This is a non ending argument, as we are dealing with your "belief" systems that are not grounded in science. You are putting a fetus ahead of the of the will and rights of the person, and that is as absurd as putting cancer ahead of the will of a person. Just because a cancer takes control of the body, doesn't give the cancer a right to grow or survive, or that the will of the person who has cancer should take a back seat to the growth of a cancer, simply because the state might want the cancer to grow. No one should be forced into having a baby if they don't want a baby. Bottom line: Destruction of a fetus is not killing a baby, any more than destruction of a germinated seed is not killing a tree. A dead fetus is not a dead being. Science has classifications for a reason....
Personhood is attained at about 22 weeks gestation: This argument is based on the definition of death: "Death is not just another disease that can be specified, analyzed, and catalogued as viral or bacterial, infectious or auto-immune. Death is the final cessation of life. Thus defining death requires more than medical and technical expertise: It requires also some agreed understanding of what is constitutive of human life, and what it is that must be absent before the person can be said to be dead." "Sometimes it will be obvious to any reasonable observer that someone is dead, or alternatively, that someone is still alive. Someone who is breathing [without a respirator] and talking and walking around is obviously alive. Someone whose body is rotting away and hanging off the bones is obviously dead. However there are some cases, perhaps many cases, where it will not be obvious to an unqualified layman whether someone is alive or dead. In these cases it is the decision of competent physicians that decides the issue." 1 Prior to about 1960, a person would be declared dead if both their heartbeat and breathing had ceased and could not be re-started. But newer technological developments made this definition invalid. Heart pacemakers can keep the heart beating indefinitely long after all other internal systems have wound down. Respirators can keep the person apparently breathing forever. Death is generally defined in most U.S. states as a situation in which the brain "flat-lines." That is, there is no major central nervous system activity and there is no detectable electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex. At this point, the person may be declared dead in many jurisdictions. The patient may appear to be breathing, as a result of the action of a respirator. Her/his heart may still be beating, either on its own or as a result of a heart pacemaker. But he/she is judged to be dead. Unplugging the patient from life support systems at this point will not actually kill the patient; she/he is already considered to be dead. The great rise of transplant medicine has, then, been wholly dependent upon organ harvesting from so called 'beating-heart cadavers', that is, patients who are determined to be dead on the basis of brain death criteria. 1 But their hearts continue to beat (sometimes with external help), to keep the body's organs fresh for transplanting. If the point of death is defined as a lack of electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex one might use the same criteria to define the start of human life. One might argue that fetal life becomes human person when electrical activity commences in the cerebral cortex. Human personhood, would then start when consciousness begins and ends when consciousness irrevocably ends. One could then argue that a fully-informed woman should have access to abortion at any point before the point that human personhood begins. According to author Richard Carrier: "...the fetus does not become truly neurologically active until the fifth month (an event we call 'quickening.' This activity might only be a generative one, i.e. the spontaneous nerve pulses could merely be autonomous or spontaneous reflexes aimed at stimulating and developing muscle and organ tissue. Nevertheless, it is in this month that a complex cerebral cortex, the one unique feature of human -- in contrast with animal -- brains, begins to develop, and is typically complete, though still growing, by the sixth month. What is actually going on mentally at that point is unknown, but the hardware is in place for a human mind to exist in at least a primitive state." When medical ethicist Bonnie Steinbock was interviewed by Newsweek and asked the question "So when does life begin?," she answered: "If weâre talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because thatâs one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesnât happen with an embryo." 8 Under this argument, some primitive neurological activity in the cerebral cortex begins during the fifth month, perhaps as early as the 22nd week of pregnancy. If we allow a two week safety factor, then we could set the gestation time limit at which abortions should not be freely available at 20 weeks. Abortions could then be requested up to the start of the 20th week for normal pregnancies, or at a later time if unusual conditions existed. Many state and provincial medical associations in North America have actually adopted this limit, probably using a different rationale. http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_argu.htm
what a intellectually lame sidestep non response. saying it is my belief system. The statements I made to you have nothing to do with belief. Comparing cancer with fetus is another intellectually lame canard for multiple reasons on multiple levels including the fact that the state already protects the fetus when a third party causes injury to it. You may want to look up the word being. You clearly misunderstood the word. Regarding viablity you can save your diatribe I already had this argument with kj a long time ago. My wife has worked with/on 23 or 24 weekers as part of her job as an advanced nurse praticioner in the level 3 neonatal intensive care unit at Childrens hospital in San Diego. Part of her job was explaining outcomes to parents of premature babies.
If you are not coming from 100% science, then it is your religious belief system in play. Don't deny your religion......
Whatever. But I think you distort my post. I wrote:" She is not a complete moron, and I never said she was. Every conservative appreciates her hanging on, so Bush could appoint her replacement. Of course, she didn;t have to wait until his second term to retire. There's nothing wrong with her wanting a republican president to select her replacement. She had a lifetime appointment and could retire when she jolly well pleased." I'm not sure how you concluded I was suggesting she or any other justice was a "complete moron."
Certainly you are correct that a judge should not impeached merely because some congressmen disagreed with an opinion. On the other hand, I would submit that a consistent pattern of extra-constitutional decisions could rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Clearly that would be a dangerous path to go down however. When judges become overly politicized, when their opinions stray from the law and begin to intrude into policymaking however, then they invite a political response. Of course, they dislike any encroachment on their turf, and we get tirades like O'Connor's.
Clearly you don't view the judiciary as having power on the level of congress of the executive branch, but rather seem to view them as nothing but a rubber stamp. Get his concept: They issue opinions, it is their job to have opinions, and they should be free from political pressure in the formation of those opinions....
Again, you seem off the wall. You tell me how constitution law is 100% science. You tell me where I was arguing from a belief system. Perhaps you mean use belief in an atypical and disingenuous manner. Along with the other words you need to look up, I suspect you may need to look up homicide. The point of this post is to pin you down. You show me where I was arguing from my belief system.
I believe their purpose is to issue opinions on specific cases before them, and to rule on whether or not the law in question pertains to or decides that case. They should leave their own personal opinions out of it. If they can do this, then their power should indeed be less than that of the Congress or Pres. That's why the SC has been called the least dangerous branch. But the least dangerous branch term only applies when they do, indeed leave their personal opinions out of their decisions. After all, they won't be voted out in a few years, will they. Congress is the branch where personal opinions should be expressed - hopefully the opinions of the voters...
Unless the Constitution is a mathematical formula, then personal opinion is necessary to evaluate any legislation against it. Even the concept of the strict constructionists like Scalia and the opinions they form that follow that theory....are personal opinions. There is no formula at all in the Constution that describes exactly how SC judges should reach their rulings, and how they should form their opinions. The danger of the SC is not the individual opinions, but rather the fact that we now have 5 white male Roman Catholics on the bench. Lacking diversity, the homogenity of the bench represents an immediate threat to a country based on diversity of opinions.