I assume you're comfortable with the fact that we have empirical observations demonstrating space and time? — Isaac

So humor me. Demonstrate time for me. It seems I must start with the presumption that there is time or else I won't be able to understand anything you're talking about.

Not asserting. Asking. If a thing is constrained by some physical laws, why not all of them? — Isaac

Because I don't think time and space are simply physical laws, but they are part of a most fundamental conceptual framework that nothing can be understood without their presumption. Existence is not a property of something and time and space are fundamental components of existence. If you have a dog without hair, you have a hairless dog. If you have a dog outside space and outside time, it exists no where at no time, meaning you don't have dog at all.

And this is part of the bigger question about objects generally in terms of how much is the physical object and how much is imposed by our perceptions and conceptual framework.

So, the reason you can't have an existing mind that does not occur in space or time is because such a mind is by definition not in existence.

Do you not find it at all odd that the physical restrictions people tend to think the mind shares are all the easy ones they learnt in school (it's in a body, we can't read other people's, it stops when you're unconscious...) and the ones they reject are all the hard ones that only neuroscientists and cognitive scientists tend to understand? — Isaac

I don't think it odd at all. I see the things near my eyes and hear what is near my ears. Everywhere I experience a perception occurs right where my body is. And we don't read other people's minds. We hear what they tell us, watch how they gesture, and we notice all sorts of behavioral manifestations that often tell us what they might be thinking, but we don't see directly into their mind, as if to see a head is the same as to see a mind.

The point is that if you want 'minds', then have at them, but if they're this spooky stuff which cannot be seen, touched or otherwise amenable to empirical investigation, then they're not constrained by the world of objects (bodies, skulls, space-time). If they are that way constrained, then they're constrained by all of the empirical world, not just the biology you learned in college. — Isaac

If the distinguishing characteristic of spooky stuff is that which cannot be seen or touched, then your worldly examples of space and time would actually be spooky stuff.

You assert without explanation why a thing that is constrained by some physical forces must be constrained by all physical forces. That is, just because minds cannot be seen but brains can does not mean that minds cannot share other properties of brains, like that both exist in space and time.

And that is the bigger problem. Space and time are not properties at all but are required elements for comprehension. A dog that exists in neither space nor time does not exist, so it's hard to call it "a dog that exists." By the same token, for a mind to exist, it must exist in space and time, but because it shares the requirement with brains that it exist in space and time doesn't mean it is subject to all the same scientific descriptions.

And speaking of what is needed for comprehension speaks to yet another thing that we cannot see or touch, which is comprehension itself. Comprehension does, however, exist somewhere (between my hat and bow tie) and at some time (like right now) because if it didn't, it wouldn't exist.

That said you two might wanna look into the statistics of anal sex; someone in another thread claimed that it's more common among heterosexuals than homosexuals. — Agent Smith

Not sure what the stats show. I'd think hetero anal sex would occur more often in established relationships (and possibly monogamous) as that seems a bit adventurous for a casual hook up, but what does a middle aged suburbanite like me truly know of such things?

What I do know is that HIV and now monkeypox spread among gays at the fastest rate, but I do know heteros got HIV at higher rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. I'd imagine Sub-Saharan sexual activity has it's idiosyncrasies as well, so not sure why their experience was so different than Peoria.

There's always a way out. And I'm sure we don't mean death, which defeats the point. — L'éléphant

Right, I was talking about finding a way out of despair, not of life.

I shall name this village Melancholia, which sits in a flood prone depression next to the River Angst. The dark clouds are confined in the valley by the heights of Mount Despair and Mount Regret, where a true rain never falls, just an eternal cold drizzle.

Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.

And to add to this, the pox are typically located in and around the genitalia, anus, and into the rectum. https://www.yahoo.com/news/er-doctor-says-hes-sick-120000516.html

Since we know that the male gay community contracts monkeypox at rates greatly exceeding the straight community, and you reject the hypothesis that it has to do with the differing ways the two groups have sex, what do you propose the cause is? Is it that monkeypoxes prefer gay bars or just find the company of gay men more fulfilling?

You sound like a lot of fun!

I didn't read the article as being a political statement one way or the other about gay people, but just a statement of what the data shows and a proposed remedy.

And what follows from this? — Fooloso4

What follows from this is that abortion, if a right, is an unenumerated right, and that unless you believe the Court has the power to enumerate the unenumerated rights, you cannot hold abortion to be Constitutionally protected right under the 9th Amendment.

Now you're just making stuff up.
— Hanover

Nope: — Fooloso4

You argued that the basis for the Texas anti-abortion law was to provide the fetus with 14th Amendment protections. I said you were making that up. You responded by telling me that that the lawyers argued there was a legitimate state interest in protecting fetuses, as if the two have something to do with each other.

If there were an argument that fetuses have 14th Amendment rights, the remedy wouldn't be to pass duplicative anti-abortion statutory law reaffirming that right, but it would be to bring a claim on behalf of a murdered fetus pursuant to his rights being violated when he was aborted.

It is not quite so simple. Abortion was legal and protected. It did not become illegal simply because of state legislatures, but because the Supreme Court overturned its long-standing precedent. It removed that protection. And it is this than enabled states to implement "trigger laws" banning abortions. — Fooloso4

A quick history:

Abortion was statutorily prohibited in some states. The Court struck down those statutes and the statutes became void. The Court reversed its ruling and those statutes became valid. The Court illegalize abortion. The legislatures did. If the Court illegalized abortion, no legislature could legalize it.

Roe was not based on an unenumerated right to an abortion. It was based on a right to privacy. — Fooloso4

It's hard to make progress here because you're too focused on trying to contradict me than in listening to what I'm saying and you're not even paying attention to what you're saying.

The right to privacy was found to encompass the right to an abortion, and the right to privacy is NOT an enumerated right. That means that abortion, under Roe, was found to be based upon an unenumerated right.

From Roe:

"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."

The discussion of the 9th Amendment related more specifically to our discussion about Scalia's views on Constitutional interpretation, limiting the Court's power from enumerating the unenumerated rights.

The Texas law at issue in Roe was based on the theory that a fetus is a "person" protected by the 14th Amendment. Where in the Constitution do we find that a fetus is a person? — Fooloso4

Now you're just making stuff up. You've not actually looked up the Texas criminal code articles 4512.1 through 4512.6 as it pertained to abortion in the early 1970s and found within that code section a statement of intent of the legislature where they announced that they were passing a law based upon their understanding of a term within a post-civil war amendment to the US Constitution.

You've not found that because it does not exist. That's not how statutes are written. The legislature doesn't have to explain its basis when it passes laws.

The Constitution doesn't say anything about fetuses. That fact is entirely irrelevant. You have apparently begun to think that the amendments to the federal constitution have some bearing upon what laws a state can pass. Not only is that false due to the distinction between the state and federal authorities, but it's also not the case that the amendments empower Congress to pass laws.

What the legislature would not do was done by other means through the court. — Fooloso4

This makes absolutely no sense. It is the legislature and the legislature alone that has illegalized abortion. No Court has ever declared a fetus a person. If it had, then the Court would be striking down laws permitting abortion. It has never done that. Never. What the Court has clearly said is that the right to abort does not exist, which means the states are free to decide whether to legalize it or not.

Scalia's originalist interpretation continues to be influential in Supreme Court decisions. It is, however, problematic. It does not support the overturning of Roe. — Fooloso4

Of course it supports the overturning of Roe. He indicated that the Court lacks the authority to declare the unenumerated rights implicit in the 9th Amendment, and since abortion is most certainly not an enumerated right in the Constitution, it cannot be used to strike down state laws related to abortion.

That decision was a religious one masquerading as a Constitutional issue. — Fooloso4

The validity of the legal justifications has to be addressed even if you think you've uncovered some pretextual basis for the position. I do think there is an absurdity in the position that it is absurd to think the Constitution does not speak to abortion. That is, I can accept those arguments that extrapolate the right to abortion from the general theme of the document and I can even buy into the idea of substantive due process as being within the realm of reasonable analysis. What I cannot accept is the opposite, which is that any argument to the contrary is patently irrational. It's simply not the case that the Constitution clearly and unequivocally protects the right to abortion, meaning there is plenty of room of reasonable argument for either side. Assuming we don't care about outcome, we can at least admit that the question of whether abortion is a matter of Constitutional right or not really isn't all that clear.

The question is whether a fetus counts as a person. — Fooloso4

That might be your question, but that has nothing to do with the over-turning of Roe v. Wade. Dobbs was based upon there being no Constitutional right to abortion, not upon a finding that fetuses were people fully endowed with Constitutional rights and therefore worthy of protection.

And yet strike down laws is what the court did, even with all its empty talk of stare decisis. — Fooloso4

You're conflating case law with statutory law. In a common law system, a court will always have the power to rule on the meaning of a law and they will always have the power to reconsider their own precedent. How the courts rule when interpreting law is called "case law" No one has ever challenged the courts' power to create and later reverse its own case law. The question of whether a court is authorized to strike down a statute is a different matter. "Statutory law" references a law that has been democratically passed law through the legislative process. If a court can declare a law is unconstitutional, then that court will be considered a Constitutional Court. Not all Supreme Courts in all countries have that power.

So, my point was that the US Constitution does not state the Supreme Court is a Constitutional Court. That is a power the Court conferred upon itself. I am not challenging that decision, but I am pointing out that it is well within reason for the Court to limit the authority it conferred upon itself, which was the point of Scalia's comment when he said he would not expand the Court's authority to declaring what the unenumerated rights of the 9th Amendment are.

What the Court did in Dobbs was to refuse to strike down the Mississippi statute on the basis of unconstitutionality. Reversing Roe is not the striking down of a law. It's a reversal of precedent.

Is this compatible with the claim that a fetus has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or, for that matter, that children have these rights? According to this a child does not have right to determine the course of life, liberty, or happiness. More so, an early stage fetus, which does not and cannot exist except as part of the mother, does not have these rights. — Fooloso4

Your questions aren't pertinent to the issue being discussed. Specifically, Scalia was simply acknowledging that people have rights and that the Declaration says as much. He then explains that the Declaration is not a legal document that can be relied upon as authority for the protection of rights. He then states that the 9th Amendment similarly supports the notion that there are rights, and that it is a legal authority, but he clarifies that he does not believe the Constitution empowers the Court to declare what those rights are. Keep in mind that no where in the Constitution does it say the Supreme Court has the power to strike down laws or to declare what rights exist, especially not those that are unenumerated. Scalia suggests that the legislature can decipher what those rights are and can then decide how best to protect them, but he denies that power is within the purview of the Court.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

The consent of the governed does not include the consent of fetuses, or children, or, at the time it was written, women. — Fooloso4

Again, this is not a legally binding document, but to the extent you're arguing laws have been passed that don't comport with the ideology of the Declaration, that's true, but it really has nothing to do with what we we're talking about.

Again, fetuses, children, and women were not includes among the People who had this Right. Further, "the People" is not the same thing as an individual person. An individual person does not have the right to alter or abolish or institute new Government. — Fooloso4

The Declaration is stating very clearly that there are rights that exist independent of the government and that the government is required to protect those rights, and if it doesn't, the government is unjust and should justly be abolished. Under this reasoning, any single person who abolished an unjust government would be just.

If one is to interpret the Constitution as an originalist then one needs to take a look at abortion practice and prohibitions at that time. It was legal and practiced without prohibitions. This changed in the mid-1800s. — Fooloso4

No, that's not what an originalist position would hold. No one suggests that you should interpret the Constitution by looking at what the various laws of the states held at the time.

There is no way they would have thought you were French; that was them publicly humiliating you for having the temerity to be in France and not speak French. Next time go to Spain. It is of course sacrilege to bend a bagutte, or put it in a bag, but since it sounds like some supermarket and not a proper boulangerie, it wouldn't have been a real baguette anyway, and carrying a folded baguette about town would be a further humiliation akin to having the scarlet letter 'A' embroidered on your dress. — unenlightened

How did you know what my dress looked like? Were you the old man lecturing me?
.

Reminds me of a story. I'll try to make it link back to the OP, but more so I want to tell my story.

So I was in France, speaking broken French, trying to buy a baguette, and the cashier asked me something that was far beyond the standard exchange one would expect in such a purchase, so I just nodded agreeably, having no idea what she was saying, but she kept insisting upon a better answer, so I apologized, telling her I didn't understand her, that I spoke English. The lady behind me told me I was being asked if it would be ok if the cashier bent the baguette in half to fit it in the bag, and then I agreed, although I thought that was an odd thing to do and I would likely have been confused had I been asked that same thing in English in America. An old man behind me then lectured me on the requirement that I speak only French when in France.

That's a story about bread, baguettes, and context, where "I don't understand" means "I don't care about your culture." I mean, how was I supposed to decipher "can I bend your bread in half" from the few words I understood in the context I described?

Next time I'll communicate better by wearing my bright white tennis shoes, my baseball cap, and my cargo shorts so they won't confuse me for being French.

Aristotle wrote about metaphor, and you only have to read the Odyssey to see lots of them. On top of that, it seems that they're deeply ingrained in all languages, hence are not modern. — Jamal

From my reading of George Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By, I'm not really sure where literalism end and metaphor begins.

Even speaking of beginnings and endings of linguistic concepts presents them as physical objects with starting and ending orientation, so that was arguably a metaphorical statement by me.

It's all very blurred to me, which it is, but, again, it's not literally blurry.

Last presidential year election, I voted in all races except for President. Under the theory votes must be earned and not that you should just choose the lesser of two evils, I'm proud of my vote.

That comment sent my mind on a journey in which I explored the role of storytelling in relationships and noted the difficulty in creating satisfying endings in life. — Jamal

If I can evoke a pensive moment, especially one burdened with sentimentality, i feel I've been successful.

More on satisfying endings in life:

I think of sentimentality as akin to regret but distinguished from regret in that instead of wishing you could travel back in the past to change your errors, you wish you could travel back and relive the romanticized perfection of what once was. It shares with regret the impossibility of correction and so a melancholy.

This gets at it:



It only makes sense if you saw the movie.

Good chat.

It’s an odd thing what happened. I loved it, was totally into it, totally involved and swept up, but with around a hundred pages to go I don’t know what happened, I just dropped it. It was like okay, that was a lot of fun, but it’s boring now and I don’t need to read on — Jamal

Describes too many of my relationships.

You can't just look to the text of the Constitution to interpret it. — Michael

But no one has done that. The determination of what a "person" is was obviously outside the text because, as acknowledged, there was no definitions section and reference was made to other uses when the document was written. I also made repeated references to the context in which the documents were written, with the 1st Amendment being after the Revolutionary War and the 14th after the Civil War in order to decipher meaning and intent.

I'm curious as to what the Constitution cannot be read to mean. If I interpret "person" to mean a fetus, then abortion is murder. The problem is that a fetus that is traveling down the birth canal is to me very much a person, and I don't at all find the Roe Court's claim that no fetus is to be considered a person at all persuasive or complete. It's as much nonsense to me to claim that personhood begins at conception as it does to claim it begins when the umbilical cord is snipped. These bright lines just don't exist as much as we may want them to.

So, I'm all aboard an analysis that takes seriously the personhood question. That should be done from a Constitutional perspective, and I would be fully opposed to any law that restricted a woman's elective medical procedure to remove a non-person mass of cells from her uterus.

It protects against laws that would limit liberty and privacy and unenumerated rights. It is up to the Supreme Court to decide what counts as a "liberty", what matters are "private". and what those unenumerated rights are, as the Constitution doesn't spell it out. In Roe and Casey they decided that medical procedures like abortion are covered by this, but that the ambiguity regarding personhood warranted some restriction, and that the point of viability is a reasonable time to consider the rights of prenatal life to take precedence over the mother's. — Michael

Consider, though, the other argument, from Justice Scalia in Toxel v. Granville (2002):

“In my view, a right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims “all Men…are endowed by their Creator.’ And in my view that right is also among the ‘othe[r] [rights] retained by the people’ which the Ninth Amendment says the Constitution’s enumeration of rights ‘shall not be construed to deny or disparage.’ The Declaration of Independence, however, is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution’s refusal to ‘deny or disparage’ other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even further removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people. Consequently, while I would think it entirely compatible with the commitment to representative democracy set forth in the founding documents to argue, in legislative chambers or in electoral campaigns, that the State has no power to interfere with parents’ authority over the rearing of their children, I do not believe that the power which the Constitution confers upon me as a judge entitles me to deny legal effect to laws that (in my view) infringe upon what is (in my view) that unenumerated right.”

I don't agree with your analysis of Roe or Casey in terms of the Court ever having considered the rights of the fetus.

Roe specifically held:

"The Constitution does not define 'person' in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to 'person.' The first, in defining 'citizens,' speaks of 'persons born or naturalized in the United States.' The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. 'Person' is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, Art, I, § 2, cl. 2, and § 3, cl. 3; in the Apportionment Clause, Art. I, § 2, cl. 3;53 in the Migration and Importation provision, Art. I, § 9, cl. 1; in the Emoulument Clause, Art, I, § 9, cl. 8; in the Electros provisions, Art. II, § 1, cl. 2, and the superseded cl. 3; in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, Art. II, § 1, cl. 5; in the Extradition provisions, Art. IV, § 2, cl. 2, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in §§ 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible prenatal application. All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."

Note as well that the Court's analysis refers to intent of the authors with its reference to 19th century practices (tagging @Benkei on this, as this is an example of original intent being used by the liberal wing to establish the right to abortion).

My reason for pointing this out is that the Court found no ambiguity with the term "person," and they have never afforded rights to the fetus or even attempted to weigh the rights of the fetus against those of the mother. The Roe Court admitted "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment." That is, the Roe Court indicated that if the fetus were a "person," abortion would be prohibited under the 14th Amendment, which is why it was critical for the Court to find the fetus was not a person.

The analysis of Roe is a bit convoluted, only arguing that the State may regulate abortion to the extent it protects the health of the mother, with no reference to the fetus:

"With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the 'compelling' point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health. Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.

This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this 'compelling' point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State."

The closest it comes to referencing the rights of the fetus is in the statement:

"With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the 'compelling' point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother."

But even here the Court is very careful to refer to it as "potential life", and not "the fetus," which would be a very different statement. The former referencing a general view that the State has the right to encourage life to come about, while the latter would indicate that an actual, particular fetus is endowed with rights.

The Casey opinion didn't change this basic framework of Roe, but instead abandoned the strict trimester framework of Roe with an evolving viability standard based on recent science.

Your phrasing of it seems like a strawman appeal to ridicule. — Michael

I'd call it just snarky, not really attempting to make any important point.

Why is a ratified treaty outside of your tradition? That requires representatives of the people to agree to it. Seems rather relevant... — Benkei

Your criticism isn't aimed at the right, but at the left as well because no one used this as an argument.

Anyway, I'm not arguing this specific case, just pointing out literal interpretations don't exist and that literal and originalist interpretation are not suitable. These are aberrations resulting from tradition but have little to do with logical rigour and even less with justice and fairness. — Benkei

This has nothing to do with logical rigor. Intellectual honesty requires you reach the opposite conclusion you have.

I could easily lay out what progressive morality demands in terms of abortion rights, gay marriage rights, transsexual rights, and those rights highly valued by all secular humanists. I think we could find general agreement in what they are.

Step two is the part that's a bit disingenuous. It's the part where we start finding every one of those rules in the Constitution, as if the framers had the foresight to have written such an expansive and malleable document capable of foretelling good from evil. What makes step two particularly problematic is that those who subscribe to a whole different set of morality, who don't see any wisdom in the progressive morality we laid out, are able to find the Constitution entirely silent to what we think is obviously there.

So then this comes down not to constitutional interpretational schemes as much as public policy. The power of the Court is used like any political institution, which is to lend its power to those capable of securing it. That's what seems like is going on to me. Let's just admit that the reason we see abortion in the 14th Amendment is because that's the only way we can protect it because we're not going to get that protection from many of the legislatures.

By the State. But like with the First Amendment it might not apply to non-Government institutions. Whereas the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment might imply that a woman has the right to an abortion.

So perhaps it is unconstitutional for a State to outlaw abortion and for a State to provide/fund abortion services, meaning it must be left to individuals and private health care providers. — Michael

The 14th Amendment specifically states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

That indicates that if a "person" is within the jurisdiction of a state, that state cannot deny him equal protection under the laws. If a fetus is a "person," then that person would be afforded the same rights as any other person, meaning if it's illegal to kill you, it's illegal to kill that fetus. That Amendment, especially in light of when and why it was passed, cannot be read to mean anything other than every person must be equally protected under the law.

The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Note that this specifically applies to Congress (although later extended to the individual states, through the 14th Amendment ) making laws from prohibiting speech. It's for that reason it's limited to what the government can do but not what private companies could do.

Again, all this goes to original intent when contextualized to time and place. The First Amendment wanted to protect against a tyrannical centralized government (which is why it was not originally extended to the individual states) as had been rebelled against in the recent war.

The 14th Amendment was providing additional protections to the slaves freed under the 13th Amendment.

And apparently it was ensuring the right to abort a fetus in the 1st and 2nd trimesters from 1973 to 2022.

The point about the article is quite clearly that a literal interpretation doesn't exist and any reading of it needs to be backed up with additional interpretative techniques. — Benkei

It's sort of funny that we're debating how the article ought be interpreted, with you thinking it should be more broadly interpreted and me more narrowly.

The US has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, which would've made an excellent basis for broadening the scope and context for intepretation of the constitution but instead it looks at... checks notes... 1866 when the 14th Amendment was passed instead of 1980. This is again wilful stupidity at best but as we all know what it really is: conservative mendacity and bad legal reasoning. — Benkei

Americans generally don't care about documents outside their specific tradition, but you know that. At any rate, it wasn't like the liberal wing argued from the Convention. They too stayed within the generally defined lanes of what was considered persuasive authority in the US.

The key to this whole matter, from my perspective, is when fetuses are people deserving of rights, which has less to do with women's rights than fetal rights, which, alas, has never been addressed by the courts.

It doesn't. In fact, the Constitution doesn't explicitly state what counts as a person at all. And that's precisely why a judge needs to look beyond just what is explicitly stated.

So perhaps a case can be made that a foetus is a person and so State-supported abortion is unconstitutional. — Michael

The Constitution doesn't have a definition section for any of its terms, but it would seem if I were trying to determine whether abortion were permissible, with one side arguing that the fetus is a person and the other that it is not, I'd focus on that part of the 14th Amendment that refers to people and life as opposed to the part that refers to liberty. It stands to reason that if the fetus is a person, it cannot be deprived of liberty either. That just seems where the question obviously lies.

So long as we're having fun. That's what its all about.

Reading your article, I now know that if I'm trying to figure out if the statement "Citizens have the right to form associations freely" means that citizens and only citizens have the right to form associations freely and that non-citizens do not, or if it means that citizens have that right and we don't know what non-citizens have, we will need some sort of statutory interpretation system to clarify that. Got it. We need a system to clarify ambiguous statements.

Now I have to figure out why I read that article and how it applies to what I'm talking about.

The 14th Amendment, in relevant part under the Roe analysis states:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

We know must find an ambiguity that needs clarifying. Perhaps we're not sure what "liberty" means, but that's more a problem with vagueness, not ambiguity, but let's pretend that distinction doesn't exist so that we can continue this analysis under the article your provided.

Alright, I'm now going to try to use that article to better understand what "liberty" might mean and whether it extends to abortion. In doing so, I must ignore the fact that it probably has something to do with the mass emancipation that just occurred under the 13th Amendment and has nothing to do abortion, but leaving that aside as an idiotic effort at divining drafter intent, we must dig a bit deeper.

Upon digging deeper, we realize that 14th Amendment states, as it pertains to abortion:

First trimester: No restrictions can be placed on abortion
Second trimester: Abortions can be restricted only if narrowly tailored to protect the mother's health.
Third trimester: Abortions can be completely prohibited except to protect the health of the mother.

I now learn upon analysis that the Amendment was impregnated with all sorts of hidden meaning.

What to do though with the phrase "nor shall any State deprive any person of life"? Why does that avoid the same tortured interpretation?

Yes. They're idiots. The only reason this isn't obvious to you is because after 200 years of "golden rule" you don't know any better. It's unfortunate and is a source for injustice. Glad I don't live there. — Benkei

The trimester framework was so obviously present in the 14th Amendment, yet I was just too blind to see it. It's just surprising to learn the drafters were thinking about abortion at the close of the Civil War prior to even women having the right to vote.

I wish you'd reconsider your not wanting to move here. We can use your positivity.

The golden rule is a bastardisation of interpretative techniques available to people with half a brain. It's just wilful stupidity. — Benkei

Alright, so if in 1972, we were to sit 100 US lawyers in a room and asked them to read the Texas abortion law and then to read the text of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, how many do you believe would announce the state has no compelling interest in regulating an abortion within the first trimester? Pretty small number don't you think?

Would you think that those who didn't find that right to be idiots without half a brain?

When we deal with statutory interpretation, it's usually of limited consequence and it doesn't result in protests in the street. We just send the law back to the legislature to get it right if it doesn't comport with the will of the people. The courts are just doing their best to interpret the law, but they're not placing themselves in a position above the legislature and the people and telling them what must be the case. Since typically the remedy is straightforward and democratic, you don't get into all this philosophical debate. Turning a statute on its head to get a desired result is really just the game lawyers play, with really little thought spent on these ideological questions.

But here we're not really asking how we should interpret words, but we're asking a bigger question regarding the role of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court. If you see the role of the Court as the final check on the general reasonableness of the legislature and you see the Constitution as akin to the Bible, where it says only good things even when it says bad things, then it follows that the Constitution says abortion is acceptable, gay marriage is permitted, and all sorts of other things I generally agree with. The Justices on the Court are therefore well within their right to tell us that the 14th Amendment speaks about abortion just like the rabbis are well within their right to tell us that the Bible condemns stoning.

Maybe then the argument should be redirected against those with half a brain who think the role of the Court ought to be limited, but then there are plenty of countries (the Netherlands for instance) who would never afford their courts the power to strike down democratically passed law even if their constitutions specifically forbade the conduct.

I harbor no illusions that the Court is entirely apolitical without an agenda, but I do think it follows that if a Court views its role as very limited in the US democratic structure, it will arrive at interpretational schemes that will act to limit its power.

Fundamentally the point I was making is that the pro-life position, if it is to be coherent, should support the development of artificial wombs. — _db

And fundamentally, the point I'm making is that you have no evidence that conservatives are opposed to artificial wombs. You've made an empirical assertion that has no empirical support.

What have the liberals been doing in the artificial womb field?

And I realize the question is a bit complicated considering there is no such field.

My purpose in providing the primer to Judaic law was meant only to provide support for my criticism against the anti-religious crowd that they were arguing a strawman. That is, there are not meaningful numbers of people who believe in a literal interpretation of the 5 books of Moses and who use them as an exclusive source of truth.

Historically, there have been sects that have rejected the oral tradition and held to the views I criticized, but they haven't been around for thousands of years. The Sadducees, for example believed in the Torah as the literal and sole source of authority. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadducees

To take the position that the OT is the literal and sole source of truth runs you head first into the problem that the OT advocates stoning and other terrible acts. If you choose to creatively interpret those problematic verses, I question why you accept your own interpretation but not of the ancient rabbis.

What I really hear you saying, however, is something more innocuous, which is that you're troubled by the idea that much religious doctrine is obviously man-made, so you want to hold to the notion that the Torah, at the very least, is a reliable, untainted, authentic statement of God, unmitigated by the imprecise hand of man.

Can't help you there, though, because it's not.

If you actually care about fetuses, then you should support the development of technology that will make it less likely that a women will choose to have one. But nobody in the pro-life movement supports this, because they don't actually care about fetuses - they care about keeping women controlled. They don't want women to be relieved of this crucial weakness. They want women to be vulnerable to becoming pregnant and make up a bunch of bullshit about the rights of fetuses to obscure it. — _db

This is really nonsense. You completely fabricated a reality and then you concluded how it would turn out in a way that exactly met your biases. The reality you fabricated was one were there existed the possibility of artificial wombs, and then you next fabricated that right wingers were interfering with the development of these artificial wombs, and then you concluded that the reason they interfered with the development of these hypothetical wombs was so that they could oppress that subgroup of women who were pregnant but who didn't want to be. That is, you reached the conclusion you were destined to reach by referring to some crazy science fiction hypothetical about artificial wombs.

Back to reality. Neo-natal care has seen great advancements over the years without interference from the right. Fetuses that would have never survived in years past now have a chance to survive due to advancements in medical science. I think from all sides of the political spectrum there would be great joy if we knew we could save babies at even earlier points in their development. There are plenty of both liberal and conservative parents who are right now standing in maternity wards in complete devastation as they watch their premies fighting for their lives. That is to say, no one is interfering with the discovery of new neo-natal treatment options and everyone is hoping for the day when neo-natal care is good enough that it can save babies in all stages of development.

Keep in mind, also, that what you're proposing in terms of an artificial womb would pose serious challenges to the logic of Roe v. Wade, which I assume you were in agreement with based upon your disagreement with it being overturned. Roe held that the State's interest in protecting the fetus increased as the fetus became viable outside the womb. The State's right to regulate the pregnancy in the first trimester was extremely limited, more expansive in the second, and extremely expansive in the third. If neo-natal care pushed viability back to the earliest moments of gestation (as you're suggesting with the artificial womb), then under the Roe logic, the woman's right to terminate the pregnancy would be reduced more and more, with the right existing only for a very limited time. Such is the problem with the trimester framework, which might offer another reason not to be so in favor of Roe.

Anyway, a question to throw back at you: If there were artificial wombs, if a pregnancy were terminated in the first week, would either parent have the right to refuse having the embryo placed in the artificial womb on the basis they didn't want to give birth to a child?

In order to say the parents have the right to object to placing the embryo in the artificial womb, I think you would have to argue that the embryo is not a person. But that does leave us with the question of what is a person, and I can't say I know any better than you where to draw that line, and I can at least understand (although not agree with) those who say personhood begins at conception.

Right-wing women are the class traitors par excellence - willing to masochistically sacrifice their sisters at the altar of phallocracy, just to get the meager privileges and honors bestowed upon them by the patriarchs. Collaborationists and cowards to the core, right-wing women fiercely cling to their masters, and jealously despise any women who has the courage to live for herself. — _db

Either that, or you're not listening to them when they tell you that they believe that human life begins at conception and they believe that it's required that the embryo and then developing fetus be protected as any other human being.

It's not a position I personally subscribe to, but I can at least listen to what they're saying in order to gain insight into what they believe as opposed to concocting some psychoanalysis I can cast upon them because it makes me feel superior to think I better understand them than they do themselves.

It's things like this that make it clear that the anti-abortion crowd is motivated by something else besides care for the life of a fetus - namely, the desire to keep women oppressed. — _db

I'm not sure what evidence you have that pro-lifers are opposed to artificial wombs. One reason such polling hasn't been done on that issue is because there's no such thing as artificial wombs. It's just a science fiction hypothetical you've created.

I also don't know what evidence you have that women consider pregnancy oppressive. I think many find the whole process hugely rewarding.

But sure, if you could incubate human embryos to birth with an artificial womb, the abortion debate would be moot.

I've not taken a hard line against any AA at all, but it's more a pragmatic objection in what I see really happening. Yes, the LGBT community, for example, has not been shown the compassion and respect it deserves, but has it been economically or academically oppressed such that it needs set asides? I really don't think that's where remedial measures are needed for that group.

There are white groups that arrived in the colonies as indentured servants, oppressed by the English long before they arrived, and to this day scraping by on the margins of society scattered through Appalachia. That cycle of poverty needs some response other than pandering politicians like Trump et al.

The best positioned African American is the affluent one, who can have the many advantages of wealth and receive the benefits of AA. Private school kids with professional parents have their path well paved, but they were going to be fine anyway. Do we really see kids from the hood being saved by AA? Aren't those the ones we're worried about?

It just seems like there's a better way to sort out who's been unfairly disadvantaged than through DNA tests. I accept the playing field is not level, but leveling it is far more complex than just dumping people into broad categories and going from there.

Well, given that there's been Affirmative Action, in effect, for straight, white male, Protestants (in the main) established in every manifest institution in North America since 1619, I don't see an equitable alternative to addressing persistent (perhaps intractable) structural inequalities. If not "permanent"", then for at least 247 more years (1969-2269) in its current, limited scope as redress(?) for the three centuries of 1619-1969 AA for white males (that continues). Besides, as I've pointed out here ↪180 Proof (link to data therein), in practice, white women have been the primary beneficiaries of Affirmation Action programs since the early 1970s. — 180 Proof

If AA is the equitable solution as you argue, but also an ineffective solution as you argue, then why have it?

Are you arguing that AA is in principle fair, but in practice unhelpful, so we should just keep it because it's of good intent?

Should I benefit from AA because I'm not Protestant?

My position on this really is pragmatic. If someone could arrive at a workable solution to racial inequity, I'd sign off on it. Meanwhile I'm filling out paperwork asking me how many gay people work at my firm so I can obtain business. What this means is that we've lost our way here terribly. I just don't think that the creators of AA policy really thought one day employers would be expected to ask employees where their dicks were the night before so that heterosexual dominance could be checked.

You're a cop on patrol. There's a unlit, dark room you have to check. There's either an armed burglar or the room's empty and safe. — Agent Smith

Why are those your only choices? Maybe there's a small child in the room who's about to be greeted with a pointed weapon at his head.

Saudi Arabia does not have a legal definition of "witch", and no particular legal safeguards. — jorndoe

If you're asking whether something is legal or not, you're left with exactly two choices: (1) Positive law or (2) natural law. Positive law is that law which is declared by the law making authority (the legislature, the dictator, the crown, or whoever) and natural law is the law that exists as part of nature. That is, it exists regardless of what people might declare. An example of positive law would be the Georgia statute I cited. An example of natural law would be something like Locke's statement that we all have the right to life, liberty, and property even if the government says otherwise.

If you're saying Saudi Arabian law has no positive law on the subject of whether it's legal or not to kill witches, then the answer to your question under a positive law analysis is no, it's not illegal to kill those determined to be witches.

If you believe that natural law exists (and many don't), and you believe it is enforceable without a positive law statement that it does (which many more don't), then the question of whether it's illegal to kill those determined to be witches would turn on whether you believe every person has a God given right to practice witchcraft without being placed in fear of death. If you do, then it would be illegal under this analysis. I will say, though, that this does a bit of an injustice to what we typically mean by "illegal," but it better describes more generally what me mean by "immoral."

Consistent with what @Benkei said, you need to explain what law you're asking they're guilty of. For example, if a Saudia Arabian killed a woman for being a witch and the laws of Georgia applied, he'd be guilty. https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-5/article-1/16-5-1

However, if the Saudia Arabian law says you can kill those who the clerics have declared a witch, then they'd be not guilty.

Is your question whether there is some natural law that is applicable regardless of what the government says the law is?

No it doesn't. It requires that people are selfish first, familial second, and tribal third, and that people in government are good at manipulating opinion. — unenlightened

The government isn't a monolithic entity, but it's comprised of the same sort of ineptitude and gullible sorts that make up the general public, which then results in everyone trying to manipulate everyone in a political free for all. I accept that the lowest rungs just follow along oblivious to the game being played, but I don't view the government as this controlling entity with all its powers clearly focused on a particular objective. They're just as smart, just as stupid, just as moral, just as corrupt as we all are.

I can attest the same cultural norms amongst the UK working classes, and also among the Afro Caribbean population here. And that proves what? It proves that we are all hearing the same messages and seeing the same solutions to the same problems. 'Work hard, support power, make yourself useful to power, don't rock the boat, etc.' The Jewish community surely knows as well as any that education and hard work count for little when the government is against you. — unenlightened

I think the Jewish experience speaks to what oppression can do, but it also speaks to what resiliency can do. Another example would be the Celts, which I use because they settled large portions of the area where I live. The Southern US culture owes much of its culture to those oppressed folks, which only makes the point that you can't explain the entirety of a group's current condition upon their most recent government.

To put this another way: Trump's persuasion is probably much stronger on the great grandchildren of the Scots and Irish settlers as opposed to those of the English aristocracy.