Coldplay!

Went to the Coldplay concert last night. It was great. Definitely one of the best concerts I've been to.

Lamenting Larry Summers

As I mentioned earlier, the much maligned Harvard President has resigned from his post. I found this very good article by Suzanne Fields about his resignation and I think she puts my feelings about the resignation best, so I recommend the article as a worthwhile read.

Answer to High Court abortion question

So, I received a question about my personal opinion as to what the Supreme Court is going to do with abortion in the next couple of years. Rather than add this as a comment to an earlier post, I thought I'd make it into a full-fledged post instead.

Okay. First, the case that the SC has taken already (the one mentioned in the previous post over the federal partial birth abortion ban). Here's my current SC math (that is if nothing on the high Court changes and no one on the high Court finds a heart - we're off to see the wizard...). As far as the partial birth abortion ban is concerned, I can see them upholding it unless they get hung up on the state's rights issues (since this is a federal law). Since Justice Kennedy, who is emerging as the swing vote on this topic after Justice O'Connor's retirement voted against allowing partial birth abortion, I can see him voting with the conservatives on this issue. However, this case will not, in my opinion, give the court a chance to really revisit the central holding in Roe v. Wade.

In other news, South Dakota has just passed a bill that basically restricts all abortions. The bill has a narrowly drawn exception for the health of the mother (narrowly drawn because it does not include mental or psychological health, as does the German exception to the ban on abortion). If this law gets to the Supreme Court (which many experts are predicting because the law seems to have been passed to force the High Court to revisit Roe and its progeny (Casey and some other cases, including, but not to an extreme extent Ayotte), I think that a 5-4 Court will strike down the law.
On the side of allowing abortion nearly burden free are: Justices Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer.
On the side of disallowing abortion (and probably overturning Roe) are: Justices Scalia and Thomas (for sure), Alito we can assume (because he wrote the dissent in Casey in the third circuit), and Roberts we can probably assume.
However, Justice Kennedy is a toss up in this situation. However, my intuition and belief is that Kennedy would vote against the law because he helped write the opinion in Casey, reaffirming the central holding of Roe.

Okay, so, those are my thoughts on the Supreme Court's abortion probabilities (I don't know that I'd make any bets based on my thoughts, though).

Supreme Court Watch

First order of business, before we get to the court watch:
Larry Summers is resigning as President of Harvard. If you'll remember, Larry Summers is the man who made the controversial remarks that it may be something in the difference between men and women that explains why few women rise to the top of the science and mathematics professions. He is basically being forced to resign because of this comment because he is having 'problems with the faculty'. You know what I say about this? So much for freedom of speech, freedom of education, and educational integrity. If someone can be constructively fired for such a comment, what can't one be forced to resign for? Okay, that's enough of my rant on that topic.

Okay, as far as the Court is concerned now, two very different topics.

1. The Supreme Court has just agreed to grant certiorari to a case over the federal ban of partial birth abortion. This law has been ruled unconstitutional by the 8th Circuit and a court in Nebraska. We'll see how it ends up very soon and we will see whether the change of staff of the SCOTUS will affect the state of aborion law in this country.

2. The Supreme Court just decided a new freedom of religion case today. The Court ruled, unanimously, oddly enough, that a little church in New Mexico can use an illegal drug in its tea for its worship services. Interesting case.

One further comment about current news: Bush is vowing to keep this Port deal. This is the first time I think I've ever agreed with Chuck Shumer, which scares me. I think we should think about this a little longer before we jump right into having a deal where a Dubai-based company controls our ports. I don't know what irons Bush already has in the fire, but I think perhaps he has some political reason (maybe he's got some deal with some other country) to come out so strongly against (he's threatened a veto, and we all know how seldom he vetoes anything) any efforts to delay the Port deal. Just my two cents :).

Congratulations to us :)

So, exciting news! ALthough I've already talked to everyoe who will read this on the phone (or such persons were there). WE'RE ENGAGED! So, that's pretty much all I have to say about it. So, see the pictures:








Okay - I changed pictures because I realized that the first and third pictures were the same picture, but the third was just darker and more difficult to see, so I changed the picture. It was way too late when I posted it last night, so that explains the problems.

Abortion Post # 2 - Addressing the Courts

I would like to begin this post with a caveat: considering the volatile state of the SCOTUS, what I discuss as the 'state of the law today' is merely that, the state of the law today. But, as I will detail later, it is unlikely that it will change very soon or much if at all if things stay as they are presently as far as the political and judicial scenes go. With that caveat in mind, allow us to delve into the 'fundamental right to an abortion'.

Starting with the history, let me tell you how we got to having a fundamental right to abortion. It all started with a little case called Griswold. *cue music from Waynes World*
In 1965, the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut. Connecticut had a law forbidding people from buying contraceptives. A married couple brought a lawsuit against the state. The Court, not content with merely stating that this couple (and others so situated) had the right to buy contraceptives and the state should stay out of the realm of prohibiting contraceptives, granted upon the people of the United States a very general 'right to privacy.' Justice Douglas 'found' this right in what we call a penumbra - in other words, he took the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 14th Amendments, and concluded that, since the Founders (and those who created the 14th Amendment) had carved out areas of life that could not be subject to governmental intrusion, the Founders had also intended to carve out a more general right to privacy. The Court has since backed away from the idea of a penumbra (mostly because many on the Court have ridiculed the idea as outlandish), but have clung to the idea that there is a very general right to privacy, usually addressing it under the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause, recognizing Substantive Due Process (which is really a topic for another day because it's rather convoluted).
Now, especially if you know nothing about substantive due process or the process of constitutional law, you may be asking yourself, so what?
Griswold was wrongly decided for these reasons:
1. There is no generalized right to privacy in the Constituion.
A. As much as we/some people might want it, it's not there - you can read the
entire document and you will never find it.
B. The Founders gave no indication that they ever intended a generalized right to
privacy.
1. In fact, one of the best arguments about this is the fact that they carved
out narrower exceptions to the general right of the government to intrude
into your life. Granted, there are a lot of these exceptions and soe of
them are quite broad, but none of them is as broad as the right of privacy
has become.
2. Substantive Due Process (the idea that there are some unenumerated rights that the government cannot infringe upon at all) is:
A. A ridiculous contradiction
1. Due process has the connotations of process
2. The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment itself never requires the
states not to infringe upon the rights of the people, it states that the
states must give due process if the states decide to infringe upon those
rights.
B. Judicially created, and completely arbitrary since it does not include rights
it should include if it is to be intellectually honest.
From Griswold come Griswold's progeny - Eisenstadt v. Baird, Skinner v. Oklahoma, Poe v. Ullman, etc. (Many of these were correctly decided as to the result - none of them were correctly decided as a matter of process.) From this line of cases comes Roe v. Wade, probably the Court's most infamous case (at least until Planned Parenthood v. Casey). There's the history of Roe. It is a case that comes from a line of cases with an original faulty reasoning.

However, even if we concede that /Griswold is not only good law, but was also correctly decided, we do not have to give up the argument on Roe.
Roe set up a three-trimester system to deal with abortion rights:
in the first trimester, the government cannot abridge the right to an abortion; in the second trimester, the state can abridge the right to abortion only to protect the health of the mother; in the third trimester, the state finally has an interest in the fetus and can ban the right to an abortion, so long as it includes the requisite exceptions.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decided in 1994 did away with the trimester system, because it was unworkable. In Casey, the Supreme Court, through a three justice panel and an opinion written by Justice O'Connor, acknowledged that Roe was not very well reasoned. Instead of overturning the decision, the SC declared that too many women had relied upon Roe for family planning and declined to overturn the case. The state of the law since Casey is thus: a state (or the federal) government cannot enact a law that puts an 'undue burden' on a woman's right to an abortion. Far from applying the usual standard of review when dealing with a fundamental right, the Court applied a stricter standard. Now, if the law is considered to put an undue burden on the right, it is unconstitutional (the spousal notification law at issue in Casey was an unde burden, but parental notifications are apparently not, just as a not terribly helpful example).

In Casey, the SC set forth several factors for overturning incorrectly decided precedent and decided that Roe should not be overturned.
The factors, and how the decision in Casey fails each, are as follows:
1. Workability - The SC itself realized in Casey that the system set up by Roe was unworkable. Not only did the SC realize and acknowledge this, the Court set up a different system, one based upon a due burden standard (a standard never before seen in fundamental rights cases).
2. Reliance - The SC basically decided the case based on this element by declaring that too many people had relied upon the decision (as noted above). However, the SC failed to consider other options to this reliance element, namely, that the legislature could do things that would make reliance a non-factor, such as make the effective date one year in the future. This would give everyone a chance to get used to the idea that abortion on demand would no longer be around.
3. Whether related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine - okay, I'll give the Court this one, but only partially. The Roe decision had, before Casey been restricted and qualified by further laws and decisions, but perhaps not to the extent that it would have completely undermined the central holding.
and 4. Whether facts have so changed, or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application or justification. I give no quarter to the Court on this factor. Facts had changed, or at least our knowledge of facts had changed. The trimester system didn't work because the fetus was found to be viable much in advance of when the Court said that it was. There had been advances in technology that allowed us to see and hear the heart beat much sooner than we had previously believed it existed. All these facts proved that there was life before the first trimester and that abortion stopped a life.

One of the basic problems with Roe, and by extension, Casey, on a purely abortion related issue is that the Court set up a completely unworkable system with very little medical expertise. The Court is equipped to decide cases dealing with rights, but is not equipped to decide either when life begins or whether further scientific advances will create the necessary technology to tell whether the fetus is 'viable.'

Now, those are some of the issues with the abortion rulings. We're not finished, though, because, that is only the state of the law as it stands today. We have two new members of the court, prompting a bit of judicial vote-counting.

Currently on the court are 4 members who are adamantly opposed to overturning Roe, its progeny, or restricting in any way a woman's right to an abortion (Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens, and Souter). There are 2 current members who have, at one time or another, stated that Roe should be overturned (Justices Scalia and Thomas). There are two new members (Justices Alito (who wrote the appellate dissent in Casey) and Roberts (whom is assumed to be a conservative in favor of overturning Roe). So far, this seems to pit the Court 4-4 on the abortion issue. But wait, you say, there are no ties on the Court! That's right - and don't think I've forgotten the recalcitrant 9th member of the Court. Then, there is Justice Kennedy. Now, Justice Kennedy has voted on both sides of the abortion issue. He helped write the opinion in Casey, but he voted against allowing partial-birth abortions in Stenberg v. Carhart, writing his own dissenting opinion stating that he did not question the essential holding in Roe.

Okay, well, this has gone long enough. Next time, I will be addressing how the debate has been commandeered and skewed. This topic will also address what happens if Roe is overturned.

Abortion, post #1

In this post, I am going to address why abortion is wrong.

The debate about abortion comes down to two issues:
1. Is the fetus a human child?
2. Is a pregnancy such a violation of a woman's right not to be uncomfortable that it warrants terminating it?

These are two separate questions, and I will address them so.

Number 1.
The reason that the debate really comes down to this big question is, if the fetus is a hunan life, to terminate the pregnancy is to end a human life, thus, it is murder in the strict sense of the word (it obviously cannot be suicide or natural death, the only other options). If the fetus is not a human life, then, it is merely a clump of cells and to terminate it is the equivalent of cutting a wart off your toe. (sorry for this gross analogy :), but this is rather a gross subject, wouldn't you agree?)
This explains the importance of answering this question. Most people on the pro-choice side of the aisle refuse to acknowledge this question because they know that if they do, they will have to face the possibility that it is a human life (this is similar to those who deny the existence of God - if they acknowledge there is something higher, they might have to face the fact that they can't just be selfish and live for themselves).

To answer this question, we can look at some simple facts:
I. The distinct life of an individual being begins at its conception
A. The individual's unique genetic fingerprint originates at
conception.
B. The unborn rapidly develops physically into a composite of different kinds of
cells which never happens with any other kind of human cell.
C. The unborn's body is not the woman's body.
1. The unborn can be a different gender
2. The unborn can have a different blood type
3. The unborn has different DNA and unique genetic
fingerprints and a different brain and central nervous system
D. The unborn is growing biologically. There is never a period
of non-life from conception to birth.
II. How the unborn differ from the newborn (4 waya) and reasons that these differences do not disqualify them from being human
A. Size or physical appearance - the unborn doesn't look like a person
1. Size does not equal value (in general, men are larger than women - more
intrinsic value?)
2. The term that describes the destruction of large groups of human beings
simply because of their physical appearance is called ethnic cleansing
B. Level of development - the unborn does not have the ability to do things
those who are born can
1. No one forfeits their right to life just by losing abilities, why should
we forfeit that right by not having developed them yet?
C. Environment - the unborn isn't located in the right place as 'real' persons
1. Why do we lose value just by moving from one area to another?
2. Do, or should, the six inches between the newborn and the unborn justify
ending the unborn's life?
D. Degree of dependency - the unborn is physically dependent upon others - not
viable and can't survive outside the womb
1. Babies of all sizes and shapes are dependent upon others - try leaving a
baby at home for two days
Okay, there's the evidence with which we can answer question one - is the fetus a human being. I think we can see that the evidence leans toward a yes answer. And, if we answer yes, then, the claim that "I don't agree with abortion but women should have a choice" must fail because we must look at abortion the same way we look at homicide - if the person is a human being, we cannot allow someone to end his/her life.
At this point, I would like stop to give credit where it is due (a lot of this, although not all, is from this source):
Making Abortion Unthinkable copyright 2001 Gregory Koukl, Scott Klusendorf, Stand to Reason.
And I would like to ask for comments - did I leave anything out? Not think of anything? If you decide to comment, please note which question you are commenting on, because I'm moving on to the next question.

Question number 2 - even if we answer the first question yes (although remember that these two questions are separate), is the burden on the woman justification of for terminating that pregnancy?
This is actually going to be addressed in the next two posts, as I discuss the Supreme Court's determination that a woman's right to privacy, no, wait, right not to be unduly burdened (whatever that means) in her quest for an abortion (I'm not sure, considering what the Court has said about abortion), outweighs the state's interest in protecting the life inside her.

Abortion Thread Introduction

UPDATE: check out the post on Megan's blog - today's and yesterday's - they're pretty funny.

As the title suggests, this post is going to be an introduction to a topic that will take several posts to get through (I have too much to say on the subject, so each of the posts will probably be too long). Here are the posts I'm thinking we'll get through:

#1: Why abortion is objectively wrong/sinful (I don't want to attach anyone, but there is a reasoned explanation for it) and therefore, why Christians should not be heard to be saying, "I would never get one (allow someone I love to get one), but women should have the choice."
#2: Why Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, regardless of whether you accept post #1 or not, starting with a little known case called Griswold v. Connecticut.
#3: How the 'pro-choice' have hijacked the debate, through the language and emotional responses.
#4: The possible future(s) of abortion with the new changes on the SCOTUS and possible future new members.

Okay, I think that pretty much covers what I want to say about it - if I decide to add something else, I will do so.
Just in case the prior sections do not clue you into where I am coming from, here it is: I am pro-life and I believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided for several reasons, not just because abortion is wrong. I always like to let people know where I'm coming from before I start anything. So, now that we're introduced, watch for the next posts!