The significance of rights.

No right of one overrides the right of another.

 

So you are admitting that a fetus is "another"? That opens this discussion up that a fetus is a human being, that has the same rights as everyone else. But we have in place to kill them arbitrarily, against their human rights, for no better reason than to unburden irresponsible males from caring for those humans once they are born.

 

The whole point of reproduction is to continue the species. That would mean that every life is meaningful. The categorization of fetus or personhood is something invented to give an arbitrary timing for any sequence of events that is chosen to be valued at the time, in our case, convenience. In some indigenous American cultures menstruation is understood as the loss of another and certain cultural traditions do not allow women to participate or even be in the same vicinity of their religious preparations as it would be considered to be in our terms "bad luck".

 

There are arguments for personhood that I find compelling, but it's interesting that those same arguments are ignored in the case of abortion. To me, there seems to be a double standard.

 

Then it is up both you and Shiva is to provide rationale to the idea of natural rights, can you do that .. because I can provide rationale why there is no such thing as inalienable/natural rights.

 

Many confuse the word "inalienable" (not alienable; not transferable to another or capable of being repudiated) with "inviolable" (secure from violation or profanation <an inviolable law> secure from assault or trespass) and the two are not the same. They somehow believe that because an inalienable right can be violated that it does not exist and yet the very reason for government in the United States, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, was the fact that our inalienable rights will be violated and that we create government to safeguard against those violations.

 

Thank you Shiva_TD, I kind of knew this would be your response based on other debates we have had .. I was hoping you wouldn't reply until after Beast Mode though, as I wanted to see if he could work it out for himself the difference between inalienable and inviolable rights. .

 

Ok, that makes sense.

 

What is your definition? Shiva basically has a good explanation that inalienable rights doesn't mean inviolable rights, which is the point of law protecting inalienable rights.

 

Because this thread addresses abortion we need to point out that the Roe v Wade decision, while citing the 14th Amendment also addressed the protection of our unenumerated Inalienable Rights protected by the 9th Amendment. The Supreme Court indirectly addressed the Inalienable Right of Self in it's reference to the 9th Amendment in Roe v Wade that is not an enumerated Right of the Person in the US Constitution but which is the fundamental Inalienable Right from which all others are derived. Ultimately it cited the 14th Amendment but the citation of the 14th Amendment was based upon the Right of Self of the Woman that is protected by the 9th Amendment.

 

What's the right of self?

 

Constitutional Protection only applies to a HUMAN BEING.

As ruled and defined by the U.S. Supreme Court a Human Being must be BORN and either birthed from the womb or removed via C-Section and is capable of living either on it's own or with mechanical assistance and must have Higher Brain Function....as a Fetus that is born without a HEAD or without a BRAIN or without Brain Function is in effect DEAD and not a Human Being.

Because of this VERY SPECIFIC DETAILED RULING.....no Constitutional Protections and Rights applying to a Human Being having PERSONAGE will or can apply to a FETUS.

THAT...is the LAW.

AboveAlpha

 

In your opinion, did the Roe v Wade decision have a robust enough argument to choose that the 14th amendment is justified by the 9th amendment in not allow the same protections to an unborn human? Or is there more that should be deliberated over?

 

This requires clarification because Constitutionally protected Rights only apply the the Person (that is a human being). The fact that historically there was no precedent that a Person existed prior to birth, undisputed by the attorneys advocating in defense of the abortion laws, the Supreme Court properly ruled that a "fetus" is not a person but at natural viability it was a "potential person" and imposed a pragmatic limitation upon the Woman's Freedom to Exercise her Inalienable Right of Self (protected by the 9th Amendment) to have an abortion at the natural viability of the fetus.

Anti-abortionists that want to argue for the "Rights of a Fetus" need to actually read and understand Roe v Wade but I've found none that have taken the time to do this.

 

In another thread I just read a woman was forced to have a C-section, a forced medical procedure. When she tried to sue for violation of her rights , it was determined that

""state&#8217;s interest outweighed Laura&#8217;s First, Fourth and Fourteenth amendment rights""


She lost. So does that mean we really have no rights? Or just women have no rights?

You seem to be very knowledgeable about all this and I'm just trying tio get my head around it all.

 

Roe v Wade was a very well presented decision by the US Supreme Court and it address the "Person" and not when life originated or even "human being" as a Person is always a human being and Rights only exist for the Person.

While I believe that the Supreme Court could have based it's decision solely upon the 9th Amendment as it often does the Supreme Court will reference the 9th Amendment when applicable and then base it's decision on a more specific provision in the Constitution. In Roe v Wade it happened to be the 14th Amendment.

One fact that I believe people need to understand is that post Bill of Rights Constitutional Amendments enumerating the Rights of the Person were all based upon violations of the 9th Amendment. We really shouldn't have needed the 13th Amendment that ended slavery because slaver violated the unenumerated Rights of the Person protected by the 9th Amendment. We really shouldn't have required the "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment or the establishment of natural born citizenship based upon Jus Soli in the 14th Amendment because both were unenumerated Rights of the Person protected by the 9th Amendment. We really shouldn't have required the 19th Amendment to allow women the Right to Vote because their equality as a person and their Right to Vote was an unenumerated Right protected by the 9th Amendment.

In all of these cases we have Constitutional Amendments that are addressing violations of the unenumerated Rights of the Person that are protected by the 9th Amendment.

I can foresee future Amendments where the unenumerated Rights of the Person protected by the 9th Amendment are being violated today.

Permanent immigrant residents in the United States should be allowed to vote in federal elections because they are also a part of the "people of the United States" and, in fact, our Congressional districts and State representation in the House (as well as the electoral college) are based upon all residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status. The "Right to Vote" applies to all of those subjected to the authority of the government and not just to citizens. Citizens have certain privileges and immunities but they don't have any Rights because Rights are applicable to ALL People.

I can foresee a Constitutional Amendment striking down our immigration laws because the "Person" has an Inalienable Right of Liberty related to immigration. As Thomas Jefferson argued the Right of Expatriation (i.e. the Right to Immigrate from one's native country to a foreign country) is an Inalienable Right of the Person and it is an unenumerated Right of the Person protected by the 9th Amendment.

I know, I'm ahead of the game on this because many Americans still advocate the violations of the Inalienable Rights of the Person but that has always been the case which is why unenumerated Inalienable Rights of the Person are so often violated by our government which eventually drives the need for enumeration by a new Constitutional Amendment.

With all of that said, as I mentioned, the 9th Amendment's protections of the Inalienable Right of Self of the Woman related to her Freedom to Exercise that Right by having an abortion was enough for the Roe v Wade decision but the 14th Amendment provided enumeration that the US Supreme Court could refer to in it's decision.

The Supreme Court generally refers to enumerated protections as opposed to relying on the unenumerated Rights of the Person protected by the 9th Amendment exclusively but will mention the protections of the unenumerated Rights which it did do in Roe v Wade. At least that's what I've found in those cases where the 9th Amendment is referred to in Supreme Court decisions. I don't recall any Supreme Court decision that was exclusively based upon the 9th Amendment although I believe it should be enforced more than it is today.

 

Definition of what. Inalienable rights or inviolable rights, there is certainly a good argument to say that inalienable rights do not exist, and as far as I am aware there are no inviolable rights.

Inalienable rights are defined as - "That which is inalienable cannot be bought, sold, or transferred from one individual to another. The personal rights to life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States are inalienable. Similarly, various types of property are inalienable, such as rivers, streams, and highways."

There are already plenty of cases where inalienable rights have been violated, and as the right to life and liberty are supposed to be inviolable rights as well as inalienable rights then the fact they have been violated says to me that there are no inviolable rights either.

I did a quite long thread on the subject where it applies in abortion - http://www.politicalforum.com/abortion/329575-abortion-violates-unalienable-right-life.html

 

Stop right there. The rest was based upon laws and applications but did not define or further the understanding of the Inalienable Rights of the Person. The above definition is accurate and they exist without government and in spite of government so leave the "law" out of it.

As I've noted before the criteria to establish what is an inalienable right is quite simply.

"An inalienable right is inherent in the person, not dependent upon other persons, cannot infringed upon the inalienable rights of another person, nor can it impose an involuntary obligation upon another person."

The foundation for inalienable rights always begins with the Inalienable Right of Self of the person. The person is a sovereign individual. All other inalienable rights are dependent upon this fundamental inalienable right of the person.

We often have a distorted understanding of inalienable rights though. For example the homesteading of land by a "settler" violates the rights of the "nomad" to use that land so there is no inalienable right of property related to the land.

Ownership of land is based upon the ancient belief in the "divine right of kings" where "God" gave the monarch the land, natural resources and even the people living on the land. Today we refer to having "Title to Land" which is the adoption of the use of "Royal Title" granted by the monarch to persons (i.e. Royal Titles such as duke or earl) where with their "Title" came the "Title to the land and the people on the land" that the monarch gave them authority over. Of course that "Title of Royalty" was revokable by the monarch as was the land that they had "Title" to.

Plantations in the Southern United States prior to the Civil War were perfect examples of the "divine right of kings" in America where the plantation owner owned the land, natural resources and the people (slaves) that were on the land. We abolished royal titles but then kept the practice of the divine right of kings granted by God in the United States as opposed to addressing the Inalienable Rights of the Person that the Declaration of Independence advocated. The "Western expansion" of the United States where the land of the Native-American tribes were taken by force was based upon the "divine right of kings" which violated the inalienable rights of the Native-Americans.

 

Thank you Shiva, you have in a most elegant way actually added to my argument that the right to self (autonomy) is first and foremost the defining right on which all others are built.

 

Abortion is totally unnecessary. Don't want to raise a child for 18+ years, give it up for adoption.

 

Pregnancy, even with today's modern medicine, is still life threatening.

And while I respect your opinion on abortion you have no "right" to impose that opinion upon others by law. The unenumerated Rights of the Woman are protected by the 9th Amendment which was cited in the Roe v Wade decision that established a woman has a Constitutionally protected Inalienable Right to have an abortion if she chooses to do so.

The question for you is do you support the US Constitution and the Inalienable Rights of a Person or not?

Express your opinion. Convince as many women as you can to not have an abortion, but don't violate their Rights as a Person and don't oppose the US Constitution is all that I would ask.

 

I think Shiva_TD answered this far better than I ever could.

 

Waiting period laws don't violate women's rights. There already are waiting periods on other legal services.

 

Agreed they don't, they just create more later term abortions. .. I thought pro-lifers wanted to reduce abortions not push them to later terms.

now are you going to respond to Shiva_TD's post or just ignore it?

 

Elective late term abortions are illegal.