Alabama's Restrictive Abortion Law: Rape and Incest Discussion

ChristianForCats said:

The Supreme Court can't "make a law." Only Congress can do that. The ruling was a Texas abortion law - one that did not make an exception for rape victims - was unconstitutional. This is throwing out a law.

Click to expand...

They can not write a law and pass it. But they can create a situation that legislates from the bench by imposing a legal theory that is at odds with the truth.

For all intents and purposes creating the legal foundation for only a narrow law in line with their views. So while they don't write and pass a law, they leave room for only a narrow expression. Again like campaign finance.

The courts did not create slavery laws but they laid the soil for them to grow and more to be created.

They did not create abortion laws but they manufactured the right from whole cloth in opposition to existing views.

Legislation from the bench is indeed a thing. Not very constitutional.... But neither is the right to an abortion.

Ridiculous.

Separation of church and state exists for a reason and I dare say any future Muslim or other politicians endeavouring to enshrine their own religious of theological beliefs in to law will be summarily hounded by so-called 'patriots'.

Absolute farce.

Archivist said:

The ACLU has already announced that it will be suing.

Alabama's Near-Total Ban On Abortion Could Be Headed To Court As ACLU Gears Up For Fight

Click to expand...

So did Planned Parenthood, of course.

redleghunter said:

Dunno. The American history I remember has Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in that order. Not the other way around.

Click to expand...

Who do you think Thomas Jefferson was referring to when he wrote that line?

The American citizens, of course, including women expecting babies.

Which all means it eventually goes to the supreme Court that just overturned a 25-year precedent in another case.

ChristianForCats said:

Who do you think Thomas Jefferson was referring to when he wrote that line?

The American citizens, of course, including women expecting babies.

Click to expand...

US kept the underpinnings of British common law and jurisprudence which included fetal rights since 1751. You have to go to the 1970s until that wasn't the case.

Davidnic said:

US kept the underpinnings of British common law and jurisprudence which included fetal rights since 1751. You have to go to the 1970s until that wasn't the case.

Click to expand...

From the same Wikepeida articile I posted earlier, justices disagreed on which amendment makes getting an abortion constitutional. Two justices believed it should have been based on the Ninth, not Fourteenth - which would make abortion legal ever since the Bill of Rights was ratified.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote a concurring opinion in which he described how he believed that while the Court was correct to find that the right to choose to have an abortion was a fundamental right, it would be better to derive it from the Ninth Amendment—which states that the fact that a right is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution shall not be construed to mean that American people do not possess it—rather than through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.[54]

ChristianForCats said:

Form the same Wikepeida articile I posted earlier, justices disagreed on which amendment makes getting an abortion constitutional. Two justices believed it should have been based on the Ninth, not Fourteenth - which would make abortion legal ever since the Bill of Rights was ratified.

Click to expand...

Same time slavery was legal yep. But you are ignoring that as late as 1967 the American Bar Association stated law protected fetal rights. So that undermines the bill of rights argument. That and many other precedents.

Roe is a legal invention. It very well could be struck down because of the privacy basis. All a lawyer has to do is effectively attack it's basis...a doctor's right to practice it by making a strong argument for fetus as patient.

Nobody is talking about the rights of doctors here.

While you wrote that post I copied text from Wikipedia to explain where the Ninth Amendment argument, a right to privacy, comes in.

ChristianForCats said:

Nobody is talking about the rights of doctors here.

While you wrote that post I copied text from Wikipedia to explain where the Ninth Amendment argument, a right to privacy, comes in.

Click to expand...

But the right of doctors to practice is the basis for Roe versus Wade.

If you disagree take it up with Ruth bader Ginsburg.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Offers Critique of Roe v. Wade During Law School Visit | University of Chicago Law School

Roe isn’t really about the woman’s choice, is it?” Ginsburg said. “It’s about the doctor’s freedom to practice…it wasn’t woman-centered, it was physician-centered.

Roe is held by most legal scholars to be poorly written and vulnerable to being overturned. No matter what fiction has grown up around it the actual writing of the law is very weak legally. Wikipedia may not cover that but legal journals generally do.

So yeah if you talk Roe, you are talking the doctors right to practice. I am always shocked at how people say Roe is one thing, but even RBG sees the weakness. She's for what it does, but she sees the vulnerability.

And the Alabama law is specifically written with the fetus as patient which attacks the doctor's so called right. It is a dagger specifically aimed at Roe versus Wade that may indeed hit the point.

That is why they blocked amendments on rape and incest and specifically stated it was because it weakened the law in reference to the personhood of the fetus. Make no mistake this is going to the Supreme Court with a very good chance of overturning Roe v Wade.

I read a CNN article that cautions it is not guaranteed that all five conservative justices will support a law which makes no rape/incest exepction. Republicans have voted with liberal justices before. Two judges on the Supreme Court bench are Donald Trump nomineesso I don't know if they support rape abortions.

ChristianForCats said:

I read a CNN article that cautions it is not guaranteed that all five conservative justices will support a law which makes no rape/incest exepction. Republicans have voted with liberal justices before. Two judges on the Supreme Court bench are Donald Trump nomineesso I don't know if they support rape abortions.

Click to expand...

it was a Conservative Republican appointed judge that sunk Casey vs. Planned Parenthood.

But the thing is it doesn't matter whether they support rape exceptions or not if the law is based on attacking that vulnerable point of Roe...they might decide legally that Roe doesn't work and boot everything back to the States.

Casey vs. Planned Parenthood didn't focus on that part of the law. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and Roe v Wade is very weak at a few points.

Legally if that law had a rape and incest exception it would be less strong in challenging Roe. Because the law itself would then say there is a time when without a life being in danger it is okay to kill a person. So the Alabama law would then have something that undermined its own legal argument.

It may be distasteful for some people but it does give the law better legal standing against Roe's weak point.

A lot of commentators think the strictness of the law undermines its potential to overturn Roe. But that's a political argument and an appeal to emotion. The law was written for this purpose... Hit Roe versus Wade at its vulnerable point.

The "distastefui" part (if that is a word) would be Alabama's strategy to make a law just to get sued for it to some people. This reminds me of when 49 Republlican Senators wanted to vote for a health care bill to overturn the Affordable Care Act after John McCain returned from a surgical procedure, thinking he will be the 50th voter in favor and force Mike Pence to break a tie. Instead, McCain made a passionate speech to say they had the wrong strategy, effrectively killing the bill. Is Alabama ready for this possibility?

Well I think they knew any Pro-life law would be challenged. So they designed it to survive that challenge by taking out the core law that results in the death of Innocents. The problem is their actions are not whole life in other laws, like health care. That is always baffling to me personally. But I follow the seamless garment view.

The bill's sponsor publicly stated he specifically wrote it to overturn RVW.

ChristianForCats said:

The bill's sponsor publicly stated he specifically wrote it to overturn RVW.

Click to expand...

Of course. Roe has allowed the death of millions of Innocents. So if someone wants to restrict abortion and knows the law will be challenged, you design it to survive by taking out the precedent.

That's politics.

Same thing was attempted by free states who wanted to end slavery.

Davidnic said:

Same thing was attempted by free states who wanted to end slavery.

Click to expand...

No comaprison. Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, not the SCOTUS.

Can someone explain why Alabama thinks it can overturn RVW by only making a medical exception while its own female citizens are forced to suffer because they can't get good health care nearby?

ChristianForCats said:

No comaprison. Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, not the SCOTUS.

Click to expand...

Yep the court kept making the morally vile decision. But cases were brought before the court because of state laws. A great part of the abolitionist movement was about creating laws in free states that would dismantle the legal justification for slavery.

Which is why appeal to judicial authority is not a valid argument of right and wrong. So it is related. The comparison is historically pretty direct. Rights of personhood arbitrarily removed for the benefit of some and that horror upheld by the highest court. So laws were made to chip away at it.