Justice Blackmun's Warning as to the demise of Roe v. Wade — Page 3

And so it begins.

Perhaps you misinterpreted my post.

While I don't have the time to do all of the legal research right now, my comment was directed at people assuming that Roe only affects the right to abortiions - hit has much broader implications. Within the past few years, there was great celebration in the gay community when the Supreme Court overturned a law that outlawed anal sex. Part of the basis of this was based in part on the same reasoning for Roe.

I wasn't talking about marriage. Which is a whole separate issue.

I really don't understand your post.

All I was trying to point out is that Roe has a much farther reach than just the right for a woman to have an abortion. I never heard the right to marriage be arued in the context of the right to control one's body or government control over you sexual organs. You could I guess make a reach, but one had nothing to do with the issue I raised.

I hope your next cup of coffee is better than the last.

Sixteen years ago Justice Harry Blackmun warned of the demise of Roe v. Wade.

Roe is not just about the rights of women. It represents freedom that trancends beyond reproductice choice.

Today is a Very Dark Day for the right of privacy which protects women, men, straight, gay.

Here is a part of Justice Blackmun’s Dissent in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989):

Although today, no less than yesterday, the Constitution and the decisions of this Court prohibit a State from enacting laws that inhibit women from the meaningful exercise of that right, a plurality of this Court implicitly invites every state legislature to enact more and more restrictive abortion regulations in order to provoke more and more test cases, in the hope that, sometime down the line, the Court will return the law of procreative freedom to the severe limitations that generally prevailed in this country before January 22, 1973. Never in my memory has a plurality announced a judgment of this Court that so foments disregard for the law and for our standing decisions.

The plurality opinion is filled with winks, and nods, and knowing glances to those who would do away with Roe explicitly, but turns a stone face to anyone in search of what the plurality conceives as the scope of a woman's right under the Due Process Clause to terminate a pregnancy free from the coercive and brooding influence of the State. The simple truth is that Roe would not survive the plurality's analysis, and that the plurality provides no substitute for Roe's protective umbrella.

I fear for the future. I fear for the liberty and equality of the millions of women who have lived and come of age in the 16 years since Roe was decided. I fear for the integrity of, and public esteem for, this Court.

He continued in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) :

I do not underestimate the significance of today's joint opinion. Yet I remain steadfast in my belief that the right to reproductive choice is entitled to the full protection afforded by this Court before Webster. And I fear for the darkness as four Justices anxiously await the single vote necessary to extinguish the light.

But, we are reassured, there is always the protection of the democratic process. While there is much to be praised about our democracy, our country, since its founding, has recognized that there are certain fundamental liberties that are not to be left to the whims of an election. A woman's right to reproductive choice is one of those fundamental liberties. Accordingly, that liberty need not seek refuge at the ballot box.

Just a reminder as the election nears!

CNN reports that the Robert's Court has begun the destruction of Roe.

Updated On: 4/18/07 at 10:21 AM

It is only on the Breaking News headline. I will post once the story is up.

brd, this is truly frightening. I interviewed Bill Baird (the social reformer/pro-choice activist) when I was in college in the '90s...he warned us not to be complacent, and that this was coming.

so's harry reid evidently since he voted for it and pat leahy too and 15 other democratic senators and 65 members of the house who voted for this bill to become law. if i were you, i'd start campaigns now to have them recalled.

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Here's the voice of one American woman who doesn't feel betrayed with restrictions on partial birth (third trimester) abortions.

papa, i know that you are smart enough to understand that this is not a political issue!

Kelz, and Moonie, this is not a decision about a particular procedure, but a citizen's right to make a difficult choice without the federal government interfering.

You mean rare? My grandmothers, my mother, my mother in law, my aunts, my sisters, my sisters in law, my nieces, my daughters, my grandchildren should decide what is "repugnant", and not you!

Wife or fetus?

Semantics, brd. We used to hang people from the neck until they were dead, but that procedure has been deemed cruel and unusual punishment. So now we just zap 'em or shoot 'em full of lethal drugs.

Let's say a crazy gunman shoots your third trimester pregnant wife through the belly, killing the fetus. Murder. He's charged and convicted and a nation mourns this poor woman's loss.

Or a drunken driver takes out a pregnant woman in a senseless accident. 2 counts manslaughter.

Let's say a medically trained doctor sucks the brains out of your third-trimester pregnant wife's fetus in order to deliver a brain-dead baby. Abortion. The doc's patted on the back for preserving the woman's right to choose.

It is about the procedure. One which, under current laws, she had a good 6 months prior to the "necessity" of this particular procedure to consider.