Let’s Get it Rolling about the Abortion Issue, and you guessed it, Roe v Wade is GONE, GONE, GONE

Let’s Get it Rolling about the Abortion Issue, and you guessed it, Roe v Wade is GONE, GONE, GONE

Let’s be clear about the fundamental issue involved in the upcoming and prior abortion cases.

You could say that the issue is whether women have a fundamental and absolute right to control their own bodies. I don’t think that is the issue because that has already been decided and the answer is no, there is no absolute right for women to control what happens in their own bodies, and counterintuitively, that “no” answer came from Roe v. Wade . Specifically, women do not have absolute control over their own bodies in the third trimester (24 weeks, as I recall from Roe) and the state has a superior right to protect a viable, unborn child, and can prohibit women from having an abortion in the absence of a threat to the woman of continuing the pregnancy.

So, we know that women have never had absolute control over their bodies throughout a pregnancy term.

The actual issue is whether the state can completely eliminate a women’s control over her own body, say from conception. Some states are passing laws doing just that, on what appears to me to be a religious belief that the soul becomes attached to the fertilized egg upon conception. Presumably, an abortion anytime after conception is murder, and a spontaneous miscarriage is a tragic death of a human being with a soul.

I understand that position and accept that it follows (i.e., it is logically sound) if your starting premise is that the soul gets attached at conception (for humans anyway). But that is a religious premise/belief. I respect that, but many people do not share that religious belief.

And in this country, we’re not supposed to make laws based on religious beliefs because of the First Amendment’s requirement that we keep church and state separate. I mean, that was one of the founding principles not only of the Constitution, but it was the reason the pilgrims came to this country a hundred and fifty years or so before the Bill of Rights was enacted.

So to me, in a sense, the real issue is whether a state can use a religious tenant of one religion (or the fundamentalist section of Christianity, plus all or almost all Catholics, I presume) to ground the government’s divesting a human being’s control over her body.

Another cut at this would be to say that characterization of a fertilized egg as a human is a perfectly reasonable religious tenant, but I don’t think it has the same moral force or imperative as say a decision to terminate a viable 6-9 month fetus. Sure, it may be hard to draw the line on the cut off point, but that doesn’t mean that the line can’t or shouldn’t be drawn.

BREAKING NEWS: ROE IS GONE.

6-3 with Roberts saying he agrees with the result of the actual case but wouldn’t have overturned it.
Here is the decision. 19-1392_6j37

Rick Jaffe, Esq.

13 thoughts on “Let’s Get it Rolling about the Abortion Issue, and you guessed it, Roe v Wade is GONE, GONE, GONE

  1. A young girl I worked with, who already had a young son, was a real party girl. The dad was taking care of the child while she was out at bars almost nightly. She had gotten pregnant a second time and it wasn’t his. She would tell me about her escapades and I would encourage her to ‘make the appointment’ as soon as possible. A few months later I saw her after we stopped working together and she was showing. Once again, all she could talk about was her wild night out and the substances she was using. At that point I said: Your pregnant. What are you doing? To which she replied, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to abort it anyway. I don’t know if she ever got around to it. I haven’t seen her since. Absolute true story.
    No one is forcing women to become baby making machines. The Supreme Court didn’t just ban abortion. No one is forcing their religion on others.
    What is that saying about how evolved a society is can be measured by how they treat their children? We don’t exactly throw babies into volcanoes but I’m not sure we’ve come all that far considering the time that has elapsed.
    I was with my BFF when she delivered at 22 months. They had put her Daddy’s wedding ring on her arm and she wore it as a bracelet in the NICU. The little girl is 7 today. I always remember that.
    You were once a zygote too ya know.

    1. Let me make a semantic point. If you are including as “children” a fertilized egg or what ever the group of cells are called for the first few days of pregnancy, then I would say that is not consistent with how the word “children” is used in this or any language. Your religion apparently takes that position, that whatever that group of cells is, it also has a soul and is entitled to the government’s protection, but that is a religious belief. And other religions and even parts of Christianity don’t agree with that, or at least such religions and Christian sects are not opposed to abortion.
      Theoretically, US and state laws are not supposed to be based on religion. I think a neutral supreme court would strike down anti abortion laws which totally ban abortions from conception as violation of the First Amendment. But they won’t because the reality is that 5 of them have a religious opposition to abortion, and they feel compelled by their religion to do what they have to do and say what they have to say to further their religious beliefs and protect the lives of these “children” which are in the early stages groups of cells which have been infused with a soul, spirit or potential according to their religious conviction.
      I completely respect that religious conviction, and if we were in a Catholic country like Ireland, I would say the Irish government has the right to do that because I don’t think is has the Same First Amendment separation of church and state provision. But up until now, I didn’t think they could do that in American, but I stand corrected by the Five Supremes

    2. Another perspective is:
      15 weeks is a pretty reasonable amount of time to get your appointment taken care of and if you can’t get around to it in that amount of time, you may need to be inconvenienced yourself slightly longer so nature can take it’s course because by that point, a human did form. And it’s pretty close to being able to survive on it’s own. 15 weeks is almost 4 months for God’s sake.
      Forget religion. Let’s draw lines. What is a reasonable amount of time?
      If you had a cancerous tumor growing, how long would you need to pick up the phone and schedule yourself an appointment? I mean, do woman have the right to allow a child to form before aborting it?
      I think that’s all most people are saying.

      1. 15 weeks is not viable, but certainly a comrpomise can be made to draw a line.

        Abortion is a private moral issue. The government doesn’t have the right to legislate our private morals.

        1. complicated because whether 15 weeks is viable now, it will be in the future with technology, and what about when there are artificial wombs? I think that was discussed in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
          Pesonally, I don’t buy that only humans have what are called souls. My two dogs have just as much soul as I do. I have an opposing thumb which allows me to manipulate things (that and standing on two feet). My dogs don’t speak human language, but humans don’t speak dog language, and I understand their language enough to know that they complain about that to me a lot, They think I’m an idiot for not understanding what they are saying with their eyes mouth and bodylanguage.
          Abortion is only a private moral up to some vague point in time in a pregnancy. No rational person would say that a woman 8 months pregnant has a right to an abortion. How does it make any rationale sense to kill something if it could live alone, I guess the answer is because the person doesn’t want to take care of it. But at some point, it’s like what was said, you should have thought about it earlier.
          But I feel the same way about animal abortion, if there is such a thing.

          1. Did you guys notice? We actually agree. Abortion should be legal until the cells form a baby. We might disagree at what point in time that is but isn’t it interesting how media polarizes and divides people into different camps. As with the vaccine issue , it’s much more grey. The reality is, the majority are varying shades of grey.

  2. No, but I think it’s down to 19 weeks that babies are surviving. I don’t think the discussion is a religious one but rather drawing a line as to when the group of cells is a child and killing it would be inhumane. Seemingly off topic:
    Lots of HOAs have rules making home owners responsible for mowing their yards and residents comply.
    If people can be responsible for not letting grass grow to long, I don’t think it’s all that unreasonable to expect grown women to be responsible for not letting a baby grow. I think we would find consensus if we all acknowledged that adult responsibility includes body maintenance/awareness. As in, child baring age women should be responsible for monitoring whether or not a baby is growing in their body and if oops, they let a baby grow for 3 or 4 months, they might have to wait another 3 or 4 months and let it come out naturally.
    When HOAs make those rules, what do you know, people figure out to mow their yard in a timely fashion. And they have to do it a lot more than once a month.

  3. I don’t think there is a medical answer as to when a feutus is a “child”. I think that answer is religious or value judgment, But mostly religious for the first part of the first term, based on the potential of what is inside a woman’s body to become a child
    There is no perfect answer and anything is going to be arbitrary.
    Other than spontaneous abortions,/miscarriage, what a woman has in her body will become viable in a relatively short period of time.

    Since we already know that even under Roe v. Wade, the constitution allows and recognizes the state superior rights say in the third trimester, except in the case of the danger to the mother.
    Rowe aside, I don’t wanna clean slate, I don’t see why it would be constitutionally impermissible to set 15 weeks as a limit to the unfettered right to abortion, even if it is four weeks before viability.
    No constitutional rights are absolute. And in this case when you’re talking about another life or potential life even, I don’t see why different states couldn’t have different reasonable cut off points. Six weeks is clearly too soon, since many women don’t even know by then. But constitutionally and practically, I don’t see there’s anything wrong with 15 weeks. Unfortunately based on the Supreme Court’s decision, there’s no restriction that would be constitutional, because abortion is not deeply rooted going back to when the constitution was created.
    No reasonable person likes young stupid women using abortion as contraception.

    1. Six weeks is a heartbeat and 4 weeks passed a missed period. Many women may not know because they are not taking the initiative or responsibillity to know. 15 weeks is not just a face. It’s a litlle boy or girl with eyebrows and eyelashes sucking their perfectly formed little thumb with fingernail and 4 missed periods. If there is no medical answer, how is the court suppose to issue a definitive verdict that that’s not a child? That’s what you want.

      1. I read an extremely disturbing very detailed and graphic explanation of a doc describing an abortion of a second trimester (I think) abortion describing removing the fetus piece by piece. It ended with “congratulations, you have now protected a women’s right to chose.”
        Don’t know if the pro-lifers do it but they should show what happens. LIke I said, women never had complete control, and any line is going to be arbitrary, except that I’m not seeing the moment of conception as reasonable.
        heartbeat isn’t crazy. Maybe that’s not crazy as a demarcation for abortion as birth control. YOu would think that women with two many kids would know and act by then, perhaps. tough issue

        1. Lo and behold, we actually agree. Isn’t it amazing what happens when people are free to communicate?

  4. My body My “Choice”?
    Except when it comes to Vaccine? Let’s debate this comparison, or not…………

Leave a Reply to Ben DoverCancel reply