Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:08am

Generations

For the Lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever, and his truth to generation and generation.

Psalm 99:  5

 

At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons — convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that, for any one of such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her request if she is able to find a medical advisor willing to undertake the procedure.

The Court, for the most part, sustains this position: during the period prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus; the Constitution, therefore, guarantees the right to an abortion as against any state law or policy seeking to protect the fetus from an abortion not prompted by more compelling reasons of the mother.

With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers [410 U.S. 222] and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally dissentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshaling of values, I can in no event join the Court’s judgment because I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court’s exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.

Justice Byron White, from his dissent in Roe v. Wade

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Mary De Voe
Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 8:05am

The sovereign person who is conceived endows motherhood to a woman and fatherhood to a man. The newly begotten child creates the mother of a woman and a father of a man. Yet, the Court insisted on conserving the life of the mother over and above the life of the person who delivered motherhood. The mother’s whim or lack thereof ignores the innocent human soul of our constitutional posterity, all future generations, each and every sovereign person brought forth in human nature and protected by our Constitution as the purpose of the Preamble states: “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our (constitutional) posterity.” To deny the newly brought forth human being, a sovereign person, endowed with all unalienable right to Life by our Creator, the freedom to grow in freedom of religion, speech, press and peaceable assembly violates the First Amendment. The child’s will to live is the state’s right to life, our Constitution’s right to life, the protection of the sovereign person.
The state does not create the sovereign person, God does. The sovereign person creates the state. Therefore, Roe v. Wade is a lie, perjury in a court of law.

Mary De Voe
Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 8:13am

The innocent, morally and legally innocent, human person conceived, is the standard of Justice for the state; the compelling interest of the state in protecting the sovereign person, newly begotten, our constitutional posterity. Justice, without innocence, is miscarriage. It is the duty of the state to protect the innocence and the virginity of our most innocent and virgin to deliver Justice. It is the duty of the state to deliver Justice. Without Justice we are no longer a civilization.

Mary De Voe
Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 8:28am

The state does not own the human being. The human being owns the state. Parental notification is an obligation in Justice of the state to acknowledge the freedom of the sovereign personhood of parents. Abortion advocates may not impose their denial of the civil rights of human beings who are parents because abortion advocates have not created the sovereign person nor do they own the sovereign person. To trespass against a minor child’s civil rights, deny informed consent of the parents, is the height of tyranny, and violation of the sovereign state, a sovereignty endowed by the minor child.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 3:43pm

The injustice of only allowing parents of a minor daughter to be notified that their underage daughter will be having an abortion–is down right mind numbing. You have to be 18 years old to get your ears pierced without your parents’ permission–and yet the SCOTUS has said that parents only have a right to notification of a medical procedure that can kill their daughter–and will kill their grandchild. This is pure, unadulterated legal, moral, & ethical insanity!!!

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 7:54pm

I forgot how powerful and direct the dissent was. Thanks for the reminder.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Wednesday, January 22, AD 2014 10:13pm

Question:
“This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs ”

What does this mean? Do we still have all those processes he referred to with the way the executive branch currently seems to assume power, justice department seems rogue. Census bureau can make old fashioned efforts to gerrymander and otherwise control elections seem like pat-a-cake. IRS frightens donors and people trying to protect or promote a viewpoint by participating in the process, etc. The idea of fair elections as a process available to the people to express their will seems more like a dream

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Thursday, January 23, AD 2014 9:29am

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Mary De Voe
Mary De Voe
Saturday, January 25, AD 2014 11:20am

“This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.”
It means Anzlyne, that the people must vote on the death penalty for the newly conceived according to his innocence, moral and legal innocence, and his guilt for a capital crime to justify taking his life. Threatening the life of his mother would make abortion a case of self-defense, a just war theory from Aquinas. The child’s guilt must be taken into account and judged. This judgement can only be made on a case by case assessment by several doctors, for a prognosis is a definite maybe. Roe v. Wade is across the board discrimination because of existence, species, race, sex, and ultimately power.
Abortion to save the life of the mother has a grave precedent in every hospital across the nation and world, long before Roe came to force every taxpayer to fund Planned Parenthood and reduce the population. The boot on the neck, the coercion to force people into Pro-life, pro-death camps came about by people not associated with Justice but those indulging in hatred of man, the lust for power and the usurpation of other people’s money.

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