There are lots of different rights. We've talked about this before but I don't think "human rights" were part of the mix. We've talked about natural rights and constitutional rights, both enumerated and not, and civil rights, and the ever-popular inalienable rights. So now we have human rights in the mix.
I would use "human rights" as being the same thing as "natural rights". The only possible difference being that "human rights" would apparently just be for humans, so believers in animal rights, or people concerned about the rights of extraterrestrials might not like the term as much. Inalienable rights would probably be the same thing as well unless you can see any way that any right that is seen as being created by man with no belief that the right is part of nature, "human nature", or supernaturally implemented or recognized, can truly be inalienable. Normally I would use the three terms as synonyms the difference would be mostly theoretical, and for the most part marginal.
Constitutional rights would really be different. They might be recognition of natural rights (many of the founders believed they are), but they themselves are a subset of legal rights (with the constitution being the law. The only complication here being that sometimes "legal rights" refers to non constitutional legal rights, in countries with constitutions.
Now, you are awarding the embryo human rights. I'll go along with that, at least for the sake of argument. But if you want me to buy your claim of it as a constitutional right, you need to show me how it's incorporated into the constitution and do so in keeping with the principles of strict-constructionism.
An argument could be made that every time the constitution says "The right of the people" or anything like that it is talking about the rights of fetuses as well. This might actually support the idea that the federal government has the right to outlaw abortion (at least if you consider the equal protection clause properly incorporated to the states, and you consider the state laws against murder)
But then I'm not really arguing that fetuses have constitutional rights as much as I am arguing that they have natural rights. No constitutional rights for fetuses are needed to turn the decision back to the states, only a recognition that there is no constitutional right to an abortion. If there is no such right than the federal government (including federal courts) have no right to impose a decision on the states in this area. They might be able to nibble at the margin (maybe inter state commerce in abortion equipment could be regulated) but they would be very small nibbles if the feds were to stay within the limits of the constitution. I suppose the feds could say "we won't send you money for program XYZ if you don't make abortion legal or illegal, but the states could always tell the feds to go shove their money.
Now, you are awarding the embryo human rights. I'll go along with that, at least for the sake of argument. But if you want me to buy your claim of it as a constitutional right, you need to show me how it's incorporated into the constitution and do so in keeping with the principles of strict-constructionism.
There is where you view of my opinion, deviates from the actual opinion. Much of the rest of your post is just heading down that same wrong track.
It seems to me that states can go ahead and award embryos rights if they want to up to the point where those rights conflict with those of persons actually awarded rights by the constitution.
Only in regards to rights actually recognized (or granted if you don't believe in natural rights) by the constitution. Even if we assume for a moment for the sake of argument that women did have a natural right to an abortion, I am asserting that they don't have a constitutional right to an abortion. If they have no such constitutional right than the states regulating against abortion (including outright disallowing it) would not be an infringement on their constitutional rights. I'd go further and say they don't have a natural right to abortion, but even if they did that fact wouldn't make the right appear in the constitution.
As for human rights, the professional advocates for human rights have a list of them. They include such things as the right to medical care and to a life sentence rather than execution. So it seems to me that if you want to incorporate one human right, you have to incorporate all of them.
I don't just disagree with that idea, I don't think it makes any sense.
In any case I am not arguing for incorporating any of them in to the constitution, except in the sense that some human/natural/inalienable rights already are explicitly part of the constitution.
Tim |
