Supreme Court Bans Partial Birth

From ther mouth of Hillery Clinton...''From the Senate: Statement on Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart Decision
Washington, DC -- "This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health. Today's decision blatantly defies the Court's recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account. It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito."

Nowhere inthe Constitution does it award women the RIGHT to killtheir child. They won that right via the legislative process and the Court can over turn it. Which they did.

This woman is dangerous.

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Your history and your facts are wrong, woiyo. The right to abortion came from a constitutional decision made by the Supreme Court, not by the legislative process. The Supreme Court are the final arbiters of what is constitutional. You are not. They said it was constitutional. It is.

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Did I miss when they will allow abortion to be performed up until? When is it classified as "partial birth"?

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Bella Dea wrote:

Did I miss when they will allow abortion to be performed up until? When is it classified as "partial birth"?

"Partial Birth" is a political football more than anything else.

What the ruling upholds is a law that prohibits the "intact D&X" procedure which is one of several possible abortion procedures. My understaning is that thiis one is fairly rarely used and almost always later in the pregnency (mostly after the 4 month point I think). Most WWW pages on the issue mention that 99% of abortions take place well before that point - usually by 20 weeks.

The ruling doesn't affect any other procedures. (i.e D&C, D&E, etc..)

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fishin wrote:

Bella Dea wrote:
Did I miss when they will allow abortion to be performed up until? When is it classified as "partial birth"?

"Partial Birth" is a political football more than anything else.

What the ruling upholds is a law that prohibits the "intact D&X" procedure which is one of several possible abortion procedures. My understaning is that thiis one is fairly rarely used and almost always later in the pregnency (mostly after the 4 month point I think). Most WWW pages on the issue mention that 99% of abortions take place well before that point - usually by 20 weeks.

The ruling doesn't affect any other procedures. (i.e D&C, D&E, etc..)

Agree, but this is a first chink in the armor...and really encouraging. But no doubt there is a considerable amount of legal battles to be fought before Roe v. Wade goes down. There's a faint twinkling of light at the end of this dark tunnel.

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username wrote:

Your history and your facts are wrong, woiyo. The right to abortion came from a constitutional decision made by the Supreme Court, not by the legislative process. The Supreme Court are the final arbiters of what is constitutional. You are not. They said it was constitutional. It is.

And now they have ruled that one form of abortion is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

Therefore,it is unconstitutional.

Live with it!!

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Politics as well as scenery change with the seasons; republicans have had their day in the sun and did nothing with "abortion law-roe v wade" because they can't afford to do away with it and lose a major divisive issue; a real vote getter no matter how they deal with it (or not). Roe v Wade has been on the books now for 25 years and has consistently been a republican (along with posting the 10 commandments and prayer in school) none of these issues have the republicans ventured forth to establish their noble cause and upset their apple-cart. Celebrate if you will but keep in mind you're on a dead-end street.

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Damn activist judges! :wink:

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This law seems like a minor tipping of the scales. Taken in isolation, I think it is probably not an entirely unreasonable restriction. If it is used as a shoehorn to change other laws, then maybe it's a bigger problem than I understand it to be. I'm pretty hardcore pro-choice. I'm OK with it. Am I missing something serious?

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Eorl wrote:

This law seems like a minor tipping of the scales. Taken in isolation, I think it is probably not an entirely unreasonable restriction. If it is used as a shoehorn to change other laws, then maybe it's a bigger problem than I understand it to be. I'm pretty hardcore pro-choice. I'm OK with it. Am I missing something serious?

Seems to me that you hit the nail squarely on the head.

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Second thread:

I hate getting in this,... but elective "partial birth" is too frequently killing a viable human for comfort. 20 weeks after the fact seems like an inordinate amount of time to make a decision, really, and I've read that some are performed as late as 7 months which is well beyond the point where a babies head being pulled out (instead of scissors going in it) results in a viable baby. I don't believe that was ever supposed to be covered by Roe Vs Wade. Baby Amelia was born at 21 weeks and I have difficult time imagining how a man who dedicated his life to Medicine Kills kids more viable for a living. It just doesn't make sense to me.

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2nd

For clarification: Baby Amelia is a healthy baby girl... and the linked news video clip shows only this miraculous story, so don't be afraid to click on it.

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fishin wrote:

Eorl wrote:
This law seems like a minor tipping of the scales. Taken in isolation, I think it is probably not an entirely unreasonable restriction. If it is used as a shoehorn to change other laws, then maybe it's a bigger problem than I understand it to be. I'm pretty hardcore pro-choice. I'm OK with it. Am I missing something serious?

Seems to me that you hit the nail squarely on the head.

There's good discussion today on this decision. Greenhouse at the NY Times and Lithwick at Slate are among the standouts. New Republic has something too but I'll wager my daughter's virginity that a man wrote it.

It will be used as a shoehorn to further restrict access to abortion. That seem pretty clearly to be the strategic function of it in inception. It seems equally clear that such is precisely the hope of the justices in the majority.

Ginsberg suggests that, as this decision is profoundly out of step with court precedent (remember all those confirmation hearing questions to Alito and Roberts on how they might weight precedent against personal beliefs) it isn't likely to stand in the future. We'll see. America is, under the present power structure, moving towards an authoritarian model of governance and that may well continue. The next appointment to the court could be critical. Events could be determinative. In either case, I really wish men would just shut the phuck up on this matter.

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blatham wrote:

...Ginsberg suggests that, as this decision is profoundly out of step with court precedent...it isn't likely to stand in the future....

Do you mean the way that Roe vs Wade was profoundly out of step with court precedent?

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I agree with Brandon's point. I also invite Blatham to consider his respect for precedent when the shoe is on the other foot. Blatham, would precedent persuade you to join the "authoriatarian" votes in the Guantanamo cases? After all, they are grounded in time-honored World War II precedents, all of them longer-standing than Roe v. Wade. (Remember that the decisions upholding the detention of 100,000 innocent Japanese-Americans remain good law to this day -- not that contemporary justices are citing them as precedents to uphold.) I am certain that if you sat on the US Supreme Court, you would overrule these decisions without hesitation.

I would even agree with you if you did: There are cases when fundamental constitutional principles should trump precedent. But what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A judge would also be justified in ignoring precedent if he concluded that Roe and Casey violated state rights, or that embryos have human rights that these precedents gave too short shrift. Precedent is an overestimated argument in fundamental-rights cases.

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Now I understand a prerequisite for the activist judges the administration and conservative republicans were railing against was that they be liberal. :wink:

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Well, no matter when it's done, abortion is a nasty job.

And any time after the fetus is viable without the mother is just criminal, IMO. (at 20 weeks fetus can feel pain)

I'm all for right to choose leagally, but am personally right to life.

It's a twisted world we live in that we hvae to make decisions regarding the right to murder your own baby. Sad

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blatham wrote:

fishin wrote:
Eorl wrote:
This law seems like a minor tipping of the scales. Taken in isolation, I think it is probably not an entirely unreasonable restriction. If it is used as a shoehorn to change other laws, then maybe it's a bigger problem than I understand it to be. I'm pretty hardcore pro-choice. I'm OK with it. Am I missing something serious?

Seems to me that you hit the nail squarely on the head.

There's good discussion today on this decision. Greenhouse at the NY Times and Lithwick at Slate are among the standouts. New Republic has something too but I'll wager my daughter's virginity that a man wrote it.

It will be used as a shoehorn to further restrict access to abortion. That seem pretty clearly to be the strategic function of it in inception. It seems equally clear that such is precisely the hope of the justices in the majority.

Sounds a awful lot like the NRA's arguments on gun controls. You always poo-poo the "slippery slope" arguments there. Wink

Quote:

Ginsberg suggests that, as this decision is profoundly out of step with court precedent (remember all those confirmation hearing questions to Alito and Roberts on how they might weight precedent against personal beliefs) it isn't likely to stand in the future. We'll see. America is, under the present power structure, moving towards an authoritarian model of governance and that may well continue. The next appointment to the court could be critical. Events could be determinative. In either case, I really wish men would just shut the phuck up on this matter.

"Profoundly out of step"??? No. I've read her dissent and the one and only sticking point she had is the "heatlh" issue. And yes, I agree with her that this ruling is a departure from previous abortion rulings. The question is, is that departure justified?

The law in question makes no provision for the "health of the mother" to be a consideration in the decision of whether or not the procedure can be used (Note: The "Life of the mother" still can be used).

Congress held their hearings and teh professionals that appeared to tesify were evenly split on whether any situation could ever arise where the mother's health would be in jeapordy and there was no other procedure that could be used.

The majority of the court decided that, given the even split in the opinions of the medical profession, the Legislature had the authority to decide the matter. Ginsberg's dissent argues that the court should over-rule the Legislature in favor of past Court precedent.

This ruling has little practical effect. Both sides conceed that this procedure is used in very few abortions to begin with. Yes, it is a political football and I'm in full argreement with you that the anti-abortion crowd will try to use it as a shoehorn. I disagree with your slippery slope argument though. I don't see much else going anywhere.

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From my readings, in the vast majority of cases, late-term abortions occur because the fetus has terrible defects. In many cases, should the fetus not be aborted, the defects will cause an early death for the child, or terrible and painful lifespan. I don't know why more people don't mention this.

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Supreme Court Bans Partial Birth

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