Jane Roe going to Supreme Court.....

[no1tovote4]

Inalienable rights is in the Declaration which is one of the documents by which the SCOTUS makes their decisions on Civil Rights.

Rights by definition are inalienable and not given by the Government, they are given by the fact of existence. Some Governments my infringe on those Rights but it is believed that they are your Rights regardless.

Oh and BTW, while researching this I have found that the SCOTUS recently ruled that the Declaration was not one of the Documents to be used any longer for setting legal precedent.

However Rights are still Rights and are not given by the Government. The Constitution was created to protect our Rights.

This is the reason for Amendment IX which states that rights not enumerated specifically in the Constitution are still Rights.

The Right to life is not specifically enumerated but is one of the Rights afforded to us by our existence.

 

[no1tovote4]

Prosecutors clearly do not attempt to charge every mother-to-be that they could with endangerment, manslaughter or murder, currently. I hope that we agree about that.

Agreed, but there is precedent where mothers have been prosecuted for damage caused by drinking.

There are way too many actions that a mother-to-be could engage in that could endanger the fetus. Many of these activities are NOT harmful to the mother. Where is the line? Well it seems to currently be drawn at birth, maybe purely for practical reasons. Should bartenders give pregnancy tests to every woman they serve. They would be partially responsible for the death of the fetus if the drink they served contributes to the miscarriage or deformation of the fetus. They are knowingly acting in a potentially reckless manner – any woman could be pregnant.

Many of those can be and are prosecuted. Say if I get in an accident with your wife who spontaneously aborts I could be tried for 2nd Degree Murder. If a mother recklessly endangers the life within her it is conceivable that at some points and places she would be prosecuted as well.

How does the law begin to deal miscarriages? They will ALL need to be autopsied. Any pregnant woman not getting basic healthcare will be negligent. If I am not mistaken about 1/3 of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Sure it was not the intention of the mother-to-be to spontaneously abort, but people do not intend to kill people driving to work in the morning either. Both would have to be equally investigated and potentially prosecuted under this new system.

I am unsure how this would be applied. My new system doesn't deal with spontaneous abortion, and would make it so the Mother would have an option to end a pregnancy without having the need to plan to kill the fetus.

How would the law address U.S. citizens committing “murder” outside the U.S. and then returning U.S.? I know the U.S. does not prosecute people who smoke Cuban cigars while in Canada, but murder seems a little different.

Unless there were laws against travelling specifically to Canada the Mother would break no law travelling there. While there she is subject to the law of Canada and therefore could legally abort her child.

How about this one:

A woman gets pregnant and has a miscarriage. Doctors tell the woman and her husband she will probably never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She and her husband decide to try having a child again. Once again she has a miscarriage. Well if “the right to life” begins at conception and she and her husband knew the risk was she might murder the second fetus she and her husband have knowingly acted recklessly and caused a death. What should happen to them?

The probability of spontaneous abortion is not reason enough to convict somebody of 1st degree murder or even 2nd degree. Since it is only a probability there is a chance that what they hoped for would happen, the successful delivery of a fully developed infant. However if we develop the idea that I have she would have an option to have the child develop ex utero.

Now to the Constitution:

My point is not about what right the 14th amendment gives to people. It is about when. Nowhere, in any documents which anyone has mentioned, does any right start at conception. You are arguing you would like it to, but the words are not there, nor does the intention seem to be there. The framers consistently chose being born as the defining moment. Illegal aliens have already been born. Their fetuses are not citizens. If an illegal alien gives birth here, then POOF the child is a citizen. If the U.S. government sends them back across the border then the child is born, then POOF not a citizen. Citizens and non-citizens seem to all be BORN. That is clearly an important deciding moment that the framers were interested in using. I am okay with it. They were not interested in protecting the unborn when they wrote the Declaration or the Constitution. So maybe the rights do not begin until someone is born.

They clearly give the priveledge of Citizenship to those born here but never define the time that rights start. To simply say they didn't say unborn is disingenuous. They did not have the scientific knowledge that we have today.

Doesn’t the Constitution afford more than one right to people born in the U.S. and not to life conceived in the U.S.? The framers would have said conceived if they meant conceived, no?

The Constitution cannot afford Rights to anybody it specifically enumerates several that we have but Rights are not given by the Government they are protected or infringed on by Governments. It specifies many priveledges of Citizenship which one must be born to get.

Question to no1tovote4 about the Declaration:

I am not trying to put you on the spot, but you seem to know something about the law. I would be interested in seeing a case where the “right to life” from the Declaration was used as an argument and won, thereby setting the precedent.

This post is getting too long sorry.

Look forward to your ideas.

Interestingly enough, previous to a recent ruling

http://www.cato.org/events/030402bf.html

The Declaration was used often as a Legal Document. However Scalia doesn't see it that way.... It is only one opinion from one of the Judges but heck.

 

[Bonnie]

Why should the parents have to know? Doesn't a teenager have the same rights as every other American as protected under the Constitution? If not, when should those rights begin?

Schools, and government institutions do not have a right to circumvent parental authority until they are aged 18 in most states. Why do parents need to be called by the school nurse before administering so much as a Tylenol, but killing a baby is okay???

 

[Bonnie]

Oh and BTW, while researching this I have found that the SCOTUS recently ruled that the Declaration was not one of the Documents to be used any longer for setting legal precedent.

However Rights are still Rights and are not given by the Government. The Constitution was created to protect our Rights.

This is the reason for Amendment IX which states that rights not enumerated specifically in the Constitution are still Rights.

The Right to life is not specifically enumerated but is one of the Rights afforded to us by our existence.

Simply stated our rights are given by our creator, and they are protected by our government.

 

[krisy]

Read this article and notice the part where the woman says she doesn't want the parent consent law because it would have a huge impact on the abortion rate. As if that is a bad thing. So what,she wants as many as possible to scar teens for life? Jeeese!!!

http://start.earthlink.net/article/pol?guid=20050123/41f32f50_3ca6_15526200501231517632039

 

[elephant]

Schools, and government institutions do not have a right to circumvent parental authority until they are aged 18 in most states. Why do parents need to be called by the school nurse before administering so much as a Tylenol, but killing a baby is okay???

I am saying the lawmakers make judgments as to which rights apply to which people. You just want different rules, but you still want rules.

And it is not a "baby" yet. Why is it okay to destroy human life? I do not know, but it seems to happen all the time. That is another topic.

Also your examples are poor.

1) Public schools and other government institutions are held to different standards - they are public, therefore their power is given to them by the citizens, in some sense. A child in a private school would be treated differently. Also school nurses are M.D.'s or D.O.'s. Seems different right there.

2) It is unreasonable to say doctors cannot ever perform medical procedures on minors. (You will argue that I should not be so all or nothing, or there are exceptions. Yes there are. And exactly which ones would you like to keep?) First doctors are private businesses, so public school rules do not apply. As a society we have agreed that doctors have certain power that other people do not have. That is why it is so difficult to practice medicine. Second, should a sexually abusive father be asked if his daughter can have an abortion? I know you will say there will have to exceptions, but how will you know who is lying and who is not. Please do not suggest asking the mother, because that is not going to work either. You probably cannot have a 6 week investigation and 6 months would be out of the question. Third doctors perform procedures on minors all the time without parental consent. You just like those procedures better.

Pro-lifers should stop fighting the law and just work towards a goal of living in a world where no one wants to get an abortion, because you cannot stop them from occurring as long as people want them, sorry.

 

[elephant]

PLEASE everyone answer this question:

A woman gets pregnant and has a miscarriage. Doctors tell the woman and her husband she will probably never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She and her husband decide to try having a child again. Once again she has a miscarriage. Well if “the right to life” begins at conception and she and her husband knew the risk was she might murder the second fetus she and her husband have knowingly acted recklessly and caused a death. What should happen to them?

No1tovote4 responded:

The probability of spontaneous abortion is not reason enough to convict somebody of 1st degree murder or even 2nd degree. Since it is only a probability there is a chance that what they hoped for would happen, the successful delivery of a fully developed infant. However if we develop the idea that I have she would have an option to have the child develop ex utero.

My response:

WHAT? I can give cars keys to a person who I know has epilepsy or schizophrenia. I can give a gun to a convicted felon. I can do a long list of things that MIGHT cause harm to some third party. If something goes wrong I would be in deep trouble though. I cannot not see any difference between my example with the miscarriage and the examples I just gave which would clearly make me partially responsible for the actions of the second party.

You cannot have it both ways. Abortion is either murder or it is not. None of the pro-lifers would complain if a prosecutor charged a rapist with murder if the rapist happens to rape a woman who was known previously not to be able to carry a child to term and she had another miscarriage.

Just like every other death caused by a second party (in my example the mother and father) intention or lack of it may only save you some prison time or spare you the needle. It very rarely gets you free pass.

 

[elephant]

All of my points revolve around the idea of making abortion illegal is completely impractical. Yes impractical, not right or wrong, or god says it is evil or whatever. It is just impossible. Did anyone ever think the Supreme Court knew this when they legalized it?

Another poster mentioned that "rich" people used to travel abroad to get them done before abortion was legal in the US. Well travel is cheaper and so is getting an abortion. People go to Canada to buy cheap drugs. If it becomes illegal again, what makes you think that abortion clinics will not be franchised along our borders and the companies traded on the NYSE?

I'll say some more tomorrow.

Thanks everyone.

 

[elephant]

Simply stated our rights are given by our creator, and they are protected by our government.

The only rights we ACTUALLY have are the ones protected by the government. Not the ones we just THINK we have.

Also you assume everyone believes in creator given rights. Some people go with just the governemnt ones.

And you probably do not want to upset your creator, he/she probably likes to be capitalised - Creator.

 

[no1tovote4]

My response:

WHAT? I can give cars keys to a person who I know has epilepsy or schizophrenia. I can give a gun to a convicted felon. I can do a long list of things that MIGHT cause harm to some third party.

Just as with any other pregnancy there is a chance of spontaneous abortion, we could not charge every parent that had one with a charge of Murder. In the course of human events some chances must be taken and this is one. What if she choose to cross a busy street, she has an increased chance of being hit by a moving truck, but it isn't murder if she is and there is a spontaneous abortion. It is the direct action of a human being killing another with forethought that we are trying to avoid, not choosing whether women can choose to get pregnant because of an increased chance of spontaneous abortion.

If something goes wrong I would be in deep trouble though. I cannot not see any difference between my example with the miscarriage and the examples I just gave which would clearly make me partially responsible for the actions of the second party.

If the doctor helped in getting the people pregnant I could see the scenario. However I do not believe that in your original scenario that happened. They chose to take on a Pregnancy knowing their hopes may be crushed again but that they had a significant chance of that not happening, just like in any other pregnancy.

You cannot have it both ways. Abortion is either murder or it is not. None of the pro-lifers would complain if a prosecutor charged a rapist with murder if the rapist happens to rape a woman who was known previously not to be able to carry a child to term and she had another miscarriage.

I didn't even attempt to have it both ways. If in your scenario you stated that the woman had zero chance of carrying to term I would agree that what she had done was unconscionable, however you did not state that you said a "good probability" and therefore there was also a probability and a reasonable chance to carry to term.

Just like every other death caused by a second party (in my example the mother and father) intention or lack of it may only save you some prison time or spare you the needle. It very rarely gets you free pass.

This as I said before is the same decision every parent makes. Since about 1/3 of all pregnancy ends in spontaneous abortion. We cannot simply arrest everybody who gets pregnant unless there was a viable alternative where they could reasonably expect their child to live but chose a different path. In your scenario there was a reasonable idea that the child would survive to term, therefore arresting the hopeful would be damaging rather than an improvement to the existing laws.

 

[no1tovote4]

The only rights we ACTUALLY have are the ones protected by the government. Not the ones we just THINK we have.

Also you assume everyone believes in creator given rights. Some people go with just the governemnt ones.

And you probably do not want to upset your creator, he/she probably likes to be capitalised - Creator.

That is incorrect. There is a reason that Amendment IX was put into the Constitution. There was a reasonable debate that people would assume that only the rights specifically enumerated were protected, and therefore the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments were left out of the original Constitution so that there could be more debate about them. Amendment IX protects other rights that are not enumerated.

Rights can be infringed upon by the Government and even sometimes denied by the Government but that doesn't take from you the actual Right.

Assume that the Government didn't have the 1st Amendment and we had an official state religion. If you were like myself and believed in a different religion then your right to choose your religion would be infringed by the Government but you would still have the right. There are numerous things you could do, form quiet underground churches, foment rebellion, etc. The Government may deem it illegal but you can take steps to secure your necessary freedoms regardless. This was based on the idea that God would not find your transgressions sinful if you took action to secure your religious freedom even though the Government may believe you had transgressed. Thus God gives you Rights and the Government either protects those rights or infringes upon them but it doesn't grant them to you they are yours by nature of being human.

 

[Gem]

Well said, No1ToVoteFor,

One of the obvious reasons why this concept is so important is exactly that. If our rights come from our Creator, whoever/whatever that is, and not the Government, than no Goverment can take those rights away from us.

The founding fathers were intelligent enough to know that if they put their most important rights in the hands of men...that men could eventually decide to take those rights away...however, if we were born with these rights...then no man could decide that he didn't like some rights and wanted to get rid of them.

You should be very wary of anyone who seems more interested in putting those rights into the hands of men, than keeping them inalienable.

 

[KarlMarx]

Here's an interesting piece. A church holds a funeral for aborted fetuses and cremates the remains. Note the reaction from the pro-abortion people... they call the church "a bunch of religious fanatics", threaten to sue over trumped up charges. They also have a problem with giving the fetuses a proper burial (which reminds me of how the Nazis disposed of their victims' remains at the death camps --- they dumped their ashes or their bodies into large pits). Of course I have to give the Nazis credit, at least they buried their victims, rather than throw them in the trash or flush them down a toilet.

LINK

 

[no1tovote4]

Here's an interesting piece. A church holds a funeral for aborted fetuses and cremates the remains. Note the reaction from the pro-abortion people... they call the church "a bunch of religious fanatics", threaten to sue over trumped up charges. They also have a problem with giving the fetuses a proper burial (which reminds me of how the Nazis disposed of their victims' remains at the death camps --- they dumped their ashes or their bodies into large pits). Of course I have to give the Nazis credit, at least they buried their victims, rather than throw them in the trash or flush them down a toilet.

LINK

Colorado is sure getting in the news alot lately. This Church has been doing this for years. They wanted to go to the press this time so that people who have had abortions and wanted a place to greive knew where they could go.

Some lady at the church was on the radio this morning, she was the one that set up the whole thing. She said that every time the Mortuary hired a new person they were always shocked at how recognizable the remains were and horrified at the practice. Crist Mortuary contacted the Church in order to get the burials done as they felt they deserved better than what they were to receive.

 

[elephant]

Just as with any other pregnancy there is a chance of spontaneous abortion, we could not charge every parent that had one with a charge of Murder. In the course of human events some chances must be taken and this is one. What if she choose to cross a busy street, she has an increased chance of being hit by a moving truck, but it isn't murder if she is and there is a spontaneous abortion. It is the direct action of a human being killing another with forethought that we are trying to avoid, not choosing whether women can choose to get pregnant because of an increased chance of spontaneous abortion.

I'll start with this one being wrong. YOU CAN CHARGE THE DRIVER WITH KILLING THE FETUS NOW. If there was any possibility the driver did anything wrong he would be charged with two deaths. If the criminal case failed it would might win in civil court. It would only make it easier to charge the driver. So the mother will be no more responsible than she is now, but everyone who interacts with her will be. That makes goos sense.

Also I CAN CHARGE EVERY DRUNK DRIVER WITH A CRIME. Even if they do not actually do anything else wrong. They are being irresponsible. They are takiung a chance. Women who are told by doctors that they are MOSTLY LIKELY to not carry to term are being irresponsible. How is that different again? Because you want it to be. That is not a good argument.

 

[no1tovote4]

I'll start with this one being wrong. YOU CAN CHARGE THE DRIVER WITH KILLING THE FETUS NOW. If there was any possibility the driver did anything wrong he would be charged with two deaths. If the criminal case failed it would might win in civil court. It would only make it easier to charge the driver. So the mother will be no more responsible than she is now, but everyone who interacts with her will be. That makes goos sense.

Also I CAN CHARGE EVERY DRUNK DRIVER WITH A CRIME. Even if they do not actually do anything else wrong. They are being irresponsible. They are takiung a chance. Women who are told by doctors that they are MOSTLY LIKELY to not carry to term are being irresponsible. How is that different again? Because you want it to be. That is not a good argument.

Once again, when making a law you need to see if it is an improvement for society or a nightmare of Government invasion. In this case for one person I can see your point. However in order to regulate every pregnancy to such a minimal fashion you would need to create a bureaucracy that would oversee every pregnancy, making sure that every woman knows correctly how to be pregnant and when they can get pregnant. At this point, I do not see an improvement but a horrible inconvenient and invasive government agency creating an impossible situation that would not lead to an improvement in society.

In every case you must have a give and take on laws. I choose to draw the line at who gets pregnant, you obviously want the line drawn even further. I simply do not want the direct and knowledgable action of killing babies for convenience; you, however, begin to think of how to regulate their behavior from the beginning.

What would the benefit to society be to create a law where getting pregnant itself would be illegal and who would that law hurt the most, or help the most?

 

[Avatar4321]

Once again, when making a law you need to see if it is an improvement for society or a nightmare of Government invasion. In this case for one person I can see your point. However in order to regulate every pregnancy to such a minimal fashion you would need to create a bureaucracy that would oversee every pregnancy, making sure that every woman knows correctly how to be pregnant and when they can get pregnant. At this point, I do not see an improvement but a horrible inconvenient and invasive government agency creating an impossible situation that would not lead to an improvement in society.

In every case you must have a give and take on laws. I choose to draw the line at who gets pregnant, you obviously want the line drawn even further. I simply do not want the direct and knowledgable action of killing babies for convenience; you, however, begin to think of how to regulate their behavior from the beginning.

What would the benefit to society be to create a law where getting pregnant itself would be illegal and who would that law hurt the most, or help the most?

Why on earth would you think we needed a government agency to oversee when women get pregnant. i dont think the government can regulate that because people are going to have sex regardless if the government tries. I dont think anyone has proposed that the government do so either. All the prolifers are arguing is that we need to protect the life that has already been created through the mothers actions. Why would we need a buearacracy to take care of that when there are doctors who have sworn oaths to do so and are paid in the private sector?

 

[no1tovote4]

Why on earth would you think we needed a government agency to oversee when women get pregnant. i dont think the government can regulate that because people are going to have sex regardless if the government tries. I dont think anyone has proposed that the government do so either. All the prolifers are arguing is that we need to protect the life that has already been created through the mothers actions. Why would we need a buearacracy to take care of that when there are doctors who have sworn oaths to do so and are paid in the private sector?

The guy asked a specific question about one instance where a prospective Mother had a spontaneous abortion and then was told that there was a high probability if she got pregnant again for another spontaneous abortion. The question he asked was should we arrest her if she decided to get pregnant again and did have another spontaneous abortion. My answer was proscribed above then extended with the answer you see above your reply.

As I said before having the Government tell people when they could get pregnant by arresting and prosecuting this particular hopeful couple is opening a can of worms that I think should remain unopened even if we are successful in changing laws to deny abortion on demand.

 

[Bonnie]

Here's an interesting piece. A church holds a funeral for aborted fetuses and cremates the remains. Note the reaction from the pro-abortion people... they call the church "a bunch of religious fanatics", threaten to sue over trumped up charges. They also have a problem with giving the fetuses a proper burial (which reminds me of how the Nazis disposed of their victims' remains at the death camps --- they dumped their ashes or their bodies into large pits). Of course I have to give the Nazis credit, at least they buried their victims, rather than throw them in the trash or flush them down a toilet.

LINK

Yes of course because the best way to further the baby killing agenda and make it more acceptable is to make those that oppose it look moronic and extreme. The truth really kills liberals!!

 

[Gem]

From The National Review:

Dead Reckoning
Roe at 25.

By The Editors

EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial appeared piece appears in the January 26, 1998, January 31, 2005, issue of National Review.
A quarter-century has passed since the Supreme Court struck down the laws of every state in the nation, in the name of a constitutional right to abortion it had just discovered. In Roe v. Wade, the Court prohibited any regulation of abortion in the first trimester, allowed only regulations pertaining to the health of the mother in the second, and mandated that any regulation in the third make an exception for maternal health. In the companion case of Doe v. Bolton, the Court insisted on the broadest definition of health — economic, familial, emotional. Legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon describes the result as the most radical pro-abortion policy in the democratic world. It permits abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason or for no reason. It has licensed the killing of some thirty-five million members of the human family so far.


The abortion regime was born in lies. In Britain (and in California, pre-Roe), the abortion lobby deceptively promoted legal revisions to allow "therapeutic" abortions and then defined every abortion as "therapeutic." The abortion lobby lied about Jane Roe, claiming her pregnancy resulted from a gang rape. It lied about the number of back-alley abortions. Justice Blackmun relied on fictitious history to argue, in Roe, that abortion had never been a common law crime.

The abortion regime is also sustained by lies. Its supporters constantly lie about the radicalism of Roe: even now, most Americans who "agree with Roe v. Wade" in polls think that it left third-term abortions illegal and restricted second-term abortions. They have lied about the frequency and "medical necessity" of partial-birth abortion. Then there are the euphemisms: "terminating a pregnancy," abortion "providers," "products of conception." "The fetus is only a potential human being" — as if it might as easily become an elk. "It should be between a woman and her doctor" — the latter an abortionist who has never met the woman before and who has a financial interest in her decision. This movement cannot speak the truth.

Roe's supporters said at the time that the widespread availability of abortion would lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies, hence less child abuse; it has not. They said that fewer women would die from back-alley abortions; the post-1940s decline in the number of women who died from abortions, the result of antibiotics, actually slowed after Roe — probably because the total number of abortions rose. They said it would reduce illegitimacy and child poverty, predictions that now seem like grim jokes.

Pro-lifers were, alas, more prescient. They claimed the West had started down the slippery slope of a progressive devaluation of human life. After the unborn would come the elderly and the infirm — more burdens to others; more obstacles to others' goals; probably better off dead, like "unwanted children." And so now we are debating whether to allow euthanasia, whether to create embryos for experimental purposes, whether to permit the killing of infants about to leave the womb.

And what greater claim on our protection, after all, does that infant have a moment after birth? He still lacks the attributes of "personhood" — rationality, autonomy, rich interactions — that pro-abortion philosophers consider the preconditions of a right to life. The argument boils down to this assertion: If we want to eliminate you and you cannot stop us, we are justified in doing it. Might makes right. Among intellectuals, infanticide is in the first phase of a movement from the unthinkable to the arguable to the debatable to the acceptable.

Everything abortion touches, it corrupts. It has corrupted family life. In the war between the sexes, abortion tilts the playing field toward predatory males, giving them another excuse for abandoning their offspring: She chose to carry the child; let her pay for her choice. Our law now says, in effect, that fatherhood has no meaning, and we are shocked that some men have learned that lesson too well. It has corrupted the Supreme Court, which has protected the abortion license even while tacitly admitting its lack of constitutional grounding. If the courts can invent such a right, unmoored in the text, tradition, or logic of the Constitution, then they can do almost anything; and so they have done. The law on everything from free speech to biotechnology has been distorted to accommodate abortionism. And abortion has deeply corrupted the practice of medicine, transforming healers into killers.

Most of all, perhaps, it has corrupted liberalism. For all its flaws, liberalism could until the early seventies claim a proud history of standing up for the powerless and downtrodden, of expanding the definition of the community for whom we pledge protection, of resisting the idea that might makes right. The Democratic Party has casually abandoned that legacy. Liberals' commitment to civil rights, it turns out, ends when the constituency in question can offer neither votes nor revenues.

Abortion-on-demand has, however, also called into being in America a pro-life movement comprising millions of ordinary citizens. Their largely unsung efforts to help pregnant women in distress have prevented countless abortions. And their political witness has helped maintain a pro-life ethic that has stopped millions more. The conversions of conscience have almost all been to the pro-life side — Bernard Nathanson, Nat Hentoff, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The conversions of convenience have mostly gone the other way, mainly, politicians who wanted to get ahead in the Democratic Party — Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt. The fight against abortion has resulted in unprecedented dialogue and cooperation between Catholics and Protestants, first on moral values and now on theological ones. It has helped transform the Republican Party from a preserve of elite WASPs into a populist and conservative party.

True, few politicians of either party — with honorable exceptions like Henry Hyde, Chris Smith, Jesse Helms, Bob Casey, Charles Canady, and Rick Santorum — have provided leadership in the struggle. Not because opposition to abortion is unpopular — throughout the Roe era, 70 percent of the public has supported laws that would prohibit 90 percent of abortions — but because politicians, and even more the consultants and journalists and big-money donors to whom they listen, tend to move in elite circles where accepting abortion is de rigueur and pro-life advocacy at best an offense against good taste. Since everyone they know favors legal abortion, they understandably conclude that everyone does. But there is progress even here. The pro-abortion intellectual front is crumbling. Supporters of the license increasingly concede that what they support is, indeed, the taking of human life. Pro-lifers, their convictions rooted in firmer soil, have not had to make reciprocal concessions.

There can be little doubt that, left to the normal workings of democracy, abortion laws would generally be protective of infants in the womb. The main obstacle on our path to a society where every child is welcomed in life and protected in law, then, remains what it has always been: the Supreme Court. There abortionism is well entrenched; and last year the Court appeared to slam the door on the legal possibility of a congressional override of its decisions on abortion or anything else. By defining a practice at odds with our deep and settled moral convictions as part of the fundamental law of the land, the Supreme Court has created a slow-motion constitutional crisis. This is what comes of courting death.