@Hoodat
I used viability as a lawful line of demarcation, but it is not the only one. The states could choose to outlaw abortion after, say, 20 weeks (that's similar to how some European nations do it). The point is to preserve a woman's meaningful ability to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy. The right - like the individual gun right - can be regulated but not denied. The heartbeat bill would ban abortion before the time a woman will know for sure she is pregnant and can make a decision. It is, therefore, clearly unconstititutional.
Oh, piffle.
Women know they are pregnant, especially the second and subsequent times, with exceptions. Morning sickness, absence of menses, etc. The baby will cause changes in everything from food input (cravings) to body chemistry which an EPT can detect as early as three weeks.
But deciding when to say you can kill the baby because the mother doesn't want to be a mom, well, what keeps that line from being extended through the terrible twos or some other age? Not one damned thing except you can hear them scream. So you don't think its okay to throw your kids in a woodchipper when they're five years old, why would you subject them to that when they're five months along?
The Constitution is designed to address both that (i) we are endowed with certain individual liberties by our Creator, and (ii) the government's role is to preserve those liberties. Some of those liberties are spelled out plainly in the Constitution, such as the freedom of speech and association, but other similarly critical liberties are not, but have been found to nevertheless protected by the Constitution. These include the right of personal privacy (the underpinning of the choice right) and the right to individual self defense. Each of these rights is protected by reason of the Constitution's interpretation by the Supreme Court. You individual right to own a gun for reasons of self defense is just as much Constitutionally protected by reason of the Heller decision as a woman's right to reproductive self-determination is Constitutionally protected by reason of Roe v. Wade.
Do you honestly think our Creator, who has known us since before we were formed, would say it's okay for you to shred that life at any time? The Constitution exists to protect the Rights of the weak in our society, not as an excuse to murder them. You simply cannot convince me that the men who wrote that document would have in any way ever intended the slaughter of 60 million of their fellow Americans in the name of convenience, nor that they would have ever intended for that alleged right to be inferred in that document nor the Bill of Rights.
(The Constitution's protection of each of these rights is potentially at risk in the event these Court decisions were to be overturned, which is why I've long advocated that they be codified. It is no coincidence that the most contentious fault lines in our culture today are abortion and guns, because both women and gun owners believe, with justification, that their precious rights are subject to the whims of the political winds.)
There you go, conflating the natural right of self-defense with murder for convenience.
What about the precious rights of the 60,000,000 who have been murdered in this quest for convenience? Where is their right to self-defense? Aren't we the sort of culture who protects the weak among us? Otherwise, we have taken a great retrograde leap in our level of civilization. The means have existed to prevent conception since well before the ruling of the few who have sanctioned this slaughter, claiming to find some Right in a document written by men who would never have sanctioned this slaughter. The time to choose is before conception, not after the fact. The right to choose whether or not to engage in sexual activity still exists, along with the Right to choose who to engage thus with. The ability to choose whether or not to conceive exists, and was even one of the flagship arguments for the imposition of Obamacare, despite the usurpation of the right to decide whether or not to purchase a service.
Hoodat, I understand that you consider abortion to be a moral wrong, and demand the State enforce your moral perspective regarding the "rights" of a six-week old fetus. But consider the damage that's been done by pro-lifers' attempts to elevate a moral issue into a political one. Far more abortions would be prevented if folks of good will could work together to educate women about what abortion is and to offer support to those who seek to do the right thing. Unfortunately, women feel justifiably threatened that a choice they must retain may be taken away - just as you feel threatened that your right to own a gun for your own defense has been politicized and is in danger of being denied.
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms has been codified, directly, as a Right of the People.
That Right was discussed at length in the communications of the Federalists, the logic laid out.
No such codification exists in the Constitution for abortion, no discussion of that alleged right, nor any support for that position was ever laid out in the founders' communications. It is a fabrication solely emanating from the eugenicists and others whose philosophies are in conflict with the whole concepts of Life and Liberty as expressed by the Founders. The ruling in
Roe v Wade is a stain on American Jurisprudence, a damned spot that won't wash out. Like typical liberals, though, those who were wrong, double down, time and again, claiming something that never was.
In the meantime, the slaughter continues.
