At 04:41 PM 3/1/2004 -0800 Deborah Harrell wrote:
>> This is also the same court that just a few years
>> ago struck down
>> Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion in Stenberg
>> vs. Carhart.
><sniplet>
>> Suffice to say, I have very real worries that
>> Ginsburg, Breyer, Stevens,
>> Souter, and O'Connor will find homosexual marriage
>> right next to the right
>> for partial birth abortion when a mother's mental
>> health is in danger in
>> the penumbra of the Constitution.
>
>Not trying to be provocative, but did you read the
>responses WRT the whole "partial birth abortion" act
>that I and others posted? How it isn't a medical term
>at all, and except in the very rare instance of a
>late-discovered case of anencephaly (a terrible and
>fatal defect in which the fetus is missing most of the
>brain, and sometimes part of the skull as well) isn't
>used? That it isn't taught anymore in the US?
Deborah, the campaign against partial-birth abortion has lasted, I think,
nearly a decade. Because we live in a republic, political change requires
the changing of the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans. For better or
for worse, those hearts and minds are not going to be changed while relying
upon the medical jargon of academia. Rather it was necessary to
communicate to the American people exactly what "dilation and extraction"
means - partially birthing a child, and then killing it.
Now, while you may argue that the procedure is already very rare, the truth
of the matter is that these abortions were still legal for any reason. If
the pro-choice side had proposed a bill early on that would have prohibited
these abortions from being performed in all cases except anencephaly, such
a bill would probably have passed handily.
As it is, the pro-choice side fought to keep these abortions legal tooth
and nail. And the result was that the partial-birth abortion issue has
single-handedly changed more hearts and minds of Americans about abortion
*in general* than any other thing that the pro-life side has ever done.
For this reason alone, the campaign against partial-birth abortions was
well worth it, because it exposed all abortion for what it really is, the
taking of a human life, in the hearts and minds of many average Americans.
>Again I find it illogical that you juxtapose
>'homosexual marriage' with abortion; one is a medical
>procedure, the other a social/legal contract between
>two adults. They are not in any way related.
Deborah, they are absolutely related. In both cases, we have justices
finding a "right" in the "penumbra" of the Constitution that the people who
wrote, debated, signed, and agreed-to that Consttution never imagined nor
envisioned. They are both examples of law being made not by the people
through their democratically elected representatives, but through the
craven fiat of unelected justices who have grossly overstepped the bounds
of the office entrusted to them.
>The _Economist_ article that Erik posted re: gay
>marriage had several telling points, particularly
>about equality (in the paragraph beginning "The case
>for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure
>and simple..."). I just don't see how allowing two
>adults who wish to publically commit themselves to
>each other is a threat to our civilisation, truly I
>don't.
Again, there is nothing in current law in the United States that prevents
homosexual couples from publicly committing themselves to each other.
Moreover, any proposed Federal Marriage Amendment with any hope of passage
will not preclude homosexual couples from publicly committing themselves to
each other.
The question, however, is whether our civilization will be undermined by:
1) incentivising homosexual unions
2) placing the homosexual union on an equal status with heterosexual
marriage as a building block of society, and
3) permitting homosexual couples to adopt or to artificially create children.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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