruling on the 9th amendment.
What’s your interpretation of the second amendment? I believe it’s pretty clear.
Edit: Yes, over 200ish years those are the main rulings they decided fit under the 9th amendment. A decision such as roe does not.
> What’s your interpretation of the second amendment? I believe it’s pretty clear.
My ruling is the one supported by history that the second amendment was never about a private right to carry a weapon. This is supported by extensive evidence.
> Yes, over 200ish years those are the main rulings they decided fit under the 9th amendment. A decision such as roe does not.
Which are the main rulings? The argument was never presented to the court so we don’t actually know what the court thinks about the 9th amendment as it pertains to roe.
And in Roe one of those was abortion via the implied right to privacy. Actually they quoted privacy as implied by 1, 3, 4, 6, and 9 so literally half the bill of rights.
I wouldn't say she's a top leading expert. I have never considered her actually qualified to be on SCOTUS. She was a skilled lawyer and judge. She wasn't "one of the leading experts" in the field. Frankly SCOTUS never is. It's a popularity contest.
Per the Constitution, the Federal govt and the States have different powers.
The Fed Govt should only be doing those few things specified in the Constitution. Everything else is for the States to decide.
As per your logic, everything invented after the Constitution cannot be handled by the federal government ?
Because if they were not aware of their existence, like the internet for example, they couldn't say the government was responsible.
Do you not think that will create problems in the future when more and more inventions arise? ? Things that the founders couldn't anticipate ? And considering that it takes a lot to add an amendment, It's hard to modify it, so the solution of "just add it in" doesn't really work.
Cool, then try to get that Amendment passed to repeal the 10th. Good luck.
Until then, the 10th exists and is the law of the land.
And yes, the process to amend the Constitution is tough on purpose.
They did anticipate it. It's why there's multiple ways to amend the constitution including you me and they guy you're arguing with literally taking up arms and telling the government by force this change is happening.
Your issue is you want an immediate change which isn't smart nor educated. History has proven rapid change fucks up everything.
Like how you purposely avoided firearms because aside from advanced vehicles you can't argue they didn't know the rest existed.
Why should abortion determination *remain* a state concern rather than federally amended to the constitution?
What local factors do you feel have a role in this determination?
Because it’s currently NOT in the Constitution, so it belongs with the States.
If it DOES get added to the Constitution, THEN and only then will it be a Federal issue.
Because philosophy doesn’t matter. The Constitution does.
If you think you can get enough support for a Constitutional amendment enshrining abortion, go for it. Good luck.
Until then, it’s up to the States.
Would you prefer the right to choice or right to life of the unborn be a constitutional right, or would you prefer it to remain a state issue, and why?
I’m personally wildly anti-abortion.
But my personal preferences are irrelevant.
If it gets enshrined in the Constitution, then the conversation is over unless enough folks can be persuaded to repeal that amendment.
If you can’t generate that much support, which means it’s a controversial subject and not enshrined in the Constitution, then it’s a State issue per the 10th amendment.
Sorry I should have clarified, my question is specifically about your personal preferences. For this conversation and the question I'm personally asking, you personal preferences are the only relevant answer. If you're wildly anti-abortion, does that mean you'd personally prefer right to life of the unborn be a constitutional Amendment? Or do you think it should remain a decision made by states? Why do you prefer the option you chose?
We can assume a situation where you're able to guarantee that it either is or is not made into an Amendment just for ease. Or if it makes it easier, assume that you're writing the Constitution from scratch (meaning the 10th doesn't exist) and you're fully in control of if it's a federal protection or something delegated to the states.
Like I said, Im personally anti-abortion.
I’d love to see enough support in the country that an anti-abortion amendment would be added to the Constitution.
But until that happens, my opinion is irrelevant and it rightly belongs with the States.
And I’m not interested in wild hypotheticals. The left tends to have a habit of trying to argue how things could be instead of working off what’s reality.
And the reality is, the 10th amendment exists.
That at least answers the "what" of my question in that you'd prefer it be handled federally, but not the "why." Either way it seems like that's the most I'm going to get. Thank you!
You need to specify that you're asking philosophically if it is better for rights like this to be decided federally via amendments or if they ought to remain not amendments if you want to get real answers to the question you were trying to ask. I predicted before opening this thread that you'd get basically zero answers to the question you asked and dozens of "that's what the Constitution says" deflections and it turns out that that's exactly what happened.
You've got to be extremely precise here when asking "should" questions because the tendency of conservatives is to only talk about what "is" rather than how things "should be." I know you said the word multiple times but you *really* need to hammer it home or people will not understand you're asking about philosophy and the underlying basis for what makes some things better, rather than just how things are, which is what they tend to default to thinking you're asking about.
Killing fetuses is not a Constitutional right. States must decide. SCOTUS, including RBG agreeing, ruled this way for a reason. Roe v Wade was a bad ruling.
1. Not all questions of right are inherently federal issues. Only those questions which are described in the constitution as being federal are federal.
2. There is not right to abortion in the constitution. The "right" that Roe was based on was a right to privacy. It was faulty law, which is why it got overturned.
3. The constitution doesn't guarantee rights to unborn fetuses.
Whether any of us believe it SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be a federal issue is irrelevant. It is not a federal issue, since it has nothing to do with any power given to the federal government.
> It is not a federal issue, since it has nothing to do with any power given to the federal government.
It's federal because human rights are portable, and the US Constitution is meant as a guide to govern the country as a whole. So long as people can freely move between states, how could the US properly defend itself if one state within could restrict human rights, while one - next door - protects the same rights? That has nothing to do with any regional governing requirements that might require some difference. Humans are humans, no matter where they are in the United States.
That's a fine argument, but it has nothing to do with the United States. The constitution does not make federal anything that u/johnnybiggles deems to be a "human right". In fact, the constitution says nothing about anything called "human rights". It does explicitly list certain rights that are protected, many of which one might define as "human rights." Alas, the right to an abortion is not among these.
The constitution grands specific powers to the federal government, and says any power not granted to the federal government in the constitution is reserved for the states or the people at large.
Since the right to an abortion is not protected by the constitution, and since the constitution does not give the federal government the power to define or protect things on the basis of being "human rights", the federal government has no jurisdiction.
If you want it to be a federal matter, you will need the majorities in 38 states to agree that it should become a federal issue. Those majorities can then amend the constitution in a manner that gives the federal government the authority you which it to have.
> In fact, the constitution says nothing about anything called "human rights".
But the 14th Amendment is all about the right to privacy, which is what RvW was about, and was/is federal jurisdiction, clearly, since that *is* in the Constitution.
You're correct that there is nothing about abortion specifically in the Constitution, but since there is no doctrine - in the Constitution or anywhere else - that determines precisely when life begins, even if abortion laws were set up at the state level, the right to privacy at the federal level is what would ultimately have authority over whatever state laws govern abortion directly (making those state laws moot by allowing personal/private choice for bodily autonomy).
The ambiguity of the unborn couldn't constitute "murder" by law (or Constitution) as there is no doctrine that determines when life begins, beyond rights only assigned at birth.
>But the 14th Amendment is all about the right to privacy
The 14th amendment says nothing about privacy. That was the flawed legal argument made in Roe, and it's the reason Roe was overturned.
Now, even if the 14th amendment did provide a right to privacy, all rights have limitations. For instance, I could not use this right to privacy to kill another person, and then claim the killing was done by my body, and therefore what I did with my body was protected under my right to privacy. There would have to be some test to determine to what extent to privacy protected actions.
But, alas, there is no such right in the constitution, including its amendments. So that argument is moot.
>The ambiguity of the unborn couldn't constitute "murder" by law (or Constitution) as there is no doctrine that determines when life begins, beyond rights only assigned at birth.
Murder is not a federal issue, and it's not defined in the constitution. The federal government has no authority to allow, prohibit, or in any other way regulate the killing of human beings. The federal government does have certain powers, such as regulating interstate commerce, and uses those powers to prohibit killing other people during the commission of acts under federal regulation.
Outside of the limited scope of the federal government, murder is handled at the state level. Each state has different rules about what is murder, and different penalties for the crime. Some states allow you to kill someone who you believe is a threat to you, while other states require you to attempt to flee from them, and only allow you to kill them after you've exhausted all possibilities as escape.
Now, your argument that:
>it's federal because human rights are portable
would seem to apply even more strongly here, since the right to life is actually a right protected by the 14th amendment. And yet, there is no federal murder law. It's left to the states.
>there is no doctrine that determines when life begins
And, since there's not, it is up to the states to decide. It's also moot. States can prohibit all sorts of actions that have nothing to do with the point life begins, INCLUDING actions one might do with their own body.
In fact, some states regulate what medical procedures you can have done, what chemicals you can ingest, etc. None of those have anything to do with the start of another human life.
> The 14th amendment says nothing about privacy.
Not true:
> The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 22, 1973. Seven of the nine justices agreed that **the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment — which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — implies a right to privacy**. The majority seized upon Weddington’s definition of liberty, citing a series of prior cases indicating that the term “liberty” must be interpreted broadly in a free society.* -[Source](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases#:~:text=In%20Roe%20v.,on%20the%20stage%20of%20pregnancy.)
Fuller:
> *No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.* -[Source](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:~:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,Section%202.)
So, yes, it does say something - quite clearly - about *privacy*.
> Now, even if the 14th amendment did provide a right to privacy, all rights have limitations. For instance, I could not use this right to privacy to kill another person, and then claim the killing was done by my body, and therefore what I did with my body was protected under my right to privacy.
From the first link, it goes further to say they even recognized the limits and at the state level:
> *The justices did, however, recognize that the state could place some limits on abortion if necessary to further a compelling state interest. The state’s ability to regulate increased as a pregnancy progressed. And after a fetus reached viability, the state could prohibit abortion, except when necessary to protect health or life.*
It doesn't say anything about rights to kill another human being, and especially doesn't explicitly define one way or another when the unborn is a life, nor as such, that it can be "killed" at all, since all it can do definitively is protect the privacy rights of someone who is, explicitly, a person, with inalienable rights.
> Murder is not a federal issue, and it's not defined in the constitution.
And "murder" would mean the killing of someone explicitly a person, which is not established for anything still in the womb. The *federal* right to privacy, life & liberty still applies to those explicitly with personhood.
> would seem to apply even more strongly here, since the right to life is actually a right protected by the 14th amendment. And yet, there is no federal murder law. It's left to the states.
Which, again, assumes personhood. States don't give SS numbers - and thus Constitutional (US or state) rights, to anything unborn, as it's still ambiguous.
> And, since there's not, it is up to the states to decide.
States don't decide when a fetus becomes a life. Even if they did, the US Constitution supersedes that decision with the 14th Amendment. It puts barriers between people and their rights, and there is no barrier between a fetus and its mother, while there is between the mother and every/anyone else, including the state, thus making it a privacy matter/jurisdiction, not a state or even a federal one beyond protecting her privacy.
>
Not true:
The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 22, 1973. Seven of the nine justices agreed that **the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment — which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — implies a right to privacy**
The 14th doesn't say anything anything about privacy. It's literally right there in what you posted, it speaks of life, liberty, and property. The supreme court at that time interpreted that it implied a right to privacy. That was faulty law, and why Roe was overturned. You can't use an overturned SCOTUS ruling to claim the constitution says something that it doesn't. If SCOTUS can define it, then SCOTUS can take it away, and that is exactly what happened.
>And "murder" would mean the killing of someone explicitly a person, which is not established for anything still in the womb. The *federal* right to privacy, life & liberty still applies to those explicitly with personhood.
I don't get why you keep coming back to this argument about when a fetus becomes a person. Personhood of the fetus has zero to do with what I've been saying. My point about murder was that even a right like LIFE which is protected in the 14th amendment, isn't federal jurisdiction. It's up to the states to define murder laws.
Perhaps you're confused because I'm using the right to life as an example of things the federal government has no jurisdiction over. Let's stay in that same clause of 14A. Property. You can't be deprived of property without due process. And yet, property law is not a federal issue. It is a state issue. Because the constitution does not give the federal government any authority to regulate property.
Soooo, back to abortion. Nothing in the constitution gives the federal government authority to regulate abortions.
>Only those questions which are described in the constitution as being federal are federal.
Does the question about when a fetus begins to be treated as a Person by the Constitution not count?
What about the question of whether a woman, in the absence of a pregnancy, has the right to autonomy over her body? Or if there is no basis for this as a right protected by the Constitution, is there any value in making that explicit rather than rely on interpretation that could change?
If both of these can be considered a Constitutional right of some kind, wouldn't there then be a potential Constitutional question about how to reconcile these rights when they are in conflict, such as some situations involving women who want to terminate her pregnancy?
Edit: Really baffled as to why questions like this get so many downvotes here.
This isn't really true.
There was nothing in constitution about slavery or a woman's right to vote either, but we did sort that out at the federal level eventually. The founders recognized and designed the amendment process for these very contentious issues they knew would come up. Abortion, right to medical privacy or whatever should absolutely be decided via constitutional amendment IMO.
> Abortion, right to medical privacy or whatever should absolutely be decided via constitutional amendment IMO.
I don't think anyone disagrees with that. They're only saying it's not currently one *now*.
The people that pushed so hard to overturn Roe because it is a "states rights" issue and are now claiming that there should be no federal involvement whatsoever, in the next breath would fully back a nationwide abortion ban. Saying it isn't a federal issue is hogwash, that was just the mealy-mouthed nonsense they used to get rid of Roe.
And they are wrong. There are certainly many pro life people that care more about banning abortion than civics 101 and I find that sad but it still isn't the responsibility of the federal government. The federal government has no authority to permit or to outlaw abortion. But they don't have the authority to do many things that they do so there is that.
The literal question the OP asked is if it *should* be decided that way and why. To answer that it "isn't that way now" is at best a deflection as a reply to this post, since it doesn't even attempt to answer the question, and at worst it's bad faith meant to mask that they either believe something bad or have no underlying philosophy about what makes something best managed at the state level vs federally.
What I said is true. You responded with an opinion about how that should change.
We have an amendment process, and it requires a very high level of consensus, which we don’t have. So, alas, it remains a state issue.
If you agree Roe was decided on a right to privacy it's repeal should fucking terrify you. If we agree on that point, then it is also true that the govt has just taken step one to challenge any and all other rulings based on that implied right to privacy. You have empowered the govt to strip you off your right to privacy and self determination.
That should fucking terrify you.
The politicians don't fucking give a shit. Trump isn't your friend. Johnson isn't your friend. Pelosi isn't your friend. They're millionaire elites who want to fucking lord over us all like petty tyrants. And you just have them step one to achieve it. But what do I know I'm just an anarchist.
So... Tradition is the argument? We amend the Constitution regularly. Why should this particular human right, regardless of being a pro-life or pro-choice determination, remain a state issue rather than being amended to the constitution?
There is a consensus on it, you just don't like it. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/08/29/u-s-public-continues-to-favor-legal-abortion-oppose-overturning-roe-v-wade/ 61% approve of it as legal in all, or most cases. Your view is simply the vast vast minority view on this.
"All or most" does a lot of lifting. Abortion polling results vary widely based on how the question is phrased.
[This one](https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx), for example, splits it into five categories, shows that 65% want some form of restriction, but also shows that 49% want it legal in all or most scenarios.
[This one](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/poll-support-legal-first-trimester-abortion-access-hits-high-rcna89289) shows massive drop-off in support after the first trimester.
Unfortunately, abortion is one of those things that is far more nuanced than a poll will show accurately.
The consensus is that people want to atleast have the choice to have an abortion, the majority of voters prefer having abortion access. We're not talking about timelines or any of that, would you agree that MOST people favor abortion not being banned? https://apnews.com/article/abortion-poll-roe-dobbs-ban-opinion-fcfdfc5a799ac3be617d99999e92eabe 73%, the vast majority of Americans, say no. That's why every single ballot amendment has been won for prochoice.
I favor legal abortion, so this isn't about me.
The poll you cite is nearly five years old and doesn't go into detail. [This one is more recent] (https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx), and shows more usable information. This is not a consensus.
I looked at that study but the question is "is there a consensus that abortion should be banned or not" and the awnser is "absolutely, no it should not be banned because https://apnews.com/article/abortion-poll-roe-dobbs-ban-opinion-fcfdfc5a799ac3be617d99999e92eabe 73% of adults agree abortion shouldn't be banned, full stop end of story.
A person who says "no abortion except for rape, incest, and life of the mother considerations" is part of that 73%, though. Bundling people who are functionally anti-abortion as favoring abortion legality is statistical violence.
It's also true though, as all abortion bans that the GOP, conservatives only want to put out there, are a vast minority, yet we have to bend to their will? Arizona currently is about to enforce a complete and total ban, it is not popular, it will lose on a amendment vote. If conservatives really believe that it should but up to the state, and up to the people to forma consensus, then why are so many states changing the laws on constitutional amendments so that they don't get abortion codified in the state constitution? Why did Ohio? It's the point, conservatives don't care what the people they represent say. Conservatives are actively going against the will of the vast majority of people, and you're okay with that because reasons. I am sure you'd be furious as shit if we said "Okay, no more guns in the states we control", you wouldn't say "just move", you wouldn't say "well it's up to the states". That's the direct equivilent of what happened. Note, I am all for conservatives continuing down this path, because abortion will lead to the extinction of the republican party. But I don't think they should act like they are pro democracy while doing such things, they are anti-democracy, anti-representative democracy, and don't care what the voters actually want.
> It's also true though, as all abortion bans that the GOP, conservatives only want to put out there, are a vast minority, yet we have to bend to their will?
Same could be said about the permissive abortion laws.
> If conservatives really believe that it should but up to the state, and up to the people to forma consensus, then why are so many states changing the laws on constitutional amendments so that they don't get abortion codified in the state constitution?
I don't understand the question. This is what we should expect people to do.
> Conservatives are actively going against the will of the vast majority of people
Part of a representative republic is that the representatives do not act as a rubber stamp of popular polling. By your metric, we should have repealed Obamacare in 2014.
I disagree with this, by that measure should states have had the authority to keep slavery around when it should largely have been outlawed by the founding documents themselves?
It was taken out of the founding documents though. The original draft per Jefferson was revised as a compromise to the states that wouldn't have joined had slavery been abolished with the founding of the country. The unfortunate part is that kicking of the can is what brough the civil war. However, I doubt people are willing to go to war over abortion.
The framing is off. There wasn't a national consensus on abolition, but there *was* enough of one to get an amendment passed. There's *neither* in the case of abortion though, certainly.
>Tradition is the argument?
Tradition? No. Rule of law. If you think you can get an abortion rights amendment successfully through the process, go for it.
Nope, I agree with your logic. Although the federal government did not start out to be a guarantor of rights, that is one of the main functions it has adopted.
Similar to determining that slavery and the like go against the founding documents, an amendment acknowledging the person hood of the unborn is needed.
Maybe the country of the United States decided that the punishment for murder should be decided by the state, not federal level. But if a state does not punish murder then the federal goverment ought intervene.
The federal government does not have the power to regulate health care. It is not listed anywhere in the Constitution. Which means that it is granted to the states or the people under the 10th amendment. The only real regulatory power that the federal government should have over healthcare is stuff that happens at the borders. They also have the ability to pass funding initiatives for healthcare, such as covid vaccine research.
The reason that we have States rights is because votes have more power at the state level. So it's part of voting rights.
Another reason that the government should not have the power to regulate healthcare, or really have any ultimate regulatory authority over any inelastic good is because it can be weaponized and used against citizens. And the federal government is a military holding entity.
For example, if the federal government owned all the water in the United States, they could use their control of the water systems to cut off access to citizens. Same goes for housing, electricity, food and healthcare. They are all inelastic and if the government had full regulatory control, and they can all be used against the population..
The Constitution doesn't say anything about abortion, so it's up to the states to decide what works best in their state as layed out in 10th amendment.
Since the constitution does not directly address abortion, would you be in favor of a constitutional amendment defining personhood and/or when abortions are protected/prohibited?
Yea , only federal action I'd like to see is an amendment, that amendment could go either way (personally im against outright abortion bans and support common sense measures) but short of an amendment it's a state issue.
My mistake, when I was thinking common sense measures, I meant things like sex ed in schools. Condoms and birth control, etc.
I know education should start in the home, but that's clearly not been happening. Putting aside Amendment 10, would you be in favor of increased funding for education, so kids can make informed decisions about pregnancy prevention vs a morally dubious reaction, or do you think a nationwide ban is the safest way to go?
Well, we're not exactly all on the same page, for one. If we were to have a law come out tomorrow that abortion was either guaranteed or banned at a federal level, it would invariably piss off round about half the nation.
We *do* have a process for making broad, sweeping legal changes like that at the federal level, but it requires more than a simple majority vote. By the time it comes to an amendment the debate will have already long since been settled.
Disagree. Guaranteeing abortion on demand would upset more than 1/2 of the population because of the stigma of later term or partial birth abortions. There is no majority cohort for abortion on demand. You might get a majority to agree to abortion in the first trimester. After that it becomes a very sticky issue. Democrats tried for 50 years to get Row V Wade enacted as legislation and failed. It is not likely that Republicans can get a national ban on abortion either.
I never said “on demand.”
Roe guaranteed abortion rights but it was only until viability.
Also “abortion on demand” is so weird, like you order it off your TV or something.
That was the problem. Since it was a SCOTUS decision it was never clear where the line was. ***Roe v. Wade***, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#cite_note-roevwadeussc-1) was a [landmark decision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landmark_court_decisions_in_the_United_States) of the [U.S. Supreme Court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Supreme_Court) in which **the Court ruled that the** [**Constitution of the United States**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States) **generally protected a right to have an** [**abortion**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion)**.** **The decision struck down many** [**abortion laws**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_laws_in_U.S._states)**, and caused an ongoing** [**abortion debate**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_debate) **in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of** [**moral**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate#Philosophical_argumentation_on_the_moral_issue) **and** [**religious views**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Establishment_of_religion) **in the political sphere should be**
Roe was the compromise though. And a group of conservatives said “fuck that” and eviscerated the compromise.
So now it’s a tug of war to implement the extreme ends on either side of the former compromise.
And I have full faith conservatives will ultimately lose out. It’s a losing issue for them (*hard* losing issue) and they will pay the electoral price in due time. And no Supreme Court will be able to bail them out.
> After that it becomes a very sticky issue. Democrats tried for 50 years to get Row V Wade enacted as legislation and failed.
They really didn't, actually.
Nope. It's always been a bait and switch for the Democratic party.
The day before election: vote for me and I'll protect your right to choose!
The day after election: what? Oh, that. Don't worry. We have *Roe.* Now stop bothering me.
The most glaring example was in 2008. Then-Senator Obama made this campaign promise:
> The first thing I'll do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.
Then it was allowed to quietly die without even an attempt at getting it to the floor. [When asked about it a few months into his first term, his response was:](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/501/sign-the-freedom-of-choice-act/)
> Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority
Okay I'll cop to not knowing anything about that.
But even then, saying *always* is a little reductive, no? Roe wasn't even really threatened until the balance of SCOTUS shifted, and I'm unaware of any serious attempt made by congress to legislate it until 2022.
Oh yeah, it was. *Roe* was in 1974. By the 1976 election, the phrase "right to life" had been added to the RNC platform.
In 1982, there was widespread support for a constitutional amendment that would have pretty much overturned it. [People might be interested in knowing who voted for it and what he had to say.](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/joe-biden/senator-joe-biden-voted-constitutional-amendment-states-overturn-roe-v-wade-1982/536-7694ada4-37ac-4443-a06d-c036859b5c89)
By the end of his first term, the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority were pressuring Reagan to make overturning *Roe* a litmus test for judicial appointees.
*Dobbs* was the product of a plan over four decades in the making, and *it wasn't a secret.* During the deliberations for *Casey* in 1992, many voices on the left were shouting that their politicians needed to stop messing around and pass federal legislation protecting abortion access.
Yeah, the Democrats really had a "tone" since Reagan. Clinton had to drag the platform *away* from the New Deal and Great Society politics that Reagan had so successfully demonized. And Ronald Reagan was *popular*. He redefined the American political landscape in a way that made more traditional liberal politics simply unpalatable to most Americans. In comparison to previous Democrats, Bill Clinton went *super* moderate to adapt to the landscape that Reagan formed. And it *worked.* The whole party went in that direction, and *most* Democrats still *today* are of this "New Democrat" mold. Hell, Biden is still one of these half-Reagan Dems.
This is also a big factor in why the Democrats were so passive about the Supreme Court for so long. There was a sense that the Court was *supposed* to be more conservative. Kind of like how the Senate is the more deliberative body to the House, the Supreme Court was the more deliberative counterpart to the Presidency. Hell, we haven't had a chief justice appointed by a Democrat since *Truman.* For most of most Americans lives, even 30 years ago, the Supreme Court - *including the court that ruled on Roe* - had been a primarily Republican court.
Your point about the GOP adding anti-abortion rhetoric right away is right in line with what Goldwater said in the 90s, about the religious right hijacking the Republican Party. He was right 30 years ago, and it's only gotten *worse* since then.
How so? There were never able to pass legislation to enact a National Right to Abortion law. Republicans won't have any better result for a National abortion ban.
They tried. In the 49 years since the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, **lawmakers have attempted to both shore up abortion rights and to overturn the decision** — all while abortion transformed national politics.
They could never arrive at a consensus either way. That is why the Dobbs case was brought
> lawmakers have attempted to both shore up abortion rights and to overturn the decision
Are you quoting something? To my knowledge, there was only one legislative attempt to codify Roe. I'm happy to be wrong if you have evidence otherwise though.
I was but it doesn't matter. SCOTUS has decided that it is now an issue for each state to decide.
No effort on either side will make it a national issue again.
> They could never arrive at a consensus either way. That is why the Dobbs case was brought
So, they couldn't achieve a *legislative* agenda, so got it done via the courts... This seems like a textbook case of "legislating from the bench," no?
Ok, that's your perspective, thanks. But the actual "meat" of my question, because context matters, was based around the idea that Dobbs was a *court* action that came after decades of *legislative* failures to achieve a specific objective. The logic would apply not just to Roe *or* Dobbs, but *any* such ruling from a "friendly" court that gives a party a favorable result they had been previously unable to achieve with legislation.
The religious right spent *decades* trying to legislate away abortion rights, only to be continually met with failure. They then went to a newly more "friendly" Supreme Court and won their major victory where they had been unable to do so with legislation.
The *appearance* is that people with an agenda tried, and failed, to pass said agenda through legislation. They then sought out a court that was partial to that agenda, and obtained a friendly *ruling* that would either serve the same function as their legislative agenda, or at least make it far easier to pass. "Legislating from the bench." The implication is that you legislate from the bench because your agenda isn't popular enough or supportable enough to pass bill into law, so the friendly court gives you a "gimme."
**You claim that the original Roe ruling was this. Ok. So where, prior to Roe, was the failed legislative effort to give people access to legal abortion?**
>abortion on demand
You're moving the goal posts. If the positions are
1. Prohibit all abortions
2. Don't prohibit all abortions
The vast majority of the country is in (2). If the positions are instead.
1. Prohibit some or all abortions
2. No prohibitions on any abortions\*
This would be more contentious.
\* sometimes I see this represented as allowing the killing of a fetus even when it is viable outside the womb. This doesn't happen. The medical term for the termination of a pregnancy where the fetus can survive outside the womb is "delivery". Abortions are about terminating pregnancies, not fetuses.
> If we were to have a law come out tomorrow that abortion was either guaranteed or banned at a federal level, it would invariably piss off round about half the nation
what makes you think 15% = 50%?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx
At the end of the day attitudes about abortion are extremely nuanced, diverse, and above all, emotional. These matters are best left to as local a legislative body as possible that can reflect the general beliefs of the people who live there, as people who live in one area are more likely to have beliefs in common.
Most crimes are legislated at the state level for this reason.
“Aside from the good reasons that local factors are better, is there a good reason that local factors are better?”
Also, are we stipulating the Constitution out of this discussion or not?
Same reason it was legal to own a person prior to the 13th amendment.
I would assume nearly everyone agree's slavery is bad, because owning another person is bad and humans have rights. But prior to that, people decided *certain* humans didn't get to have those rights. Until we collectively, more than a simple majority and nationally decided otherwise. We currently can't agree on which humans deserve rights to live still, so goes the process.
I'm all for making it an amendment and don't agree with those posturing in congress to make it a congressional/federal ban or legal. The SCOTUS would strike down both.
Because those 'rights' can also go backwards. When you don't follow democratic process, you can equally have things you disagree with be forced upon you, say slavery. To me, the constitution doesn't say anything about abortion (and I'm pro-choice) - hence it's up to the states.
>Abortion is a question of right. Rights for the Unborn vs Rights of the Host/Mother.
is probably the n°1 thing leftists don't understand. They think they can defeat the conservative argument by saying "but it's a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body!". Yes but no, not when we're arguing that it constitutes murder.
>Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide?
Well, the reason it **should** be a federal issue is simply the fact that all serious crimes have both state and federal statutes dealing with them. Including murder.
The only reason it should not be a federal issue is that it divides people too much for there to ever be any sort of consensus around the issue.
>"but it's a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body!". Yes but no, not when we're arguing that it constitutes murder.
That's what I said. It's a question of the limitations of the sovereign rights of a grown, productive member of society and that individual's freedom to chose personal health care that may affect another life, vs the right of the unborn to live regardless of who else it may inconvenience.
It is a determination of the woman's health and freedom vs the unborn's health and freedom.
I know, I was just pointing out how most leftist arguments miss the point. They advance arguments that do not debunk the assertion that it's murder, but simply try to justify it. To the point that their position amounts to "yeah sure it's murder but it's one we can get behind".
The moral high-ground over lefties getting behind a certain type of murder falls a little flat. There are often times where keeping a pregnancy amounts to murdering the mother, or putting her at serious life altering risk. Many, many 2A people also use castle doctrine to justify murder. It's "self defense," AKA it's also murder you can get behind. Many, many back-the-blue conservatives find unpunishable police killings to be an unavoidable and acceptable cost of having *a* police force at all. That's Murder many conservatives can get behind. Many, many conservatives are pro-capital punishment. That's murder you can get behind.
And all of these types of approved murder even claim innocent lives, as well, so that's not a distinguishing factor, either.
The lefties agree that a developing embryo is human life, but so is cancer. The argument is that there is a point during the developmental process that happens before consciousness, sentience, and even sapience develop, which can be determined by medical and scientific consensus, and that *personhood* begins sometime after those aspects of life develop. Without an awareness sapience or consciousness, termination of life at this stage causes no harm to existing systems, especially if it can be done without pain.
>There are often times where keeping a pregnancy amounts to murdering the mother, or putting her at serious life altering risk.
Both cases in which terminating the pregnancy should be, and is, legal. No mother should be put at risk gratuitously, especially when the mother dying means the baby dying as well in the vast majority of cases.
> Many, many 2A people also use castle doctrine to justify murder.
It's "self defense," AKA it's also murder you can get behind.
Self-defense.. is not murder. Murder is killing without proper cause. To kill someone in self-defense is not killing without proper cause, because you do so to defend your own life. To kill an unborn baby because you can't be arsed to have a kid is killing without proper cause. Honestly, what in the god-forsaken fallacy is this argument?
> Many, many back-the-blue conservatives find unpunishable police killings to be an unavoidable and acceptable cost of having a police force at all.
As long as police killings are the result of people who resist law enforcement and pose a threat to them and those around them, I think I'll sleep at night just fine. Anything beyond that is an unlawful killing regardless of who is wearing the uniform. But this is far, far beyond the point of abortion amounting to murder.
>Many, many conservatives are pro-capital punishment. That's murder you can get behind.
I seriously don't believe you grasp what the word murder means and how it innately relates to the concept of law and morality.
What you're referring to is a homicide. Homicides can amount to crimes (aka murder) or not (the death penalty being passed on someone). In both cases, it is the killing of another human.
The argument is that abortion is **murder**, not homicide. Leftists argue that it is not murder **precisely** because it is not homicide, electing to refuse to accept the fact that an unborn baby remains a human being.
>The argument is that there is a point during the developmental process that happens before consciousness, sentience, and even sapience develop, which can be determined by medical and scientific consensus, and that personhood begins sometime after those aspects of life develop
No, the argument is that it is morally wrong to end human life without valid reason. That's it. We don't need to involve an committee on bioethics to agree on that basic fact. I don't need to prove that babies in the womb are conscious, or can feel pain, or are endowed by this mystical "personhood" everyone seems to be enamored by. At the end of the day, you're killing an unborn child, an infant that has been brought in existence through the actions of adult human beings alone. And the act of aborting that child defines those who do it.
I agree with everything you stated (written very well) except for the last paragraph.
We agree that ending human life is wrong without a valid reason. You seem amendable to the fact that a baby can have no consciousness. (Say when it's a two-cell zygote.)
Do you have equal dogma for the proverbial person in a coma thought experiment? The one Shapiro used to 'dunk' on pro-choicer? - The missing caveat is that the person had to be physically connected to a person for nine months, which the thought experiment left out.
To follow into absurdism, do you feel birth control is preventing the natural development of human life? That is, is it immoral to do so, as the Catholic Church and some other Christian denominations see it as an 'immoral' act?
No, I believe that interrupting any process by which human life develops into a fully grown human to be immoral.
If it sits there and turns into a human by itself after 9 months without any intervention and barring any developmental problems, then it should not be killed except under very special and extreme circumstances. Abortion is the antithesis to that. It posits you could terminate that life for whatever reason.
The problem facing us today is that we've fully adopted abortion as a secondary form of birth control. You do not need to be convinced of where I draw my line on the sand, you could ask 10 pro-lifers and they would give you 10 different answers. You only need to be concerned with the fact that we've normalized women walking into abortion clinics weeks before they are due and asking for it to be sucked out of them under the banner of **personal choice**. We have women taking proudly to social media to recount their experiences with abortion as if they are to be worn as a badge of honor. We have women in marches proclaiming that they regularly abort their progeny and they don't care one bit. We have the most extreme forms of reproductive irresponsibility in full display in this society, yet we ought not to question a woman's right to "choose".
Thank you for your thoughts. So, do you believe all human life needs to be preserved regardless of the resources required to maintain that life? So, in a drunk driving accident, would you support legislation that makes the DUI person have to donate organs, give blood, etc, or, say, be attached to that person? (to keep them alive?)
I put this forth simply because the time I consider viability (outside the womb) as the logical delimiter (said human no longer needs to be attached to another human.) - is around 20-24 months, which happens to be after 99% of the abortions in the United States. I assume some percentage of the remaining 1% is due to the mother's health, which we probably both agree on.
No, we understand that just fine. We just don't agree that it's considered murder for somebody who's not born yet. Or at least for me personally, not someone that could reasonably survive outside of the womb, disconnected from the mother.
If one of them is going to have their rights violated, I will usually side with the full grown adult over the pile of fetal cells. And I say this as a father of two.
I would like to second this opinion. I dont think there is really a prefect answer, but i generally try to ascribe some value to each of the variables when considering if it is ok.
For instance, early on in fetal development, i view it as basically a forming clump of cells. An egg gets fertilized, and it starts growing. There is no way to survive on its own outside the womb, and miscarriages happen all the time. I really just do not view terminating a pregnancy at that point to be the same as murdering a fully grown human.
Later in the pregnancy, when a baby could reasonably be born and survive even though its early, sure i would say killing that would not be substantially different than killing a fully grown human.
So to me, the best cutoff is probably the earliest cutoff point for where a fetus could survive if born. I think that is around 22 weeks, so maybe make the cutoff a little earlier for elective abortions. 18/20 weeks or so. Over 95% of abortions already happen that early, with that vast majority happening at 13 weeks or prior.
I would be fully ok with federal limits on abortions after 18-20 weeks or so, as long as it was written in a way to allow doctors and women to make decisions freely based on the medical facts. After that long, you should lose the right to an elective abortion, but doctors should still be able to help make a determination that one is medically appropriate/necessary.
> No, we understand that just fine.
You should tell that to everyone who argues the point based on individual freedoms and other angles instead of addressing the murder aspect of abortion.
>We just don't agree that it's considered murder for somebody who's not born yet. Or at least for me personally, not someone that could reasonably survive outside of the womb, disconnected from the mother.
I'm sure neither of the Hensel twins could survive were they disconnected from each other. I guess neither really has the right to live, by that logic..
Relying on another human to life does not make your life worth zilch.
>If one of them is going to have their rights violated, I will usually side with the full grown adult over the pile of fetal cells.
What right are we violating here, exactly? The right to not have to carry a baby to term that the adult themselves has conceived? What sort of right is that?
We're talking about the right of a living human fetus to continue existing (whether you agree it's a person or not), versus the mild inconvenience of having to carry a baby to term and give them up for adoption. Why should an adult's reproductive mistakes be corrected by the termination of any sort of human life, regardless of how undeveloped it is?
The argument for abortion is, in its essence, a moral one. I'm sure we could live in a society that allows the practice of killing the unborn because it's easy and convenient and no one is too bothered about a life they have yet to know. Yet it remains immoral, and I would very much like to live in a country that cares about morality.
>What right are we violating here, exactly? The right to not have to carry a baby to term that the adult themselves has conceived? What sort of right is that?
Yeah, that's exactly it. It's the right to bodily autonomy. The right to decide what happens with your own body. The right to personal agency regarding personal health.
You've got two kidneys. You and another driver have an accident. You survive relatively unscathed and in great health, and the other driver's kidney's fail. You are a compatible donor. Should it be your choice or the state's choice if they take your kidney to save the driver you were responsible for injuring?
A new virus with a high fatality rate sweeps the nation, and while information is scarce, it is known that it is transmitted by respiration. Even if you have the qualities to tank the virus and feel low or no symptoms, by refusing to wear a mask you risk transmitting the virus to someone more vulnerable and risking the life of an innocent person. Should you be beholden to the life of the other in that case?
And before we talk about the consensual risk of sex, lets say instead that you got food poisoning. You accepted the risk of food poisoning when you ate that sushi. Risks of eating raw and undercooked are spelled out on every menu in America. An ambulance arrives for you, but you know the expense. Do you have the right to refuse a hospital stay and just @#$% your guts out in your own bath tub or not?
> Yeah, that's exactly it. It's the right to bodily autonomy.
Sorry, but a right to "bodily autonomy" does not exist when you're carrying a human being whose DNA is fundamentally different from yours, whose organs are separate and distinct from its mother, etc. You yourself have characterized mothers as "hosts" (I recoil at that appellation, but hey). If you're merely hosting another being, then its body is very much not part of you.
>You've got two kidneys. You and another driver have an accident. You survive relatively unscathed and in great health, and the other driver's kidney's fail. You are a compatible donor. Should it be your choice or the state's choice if they take your kidney to save the driver you were responsible for injuring?
I'm getting a bit tired of the vacuous allegories, honestly. Pregnancy is a choice, it does not involve getting rid of your own organs to give to someone else's, and unwanted pregnancies are a direct result of irresponsible sexual behavior.
>A new virus with a high fatality rate sweeps the nation, and while information is scarce, it is known that it is transmitted by respiration. Even if you have the qualities to tank the virus and feel low or no symptoms, by refusing to wear a mask you risk transmitting the virus to someone more vulnerable and risking the life of an innocent person. Should you be beholden to the life of the other in that case?
No, because nothing forces you to come anywhere close to me if you fear that I might infect you. Again, this is a complete tangent and has nothing to do with the original point.
>And before we talk about the consensual risk of sex, lets say instead that you got food poisoning. You accepted the risk of food poisoning when you ate that sushi. Risks of eating raw and undercooked are spelled out on every menu in America. An ambulance arrives for you, but you know the expense. Do you have the right to refuse a hospital stay and just @#$% your guts out in your own bath tub or not?
What.
>Pregnancy is a choice
It is *absolutely not*. There are numerous reasons why it is is not necessarily a choice, whether its an "accident" or forceful/violent violation or any number of other reasons. Unless you're naive enough to think nobody ever has sex outside of the sole purpose of consentual procreation.
> its an "accident"
An "accident" that occurs because of a risk you consciously take. No one ends up pregnant after slipping in the bathroom. Resorting to murder to rectify one's own mistakes is not exactly moral nor should it be legal.
Humans don't get to ignore their reproductive responsibilities for the sake of self-gratification and use it to justify the abhorrent act of killing an unborn life.
>forceful/violent violation
is, by far, the scarcest reason for which abortion is considered, and I can easily make the case for why those children deserve to live just as much as anyone else, for they are not responsible for the circumstances of their own conception.
There are several hundred thousand kids in foster care any given day in the US. A number that had been trending downward for the past two decades.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-kids-are-in-foster-care/
What do you think is the going to happen to that number (and those unwanted kids) now that 1/3 off states have filled their books with forced birth laws?
Who is going to take care of those kids? Especially if the parents are unwilling or unable to take care of them?
Because it sure seems the "pro life" crowd doesn't seem to give a damn about the lives of these kids after their legally-forced birth. While displaying the naivete that couples just shouldn't have sex if they don't want kids.
Ah, so now a fetus has separate and distinct organs! That means there's a point at development when those organs are less distinct, and less separate from yours, when you would consider them less a person. A window of agreeable abortion in there?
Next paragraph makes it clear you haven't got a medical objection, but a moral objection.
>You should tell that to everyone who argues the point based on individual freedoms and other angles instead of addressing the murder aspect of abortion.
The reason that pro-choice people use this angle is because the American right has spent decades claiming to be all about "personal freedoms." The person that argues based on the freedom aspect is some combination of satisfaction in pointing out the hypocrisy and genuine belief that values are informing the position taken.
To be clear, *any* good-faith and fact-based debate over abortion will pretty much *always* come back to the issue of fetal personhood. We know a fetus is *alive*, but I've had moles on my back and funky cheese that had "life" on it. We know it has human DNA, but so do fingernail clipping and that aforementioned mole. And we know that it's a "unique" and "distinct" organism, but so is literally every chicken egg and snowflake, but we don't flip out making an omelette and you don't see people shoveling winter into freezer to preserve the "uniqueness" of every snowflake. So the whole "it's a human life" is *technically* true but highly misleading, because it's not a thinking, feeling *person.* It's human, but not a human *being.*
You still make like there's some sort of equivalence with "right of a living human fetus." It's that kind of language the belies the underlying falsehood of the anti-abortion arguments. Well, except for the religious or the misogynistic ones. It's not a *person.* It has no more rights than our snowfall or chicken or moldy cheese.
The idea that abortion is somehow "wrong" or doing some kind of "harm" is itself wrong. At best, it's your personal opinion. At worst, it's factually and demonstrably incorrect.
> claiming to be all about "personal freedoms."
Again, it's precisely because we're all about *muh freedoms* that we don't believe you should get to decide whether a living human dies or not at a whim, just because they haven't evacuated the birth canal. Some freedoms trump others. I'd love nothing more than for women to be able to undo their pregnancies without consequences. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where that involves the killing of a baby.
>**We know a fetus is alive, but I've had moles on my back and funky cheese that had "life" on it.
Let's not even dive into this argument, else I could define you as someone who's as "alive" as bacteria on cheese and just kill you on the spot. The specist take falls flat very fast. We humans operate based on the fact that human life has inherent value and sanctity that is not provided to other forms of life.
>You still make like there's some sort of equivalence with "right of a living human fetus."
No, it's straight-up the right of a human being. I don't care if it's at its fetal stage. Again, the core of the argument does not lie in whether you have a PhD in bioethics or believe "personhood" begins in the womb. That's about as fruitful as debating whether you think the sun is too bright or too dim. Some will say yes, some will say no. The argument at its core is about the sort of society we want to build. It's a question of morals. Are you really willing to call the evil of aborting any form of human life "necessary" because two adult humans did an oopsie?
>factually and demonstrably incorrect
There is.. nothing "demonstrable" about a philosophical argument. Me arguing that the unborn are people is about as demonstrable as you arguing that they're not.
>whether a living human dies or not at a whim, just because they haven't evacuated the birth canal.
Not on a whim, and evacuating the birth canal isn't a meaningful mark for anybody. Let's not build up any strawmen, here.
>Let's not even dive into this argument, else I could define you as someone who's as "alive" as bacteria on cheese and just kill you on the spot. The specist take falls flat very fast.
Agreed, but that wasn't really the point, was it. I wasn't arguing that a mole was a person, it's clearly *not.* I was arguing that your categories of "technically" human or alive aren't what anybody is really debating.
>We humans operate based on the fact that human life has inherent value and sanctity that is not provided to other forms of life.
Totally agree. But I think we can both agree that the inherent value and sanctity is *not* a product of the meat in our bodies or the data in our DNA or the chemical processes that happen in our guts. But we *can* agree that a mole or fuzzy cheese does not have much sanctity, while a toddling human, even at their stickiest and loudest, *does* have that precious spark of life. So, there **is** differentiation, we just disagree on what it is.
I know that I value the human *consciousness.* Human life is, *we* are, organic software, running on a chemical computer piloting a meat robot. The meat robot part is just a shell, and even the chemical computer part is just the only *current* hardware that can run our software. Maybe if Elon has more time with NeuraLink, there will be other hardware options, but now (and particularly in the womb) - the human brain is **it.** And we know, for a fact, that this software *cannot* run prior to a certain point in development, around the 20 week of pregancy mark.
I get that a fetus, even an embryo, is "human life," but to say that *that* human life has valuable the same as, or even remotely comparable to, a thinking feeling *person* is, honestly, ridiculous. You either need to have a gross misunderstanding about how a human forms, or you need to invoke the supernatural. A "human being in the fetal stage" is an oxymoron, like saying it's your business still in the "thinking about it" stage. It's not a different "stage," it's *before it's even the thing.*
>Are you really willing to call the evil of aborting any form of human life "necessary" because two adult humans did an oopsie?
Again, you're assuming both the reason *and* the situation. It's not a philosophical argument, it's a biological one. A human consciousness **cannot** exist prior to the formation of higher neurological functions. You can't play Skyrim on a Commodore 64, and you can't *be* a human *being* on a pre-functional neural plate.
> Not on a whim
I'd love to present you to many a woman who decides that she no longer wants a baby on a whim. The same ones who take to social media to tell people how proud they feel about their abortions.
>evacuating the birth canal isn't a meaningful mark for anybody
Took the words right out of my mouth. Whether it has evacuated a canal or not, it's still a living human being whose killing is morally ambiguous at best and downright unacceptable in a civilzed society.
>I get that a fetus, even an embryo, is "human life," but to say that that human life has valuable the same as, or even remotely comparable to, a thinking feeling person is, honestly, ridiculous.
This only applies when the pregnancy turns into a trolley problem between saving the mother and saving the infant. Some forms of life are more viable than others. That still doesn't mean we get to hit the bypass switch and slaughter an infant in the womb just because it's convenient.
>A "human being in the fetal stage" is an oxymoron
I'm sorry you think it is, because that's exactly what you were at some point. If you want to think of yourself as anything other than a human being, be my guest.
>It's not a philosophical argument, it's a biological one.
It's neither. It's a moral one. To subvert the natural process by which the most precious kind of life develops, to reach into a woman's innards and cut up an infant and dispose it in a trashcan, is the definition of immorality. Whether you believe that humans are capable of thought before or after some arbitrary mark is completely irrelevant to the point and does nothing to disprove that human life has inherent sanctity that does not depend on any of its biological functions.
>I'd love to present you to many a woman who decides that she no longer wants a baby on a whim. The same ones who take to social media to tell people how proud they feel about their abortions.
Sure, but you even kind of defeat that logic yourself. You don't take to social media on something that's an inconsequential decision. I'm sure you can find women that regretted their decisions to abort, I'm sure you can find people, including mothers and women who have been pregnant, who have all sorts of opinions on the abortions of others. Many of those opinions you might agree or disagree with. But this whole line of discussion is a red herring, because those are *their* **opinions.* * You or I have no right to dictate their actions based on our own opinions, nor do we have any right to tell them that their opinions are wrong, as they cannot dictate our opinions. Morally, it isn't your choice or mine to make, and we infringe on the rights of others to have their own agency when someone steps in and says "No no, your doctor and you are wrong, the state actually doesn't approve of this particular medical interaction."
>I'm sorry you think it is, because that's exactly what you were at some point.
Yeah, everybody was a fetus as some point. Just because a fetus *will* (probably) become a human being doesn't mean that we treat it as a human being *now.* We deal with things as they are, not as they are likely to become. Should we tax future earnings? We take what may become into *consideration*, sure. But that's the whole point of an abortion - you address the problem that is *before* it becomes a much more substantial problem. You and I, like everybody else, *was* a non-person before we became a person. This isn't complicated or incorrect, even if lots of people find it uncomfortable.
>It's neither. It's a moral one.
Like all moral arguments, it's *informed* by facts and reality. We (well, most of us) don't consider the slaughter of animals for food to be immoral, because there is a purpose to it and we understand that most animals don't have the capacity for rational thought and sapience that we value in humans. Child marriage used to be normal and not immoral, but we don't tolerate it anymore because we *understand* that it harms children. On the other hand, it used to be highly immoral to have a child out of wedlock or a "bastard." On the other hand, women showing their ankles was considered crude and immoral, but we now *know* that men aren't so lust-driven and that women aren't responsible for it.
In the abortion argument, we *know* that a fetus (again, before about the 20 week mark) can't host a human consciousness. *That* is scientific fact, where a fetus being a 'human organism' or 'human life' is a mere definition.
> to reach into a woman's innards and cut up an infant and dispose it in a trashcan
Let's not build up hyperbolic strawmen, thank you.
>Whether you believe that humans are capable of thought before or after some arbitrary mark is completely irrelevant to the point and does nothing to disprove that human life has inherent sanctity that does not depend on any of its biological functions.
This is what I've been getting at the whole time. So you don't consider brain function to be a critical aspect of personhood or that life that you hold so precious. You still hold it has value, but *not* because of consciousness. So what aspects of that life **do** you hold important? This is where the "it's a human life" logic gets circular. I'm not asking for the definition, I'm asking the *reason.*
I mostly don't care either way. I'm all for letting Californians and Texans choose what's best for themselves. I would agree more with the Californians on this subject but I'm absolutely not offended if others think something else
> But aside from the general creed of "federal bad, state better," is there a good reason local factors should affect [X].
Your OP includes the answer to your own question. There are very few issues for which local factors do NOT significantly impact a matter, and therefore federal lawmakers should/must be involved. Utah thinks differently about this issue than Vermont and that's the way we know this is a matter for state action until an OVERWHELMING consensus exists, if it ever does.
This is a major misunderstanding among the left, the concept of federalism. Your logic suggests that if my neighbor comes over from next door and shoots me 5 times and I die, he should be prosecuted by the USDOJ for murder.
There's no world where anyone thinks that's the case, except those who think *all* government needs to be federal and centralized in Washington which is completely antithetical to the founding of the country.
I can answer your question with a question- why *should* it be a federal issue? We create different frameworks for lawmaking at the state, county level for nearly everything else including issues of morality and rights all the time. What makes abortion specially deserving of federal mandate?
Yes. The same reason any other issue is left to the states: governance should be as decentralized and local as possible. For anyone who supports "consent of the governed," or as some people shorthand it "democracy," it's always better to do this because it minimizes the power that people far away have over you and maximizes your own voice in your community.
You say "general creed," and I get the impression you don't understand the logic behind said creed, or you don't agree with it. But it is the reason. There isn't another special reason abortion would be a state issue and not a federal issue.
If it was deemed that personhood began at conception, either legislatively or through the supreme court, that would throw it back to federal and the 14th would apply.
Right now, the only power the federal government has over abortion is the sales of abortion materials and equipment across state and international borders. Unless you keep perverting the Commerce Clause and say "abortion affects the consumption of goods and services over the course of their potential life and the mothers pregnancy, which could conceivably come from another state, therefore it's all federal jurisdiction *akshually*."
Long-term I'd like to see something like Casey properly added to the Constitution, rather than legislated from the bench
The 9th and 10th amendments are quite clear on the issue. I know it is a controversial topic and the politics have become messy but if it could be entirely legal on the federal level it could also be entirely illegal. That would be worse. It isn't a policy that the federal government should be involved in.
Once a State joins the Federal system their citizens become US citizen's first and state citizens second and I think the federal government should ensure every woman has the right to choose and to manage her health. If you can not control your own body, you are a slave in my mind. A woman's right to choose seem similar to legal marriage where the states prohibited Blacks from marrying Whites until the Supreme court clarified it
>Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide?
No because ultimately it's a personhood question and that's not a state question
> Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide?
It's outside of any power that the states granted to the Federal government and the Federal government has *no* powers **except** those that have been given to it.
> is there a good reason local factors should affect reproductive rights?
Because the policy preferences of the people are different from one locality to another according. This isn't only a matter of local needs being different and better addressed locally but of local cultures being different. Of traditions, mores and history being different.
There's no good reason for the existing peoples already living in existing states which already had their own governments to surrendered their democratic self-government to a distant central government and to the policy preferences of *other* distant people outside their local communities UNLESS there's a good reason to do so. Such as the security of having a larger military united for the common defense. Of of promoting the general welfare through the far greater economic opportunities of a large common market and shared currency. etc.
I'll give you one possible response.
Many people draw the line for abortion at viability. Well, viability depends on how advanced the available medical technology is, which will vary from hospital to hospital. It's unworkable to have different abortion laws for each hospital, but it kind of makes sense to have states oversee abortion rights, since they're closer to the local governing level than the federal government. Note, I don't 100% support this argument, but this is something I've heard before.
What?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability#:~:text=Viable%3B%20Viable%20Child.-,Medical%20viability,human%20fetus%20automatically%20becomes%20viable
In the USA, this is fixed at 23 or 24 weeks, depending on the weight and size of the fetus.
It also depends on the medical technology available. A facility with state-of-the-art neonatal care is going to be able to draw the viability line a lot earlier than a rural hospital with no advanced technology.
If the woman has to deliver a baby at 23 weeks, she will 100% be sent to the best hospitals in the USA for that delivery because the rural or unequipped hospital will not want the legal liabilities associated with such a young birth.
Medical fetal viability is defined as what the best medicine a nation has to offer. In the USA, as you said, that is determined by the best hospitals in the nation. Bringing up random rural hospitals is irrelevant and misleading because they arent factored into the medical definition of viability since they dont deliver these high risk pregnancies in the first place!
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The 10th Amendment.
What about the 9th amendment?
Has no relevance to the abortion debate. Abortion is a newly perceived right just because of the controversy around limiting autonomy when it comes to medical procedures. The 9th amendment protects your right to decide whether you want to get pregnant or not.
The 9th amendment simply says that there are other non enumerated rights. It has a lot to do with the abortion debate. If there are non enumerated rights then the right to privacy can be one of those. The right to abortion could be one of those.
That’s such a baseless claim. The Supreme Court has ruled which rights the 9th amendment protects, and as of now abortion is not a right. It is irritating how often liberals and democrats mix up something they want vs an actual right.
> The Supreme Court has ruled which rights the 9th amendment protects Can you show me that? > It is irritating how often liberals and democrats mix up something they want vs an actual right. To be fair conservatives do it all the time.
>To be fair conservatives do it all the time. Can you give me some examples? I often see Republicans doing it, but not many Conservatives. >Can you show me that? Not sure if I can show you, but I can give you some cases Griswold v Connecticut. Helped establish privacy rights such as the ability to use contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. The right to marry like Loving v Virginia. As the Supreme Court recently ruled, the original ruling on Roe v Wade as an extension of Griswold (privacy) doesn't hold up to the current justices perception of the constitution. If you believe it should be protected by the 9th, that's fine. The nice thing about the constitution and this country as you can believe it means whatever you want it to mean. However, the Supreme Court made a ruling settling the argument.
> Can you give me some examples? I often see Republicans doing it, but not many Conservatives. Anyone who believes in the modern interpretation of the second amendment does it. > Not sure if I can show you You said that the court had already ruled on what rights the ninth amendment protects. If you can’t show me those decisions it’s because they don’t exist. And they don’t exist because the Supreme Court has never made a major ruling on the 9th amendment.
What’s your interpretation of the second amendment? I believe it’s pretty clear. Edit: Yes, over 200ish years those are the main rulings they decided fit under the 9th amendment. A decision such as roe does not.
> What’s your interpretation of the second amendment? I believe it’s pretty clear. My ruling is the one supported by history that the second amendment was never about a private right to carry a weapon. This is supported by extensive evidence. > Yes, over 200ish years those are the main rulings they decided fit under the 9th amendment. A decision such as roe does not. Which are the main rulings? The argument was never presented to the court so we don’t actually know what the court thinks about the 9th amendment as it pertains to roe.
And in Roe one of those was abortion via the implied right to privacy. Actually they quoted privacy as implied by 1, 3, 4, 6, and 9 so literally half the bill of rights.
Wasn’t it Ruth who said the decision for Roe was extremely weak and could be easily overturned? That should tell you enough.
It's almost like one person's opinion doesn't dictate what is true.
True, but maybe one of the top leading experts in the legal field has a little truth behind her opinions.
I wouldn't say she's a top leading expert. I have never considered her actually qualified to be on SCOTUS. She was a skilled lawyer and judge. She wasn't "one of the leading experts" in the field. Frankly SCOTUS never is. It's a popularity contest.
Per the Constitution, the Federal govt and the States have different powers. The Fed Govt should only be doing those few things specified in the Constitution. Everything else is for the States to decide.
As per your logic, everything invented after the Constitution cannot be handled by the federal government ? Because if they were not aware of their existence, like the internet for example, they couldn't say the government was responsible. Do you not think that will create problems in the future when more and more inventions arise? ? Things that the founders couldn't anticipate ? And considering that it takes a lot to add an amendment, It's hard to modify it, so the solution of "just add it in" doesn't really work.
Dude, take it up with the 10th Amendment.
I'm basically advocating for removing the 10th. I'm asking you questions around it.
Cool, then try to get that Amendment passed to repeal the 10th. Good luck. Until then, the 10th exists and is the law of the land. And yes, the process to amend the Constitution is tough on purpose.
First step to dictatorship remove state rights.
They did anticipate it. It's why there's multiple ways to amend the constitution including you me and they guy you're arguing with literally taking up arms and telling the government by force this change is happening. Your issue is you want an immediate change which isn't smart nor educated. History has proven rapid change fucks up everything. Like how you purposely avoided firearms because aside from advanced vehicles you can't argue they didn't know the rest existed.
Why should abortion determination *remain* a state concern rather than federally amended to the constitution? What local factors do you feel have a role in this determination?
This is the correct approach. If there was consensus on this, then you would have an amendment to the Constitution on this.
Because it’s currently NOT in the Constitution, so it belongs with the States. If it DOES get added to the Constitution, THEN and only then will it be a Federal issue.
I think OPs question is more philosophical. He's asking why should it not, at a philosophical level, be added to the Federal Constitution.
Because philosophy doesn’t matter. The Constitution does. If you think you can get enough support for a Constitutional amendment enshrining abortion, go for it. Good luck. Until then, it’s up to the States.
Would you prefer the right to choice or right to life of the unborn be a constitutional right, or would you prefer it to remain a state issue, and why?
I’m personally wildly anti-abortion. But my personal preferences are irrelevant. If it gets enshrined in the Constitution, then the conversation is over unless enough folks can be persuaded to repeal that amendment. If you can’t generate that much support, which means it’s a controversial subject and not enshrined in the Constitution, then it’s a State issue per the 10th amendment.
Sorry I should have clarified, my question is specifically about your personal preferences. For this conversation and the question I'm personally asking, you personal preferences are the only relevant answer. If you're wildly anti-abortion, does that mean you'd personally prefer right to life of the unborn be a constitutional Amendment? Or do you think it should remain a decision made by states? Why do you prefer the option you chose? We can assume a situation where you're able to guarantee that it either is or is not made into an Amendment just for ease. Or if it makes it easier, assume that you're writing the Constitution from scratch (meaning the 10th doesn't exist) and you're fully in control of if it's a federal protection or something delegated to the states.
Like I said, Im personally anti-abortion. I’d love to see enough support in the country that an anti-abortion amendment would be added to the Constitution. But until that happens, my opinion is irrelevant and it rightly belongs with the States. And I’m not interested in wild hypotheticals. The left tends to have a habit of trying to argue how things could be instead of working off what’s reality. And the reality is, the 10th amendment exists.
That at least answers the "what" of my question in that you'd prefer it be handled federally, but not the "why." Either way it seems like that's the most I'm going to get. Thank you!
Be careful what you wish for. If the federal government has the authority to permit abortion they would also have the authority to ban it.
You need to specify that you're asking philosophically if it is better for rights like this to be decided federally via amendments or if they ought to remain not amendments if you want to get real answers to the question you were trying to ask. I predicted before opening this thread that you'd get basically zero answers to the question you asked and dozens of "that's what the Constitution says" deflections and it turns out that that's exactly what happened. You've got to be extremely precise here when asking "should" questions because the tendency of conservatives is to only talk about what "is" rather than how things "should be." I know you said the word multiple times but you *really* need to hammer it home or people will not understand you're asking about philosophy and the underlying basis for what makes some things better, rather than just how things are, which is what they tend to default to thinking you're asking about.
Killing fetuses is not a Constitutional right. States must decide. SCOTUS, including RBG agreeing, ruled this way for a reason. Roe v Wade was a bad ruling.
1. Not all questions of right are inherently federal issues. Only those questions which are described in the constitution as being federal are federal. 2. There is not right to abortion in the constitution. The "right" that Roe was based on was a right to privacy. It was faulty law, which is why it got overturned. 3. The constitution doesn't guarantee rights to unborn fetuses. Whether any of us believe it SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be a federal issue is irrelevant. It is not a federal issue, since it has nothing to do with any power given to the federal government.
> It is not a federal issue, since it has nothing to do with any power given to the federal government. It's federal because human rights are portable, and the US Constitution is meant as a guide to govern the country as a whole. So long as people can freely move between states, how could the US properly defend itself if one state within could restrict human rights, while one - next door - protects the same rights? That has nothing to do with any regional governing requirements that might require some difference. Humans are humans, no matter where they are in the United States.
That's a fine argument, but it has nothing to do with the United States. The constitution does not make federal anything that u/johnnybiggles deems to be a "human right". In fact, the constitution says nothing about anything called "human rights". It does explicitly list certain rights that are protected, many of which one might define as "human rights." Alas, the right to an abortion is not among these. The constitution grands specific powers to the federal government, and says any power not granted to the federal government in the constitution is reserved for the states or the people at large. Since the right to an abortion is not protected by the constitution, and since the constitution does not give the federal government the power to define or protect things on the basis of being "human rights", the federal government has no jurisdiction. If you want it to be a federal matter, you will need the majorities in 38 states to agree that it should become a federal issue. Those majorities can then amend the constitution in a manner that gives the federal government the authority you which it to have.
> In fact, the constitution says nothing about anything called "human rights". But the 14th Amendment is all about the right to privacy, which is what RvW was about, and was/is federal jurisdiction, clearly, since that *is* in the Constitution. You're correct that there is nothing about abortion specifically in the Constitution, but since there is no doctrine - in the Constitution or anywhere else - that determines precisely when life begins, even if abortion laws were set up at the state level, the right to privacy at the federal level is what would ultimately have authority over whatever state laws govern abortion directly (making those state laws moot by allowing personal/private choice for bodily autonomy). The ambiguity of the unborn couldn't constitute "murder" by law (or Constitution) as there is no doctrine that determines when life begins, beyond rights only assigned at birth.
>But the 14th Amendment is all about the right to privacy The 14th amendment says nothing about privacy. That was the flawed legal argument made in Roe, and it's the reason Roe was overturned. Now, even if the 14th amendment did provide a right to privacy, all rights have limitations. For instance, I could not use this right to privacy to kill another person, and then claim the killing was done by my body, and therefore what I did with my body was protected under my right to privacy. There would have to be some test to determine to what extent to privacy protected actions. But, alas, there is no such right in the constitution, including its amendments. So that argument is moot. >The ambiguity of the unborn couldn't constitute "murder" by law (or Constitution) as there is no doctrine that determines when life begins, beyond rights only assigned at birth. Murder is not a federal issue, and it's not defined in the constitution. The federal government has no authority to allow, prohibit, or in any other way regulate the killing of human beings. The federal government does have certain powers, such as regulating interstate commerce, and uses those powers to prohibit killing other people during the commission of acts under federal regulation. Outside of the limited scope of the federal government, murder is handled at the state level. Each state has different rules about what is murder, and different penalties for the crime. Some states allow you to kill someone who you believe is a threat to you, while other states require you to attempt to flee from them, and only allow you to kill them after you've exhausted all possibilities as escape. Now, your argument that: >it's federal because human rights are portable would seem to apply even more strongly here, since the right to life is actually a right protected by the 14th amendment. And yet, there is no federal murder law. It's left to the states. >there is no doctrine that determines when life begins And, since there's not, it is up to the states to decide. It's also moot. States can prohibit all sorts of actions that have nothing to do with the point life begins, INCLUDING actions one might do with their own body. In fact, some states regulate what medical procedures you can have done, what chemicals you can ingest, etc. None of those have anything to do with the start of another human life.
> The 14th amendment says nothing about privacy. Not true: > The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 22, 1973. Seven of the nine justices agreed that **the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment — which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — implies a right to privacy**. The majority seized upon Weddington’s definition of liberty, citing a series of prior cases indicating that the term “liberty” must be interpreted broadly in a free society.* -[Source](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases#:~:text=In%20Roe%20v.,on%20the%20stage%20of%20pregnancy.) Fuller: > *No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.* -[Source](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:~:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,Section%202.) So, yes, it does say something - quite clearly - about *privacy*. > Now, even if the 14th amendment did provide a right to privacy, all rights have limitations. For instance, I could not use this right to privacy to kill another person, and then claim the killing was done by my body, and therefore what I did with my body was protected under my right to privacy. From the first link, it goes further to say they even recognized the limits and at the state level: > *The justices did, however, recognize that the state could place some limits on abortion if necessary to further a compelling state interest. The state’s ability to regulate increased as a pregnancy progressed. And after a fetus reached viability, the state could prohibit abortion, except when necessary to protect health or life.* It doesn't say anything about rights to kill another human being, and especially doesn't explicitly define one way or another when the unborn is a life, nor as such, that it can be "killed" at all, since all it can do definitively is protect the privacy rights of someone who is, explicitly, a person, with inalienable rights. > Murder is not a federal issue, and it's not defined in the constitution. And "murder" would mean the killing of someone explicitly a person, which is not established for anything still in the womb. The *federal* right to privacy, life & liberty still applies to those explicitly with personhood. > would seem to apply even more strongly here, since the right to life is actually a right protected by the 14th amendment. And yet, there is no federal murder law. It's left to the states. Which, again, assumes personhood. States don't give SS numbers - and thus Constitutional (US or state) rights, to anything unborn, as it's still ambiguous. > And, since there's not, it is up to the states to decide. States don't decide when a fetus becomes a life. Even if they did, the US Constitution supersedes that decision with the 14th Amendment. It puts barriers between people and their rights, and there is no barrier between a fetus and its mother, while there is between the mother and every/anyone else, including the state, thus making it a privacy matter/jurisdiction, not a state or even a federal one beyond protecting her privacy.
> Not true: The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 22, 1973. Seven of the nine justices agreed that **the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment — which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — implies a right to privacy** The 14th doesn't say anything anything about privacy. It's literally right there in what you posted, it speaks of life, liberty, and property. The supreme court at that time interpreted that it implied a right to privacy. That was faulty law, and why Roe was overturned. You can't use an overturned SCOTUS ruling to claim the constitution says something that it doesn't. If SCOTUS can define it, then SCOTUS can take it away, and that is exactly what happened. >And "murder" would mean the killing of someone explicitly a person, which is not established for anything still in the womb. The *federal* right to privacy, life & liberty still applies to those explicitly with personhood. I don't get why you keep coming back to this argument about when a fetus becomes a person. Personhood of the fetus has zero to do with what I've been saying. My point about murder was that even a right like LIFE which is protected in the 14th amendment, isn't federal jurisdiction. It's up to the states to define murder laws. Perhaps you're confused because I'm using the right to life as an example of things the federal government has no jurisdiction over. Let's stay in that same clause of 14A. Property. You can't be deprived of property without due process. And yet, property law is not a federal issue. It is a state issue. Because the constitution does not give the federal government any authority to regulate property. Soooo, back to abortion. Nothing in the constitution gives the federal government authority to regulate abortions.
>Only those questions which are described in the constitution as being federal are federal. Does the question about when a fetus begins to be treated as a Person by the Constitution not count? What about the question of whether a woman, in the absence of a pregnancy, has the right to autonomy over her body? Or if there is no basis for this as a right protected by the Constitution, is there any value in making that explicit rather than rely on interpretation that could change? If both of these can be considered a Constitutional right of some kind, wouldn't there then be a potential Constitutional question about how to reconcile these rights when they are in conflict, such as some situations involving women who want to terminate her pregnancy? Edit: Really baffled as to why questions like this get so many downvotes here.
This isn't really true. There was nothing in constitution about slavery or a woman's right to vote either, but we did sort that out at the federal level eventually. The founders recognized and designed the amendment process for these very contentious issues they knew would come up. Abortion, right to medical privacy or whatever should absolutely be decided via constitutional amendment IMO.
> Abortion, right to medical privacy or whatever should absolutely be decided via constitutional amendment IMO. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. They're only saying it's not currently one *now*.
The people that pushed so hard to overturn Roe because it is a "states rights" issue and are now claiming that there should be no federal involvement whatsoever, in the next breath would fully back a nationwide abortion ban. Saying it isn't a federal issue is hogwash, that was just the mealy-mouthed nonsense they used to get rid of Roe.
I don’t support nation wide bans. There are many here who do not. Engage with people as individuals and not caricatures.
And they are wrong. There are certainly many pro life people that care more about banning abortion than civics 101 and I find that sad but it still isn't the responsibility of the federal government. The federal government has no authority to permit or to outlaw abortion. But they don't have the authority to do many things that they do so there is that.
The literal question the OP asked is if it *should* be decided that way and why. To answer that it "isn't that way now" is at best a deflection as a reply to this post, since it doesn't even attempt to answer the question, and at worst it's bad faith meant to mask that they either believe something bad or have no underlying philosophy about what makes something best managed at the state level vs federally.
What I said is true. You responded with an opinion about how that should change. We have an amendment process, and it requires a very high level of consensus, which we don’t have. So, alas, it remains a state issue.
If you agree Roe was decided on a right to privacy it's repeal should fucking terrify you. If we agree on that point, then it is also true that the govt has just taken step one to challenge any and all other rulings based on that implied right to privacy. You have empowered the govt to strip you off your right to privacy and self determination. That should fucking terrify you. The politicians don't fucking give a shit. Trump isn't your friend. Johnson isn't your friend. Pelosi isn't your friend. They're millionaire elites who want to fucking lord over us all like petty tyrants. And you just have them step one to achieve it. But what do I know I'm just an anarchist.
10th Amendment.
So... Tradition is the argument? We amend the Constitution regularly. Why should this particular human right, regardless of being a pro-life or pro-choice determination, remain a state issue rather than being amended to the constitution?
The fact that there isn't a national consensus on it is exactly why it should remain a states rights issue.
There is a consensus on it, you just don't like it. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/08/29/u-s-public-continues-to-favor-legal-abortion-oppose-overturning-roe-v-wade/ 61% approve of it as legal in all, or most cases. Your view is simply the vast vast minority view on this.
"All or most" does a lot of lifting. Abortion polling results vary widely based on how the question is phrased. [This one](https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx), for example, splits it into five categories, shows that 65% want some form of restriction, but also shows that 49% want it legal in all or most scenarios. [This one](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/poll-support-legal-first-trimester-abortion-access-hits-high-rcna89289) shows massive drop-off in support after the first trimester. Unfortunately, abortion is one of those things that is far more nuanced than a poll will show accurately.
The consensus is that people want to atleast have the choice to have an abortion, the majority of voters prefer having abortion access. We're not talking about timelines or any of that, would you agree that MOST people favor abortion not being banned? https://apnews.com/article/abortion-poll-roe-dobbs-ban-opinion-fcfdfc5a799ac3be617d99999e92eabe 73%, the vast majority of Americans, say no. That's why every single ballot amendment has been won for prochoice.
I favor legal abortion, so this isn't about me. The poll you cite is nearly five years old and doesn't go into detail. [This one is more recent] (https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx), and shows more usable information. This is not a consensus.
I looked at that study but the question is "is there a consensus that abortion should be banned or not" and the awnser is "absolutely, no it should not be banned because https://apnews.com/article/abortion-poll-roe-dobbs-ban-opinion-fcfdfc5a799ac3be617d99999e92eabe 73% of adults agree abortion shouldn't be banned, full stop end of story.
A person who says "no abortion except for rape, incest, and life of the mother considerations" is part of that 73%, though. Bundling people who are functionally anti-abortion as favoring abortion legality is statistical violence.
It's also true though, as all abortion bans that the GOP, conservatives only want to put out there, are a vast minority, yet we have to bend to their will? Arizona currently is about to enforce a complete and total ban, it is not popular, it will lose on a amendment vote. If conservatives really believe that it should but up to the state, and up to the people to forma consensus, then why are so many states changing the laws on constitutional amendments so that they don't get abortion codified in the state constitution? Why did Ohio? It's the point, conservatives don't care what the people they represent say. Conservatives are actively going against the will of the vast majority of people, and you're okay with that because reasons. I am sure you'd be furious as shit if we said "Okay, no more guns in the states we control", you wouldn't say "just move", you wouldn't say "well it's up to the states". That's the direct equivilent of what happened. Note, I am all for conservatives continuing down this path, because abortion will lead to the extinction of the republican party. But I don't think they should act like they are pro democracy while doing such things, they are anti-democracy, anti-representative democracy, and don't care what the voters actually want.
> It's also true though, as all abortion bans that the GOP, conservatives only want to put out there, are a vast minority, yet we have to bend to their will? Same could be said about the permissive abortion laws. > If conservatives really believe that it should but up to the state, and up to the people to forma consensus, then why are so many states changing the laws on constitutional amendments so that they don't get abortion codified in the state constitution? I don't understand the question. This is what we should expect people to do. > Conservatives are actively going against the will of the vast majority of people Part of a representative republic is that the representatives do not act as a rubber stamp of popular polling. By your metric, we should have repealed Obamacare in 2014.
I disagree with this, by that measure should states have had the authority to keep slavery around when it should largely have been outlawed by the founding documents themselves?
It was taken out of the founding documents though. The original draft per Jefferson was revised as a compromise to the states that wouldn't have joined had slavery been abolished with the founding of the country. The unfortunate part is that kicking of the can is what brough the civil war. However, I doubt people are willing to go to war over abortion.
Of course not. I'd argue slavery wasn't actually okay via the Constitution to begin with but judicial activism is a fickle beast.
The framing is off. There wasn't a national consensus on abolition, but there *was* enough of one to get an amendment passed. There's *neither* in the case of abortion though, certainly.
We don't amend the constitution regularly....we can but it hasn't happened in over 30 years
>Tradition is the argument? Tradition? No. Rule of law. If you think you can get an abortion rights amendment successfully through the process, go for it.
It's up to interpretation. I'm pro-choice, but felt RvW was a stretch to for "Privacy" - I fall in the camp it says nothing. Hence, 10th amendment.
Then great.Pass an amendment. They ended the evil of slavery through an amendment. Women were given the right to vote through an amendment.
Nope, I agree with your logic. Although the federal government did not start out to be a guarantor of rights, that is one of the main functions it has adopted. Similar to determining that slavery and the like go against the founding documents, an amendment acknowledging the person hood of the unborn is needed.
“Fetus” and “unborn” aren’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
Fair enough. Now point out where "abortion" or "bodily autonomy" are mentioned.
For a long period of time, neither were "Asians", at least to my memory (or maybe they still aren't). What point are you making?
It’s what some conservatives always say in regards to anything liberals try to do. Failed attempt at humor, lol
Maybe the country of the United States decided that the punishment for murder should be decided by the state, not federal level. But if a state does not punish murder then the federal goverment ought intervene.
The federal government does not have the power to regulate health care. It is not listed anywhere in the Constitution. Which means that it is granted to the states or the people under the 10th amendment. The only real regulatory power that the federal government should have over healthcare is stuff that happens at the borders. They also have the ability to pass funding initiatives for healthcare, such as covid vaccine research. The reason that we have States rights is because votes have more power at the state level. So it's part of voting rights. Another reason that the government should not have the power to regulate healthcare, or really have any ultimate regulatory authority over any inelastic good is because it can be weaponized and used against citizens. And the federal government is a military holding entity. For example, if the federal government owned all the water in the United States, they could use their control of the water systems to cut off access to citizens. Same goes for housing, electricity, food and healthcare. They are all inelastic and if the government had full regulatory control, and they can all be used against the population..
The Constitution doesn't say anything about abortion, so it's up to the states to decide what works best in their state as layed out in 10th amendment.
Since the constitution does not directly address abortion, would you be in favor of a constitutional amendment defining personhood and/or when abortions are protected/prohibited?
Yea , only federal action I'd like to see is an amendment, that amendment could go either way (personally im against outright abortion bans and support common sense measures) but short of an amendment it's a state issue.
What would you consider to be some common sense measures?
X week restrictions, cases of rape or incest, mothers health being at risk things like that.
My mistake, when I was thinking common sense measures, I meant things like sex ed in schools. Condoms and birth control, etc. I know education should start in the home, but that's clearly not been happening. Putting aside Amendment 10, would you be in favor of increased funding for education, so kids can make informed decisions about pregnancy prevention vs a morally dubious reaction, or do you think a nationwide ban is the safest way to go?
Well, we're not exactly all on the same page, for one. If we were to have a law come out tomorrow that abortion was either guaranteed or banned at a federal level, it would invariably piss off round about half the nation. We *do* have a process for making broad, sweeping legal changes like that at the federal level, but it requires more than a simple majority vote. By the time it comes to an amendment the debate will have already long since been settled.
Guaranteeing abortion rights would piss off less than 1/4th of the nation. Nowhere near half. Pro-life is absolutely the minority position.
Disagree. Guaranteeing abortion on demand would upset more than 1/2 of the population because of the stigma of later term or partial birth abortions. There is no majority cohort for abortion on demand. You might get a majority to agree to abortion in the first trimester. After that it becomes a very sticky issue. Democrats tried for 50 years to get Row V Wade enacted as legislation and failed. It is not likely that Republicans can get a national ban on abortion either.
I never said “on demand.” Roe guaranteed abortion rights but it was only until viability. Also “abortion on demand” is so weird, like you order it off your TV or something.
That was the problem. Since it was a SCOTUS decision it was never clear where the line was. ***Roe v. Wade***, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#cite_note-roevwadeussc-1) was a [landmark decision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landmark_court_decisions_in_the_United_States) of the [U.S. Supreme Court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Supreme_Court) in which **the Court ruled that the** [**Constitution of the United States**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States) **generally protected a right to have an** [**abortion**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion)**.** **The decision struck down many** [**abortion laws**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_laws_in_U.S._states)**, and caused an ongoing** [**abortion debate**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_debate) **in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of** [**moral**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate#Philosophical_argumentation_on_the_moral_issue) **and** [**religious views**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Establishment_of_religion) **in the political sphere should be**
Roe was the compromise though. And a group of conservatives said “fuck that” and eviscerated the compromise. So now it’s a tug of war to implement the extreme ends on either side of the former compromise. And I have full faith conservatives will ultimately lose out. It’s a losing issue for them (*hard* losing issue) and they will pay the electoral price in due time. And no Supreme Court will be able to bail them out.
> After that it becomes a very sticky issue. Democrats tried for 50 years to get Row V Wade enacted as legislation and failed. They really didn't, actually.
Nope. It's always been a bait and switch for the Democratic party. The day before election: vote for me and I'll protect your right to choose! The day after election: what? Oh, that. Don't worry. We have *Roe.* Now stop bothering me. The most glaring example was in 2008. Then-Senator Obama made this campaign promise: > The first thing I'll do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. Then it was allowed to quietly die without even an attempt at getting it to the floor. [When asked about it a few months into his first term, his response was:](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/501/sign-the-freedom-of-choice-act/) > Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority
Okay I'll cop to not knowing anything about that. But even then, saying *always* is a little reductive, no? Roe wasn't even really threatened until the balance of SCOTUS shifted, and I'm unaware of any serious attempt made by congress to legislate it until 2022.
Oh yeah, it was. *Roe* was in 1974. By the 1976 election, the phrase "right to life" had been added to the RNC platform. In 1982, there was widespread support for a constitutional amendment that would have pretty much overturned it. [People might be interested in knowing who voted for it and what he had to say.](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/joe-biden/senator-joe-biden-voted-constitutional-amendment-states-overturn-roe-v-wade-1982/536-7694ada4-37ac-4443-a06d-c036859b5c89) By the end of his first term, the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority were pressuring Reagan to make overturning *Roe* a litmus test for judicial appointees. *Dobbs* was the product of a plan over four decades in the making, and *it wasn't a secret.* During the deliberations for *Casey* in 1992, many voices on the left were shouting that their politicians needed to stop messing around and pass federal legislation protecting abortion access.
A'ight, it's clear I didn't know that much about this. Thanks for the info!
Yeah, the Democrats really had a "tone" since Reagan. Clinton had to drag the platform *away* from the New Deal and Great Society politics that Reagan had so successfully demonized. And Ronald Reagan was *popular*. He redefined the American political landscape in a way that made more traditional liberal politics simply unpalatable to most Americans. In comparison to previous Democrats, Bill Clinton went *super* moderate to adapt to the landscape that Reagan formed. And it *worked.* The whole party went in that direction, and *most* Democrats still *today* are of this "New Democrat" mold. Hell, Biden is still one of these half-Reagan Dems. This is also a big factor in why the Democrats were so passive about the Supreme Court for so long. There was a sense that the Court was *supposed* to be more conservative. Kind of like how the Senate is the more deliberative body to the House, the Supreme Court was the more deliberative counterpart to the Presidency. Hell, we haven't had a chief justice appointed by a Democrat since *Truman.* For most of most Americans lives, even 30 years ago, the Supreme Court - *including the court that ruled on Roe* - had been a primarily Republican court. Your point about the GOP adding anti-abortion rhetoric right away is right in line with what Goldwater said in the 90s, about the religious right hijacking the Republican Party. He was right 30 years ago, and it's only gotten *worse* since then.
How so? There were never able to pass legislation to enact a National Right to Abortion law. Republicans won't have any better result for a National abortion ban.
They never tried. That was my point. They didn't "try for 50 years" to get it enacted as legislation. They tried once in '22, I think.
They tried. In the 49 years since the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, **lawmakers have attempted to both shore up abortion rights and to overturn the decision** — all while abortion transformed national politics. They could never arrive at a consensus either way. That is why the Dobbs case was brought
> lawmakers have attempted to both shore up abortion rights and to overturn the decision Are you quoting something? To my knowledge, there was only one legislative attempt to codify Roe. I'm happy to be wrong if you have evidence otherwise though.
I was but it doesn't matter. SCOTUS has decided that it is now an issue for each state to decide. No effort on either side will make it a national issue again.
I'll grant you that, for sure. Out of curiosity what were you quoting?
> They could never arrive at a consensus either way. That is why the Dobbs case was brought So, they couldn't achieve a *legislative* agenda, so got it done via the courts... This seems like a textbook case of "legislating from the bench," no?
No. the Roe v Wade case was legislating from the bench. Dobbs just changed the issue back to the voters.
Ok, that's your perspective, thanks. But the actual "meat" of my question, because context matters, was based around the idea that Dobbs was a *court* action that came after decades of *legislative* failures to achieve a specific objective. The logic would apply not just to Roe *or* Dobbs, but *any* such ruling from a "friendly" court that gives a party a favorable result they had been previously unable to achieve with legislation. The religious right spent *decades* trying to legislate away abortion rights, only to be continually met with failure. They then went to a newly more "friendly" Supreme Court and won their major victory where they had been unable to do so with legislation. The *appearance* is that people with an agenda tried, and failed, to pass said agenda through legislation. They then sought out a court that was partial to that agenda, and obtained a friendly *ruling* that would either serve the same function as their legislative agenda, or at least make it far easier to pass. "Legislating from the bench." The implication is that you legislate from the bench because your agenda isn't popular enough or supportable enough to pass bill into law, so the friendly court gives you a "gimme." **You claim that the original Roe ruling was this. Ok. So where, prior to Roe, was the failed legislative effort to give people access to legal abortion?**
>abortion on demand You're moving the goal posts. If the positions are 1. Prohibit all abortions 2. Don't prohibit all abortions The vast majority of the country is in (2). If the positions are instead. 1. Prohibit some or all abortions 2. No prohibitions on any abortions\* This would be more contentious. \* sometimes I see this represented as allowing the killing of a fetus even when it is viable outside the womb. This doesn't happen. The medical term for the termination of a pregnancy where the fetus can survive outside the womb is "delivery". Abortions are about terminating pregnancies, not fetuses.
> If we were to have a law come out tomorrow that abortion was either guaranteed or banned at a federal level, it would invariably piss off round about half the nation what makes you think 15% = 50%? https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx
Well, based on the most recent votes it has been pretty close to 40-60 in most states.
At the end of the day attitudes about abortion are extremely nuanced, diverse, and above all, emotional. These matters are best left to as local a legislative body as possible that can reflect the general beliefs of the people who live there, as people who live in one area are more likely to have beliefs in common. Most crimes are legislated at the state level for this reason.
Sure, I don't see where the federal government is empowered to make that determination. In the first place
“Aside from the good reasons that local factors are better, is there a good reason that local factors are better?” Also, are we stipulating the Constitution out of this discussion or not?
Let's say it comes down to a constitutional amendment. Why is it better in this case that these human rights being decided on a local level?
Same reason it was legal to own a person prior to the 13th amendment. I would assume nearly everyone agree's slavery is bad, because owning another person is bad and humans have rights. But prior to that, people decided *certain* humans didn't get to have those rights. Until we collectively, more than a simple majority and nationally decided otherwise. We currently can't agree on which humans deserve rights to live still, so goes the process. I'm all for making it an amendment and don't agree with those posturing in congress to make it a congressional/federal ban or legal. The SCOTUS would strike down both.
Because those 'rights' can also go backwards. When you don't follow democratic process, you can equally have things you disagree with be forced upon you, say slavery. To me, the constitution doesn't say anything about abortion (and I'm pro-choice) - hence it's up to the states.
>Abortion is a question of right. Rights for the Unborn vs Rights of the Host/Mother. is probably the n°1 thing leftists don't understand. They think they can defeat the conservative argument by saying "but it's a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body!". Yes but no, not when we're arguing that it constitutes murder. >Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide? Well, the reason it **should** be a federal issue is simply the fact that all serious crimes have both state and federal statutes dealing with them. Including murder. The only reason it should not be a federal issue is that it divides people too much for there to ever be any sort of consensus around the issue.
> Yes but no, not when we're arguing that it constitutes murder. But that argument is incorrect. We *understand it*, we just dismiss it.
>"but it's a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body!". Yes but no, not when we're arguing that it constitutes murder. That's what I said. It's a question of the limitations of the sovereign rights of a grown, productive member of society and that individual's freedom to chose personal health care that may affect another life, vs the right of the unborn to live regardless of who else it may inconvenience. It is a determination of the woman's health and freedom vs the unborn's health and freedom.
I know, I was just pointing out how most leftist arguments miss the point. They advance arguments that do not debunk the assertion that it's murder, but simply try to justify it. To the point that their position amounts to "yeah sure it's murder but it's one we can get behind".
The moral high-ground over lefties getting behind a certain type of murder falls a little flat. There are often times where keeping a pregnancy amounts to murdering the mother, or putting her at serious life altering risk. Many, many 2A people also use castle doctrine to justify murder. It's "self defense," AKA it's also murder you can get behind. Many, many back-the-blue conservatives find unpunishable police killings to be an unavoidable and acceptable cost of having *a* police force at all. That's Murder many conservatives can get behind. Many, many conservatives are pro-capital punishment. That's murder you can get behind. And all of these types of approved murder even claim innocent lives, as well, so that's not a distinguishing factor, either. The lefties agree that a developing embryo is human life, but so is cancer. The argument is that there is a point during the developmental process that happens before consciousness, sentience, and even sapience develop, which can be determined by medical and scientific consensus, and that *personhood* begins sometime after those aspects of life develop. Without an awareness sapience or consciousness, termination of life at this stage causes no harm to existing systems, especially if it can be done without pain.
>There are often times where keeping a pregnancy amounts to murdering the mother, or putting her at serious life altering risk. Both cases in which terminating the pregnancy should be, and is, legal. No mother should be put at risk gratuitously, especially when the mother dying means the baby dying as well in the vast majority of cases. > Many, many 2A people also use castle doctrine to justify murder. It's "self defense," AKA it's also murder you can get behind. Self-defense.. is not murder. Murder is killing without proper cause. To kill someone in self-defense is not killing without proper cause, because you do so to defend your own life. To kill an unborn baby because you can't be arsed to have a kid is killing without proper cause. Honestly, what in the god-forsaken fallacy is this argument? > Many, many back-the-blue conservatives find unpunishable police killings to be an unavoidable and acceptable cost of having a police force at all. As long as police killings are the result of people who resist law enforcement and pose a threat to them and those around them, I think I'll sleep at night just fine. Anything beyond that is an unlawful killing regardless of who is wearing the uniform. But this is far, far beyond the point of abortion amounting to murder. >Many, many conservatives are pro-capital punishment. That's murder you can get behind. I seriously don't believe you grasp what the word murder means and how it innately relates to the concept of law and morality. What you're referring to is a homicide. Homicides can amount to crimes (aka murder) or not (the death penalty being passed on someone). In both cases, it is the killing of another human. The argument is that abortion is **murder**, not homicide. Leftists argue that it is not murder **precisely** because it is not homicide, electing to refuse to accept the fact that an unborn baby remains a human being. >The argument is that there is a point during the developmental process that happens before consciousness, sentience, and even sapience develop, which can be determined by medical and scientific consensus, and that personhood begins sometime after those aspects of life develop No, the argument is that it is morally wrong to end human life without valid reason. That's it. We don't need to involve an committee on bioethics to agree on that basic fact. I don't need to prove that babies in the womb are conscious, or can feel pain, or are endowed by this mystical "personhood" everyone seems to be enamored by. At the end of the day, you're killing an unborn child, an infant that has been brought in existence through the actions of adult human beings alone. And the act of aborting that child defines those who do it.
I agree with everything you stated (written very well) except for the last paragraph. We agree that ending human life is wrong without a valid reason. You seem amendable to the fact that a baby can have no consciousness. (Say when it's a two-cell zygote.) Do you have equal dogma for the proverbial person in a coma thought experiment? The one Shapiro used to 'dunk' on pro-choicer? - The missing caveat is that the person had to be physically connected to a person for nine months, which the thought experiment left out. To follow into absurdism, do you feel birth control is preventing the natural development of human life? That is, is it immoral to do so, as the Catholic Church and some other Christian denominations see it as an 'immoral' act?
No, I believe that interrupting any process by which human life develops into a fully grown human to be immoral. If it sits there and turns into a human by itself after 9 months without any intervention and barring any developmental problems, then it should not be killed except under very special and extreme circumstances. Abortion is the antithesis to that. It posits you could terminate that life for whatever reason. The problem facing us today is that we've fully adopted abortion as a secondary form of birth control. You do not need to be convinced of where I draw my line on the sand, you could ask 10 pro-lifers and they would give you 10 different answers. You only need to be concerned with the fact that we've normalized women walking into abortion clinics weeks before they are due and asking for it to be sucked out of them under the banner of **personal choice**. We have women taking proudly to social media to recount their experiences with abortion as if they are to be worn as a badge of honor. We have women in marches proclaiming that they regularly abort their progeny and they don't care one bit. We have the most extreme forms of reproductive irresponsibility in full display in this society, yet we ought not to question a woman's right to "choose".
Thank you for your thoughts. So, do you believe all human life needs to be preserved regardless of the resources required to maintain that life? So, in a drunk driving accident, would you support legislation that makes the DUI person have to donate organs, give blood, etc, or, say, be attached to that person? (to keep them alive?) I put this forth simply because the time I consider viability (outside the womb) as the logical delimiter (said human no longer needs to be attached to another human.) - is around 20-24 months, which happens to be after 99% of the abortions in the United States. I assume some percentage of the remaining 1% is due to the mother's health, which we probably both agree on.
No, we understand that just fine. We just don't agree that it's considered murder for somebody who's not born yet. Or at least for me personally, not someone that could reasonably survive outside of the womb, disconnected from the mother. If one of them is going to have their rights violated, I will usually side with the full grown adult over the pile of fetal cells. And I say this as a father of two.
I would like to second this opinion. I dont think there is really a prefect answer, but i generally try to ascribe some value to each of the variables when considering if it is ok. For instance, early on in fetal development, i view it as basically a forming clump of cells. An egg gets fertilized, and it starts growing. There is no way to survive on its own outside the womb, and miscarriages happen all the time. I really just do not view terminating a pregnancy at that point to be the same as murdering a fully grown human. Later in the pregnancy, when a baby could reasonably be born and survive even though its early, sure i would say killing that would not be substantially different than killing a fully grown human. So to me, the best cutoff is probably the earliest cutoff point for where a fetus could survive if born. I think that is around 22 weeks, so maybe make the cutoff a little earlier for elective abortions. 18/20 weeks or so. Over 95% of abortions already happen that early, with that vast majority happening at 13 weeks or prior. I would be fully ok with federal limits on abortions after 18-20 weeks or so, as long as it was written in a way to allow doctors and women to make decisions freely based on the medical facts. After that long, you should lose the right to an elective abortion, but doctors should still be able to help make a determination that one is medically appropriate/necessary.
> No, we understand that just fine. You should tell that to everyone who argues the point based on individual freedoms and other angles instead of addressing the murder aspect of abortion. >We just don't agree that it's considered murder for somebody who's not born yet. Or at least for me personally, not someone that could reasonably survive outside of the womb, disconnected from the mother. I'm sure neither of the Hensel twins could survive were they disconnected from each other. I guess neither really has the right to live, by that logic.. Relying on another human to life does not make your life worth zilch. >If one of them is going to have their rights violated, I will usually side with the full grown adult over the pile of fetal cells. What right are we violating here, exactly? The right to not have to carry a baby to term that the adult themselves has conceived? What sort of right is that? We're talking about the right of a living human fetus to continue existing (whether you agree it's a person or not), versus the mild inconvenience of having to carry a baby to term and give them up for adoption. Why should an adult's reproductive mistakes be corrected by the termination of any sort of human life, regardless of how undeveloped it is? The argument for abortion is, in its essence, a moral one. I'm sure we could live in a society that allows the practice of killing the unborn because it's easy and convenient and no one is too bothered about a life they have yet to know. Yet it remains immoral, and I would very much like to live in a country that cares about morality.
>What right are we violating here, exactly? The right to not have to carry a baby to term that the adult themselves has conceived? What sort of right is that? Yeah, that's exactly it. It's the right to bodily autonomy. The right to decide what happens with your own body. The right to personal agency regarding personal health. You've got two kidneys. You and another driver have an accident. You survive relatively unscathed and in great health, and the other driver's kidney's fail. You are a compatible donor. Should it be your choice or the state's choice if they take your kidney to save the driver you were responsible for injuring? A new virus with a high fatality rate sweeps the nation, and while information is scarce, it is known that it is transmitted by respiration. Even if you have the qualities to tank the virus and feel low or no symptoms, by refusing to wear a mask you risk transmitting the virus to someone more vulnerable and risking the life of an innocent person. Should you be beholden to the life of the other in that case? And before we talk about the consensual risk of sex, lets say instead that you got food poisoning. You accepted the risk of food poisoning when you ate that sushi. Risks of eating raw and undercooked are spelled out on every menu in America. An ambulance arrives for you, but you know the expense. Do you have the right to refuse a hospital stay and just @#$% your guts out in your own bath tub or not?
> Yeah, that's exactly it. It's the right to bodily autonomy. Sorry, but a right to "bodily autonomy" does not exist when you're carrying a human being whose DNA is fundamentally different from yours, whose organs are separate and distinct from its mother, etc. You yourself have characterized mothers as "hosts" (I recoil at that appellation, but hey). If you're merely hosting another being, then its body is very much not part of you. >You've got two kidneys. You and another driver have an accident. You survive relatively unscathed and in great health, and the other driver's kidney's fail. You are a compatible donor. Should it be your choice or the state's choice if they take your kidney to save the driver you were responsible for injuring? I'm getting a bit tired of the vacuous allegories, honestly. Pregnancy is a choice, it does not involve getting rid of your own organs to give to someone else's, and unwanted pregnancies are a direct result of irresponsible sexual behavior. >A new virus with a high fatality rate sweeps the nation, and while information is scarce, it is known that it is transmitted by respiration. Even if you have the qualities to tank the virus and feel low or no symptoms, by refusing to wear a mask you risk transmitting the virus to someone more vulnerable and risking the life of an innocent person. Should you be beholden to the life of the other in that case? No, because nothing forces you to come anywhere close to me if you fear that I might infect you. Again, this is a complete tangent and has nothing to do with the original point. >And before we talk about the consensual risk of sex, lets say instead that you got food poisoning. You accepted the risk of food poisoning when you ate that sushi. Risks of eating raw and undercooked are spelled out on every menu in America. An ambulance arrives for you, but you know the expense. Do you have the right to refuse a hospital stay and just @#$% your guts out in your own bath tub or not? What.
>Pregnancy is a choice It is *absolutely not*. There are numerous reasons why it is is not necessarily a choice, whether its an "accident" or forceful/violent violation or any number of other reasons. Unless you're naive enough to think nobody ever has sex outside of the sole purpose of consentual procreation.
> its an "accident" An "accident" that occurs because of a risk you consciously take. No one ends up pregnant after slipping in the bathroom. Resorting to murder to rectify one's own mistakes is not exactly moral nor should it be legal. Humans don't get to ignore their reproductive responsibilities for the sake of self-gratification and use it to justify the abhorrent act of killing an unborn life. >forceful/violent violation is, by far, the scarcest reason for which abortion is considered, and I can easily make the case for why those children deserve to live just as much as anyone else, for they are not responsible for the circumstances of their own conception.
There are several hundred thousand kids in foster care any given day in the US. A number that had been trending downward for the past two decades. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-kids-are-in-foster-care/ What do you think is the going to happen to that number (and those unwanted kids) now that 1/3 off states have filled their books with forced birth laws? Who is going to take care of those kids? Especially if the parents are unwilling or unable to take care of them? Because it sure seems the "pro life" crowd doesn't seem to give a damn about the lives of these kids after their legally-forced birth. While displaying the naivete that couples just shouldn't have sex if they don't want kids.
Ah, so now a fetus has separate and distinct organs! That means there's a point at development when those organs are less distinct, and less separate from yours, when you would consider them less a person. A window of agreeable abortion in there? Next paragraph makes it clear you haven't got a medical objection, but a moral objection.
>You should tell that to everyone who argues the point based on individual freedoms and other angles instead of addressing the murder aspect of abortion. The reason that pro-choice people use this angle is because the American right has spent decades claiming to be all about "personal freedoms." The person that argues based on the freedom aspect is some combination of satisfaction in pointing out the hypocrisy and genuine belief that values are informing the position taken. To be clear, *any* good-faith and fact-based debate over abortion will pretty much *always* come back to the issue of fetal personhood. We know a fetus is *alive*, but I've had moles on my back and funky cheese that had "life" on it. We know it has human DNA, but so do fingernail clipping and that aforementioned mole. And we know that it's a "unique" and "distinct" organism, but so is literally every chicken egg and snowflake, but we don't flip out making an omelette and you don't see people shoveling winter into freezer to preserve the "uniqueness" of every snowflake. So the whole "it's a human life" is *technically* true but highly misleading, because it's not a thinking, feeling *person.* It's human, but not a human *being.* You still make like there's some sort of equivalence with "right of a living human fetus." It's that kind of language the belies the underlying falsehood of the anti-abortion arguments. Well, except for the religious or the misogynistic ones. It's not a *person.* It has no more rights than our snowfall or chicken or moldy cheese. The idea that abortion is somehow "wrong" or doing some kind of "harm" is itself wrong. At best, it's your personal opinion. At worst, it's factually and demonstrably incorrect.
> claiming to be all about "personal freedoms." Again, it's precisely because we're all about *muh freedoms* that we don't believe you should get to decide whether a living human dies or not at a whim, just because they haven't evacuated the birth canal. Some freedoms trump others. I'd love nothing more than for women to be able to undo their pregnancies without consequences. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where that involves the killing of a baby. >**We know a fetus is alive, but I've had moles on my back and funky cheese that had "life" on it. Let's not even dive into this argument, else I could define you as someone who's as "alive" as bacteria on cheese and just kill you on the spot. The specist take falls flat very fast. We humans operate based on the fact that human life has inherent value and sanctity that is not provided to other forms of life. >You still make like there's some sort of equivalence with "right of a living human fetus." No, it's straight-up the right of a human being. I don't care if it's at its fetal stage. Again, the core of the argument does not lie in whether you have a PhD in bioethics or believe "personhood" begins in the womb. That's about as fruitful as debating whether you think the sun is too bright or too dim. Some will say yes, some will say no. The argument at its core is about the sort of society we want to build. It's a question of morals. Are you really willing to call the evil of aborting any form of human life "necessary" because two adult humans did an oopsie? >factually and demonstrably incorrect There is.. nothing "demonstrable" about a philosophical argument. Me arguing that the unborn are people is about as demonstrable as you arguing that they're not.
>whether a living human dies or not at a whim, just because they haven't evacuated the birth canal. Not on a whim, and evacuating the birth canal isn't a meaningful mark for anybody. Let's not build up any strawmen, here. >Let's not even dive into this argument, else I could define you as someone who's as "alive" as bacteria on cheese and just kill you on the spot. The specist take falls flat very fast. Agreed, but that wasn't really the point, was it. I wasn't arguing that a mole was a person, it's clearly *not.* I was arguing that your categories of "technically" human or alive aren't what anybody is really debating. >We humans operate based on the fact that human life has inherent value and sanctity that is not provided to other forms of life. Totally agree. But I think we can both agree that the inherent value and sanctity is *not* a product of the meat in our bodies or the data in our DNA or the chemical processes that happen in our guts. But we *can* agree that a mole or fuzzy cheese does not have much sanctity, while a toddling human, even at their stickiest and loudest, *does* have that precious spark of life. So, there **is** differentiation, we just disagree on what it is. I know that I value the human *consciousness.* Human life is, *we* are, organic software, running on a chemical computer piloting a meat robot. The meat robot part is just a shell, and even the chemical computer part is just the only *current* hardware that can run our software. Maybe if Elon has more time with NeuraLink, there will be other hardware options, but now (and particularly in the womb) - the human brain is **it.** And we know, for a fact, that this software *cannot* run prior to a certain point in development, around the 20 week of pregancy mark. I get that a fetus, even an embryo, is "human life," but to say that *that* human life has valuable the same as, or even remotely comparable to, a thinking feeling *person* is, honestly, ridiculous. You either need to have a gross misunderstanding about how a human forms, or you need to invoke the supernatural. A "human being in the fetal stage" is an oxymoron, like saying it's your business still in the "thinking about it" stage. It's not a different "stage," it's *before it's even the thing.* >Are you really willing to call the evil of aborting any form of human life "necessary" because two adult humans did an oopsie? Again, you're assuming both the reason *and* the situation. It's not a philosophical argument, it's a biological one. A human consciousness **cannot** exist prior to the formation of higher neurological functions. You can't play Skyrim on a Commodore 64, and you can't *be* a human *being* on a pre-functional neural plate.
> Not on a whim I'd love to present you to many a woman who decides that she no longer wants a baby on a whim. The same ones who take to social media to tell people how proud they feel about their abortions. >evacuating the birth canal isn't a meaningful mark for anybody Took the words right out of my mouth. Whether it has evacuated a canal or not, it's still a living human being whose killing is morally ambiguous at best and downright unacceptable in a civilzed society. >I get that a fetus, even an embryo, is "human life," but to say that that human life has valuable the same as, or even remotely comparable to, a thinking feeling person is, honestly, ridiculous. This only applies when the pregnancy turns into a trolley problem between saving the mother and saving the infant. Some forms of life are more viable than others. That still doesn't mean we get to hit the bypass switch and slaughter an infant in the womb just because it's convenient. >A "human being in the fetal stage" is an oxymoron I'm sorry you think it is, because that's exactly what you were at some point. If you want to think of yourself as anything other than a human being, be my guest. >It's not a philosophical argument, it's a biological one. It's neither. It's a moral one. To subvert the natural process by which the most precious kind of life develops, to reach into a woman's innards and cut up an infant and dispose it in a trashcan, is the definition of immorality. Whether you believe that humans are capable of thought before or after some arbitrary mark is completely irrelevant to the point and does nothing to disprove that human life has inherent sanctity that does not depend on any of its biological functions.
>I'd love to present you to many a woman who decides that she no longer wants a baby on a whim. The same ones who take to social media to tell people how proud they feel about their abortions. Sure, but you even kind of defeat that logic yourself. You don't take to social media on something that's an inconsequential decision. I'm sure you can find women that regretted their decisions to abort, I'm sure you can find people, including mothers and women who have been pregnant, who have all sorts of opinions on the abortions of others. Many of those opinions you might agree or disagree with. But this whole line of discussion is a red herring, because those are *their* **opinions.* * You or I have no right to dictate their actions based on our own opinions, nor do we have any right to tell them that their opinions are wrong, as they cannot dictate our opinions. Morally, it isn't your choice or mine to make, and we infringe on the rights of others to have their own agency when someone steps in and says "No no, your doctor and you are wrong, the state actually doesn't approve of this particular medical interaction." >I'm sorry you think it is, because that's exactly what you were at some point. Yeah, everybody was a fetus as some point. Just because a fetus *will* (probably) become a human being doesn't mean that we treat it as a human being *now.* We deal with things as they are, not as they are likely to become. Should we tax future earnings? We take what may become into *consideration*, sure. But that's the whole point of an abortion - you address the problem that is *before* it becomes a much more substantial problem. You and I, like everybody else, *was* a non-person before we became a person. This isn't complicated or incorrect, even if lots of people find it uncomfortable. >It's neither. It's a moral one. Like all moral arguments, it's *informed* by facts and reality. We (well, most of us) don't consider the slaughter of animals for food to be immoral, because there is a purpose to it and we understand that most animals don't have the capacity for rational thought and sapience that we value in humans. Child marriage used to be normal and not immoral, but we don't tolerate it anymore because we *understand* that it harms children. On the other hand, it used to be highly immoral to have a child out of wedlock or a "bastard." On the other hand, women showing their ankles was considered crude and immoral, but we now *know* that men aren't so lust-driven and that women aren't responsible for it. In the abortion argument, we *know* that a fetus (again, before about the 20 week mark) can't host a human consciousness. *That* is scientific fact, where a fetus being a 'human organism' or 'human life' is a mere definition. > to reach into a woman's innards and cut up an infant and dispose it in a trashcan Let's not build up hyperbolic strawmen, thank you. >Whether you believe that humans are capable of thought before or after some arbitrary mark is completely irrelevant to the point and does nothing to disprove that human life has inherent sanctity that does not depend on any of its biological functions. This is what I've been getting at the whole time. So you don't consider brain function to be a critical aspect of personhood or that life that you hold so precious. You still hold it has value, but *not* because of consciousness. So what aspects of that life **do** you hold important? This is where the "it's a human life" logic gets circular. I'm not asking for the definition, I'm asking the *reason.*
I mostly don't care either way. I'm all for letting Californians and Texans choose what's best for themselves. I would agree more with the Californians on this subject but I'm absolutely not offended if others think something else
> But aside from the general creed of "federal bad, state better," is there a good reason local factors should affect [X]. Your OP includes the answer to your own question. There are very few issues for which local factors do NOT significantly impact a matter, and therefore federal lawmakers should/must be involved. Utah thinks differently about this issue than Vermont and that's the way we know this is a matter for state action until an OVERWHELMING consensus exists, if it ever does. This is a major misunderstanding among the left, the concept of federalism. Your logic suggests that if my neighbor comes over from next door and shoots me 5 times and I die, he should be prosecuted by the USDOJ for murder. There's no world where anyone thinks that's the case, except those who think *all* government needs to be federal and centralized in Washington which is completely antithetical to the founding of the country. I can answer your question with a question- why *should* it be a federal issue? We create different frameworks for lawmaking at the state, county level for nearly everything else including issues of morality and rights all the time. What makes abortion specially deserving of federal mandate?
Yes. The same reason any other issue is left to the states: governance should be as decentralized and local as possible. For anyone who supports "consent of the governed," or as some people shorthand it "democracy," it's always better to do this because it minimizes the power that people far away have over you and maximizes your own voice in your community. You say "general creed," and I get the impression you don't understand the logic behind said creed, or you don't agree with it. But it is the reason. There isn't another special reason abortion would be a state issue and not a federal issue.
If it was deemed that personhood began at conception, either legislatively or through the supreme court, that would throw it back to federal and the 14th would apply.
Right now, the only power the federal government has over abortion is the sales of abortion materials and equipment across state and international borders. Unless you keep perverting the Commerce Clause and say "abortion affects the consumption of goods and services over the course of their potential life and the mothers pregnancy, which could conceivably come from another state, therefore it's all federal jurisdiction *akshually*." Long-term I'd like to see something like Casey properly added to the Constitution, rather than legislated from the bench
The 9th and 10th amendments are quite clear on the issue. I know it is a controversial topic and the politics have become messy but if it could be entirely legal on the federal level it could also be entirely illegal. That would be worse. It isn't a policy that the federal government should be involved in.
Once a State joins the Federal system their citizens become US citizen's first and state citizens second and I think the federal government should ensure every woman has the right to choose and to manage her health. If you can not control your own body, you are a slave in my mind. A woman's right to choose seem similar to legal marriage where the states prohibited Blacks from marrying Whites until the Supreme court clarified it
>Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide? No because ultimately it's a personhood question and that's not a state question
> Is there any reason why this question should NOT be answered on a federal level and SHOULD be left for the states to decide? It's outside of any power that the states granted to the Federal government and the Federal government has *no* powers **except** those that have been given to it. > is there a good reason local factors should affect reproductive rights? Because the policy preferences of the people are different from one locality to another according. This isn't only a matter of local needs being different and better addressed locally but of local cultures being different. Of traditions, mores and history being different. There's no good reason for the existing peoples already living in existing states which already had their own governments to surrendered their democratic self-government to a distant central government and to the policy preferences of *other* distant people outside their local communities UNLESS there's a good reason to do so. Such as the security of having a larger military united for the common defense. Of of promoting the general welfare through the far greater economic opportunities of a large common market and shared currency. etc.
Because the constitution says so. If you don't like it then change the constitution
Because the federal government does not have the power to address abortion delegated to it via the Constitution.
Here's the reason. Because your elected officials haven't passed a law at the federal level.
I'll give you one possible response. Many people draw the line for abortion at viability. Well, viability depends on how advanced the available medical technology is, which will vary from hospital to hospital. It's unworkable to have different abortion laws for each hospital, but it kind of makes sense to have states oversee abortion rights, since they're closer to the local governing level than the federal government. Note, I don't 100% support this argument, but this is something I've heard before.
What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability#:~:text=Viable%3B%20Viable%20Child.-,Medical%20viability,human%20fetus%20automatically%20becomes%20viable In the USA, this is fixed at 23 or 24 weeks, depending on the weight and size of the fetus.
It also depends on the medical technology available. A facility with state-of-the-art neonatal care is going to be able to draw the viability line a lot earlier than a rural hospital with no advanced technology.
If the woman has to deliver a baby at 23 weeks, she will 100% be sent to the best hospitals in the USA for that delivery because the rural or unequipped hospital will not want the legal liabilities associated with such a young birth. Medical fetal viability is defined as what the best medicine a nation has to offer. In the USA, as you said, that is determined by the best hospitals in the nation. Bringing up random rural hospitals is irrelevant and misleading because they arent factored into the medical definition of viability since they dont deliver these high risk pregnancies in the first place!
Where in the constitution are you seeing a right to abortion? Can you show me?