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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (116017)	5/24/2005 8:14:44 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 793817

We generously apply our rights to foreigners and we could do so to the pre-born if we wanted to, but that's not the same as the constitution guaranteeing them. I'm not sure they aren't constitutionally guaranteed. One can make that argument, but a strict constructionist couldn't make it. Only if the constitution actually defines who the rights apply to, and the limit is defined as American citizens. The constitution is quite clear about whose rights cannot be abridged, and it sure doesn't include embryos." But that argument simply isn't correct unless you are arguing for a constitutional right to abortion. No, that statement means that the constitution clearly does not award rights to embryos, a subject we already covered. It doesn't speak to anyone's right to an abortion. My point is if there is no constitutional right to an abortion, and now constitutional rights for fetuses than the issue is an issue for the states according to the constitution. No. A right to an abortion is a positive right. The phrase is often used to mean a negative right. Strictly speaking it might be called the right to not have the government deny you permission to have an abortion or punish you for having one, but that is a much longer way of stating it. A better phrase without adding a lot of words might be "the right to have an abortion" for the negative right, and "the right to have abortion services provided to you" for the positive version. When I used the term "a right to an abortion" I was talking about the negative version. I used that term rather than "the right to be left alone", because the two possible rights are different. In theory you might in general have a right to be left alone without having a right to have an abortion, and you might in theory have a right to an abortion without a more general right to be left alone. A natural right to be left alone can not be an absolute right, it would probably have to be a limited one, in practice to the extent it exists at all as a legal right it is a very limited one. There is no constitutional right to be left alone, and there probably would not be one even in an extreme version of a libertarian society, at least not a wide spread, strong, enforceable right to be left alone. For one thing you have to fund the government, and making me pay any form of tax isn't leaving me alone. I could thing of a bunch of other examples. The reason I used "a right to an abortion" rather than "a right to be left alone", is similar to the reason I used the term "gay rights" earlier. I might consider using the phrase "a right to be left alone that includes a right to have an abortion" but only occasionally, it wouldn't be my default word choice. I'm open to other phrases or terms but to mean the same thing they would have to focus on abortion, not a more general real or imagined right to be left alone. Tim