March 13, 2003
FIRST STEPS:
Senate passes ban on late-term abortion procedure: House to take up measure next (CNN, 3/13/03)The Senate voted by a wide margin Thursday to ban a late-term abortion procedure, referred to by critics as partial-birth abortion.The 64-33 vote sent the legislation to the Republican-controlled House, which is expected to pass it this spring. President Bush said he will sign it once it clears Congress.
"Partial-birth abortion is an abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity, and I commend the Senate for passing legislation to ban it," Bush said in a statement. "Today's action is an important step toward building a culture of life in America."
It passed by numbers fairly close to the 70% of people who oppose the practice nationwide. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2003 9:38 PM
Mr. Judd;
Is that constitutional? The only valid basis for such a law is that the procedure is murder (a view which I presume you to hold). Is it constituionally permitted for Congress to pass laws against murder that do not involve actions across state lines or federal employees?
Sure, unless you think the Declaration and Preamble are boilerplate. The first purpose of government is to guarantee the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, etc., a Constitution that did not include government power to prevent murder of citizens would make such rights illusory.
Posted by: oj at March 14, 2003 7:09 PMWasn't that left to the States? Are there in fact any other federal
laws against murder that don't involve federal employees?
For the most part, I do consider the Declaration and the Preamble to be boilerplate. I think one of the best features of the Constitution is that that language, while expressing the aspirations of the Founders, has no
legal meaning. One need only look at the current effort in Europe to see that deep wisdom of that.
AOG:
That's the deep libertarian argumant, which holds it unconstitutional even for the Feds to have freed the slaves. Likewise, it would make it unconstitutional for the federal government to put a stop to something like the Holocaust if it happened in say NY state. If we had a seance and asked the Founders if this was their intent it seems unlikely they'd tell us that's what they meant.