North Dakota appears intent on triggering another round of litigation in the hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade. North Dakota’s House of Representatives has voted 51-41 to declare that a fertilized egg has all the rights of any person. The vote would make abortion murder.
Minot Republican Dan Ruby previously sponsored other bills banning abortion but they all failed. Strangely , Ruby argues that the bill is compatible with Roe v. Wade: “This is the exact language that’s required by Roe v. Wade. It stipulated that before a challenge can be made, we have to identify when life begins, and that’s what this does.” That is a pretty convenient reading of the case and its progeny of cases. It misses the repeated holdings that states cannot deny a woman the right to choose in such cases.
With Democrats in control, some activists may view this Supreme Court as the best they are going to get for some time. Before any further changes occur, they may want to try one more time to further narrow or outright overturn Roe.
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Religion is the curse of mankind
Sanity prevails in the North Dakota Senate — for now :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/ap_on_re_us/abortion_restrictions
Buddha,
**I don’t carry on discussions with people who insist on basing their faulty logic in a lie. I made that clear.**
I’m sorry you feel that way. Declaring that I have faulty logic is not the same as proving that you don’t. Its interesting that you are the one who insulted and demeaned, yet strangely, are also the one who is so offended that you have chosen to ignore me. That speaks volumes. Take some lessons in civility from Mespo.
Mespo,
Interesting viewpoint. What if the premature child would be an “unnecessary financial burden” to the parents? Why would they not have any right to terminate the child’s life?
I’d be surprised if this even made it to the Supreme Court, after Planned Parenthood v. Casey. You can’t tell me this doesn’t create an undue burden.
Carlin clips here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TBGt5K0s8c
Generally, the term ‘fetus’ applies when a heartbeat can first be detected – around eight weeks. The ‘quickening’ is estimated to occur around the sixteenth week.
Catholics for choice.org has an interesting site and a magazine called ‘Choice’ where this 1996 article, linked below, appeared. It’s interesting to note that it’s only been since 1869, 100 years after Blackstone, that the Catholic Church established it’s ‘position’ on abortion as ‘a sin worthy of excommunication’
– as was murder. And divorce, for that matter! When locking horns with modern christians, I’d stick with quoting Popes and the Saints.
http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/Law111/CatholicHistory.htm
More historical background from ASU:
http://embryo.asu.edu/encyclopedia/concepts/?getObject=embryo:124810
Roman Catholic Church Quickening
…’ Many early Church leaders and publications, such as the Didache, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Basil the Great, and others, also indicated that quickening was not used to determine the value of life in the womb. Later Catholic theologians, leaning heavily on Greek philosophers like Aristotle, declared a distinction in the severity of the crime of procured abortion based on a particular point in development. Indeed, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas both cited a point after conception, generally the point of quickening, as the moment at which the life in the womb becomes human, meaning ensouled with a rational human soul. For Augustine and Aquinas, intentional abortion was always an offense against God but after the point of ensoulment it was much more so. These and other Church theologians often declared that abortion after quickening was a highly immoral action, worthy of immediate excommunication and/or the legal penalty for homicide…’
Gyges:
I defer to you and Patty C. I believe the first stage of Embryogenesis is the zygote, then blastocyst which is about 100 or so cells,and finally the fetus, or at least that is what I recall from freshman biology.
Clint,
mespo’s answer stands.
As for you, I told you I was done with you.
Was that too complicated?
This is the last time I’ll repeat myself. Address others if you have questions. Not that I expect you to do that. Zealots are as zealots do. Just don’t expect an answer, Biblical literalist. I don’t carry on discussions with people who insist on basing their faulty logic in a lie. I made that clear.