Lisa Graas blogs today about Rick Santorum being better than Rick Perry, which she is right about, although the constitutional argument she uses may not be right.
Lisa says that Rick Perry says that states have the right to make abortion legal or illegal, whereas she says that the Fourteenth Amendment trumps the Tenth Amendment. But if everyone agreed that unborn children were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, there never would have been a Roe v. Wade or legalized abortion in the first place. Is abortion killing? Of course it is. But the reason why abortion is a Tenth Amendment issue is because you will never get states like New York, Illinois, or California to sign on to the theory that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the unborn. This idea, the idea of a constitutional amendment that will protect the unborn, is a political impossibility. It can never happen.
Wouldn't it be much better for the future of the pro-life movement, if the Supreme Court were to respect Luther v. Borden, and invoke the political questions doctrine (which is what it should have done instead of Roe v. Wade), and let at least the most conservative states (Montana, the Dakotas, Tennessee) make abortion illegal? That way, it would at least be in the public mind that not everybody condoned legal abortion, some states deigning to outlaw it, and no one could any longer use the fallacious argument of "If abortion were really immoral, it wouldn't be legal in all 50 states?" I don't think Lisa Graas is more pro-life than I am; what Estase says is that if it is all or nothing--nothing is what you will get.
Lisa says that Rick Perry says that states have the right to make abortion legal or illegal, whereas she says that the Fourteenth Amendment trumps the Tenth Amendment. But if everyone agreed that unborn children were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, there never would have been a Roe v. Wade or legalized abortion in the first place. Is abortion killing? Of course it is. But the reason why abortion is a Tenth Amendment issue is because you will never get states like New York, Illinois, or California to sign on to the theory that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the unborn. This idea, the idea of a constitutional amendment that will protect the unborn, is a political impossibility. It can never happen.
Wouldn't it be much better for the future of the pro-life movement, if the Supreme Court were to respect Luther v. Borden, and invoke the political questions doctrine (which is what it should have done instead of Roe v. Wade), and let at least the most conservative states (Montana, the Dakotas, Tennessee) make abortion illegal? That way, it would at least be in the public mind that not everybody condoned legal abortion, some states deigning to outlaw it, and no one could any longer use the fallacious argument of "If abortion were really immoral, it wouldn't be legal in all 50 states?" I don't think Lisa Graas is more pro-life than I am; what Estase says is that if it is all or nothing--nothing is what you will get.
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