In a new campaign ad (I will post an image when I can find one online), Barack Obama claimed that John McCain, if elected President, will abolish abortion.
Now, I know Obama went to a pretty good law school; and I know he taught "Constitutional Law" at a different pretty good law school. So either, he wasn't paying attention, or he thinks the general public is uninformed enough to not know that the President cannot abolish abortion. The Supreme Court has said that a woman has a fundamental, Constitutional right to have an abortion free from government interference. A President has no power to undo the decision in Roe v. Wade or subsequent Supreme Court rulings. So, either Obama doesn't know what he is talking about, or he thinks he can trick the American people into believing something that is simply not true.
At most, John McCain will appoint Supreme Court justices that would be inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade. I think he is more likely to appoint justices like O'Connor and Kennedy then Scalia and (Obama's main man) Thomas. We'll see. Regardless, if the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, that does not mean abortion will be illegal. It only means that the government can make abortion illegal.
In all likelihood, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, states will once again be allowed to set their own abortion laws. Some states will outlaw abortion, some states will limit abortion, some states will continue to make abortion legal. Some states will make abortion illegal, only to be overturned by the Supreme Court of that state which will hold that, while the Federal Constitution does not include a fundamental right to an abortion, the state Constitution does (a la gay marriage in California).
The pro-choice argument is basically a straw man. Don't elect a pro-life President because they will make abortion illegal. It's not possible. It won't happen. There will always be abortion. Some states will allow it. It's not going away. However, states should have the right to make it illegal or limit it if they choose. That is the very essence of the federal system on which this country was founded.
It's really the liberals who want to take away the right to choose - they want to (and have successfully) take away the right of states to choose how to deal with the abortion issue. But contrary to Obama's statement, electing John McCain will not lead to the abolition of abortion in America. It's not possible.
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2 comments:
Two things:
1) Regardless of one's position on abortion, anyone who has ever actually read Roe v. Wade knows it is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever made and one of the most egregious examples of legislating from the bench that has ever existed in this country.
2) Those liberals that have been attacking Gov. Palin and her 17-year-old daughter for being pregnant are the same folks that think Bristol should have been legally allowed to have an abortion without her mother knowing about it.
worse than Roe v. Wade is Griswold v. Connecticut, which opened up the door for the Supreme Court to find a "right to privacy" in the Constitution. We have one justice discussing "penumbras" of established rights, another combining language from six different amendments and another saying that a right to privacy was just presumed in the Constitution and doesn't actually have to be specified. Once the court went down that road, protecting abortion was the next (il)logical step.
Interestingly enough, Griswold v. Connecticut was a total lark. A law in Connecticut limited sales of prophylactics. Liberals in the state were trying to find someone to sue the state to overturn the law (ostensibly to reach other things like abortion), but no one would do it because the law was not enforced, so no one was ever harmed. Liberals basically had to get a police office to agree to fine someone for buying the product and get that person to agree to sue the state for violating her Constitutional rights. It was a big joke until it actually worked.
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