MP: First; the tribunal is the Supreme Court. Laws can no longer be made that do
not follow the adjudicated legal stipulations and precedents emanating from R. v. W. The SC is not elected, it is appointed, and then for life. We have nine people deciding how all of American Society *must* act with respect to abortion. That is a tribunal. [Krimel] My God man don't they teach civics in Sunday School? Laws cannot be passed which violate the constitution. The Supreme Court is the branch of government which decides how our founding document applies to new laws and how the Law of the Land is applied in practice. Justices are appointed for life to avoid the influence peddling and the excesses of democracy. This was specifically set in place by the founding fathers as a check and balance not only on the other branches of government but as a caution against mob rule and the tyranny of the majority. Roe v Wade does not decide how anyone *must* act. It talks about what restrictions the law can impose upon this particular course of action. Yes, the Supreme Court is a "tribunal." But it is not exactly a kangaroo court. [MP:] Secondly; You clearly don't understand the legality of R v. W. The decision had nothing to do with assigning woman's choice. A woman has all the rights under the Constitution to make choices. Always had, still does. It was about when, where and how a State law can impose it's will over that of a woman. It was a State's rights decision, not a human rights one. In the third trimester, the SC actually gave the State nearly full reign to legislate over the woman's choice if it decides it is in the State's best interest. [Krimel] Roe v Wade was about the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment which states: "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." Prior to this time states restricted, in varying degrees, women's rights to seek safe medical treatment to halt unwanted pregnancies. The court, as you note did not outlaw abortion it simply set limits on the kinds of laws that states could enact to restrict the practice. [MP:] How far things have strayed since then, with no democratic input (only tribunal) how just how injurious that SC decision was to the Constitutional right of the people to decide for themselves (via legislature) what to do on abortion. (Consider that partial abortion is the even being debated in court.) [Krimel] You think Roe v Wade crushed states rights? Dude, Civil Rights struck the major blows against State's Rights and that was a joint effort by all three branches of government. Roe v Wade had next to nothing to do with it. The whole point of the 14th amendment was to prevent individual states from stripping citizens of fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution and not subject to the whims of public opinion and sentiment. It was passed in response to the excesses of Southern states during reconstruction. Even in the face of this, it took almost 100 years to insure the equal rights of black citizens. Roe v Wade was if anything a step in the direction of guaranteeing the rights of women. [MP:] The ultimate problem was that the SC actually *wrote a law*; it defined things legally. That is not its job. The Judicial branch is supposed to interpret a law against the Constitution and decide if it does or does not comply. If it finds it doesn't, the SC's job is to state why and then send it back and let the legislature try again, NOT to dictate to the legislature *how* to do it. R v. W instead legislated; it said *how* to legislate on the issue. [Krimel] This is just obvious bullshit. The Court did not write law, it stated what sorts of laws can be written with respect to individual rights and that is exactly what it is supposed to do. Nor is passing judgment on specific legislation the only charge of the court. This is in fact very rare for the court to do. Usually it rules on particular applications of the law in specific cases. It speaks to lower courts about the way the law is to be applied. It does indeed and rightly *dictates* that states cannot pass laws restricting citizen's rights to vote or to declare a hunting season on particular ethnic groups or detain prisoners without due process. This canard of the court *legislating* is right wing twisting of language like "unborn child," or "judicial activism." The legislative branch can always overrule the Supreme Court by amending the constitution. Again that what the system of checks and balances is all about. And by the way, one of the first instances of what "wingnuts" call judicial *legislation* was Marbury v Madison. It was the first time the Court actually struck down and declared a law unconstitutional. In doing so the Court assumed for itself a power, a "right" if you will, not specified in the constitution. This *legislating* by the court is not some modern threat to the republic. It is built into the warp and weft of the fabric of our government. It is not some power newly seized and applied. It is in fact the duty and purpose of the court. [MP:] But R v. W was a States' rights decision in this regard. It did not create a right to abortion or choice. Those already existed. It defined (outside its purview, but did so nonetheless) where and when States could impinge on that right. [Krimel] I have addressed most of this rubbish but I do want to comment on the actually wisdom and brilliance of the actual Roe v Wade decision itself. The court recognized that a woman's right to equal protection under the law was not the only set of rights at stake in this case. There was also the *potential* rights of the fetus. They acknowledged that pregnancy is a process by which new citizens are brought into a democracy. But at what point in that process does the developing fetus actually have rights? They establish the onset of such rights as the age of viability. Based on the medical evidence of the day, which surprisingly has changed very little, they set that age a seven months but allowed states some grey area as early as 24 weeks. After this time the states may restrict abortion so long as those restrictions do not jeopardized the health of the mother. In other words the court struck a difficult balance between the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus. Balancing the rights of individuals is after all what all law and the pursuit of justice is about. Early in pregnancy most of the rights accrue to the mother. As the process of development proceeds, the rights increasing flow to the fetus. Clearly abortion is a difficult decision. It is a deeply personal decision that affects the lives and families of all concerned. The Court's Solomonic decision balances the rights of all parties in a thoughtful and elegant way that like Solomon's decision seems to have appeased no one. Like the landmark civil rights decisions that preceded it, the right wing backlash from Roe v Wade helped create the evil moral majority and the tyranny of religious fundamentalism that until recently ran rough shod across this great land. The rest of the drivel you present in this thread reminds me of nothing so much as teenagers arguing about why they should or should not be allowed to stay out all night. They seek to find all the possible reasons for the parental decision so as to break it down into a set of logical propositions which they can spin and twist to find the logical fallacies. It's all a ruse. They are not interested in logic and justice they just want their way. All this crap you are dumping here has already been presented to the Court and dismissed as the tripe that it is. The right wing's response has been to stack the court with rightwing justices whose concern for individual liberties is dubious. [MP:] I fear if we aren't rigorous about it per above we risk just flaming this issue out as an opinion war and not resolving anything other than we disagree and are great at cutting each other up with words. [Krimel] This is entirely disingenuous. You began by asking how the MoQ would apply to abortion. Most people replied by looking specifically at how an individual woman might use it as a guide in making a personal decision. But no one doubted where this was heading. I think most of hear would agree with Steve's comment that this is a matter of how the individual weighs social and intellectual considerations against the biological level. In fact that is essentially what the court did as well. Frankly, I think that debating abortion here is about as productive as discussing Nazis. It is guaranteed to produce a flame war and solve nothing. I'll repeat: No uterus, no opinion! Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
