The Gordian Abortion

The Gordian Abortion

©2013  Ross Williams

I still have no idea why this has to be so difficult, but liberals, take note.  This is what happens when you do the “right thing” the wrong way – as you invariably do whenever you happen to come across the right thing to do.  Which isn’t as often as you think, frankly.

It’s very simple: the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution says that not all of our rights were written down, but we still have them; the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution says that unless the power was given to the US government, the US government has no authority in the matter, and the power belongs to THE PEOPLE or to the state.

Abortion, birth control, family planning, pregnancy, defining the beginning of life ... these authorities were not given to the US government, therefore the US government does not have any authority in the matter.  Therefore ... you guessed it ... the power to abort, choose birth control, plan a family, deal with pregnancy, and define the beginning of your offspring’s life belongs to THE PEOPLE.  Or to the states.

But: THE PEOPLE come first.

The Fourteenth Amendment says that every citizen of any individual state is also a citizen of the United States and may not have his US Constitution-mandated 9thAM/10thAM rights taken away by the state, even if the state chooses to address the subject under its own 10thAM power, so the state government cannot materially interfere with a person’s power to abort, choose birth control, plan a family, deal with pregnancy, and define the beginning of his offspring’s life even as it puts modest limits and qualifiers on them.

But in 1973 you couldn’t have that, could you?  You could only see a nationwide, one-size-fits-all behemoth of Mommy Fed making edicts they aren’t allowed to make just to satisfy your political whim of the day.  Were you correct that abortion is a right belonging to THE PEOPLE?  Yes, you were.  Were you correct about it being something that the US government had the authority to define for the states?  No, you were not.

The only – ONLY – authority the US government has in the matter is ensuring that states do not materially interfere with THE PEOPLE’S right to abort by enforcing the 14^th Amendment on the states.

Instead what we got was the dog’s vomit of Blackmun’s mincing, mewling meandering through, over and around the subject, picking up stray bits of pulverized phlegm-coated freedom, and concocting out of it what he acknowledged were arbitrary distinctions, creating constitutionally insupportable impositions upon state jurisdiction in the process.

He spoke of “umbras and penumbras” of individual rights among the words of our Constitution, and not the government’s obligation to leave people the hell alone to do what they want in areas of their lives in which the government was given no authority to interfere.  He discussed a right to privacy, which – while it itself does exist as yet another 9thAM/10thAM right – has little direct bearing on this subject; it is a tangential rationalization to conclude it was privacy the state could not mess with instead of abortion.  This litigation was about abortion in case you forget, and just like privacy, it is not an area the government is allowed to interfere.

Stick with the subject.

As a direct result of his cockeyed, equivocated, mangle of disingenuous gooseshit, we have been subjected to a few different legacies which will not seem to die.  First is the equally equivocative nonsense that pregnancy falls under the Thirteenth Amendment’s proscription of slavery.  Right ... a barely-congealed mass of cells in utero is a slave-holder, with the power of the State acting as overseer.

Lay off the mushrooms, hippies.  It does no one any good to make it more complex, not to mention more indefensibly stupid, than it needs to be.

The second legacy is that we, as a nation, have to incorporate the inconsistent, hackneyed, arbitrary screed of Roe into our state laws.  In doing this, we are seeing our state legislatures making their own inconsistent, hackneyed, arbitrary screed into law.  Witness: Arkansas.

Let’s review the major dictates of Roe as Blackmun fished them out of his toilet bowl after wiping his ass of it:

1] the first three months belong to the pregnant woman to do as she pleases;

2] the last three months belong to the state to do with as it pleases;

3] the middle three months belong to either the pregnant woman or the state, depending on state law.

Enter, now, Arkansas, which recently passed, and overrode the Governor’s veto of, a state law reputed to be the nation’s strictest.  Arkansas’ legislature has taken Blackmun’s cogitational turds on their face.  Their law effectively declares, “We can’t touch the first three months? Fine.  The last three are ours no matter what?  Okay.  The middle three depend on ‘state law’?  Gotcha.   Try this ‘state law’ on for size...”

The result: no abortions in Arkansas after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The best part about it, from an anti-abortionist’s perspective, is that it is fully compliant with Roe.  The fact that the Arkansas legislators took forty years to find the ‘out’ Blackmun left them only attests to their being, like Moses perhaps, slow on the uptake.  The fact that the reasoning for this law contains at least as many irrelevant and needless rationalizations as Blackmun’s contained simply adds useless fluff: laws are about limiting freedom, and not about fulfilling science.  Science can take care of itself.

The worst part about it, from a pro-abortionist’s perspective – not that they will acknowledge it – is that it is fully compliant with Roe, which pro-abortionists uniformly love, mostly for their ability to misrepresent it.  Pro-abortionists, nearly to a screaming meemie, believe that Roe affirms the right to abortion on demand.  It does no such thing, and never did.

Of course, from a libertarian’s perspective, this is another object lesson on doing the right thing the wrong way; the right thing becomes wrong.  Yes, liberals, abortion rights in this country are stated incorrectly and do not, in fact, exist the way you believe they do.  They DO exist, but no one would know it from listening to you yammering on ... and on ... and on ... and on about it.

You painted yourselves – and the rest of us along with you – into this uncomfortable corner by insisting on doing something the wrong way; who could figure that your political opponents could take political advantage of this wrong way?  ...besides everyone with a political IQ above zero, that is.

There’s no one here to blame for it but you.  You were all smiles about it back in ’73.  Aren’t you proud of yourselves, now? 

So what are you going to do to get us out?  Yes, I know you’re going to flop your arms across your chests and decry this law in every court you can find as being violative of Roe ... when it isn’t.  You may even win.  But that would simply be adding another new layer of ‘wrong’ to the current constitutional train-wreck.  And of course, you still don’t suspect your political opponents could take advantage of that.

Might I suggest, instead, doing it the right way this time?