Georgia's heartbeat bill was signed last week. Today the Alabama state legislature passed a law that is clearly unconstitutional under current SCOTUS jurisprudence just precisely in order to provoke a court challenge. Frankly, if I were the governor of Alabama -- the actual governor is a woman, by the way -- I would veto it in spite of all the reasons to oppose abortion. The Georgia law may not survive constitutional challenges either, but at least it aims at being a workable law: it defines the beginning of human life as the beginning of the natural heartbeat (philosophically indefensible, that, but it does track the equally wrong but actually legal standard for death as the end of the natural heartbeat). All legal protections start there.
Not citizenship, though, which requires the child being born under the 14th Amendment. The earliness of the heartbeat also means that abortion may not practically be an option for most mothers, which is going to be hard for the SCOTUS to swallow. I don't think the votes are there to support repealing Roe and Casey yet -- I'd expect Roberts to defect, and Kavanaugh perhaps given his commentary in the confirmation -- but the approach is defensible. Establish that the child is a legal person, alive and entitled to an equality of rights.
The Alabama law doesn't even try to construct workable standards. The legislature was clear that its intent is to provoke, rather than to craft a law that could apply to practical cases in the world. That is not the purpose of legislation, and there definitely aren't the SCOTUS votes to win given that it defies every single aspect of the extant jurisprudence. I would think a governor would rather not take a case like that to court.
4 comments:
I disagree in part and agree in part.
I agree that the law ought to be vetoed, but over the lack of exceptions to the abortion ban. I think there needs to be room for case by case review. Just because I can't think of a viable reason for killing a baby by abortion, or other Conservatives can't think of one, doesn't mean they don't exist. I fundamentally oppose one-size-fits-all laws, especially when "all" is as large a population as a State's. That much "all" isn't close to monolithic.
I disagree, though, that the law is, perforce, unconstitutional. If we take Roe as the definition of constitutionality in this venue, the law is fully constitutional. Roe is technologically oriented, and it allows States to regulate abortions to the point of banning them when the baby reaches viability--that is, supportable to term outside the womb--and Roe only suggests, not mandates, the start of the third trimester as the beginning of viability.
Modern medical technology has pushed that threshold much sooner into the period of pregnancy, and so abortions ought to be bannable--wholly within Roe--from that much earlier threshold.
Indeed, we have babies successfully made in test tubes and then, after a suitable period of growth, implanted into a woman's uterus. The only thing that keeps conception, then, from being the beginning of viability is that we don't yet have the technology for supporting that zygote/embryo until it reaches, say, heartbeat stage.
For all that, the law is worth signing, my objection above notwithstanding, for the reasons offered by many of its State Senate supporters: to force exactly the above discussion, with a view IMNSHO, to clarifying Roe's technological threshold.
Eric Hines
The avatar is synched to spirit at first breath. This locks in the avatars energy signature. Fate and destiny, also karma.
Others trace over the child s bio signal much earlier. Spirit knows the chances humans will abort. Those vessels are not invested often unless it is planned.
First, my understanding is that there are some very limited exceptions built into the bill- When the life of the mother is at risk, and a two psychiatrist ruling of severe mental health issues that could be interpreted in a way that would be able to be used by rape victims
I think also it's very useful for renewing the debates around when life begins. As Mr. Hines notes, viability has been a moving target (and in a downward direction). How then can it be seen to be the line we can use to determine when life begins? Did we instill life into younger and younger fetuses by developing better and better technologies for allowing them to survive short gestations? That would seem ludicrous on it's face. If that is not useful for determining when life begins, how can we know with certainty it's ok at some given point?
I'll recommend the book "Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues" by Robert J. Spitzer SJ. It's a very good and thorough debunking of everything Roe was built on.
How then can it [viability] be seen to be the line we can use to determine when life begins?
My own view is that life begins at conception. But I also try to be a practical man and work for what's politically possible today and coming back tomorrow for another slice, rather than demanding all or nothing, which can only result in getting the nothing.
Thus, for me, viability in this context is not about when life begins but about moving the threshold for pseudo-abortion* back towards the beginning of life.
Eric Hines
*a term created by me just now. It's not aborting in the sense of destroying the baby on the way out of the womb, but rather removing the baby from an unwanting mother (without intending judgment in "unwanting") and placing it in an environment within which it can be brought healthily to term.
Eric Hines
Post a Comment