To be an American is to exercise human value founded in the notion of choice. Therefore, an abortion law that denies choice is an affront to the foundation of the meaning of being American.
By Professor Gilbert Morris
In the sloppy parlance of American jurisprudence - which constantly eliminates subtly or thinking - I am pro-life/pro-choice: that is, I am not in favour of abortion, but I don’t think it’s the government’s business of provenance to decide the matter.
When I was Scholar-in-Residence at George Mason University Law School, after a close study of the issue, I concluded that nearly all the judicial writing on this question were childish, argued poorly and lacking in internal logic or a logical mode of expression.
To be an American is to exercise human value founded in the notion of choice. Therefore, an abortion law that denies choice is an affront to the foundation of the meaning of being American.
In Japan, abortion is legal, yet the percentage of abortions in Japan is lower as a percentage of population than in the United States; with none of the hypocritical idiocy of:
1. Committing violence under the claim of preventing violence against the unborn.
2. Asserting a protection of the unborn on the basis that life is sacrosanct by the same people who largely support the death penalty.
3. Being a nation that refuses gun control laws - even after toddlers are slaughters with semi- automatic weapons - yet whilst asserting an empty commitment to life.
4. A nation with a volunteer military - so choice centred service - whilst denying choice to women and their significant others and families.
Put simply, there is no conceptual consistency in preaching about choice, whilst denying choice to women, particularly when after that same woman has the child, the right wing anti-abortionists are generally the same ones denying her child services or regular daycare and family leave once the child is born.
This suggests that the anti-abortion position is backward, intellectually spurious and feckless.
Moreover, it would appear to me reasonable and responsibly consistent that in a country in which children have been raped in churches for 150 years (that we know of) and where there are such high incidents of incest, ambition must be an option.
In my lecture on the issue at Mason in 1995, I argued: “In a democracy, the ordinary impulse and default posture in any crisis is deliberation and debate. This means persuasion is the fundamental mechanism in the protection and advancement of choice. As I have averred, I am personally opposed to abortion, but I take it to be unacceptable that government should invade this issue of private conscience, mandating it. As one who adheres to constitutional democracy, I trust decisions that emerge from deliberative debate, even if and where I may disagree with them. Indubitably, there can be no other position - I fear - for anyone who accepts the notion of choice as the foundation of human value”.
George Mason is a “conservative” law school. Yet, there are no conservatives in America; as they seek to conserve nothing. They are the merest ideological or tribal Republicans. The law school at Mason is named after Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia, an overrated right wing bloviator. who never wrote a single legal principle worth remembering, though he wrote many quaint phrases. Robert Bork, Kenneth Starr and Karl Rove were also on faculty.
The usual arguments at Mason had nothing to do with law or justice. The issue was there was always acquiring the power and exploiting the procedure to overturn Roe V Wade (1973). When Madam Justice Amy C. Barrett ascended to the Supreme Court last year, I warned that she would undermine Roe V Wade, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas (who has dissolved into an embittered reactionary fanatic), Justice Samuel Alito, Judge Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh - known as a party hack wiling to do anything to advance the Republican cause and probably the lowest brain amperage ever to have sat on the bench.
Last night, the US supreme court damaged Roe V Wade by refusing to ban a Texas law restricting abortion access; which means, the Texas restrictions are now the law of the land.
In refusing to ban the Texas law, the US Supreme Court lowered itself even further, by ignoring two cardinal ancient principles of law:
a. Standing - by which the courts determine whi has a valid interest in a case which the law should recognise.
b. Damage - where a complainant must show that he has suffered loss/damage within the parameters of the legal complaint.
The Texas law satisfies neither of these preliminary legal conditions that justifies a legal claim. And therefore, the US Supreme Court made itself a handmaiden to ideological hackery, leaving both rape and incset victims with no recourse.
One reflects on the grace and charm with which society in Japan treats this issue. One would think the “Christian” nation would’ve been the guiding example.
