I am an avid Ron Paul supporter. I am also pro-choice whereas he holds strong pro-life views, yet I agree with him completely on abortion. Confused yet? Read on–this is the exact misunderstanding of abortion that I want to eradicate–you can be pro-choice and against the terms of Roe v. Wade. How? Because Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, and Ron Paul recognizes this without a pro-life bias as I do without a pro-choice predisposition of my own.
To justify the terms of Roe v. Wade, a “constitutional right to privacy” is often referenced, but I challenge any reader of the Constitution to point out to me exactly where this supposed right to privacy is actually written–and how it possibly overrules the terms of the 10th Amendment, which specifically says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”
The supposed “Constitutional right to privacy” started with a Supreme Court case heard in 1965 called Griswold v. Connecticut. The facts of the case surround a Connecticut law that made it illegal for married couples to be counseled on the use of contraceptives. Absurd as the statute may have been, Constitutionally speaking, it shouldn’t have been struck down by the highest federal court, as it was a state issue. As the Supreme Court Justice I most admire, Judge Hugo Black (who never went anywhere without a Constitution in his pocket) puts it in his written dissent on this case:
I feel constrained to add that the law is every bit as offensive to me as it is to my Bretheren of the majority and my Brothers HARLAN, WHITE and GOLDBERG, who, reciting reasons why it is offensive to them, hold it unconstitutional. There is no single one of the graphic and eloquent strictures and criticisms fired at the policy of this Connecticut law either by the Court’s opinion or by those of my concurring Brethern to which I cannot subscribe - expect that their conclusion that the evil qualities they see in the law make it unconstitutional.
Taking a brave stance against activist judges, who characteristically bend the terms of the Constitution to justify their individual agendas, Justice Black sets aside his personal convictions to let the governmental process work as it was intended to, as Dr. Ron Paul would with abortion by revoking the privilege of making rather than interpreting law from the Supreme Court and restoring the specified Constitutional restraints on government. Abortion, as an infinitely complex scientific and moral issue, would then be left to the states - exactly what our Founding Fathers would have wanted, as they were as a whole quite weary of exactly what the federal government has become today: an uncontrollable and power driven centralized body of government with a disturbing disregard for state’s rights.
As a young female who has grown up in the typically “Blue State” of Massachusetts and recently spent two years at a very liberal private school in New York City, I’ve heard the feminist argument that it’s not the place of “nine men in robes to determine our fate.” Well ladies, you’re exactly right. What the nine judges did in Griswold and Roe is what I call “creating a shortcut to liberty”, because you may agree with their conclusions as a staunch pro-choice advocate, but the ruling is in effect violating your rights as an American citizen, because these judges were appointed to interpret law, not voted on to write legislation.
You vote for your representative in Congress as well as on a more local level, and that gives you a voice. Petition your city/town and state governments–vote, participate and if you’re pro-choice, don’t be a hypocrite and complain about these “old men” who know nothing about your body as a modern woman–because something tells me it would be these exact women who would be the first to become militant if Roe was to be revoked, yet it was the same “clueless old men” who set the terms of Roe into motion.
As my Dad puts it, democracy is cathartic to none other than we, the people, and as strongly as I believe a woman has a right to choose, another individual feels that life starts at conception and thusly that abortion is murder. Therefore, from a governmental standpoint, a moral issue such as abortion need be a battle between the people, and the dissenters in a specific state can admit defeat when local democracy works, not when a majority of Supreme Court judges bend the law to accomodate a “progressive” social agenda.
Knowing the complex medical and ethical details surrounding abortion is not the job of a Supreme Court judge, but understanding how our Constitutional Republic operates is; exactly why experts on local levels should be addressing abortion and any other issue not expressly discussed within the Constitution, not the federal government. In fact, Oyez.com, the fantastic website chock full of Supreme Court case information and MP3s of oral arguments that I generally use when referencing a case, states in a summary conclusion of Griswold v. Connecticut that “Though the Constitution does not explicity protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy.”
That right there is all the information I need as a strict constructionist to determine, as Judge Black did, that the Griswold ruling seems to be a manipulation of the Constitution by a group of federal judges following their instincts rather than what is written in the Constituiton. If the people of Conneticut felt offended by this law, they should have petitioned to their state government, which is Constitutionally given the power to deal with the local laws to protect people from an overzealous federal government.
The infamous Roe v. Wade case of 1973, based highly on the unconstitutional precedent set in Griswold, became part of an equally as destructive precedent of the Supreme Court acting as lawmakers rather than interpreters. Again, refferencing Oyez.com, an effect of Roe v. Wade was that, “The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court’s ruling.” Constitutionally speaking, the Supreme Court defining rather than interpreting seems a bit out of line to me, as I would assume it does to Dr. Paul - or to any advocate of the Constitutional rule of law!
I ended a paper on interpreting the Constitution that I wrote for a class entitled “Law and Justice in America” last semester with the following statement and question:
“Fundamentally, the idea of letting the Man alone is integral to the basic intent inherent in the Constitution. But if one is to employ an analysis of historical jurisprudence it must be noted that if the Supreme Court votes in a way that seems to allow for more expansive freedoms, parallel to the intent of the Framers, it is in effect violating the indispensable balance of power between the three branches of government that is purposefully outlined in the Constitution. It is blatantly not the Supreme Court’s place to restrict state power to the extent that it sometimes has in the name of ‘freedom’, because what freedom is there when the American people themselves have no voice?”
I now respectfully ask my current readers to ponder the same question and to consider the importance of keeping the federal government at bay on ethical issues such as abortion, which are best suited to be dealt with locally, not nationally. Despite the fact that I disagree with Ron Paul on his contention that life starts at conception, I agree completely with his call to make complicated social problems state issues. Why? Because I’ve read the Constitution.
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Most issues like the above should be left to the individual states and local communities do decide and is not a decision of the federal government.
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I think that you err in imputing the discovery of a right to privacy to unconstitutional ‘interpretation’ of the law.
In fact, we rely on this right when the application of the 4th amendment is brought to bear on searches and seizures, the presumption (absent a probable cause or warrant).
It may be that the federal government is unable (jurisdictionally) to rule on state law, but that would be news to me, as the constitution expressly protects the rights of citizens from abuse by states (law, legislature, police etc.).
Perhaps it is the word (or term of art) ‘privacy’ that offends, not being a part of the constitution. I think that the meaning of the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments is not difficult to determine, especially if the words used have the meanings that were in use at the time of their writing.
Much has been written about this by scholars and judges and lawyers and I would not claim to be particularly expert, however, there is an issue of consistency here. Those of ‘us’ who demand protection of our rights and rely on the federal and state constitutions can’t arbitrarily decide which rights are to be protected and which are not. That would render the whole purpose of teh constitution moot.
Rich
I am pro-choice and feel Roe is bad legal theory too, but for different reasons, mainly the arbitrariness of using fetal age and viability to limit rights. It makes one person’s right to life, liberty, etc. contingent on the AGE of another person. It places fetuses above all other persons: born persons do not have an inherent right to be sustained by someone else’s body parts, so why does a second or third trimester fetus? Roe was a valient attempt at compromise but it needs to be replaced by something else. What, specifically, would Ron Paul replace it with?
I have to disagree with Corie that the absence of the word “privacy” in the Constitution means there is no right to it. The Ninth Amendment alone makes it debatable. And I doubt that the states rights clause includes the power to supersede federal jurisdiction on human rights. It means the states get the say on issues where the federal constitution is silent. The issue, then, is to what extent the constitution is really silent on a particular right.
The current rationale for a constitutional right to bodily integrity, medical privacy, etc. rests on a finding of something called “substantive due process” in the 14th Amendment. The enumerated rights cannot be effectively exercised without these other implied rights. If I cannot control how my body is used, at all times, I am not free. But that was not the only argument suggested by Roe’s lawyers, and it’s certainly not the only argument that could be made.
This is rather a separate issue entirely, but call me an anti-Federalist: I believe there are certain issues that are simply too important to be left to the whim of the individual states. Civil rights are at the very top of the list — they should not depend on the political climate of the area where I happen to live. The separateness of the states is a historical artifact that made sense in the 18th and 19th centuries but not it’s pretty hard to justify giving citizens different human rights based on whether they live in Manhatten or Hoboken.
Both Corie and Sheila have valid points, and that is what makes abortion such a sticky issue. Both sides are right, from their own perspective. What further complicates matters is that there is no clear line about when life begins. If life begins at conception then abortion is in fact murder. If life begins at birth then it’s not.
But who is the federal government to decide when life begins? Whose Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness should it be protecting? The mother’s or the unborn baby’s? This is not an answerable question, and any attempt by the Federal government to attempt to do so will be violating someone’s beliefs. When an issue is this decisive and ambiguous, government interference will only divide the people.
We live in dangerous, troubled times. We can’t afford to let this issue continue to divide us.
I will be commenting further on this in a future post.
Peter writes:
“If life begins at conception then abortion is in fact murder. If life begins at birth then it’s not.”
In other words, every person who dies waiting for a transplant is a murder victim? Every person who still has both kidneys is a murderer? What about every person who fails to donate blood every 2-3 months? After all, it’s PROBABLY not going to hurt you, and that other FULLY HUMAN BEING needs that material to survive.
Peter: do you have both your kidneys? If so, why?
Sheila, interesting point but I think there is a difference between abortion and kidney failure. Regardless of your view, the mother or doctor is singularly responsible for the death of a baby in the case of an abortion, but in the case of someone dying from not receiving a transplant, you have to hold everyone in the world who didn’t donate those kidneys to be responsible for the death. There is a difference here, don’t you think?
Furthermore, I am not expressing my own opinion (which is neutral) but those of both sides. Personally I think it is inappropriate to use the word “murder” because that implies legal responsibility–it is more appropriate to frame this in a moral context than a legal one.
Pregnancy and tissue donation are very comparable. Pregnancy is the utilization of your own body to sustain a person while s/he is not otherwise viable. It usually doesn’t kill you but it has tremendous potential medical ramifications. Donating an organ is similar — but nobody would contend that it should be mandatory, even though, chances are, you will be fine, and someone needs that tissue to survive. Not even blood donation is mandatory except by court order for the purpose of evidence collection and other state interests (and those state interests NEVER include taking your blood by force and feeding it into another person).
I often say I will rethink my pro-choice position when a law is passed (and found constitutional) stating that non-pregnant adults can be forced to use their bodies to save someone else.
I’m trying to make a point that “fetus = human life” does not lead smoothly and self-evidently to “abortion = murder”.
Lots of people think that A follows B, but have they pondered the full ramifications — or are they caught up in the thought of sweet, gurgling babies and resentment of sexual freedom?
The overall theme is that, even accepting full humanity from the instant of fertilization, does it follow that this particular human being has an absolute right to life? No, not if the fetus is “equal” to everyone else. Governments AND people are both allowed to kill under certain circumstances. Does it follow that the fetus’s right to life must be the problem of the pregnant woman? She’s just out of luck? About the only argument the anti-choice people have is to smirk that, well, she HAD SEX!!! (Where I would argue that the use of my body is subject to my CONTIUING consent.)
The decision whether to continue a pregnancy is not simply a choice of “kill the baby or leave it alone” as if you’re talking about some baby minding its own business in another room or something. It’s the choice whether to allow the use of your organs, or to forbid it. It’s the choice to tolerate a drain on your body or to end it.
Abortion is declining to be a hero. And as long as every other person has that option, why shouldn’t the pregnant woman?
In this way I believe Dr. Paul (as much as I like him) is being inconsistent. He’s looking at the conflicting interests between the (unwillingly) pregnant woman and fetus and declaring the fetus the winner. In other scenarios of conflicting interests, libertarians like to simply let the stronger party prevail. Why the difference here?
If I were a patient of his and started developing complications, I would be fearful that he would prioritize the baby’s survival over mine. And that should be my decision, not his. I wonder about his never having seen a medically necessary abortion. That is just unrealistic and I wonder what the truth behind it is. Does he just refuse to treat the patient and they find someone else, thus keeping his record clean?
“I challenge any reader of the Constitution to point out to me exactly where this supposed right to privacy is actually written.”
The 9th Amendment. This kind of position that the rights specifically granted to people in the bill of rights is *exactly* the reason that the federalists didn’t want a bill of rights, because it would be abused to say that people only had the rights they were specifically granted.
The right to privacy certainly exists, and is somewhat enforced by the 4th amendment, but is a right recognized by the 9th amendment. The federal courts have jurisdiction to decide that something is a 9th amendment right - and they have decided that privacy is a 9th amendment right.
That said, I support Ron Paul, I am pro-choice (both from a rights perspective, and from a social good perspective, studies of abortion rates vs. crime show that legalized abortion lowers violent crime rate, a mother who does not want their child will not raise it well), but I do not agree with Ron Paul’s stance on this issue.
Seems you’ve been reading Freakonomics. ie., “(both from a rights perspective, and from a social good perspective, studies of abortion rates vs. crime show that legalized abortion lowers violent crime rate, a mother who does not want their child will not raise it well)”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect
I see no correlation between organ transplants and abortion. In the former case, one has to take an action in order to help keep someone else alive, while in the latter case one has to physically harm the embryo for death to take place. Although I don donate blood every 2-3 months, I have not yet given any organs away, but I am not a murderer because I did nothing to put the person needing the donation in their situation. However, this DOES leave us all open to the charge of neglect; I believe that Sheila just cannot bear to think she’s being uncharitable by not doing everything she can to help those in need. (Of course, the argument could be made that the longer life one will have if they keep both kidneys can be made up for by doing additional works to help the poor and the sick).
I too am an ardent Ron Paul supporter, and though I certainly trust him, the pro-choice libertines who are his strongest supporters make me more lukewarm about his whole candidacy. I wish he had more support from pro-lifers like me and Catholics for Ron Paul.
“I see no correlation between organ transplants and abortion. In the former case, one has to take an action in order to help keep someone else alive, while in the latter case one has to physically harm the embryo for death to take place.”
Nicely argued, but I can’t agree. Anti-reproductive-freedom forces love to presume a healthy, smiling baby minding its own business, as if all the pregnant woman has to do is… nothing. Unfortunately, every second that pregnancy continues it’s having an impact (or potential impact) on the woman’s health as well as other aspects of her life. (These impacts include economic risk that could affect other family members — including existing children — and a higher statistical risk of becoming a murder victim.)
There is no way for the pregnant woman to put a stop to the impact of pregnancy without taking a positive action. And that positive action is actually a RESPONSE to something that’s happening to her body. But how does this fact affect her right to decide whether to undertake pregnancy, or her right to discontinue it in light of changed circumstances?
By your logic you must also support the traditional Catholic position on ectopic pregnancy. While there is a drug (methotrexate) that can dissolve an embryo (that was never viable) some Catholic doctors take the position that the woman must instead undergo surgery to remove the affected fallopian tube. (Thus cutting her natural fertility in half, and we know how the Pope feels about IVF.) Because, removing the tube only has the unfortunate side effect of killing the embryo, while administering the drug would be taking POSITIVE ACTION to kill it.
It’s puzzling that an avowed libertarian suddenly makes an exception in this case. Normally the libertarian ideal is that nobody owes anyone anything.
The correlation between organ donation and pregnancy is that in each case, a person is using his/her body or tissues to keep someone else alive. In each case, a refusal to provide that assistance results in the death of the other. But only the pregnant woman is thought to have an OBLIGATION to do so. (Oh, I forgot. SHE HAD SEEEEEEXXXXXX!)
That aside, Dr. Paul’s abortion stance would not keep me from voting for him if I were otherwise going to do so. I like the guy but have no wish to live in an Ayn Randian dystopia (no offense).
As for Sheila, I don’t care what she thinks about charity or whatever. What’s important is what the state should be able to oblige someone to do. And it is kind of strange that the state cannot oblige Leslie even to donate blood but many feel if OUGHT to be able to compel her to give birth.
Ron Paul’s position on abortion is totally absurd and really morally deplorable.
Paul believes that abortion is murder. (”I believe beyond a doubt that a fetus is a human life deserving of legal protection, and that the right to life is the foundation of any moral society.” - Ron Paul, March 29, 2005)
The Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights both establish the Right to Life as a fundamental, inalienable human right (presumably to be protected by any and every legitimate federal government). So it goes something like this:
1. Abortion is murder.
2. It is properly the duty of the federal government to criminalize murder.
3. It is properly the duty of the federal government to criminalize abortion.
I’m pro-choice, because I don’t think that a fetus is a person. If I thought that a fetus was a person, I would be morally obligated to do everything in my power to stop an abortion that I would do to stop the murder of a 2 year old.
If the Democrats wanted to legalize infanticide for infants under 2 years of age on the grounds that they aren’t properly ‘persons’, and Ron Paul said, “Look, they’re people, but I think that it should be up to the states to decide whether to slaughter them or not,” NOBODY would vote for him. What gives?