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In order to turn over Roe, you need to turn over Griswold which outlines the right to privacy. If we expand the debate to right to privacy beyond just abortion to contraception and controlling your fertility we would have much more support.
We should be asking:
If life begins at conception and the state has a right and an obligation to protect that right then most non-barrier contraception must be considered abortion since they simply prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted in the Uterus. Which forms of birth control would be outlawed under your proposal.
In a similar way, if abortion laws are left to the states would pregnant women from a state where abortion is illegal be prevented from travelling to a state where abortion is legal?
If you have a miscarriage, would that be investigated as a crime scene? Sounds silly but just imagine women and their co-conspirator doctors saying, "it was not an abortion it was just a miscarriage" to get around the law (with a little help from some illegal RU-486).
How and when would the state be responsible for protecting the new life. Would you have to report a pregnancy to the state? Go to the next level, since most contraception is illegal, would you have to report to the state if you are planning to have children? Other than that sex between consenting adults would have to be illegal because a potential life could be created.
If you took a friend across state lines to have an abortion from a state where it is illegal could you be prosecuted as an accomplice to murder?
Would a women who is pregnant in a state where abortion is illegal be prevented from travelling to say Canada, Mexico or Europe?
Could you get an out-of-state doctor to prescribe a "morning after pill" or RU-486 or by a mail-order pharmacy? If you did, could that pharmacist be prosecuted by that state?
If a pregnant woman determines through genetic testing that the fetus has a severe mutation like CF or Tay-Sachs and would terminate but that is illegal, could the state be forced to assume all expenses associated with that fetus/baby?
If a pregnant woman is a severe health/death risks for carrying the baby to term (Hypertension, Diabetes, Heart Disease) could she terminate the pregnancy to save her own life? What would the burden of proof be?
Obama/Whoever He Chooses '08 Winning Change for America and the Democratic Party
by dvogel001 on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:36:28 AM PDT
Isn't there a problem with right wing jurists on the question of privacy, however? I am not a lawyer, but I seem to recall some of the hardliners disputing that there is any right to privacy in the Constitution. Do they think that, along with Roe, Griswold was wrongly decided?
Also, I wonder how many people know that in Idaho there is a law already on the books that states that the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned, any doctor performing an abortion in Idaho will be charged with murder?
One other state also has a similar provision, but I don't remember which one...maybe Louisiana.
It's the Supreme Court, Stupid!
by Radiowalla on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:50:23 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer." ~Samwise Gamgee
by SheelaNG on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:56:37 PM PDT
wide narrow
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