"Alan Moore" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 18:42:57 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

"Friday" wrote in message
...

snip

All religious considerations aside: A woman mosy certainly has a right
to her liberty and pursuit of happiness, while a child most certainly
has his or her right to life. _Both_ are inalienabale and unarguable
rights clearly defined in the US Constitution.

The _BIG_ question (as it's ultimately boiled down to) is defining " a
human." Is an egg a human, and thus entitled to the rights guaranteed
in the Constitution? When the egg meets a sperm and the cell spilts
does it then become entitled to the right to life? At 3 months? Three
days? Not until it leaves the womb?

This issue has troubled me for as long as I've been aware of it. I
would _NOT_ want to be a Justice of the SCOTUS, having to struggle with
this one.

They didn't have to struggle with it. Roe v Wade was decided on the basis
of
default in a potential conflict of rights. The 14th Amendment Due Process
rights, which are the relevant ones, are not established under law nor
under
the Constitution for prenatal life. (In the actual decision of this case,
that meant that the state of Texas had no compelling right to prevent an
abortion.) OTOH, the rights of a woman to life and to privacy are
established under law.

As the justices themselves said (from the majority opinion of Roe,
written
by Blackman): "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life
begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine,
philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in
a
position to speculate as to the answer."

Correct. Roe v. Wade didn't really address either the rights of the
mother, or of the child, or whatever. It addressed the rights of the
government, and stated that the government did not have the right to
impose a particular view. It was, I think, a pretty good call by the
Supreme Court.

Well, I'm not sure I agree with that, although, legally, it probably was the
right call. I'll leave the question of whether it was the right moral call
up to others.

The rights of the mother were part of the case. That's why both her right to
life and her privacy came into play -- the latter of which is the reason the
conservative Justices and many other conservatives have gone up a rope over
this case.

The state (Texas) was arguing that it had a compelling interest in limiting
those rights, in order to protect the rights of the unborn. What the Court
decided was that there is no legal basis that established Due Process rights
for the unborn. If you read the case you'll see how the Court dealt with
other matters, such as the presumed right of the unborn to inheritances,
etc. (They are predicated on the assumption that the fetus will be brought
to term and will achieve full rights. In this case, that question was the
issue itself, so using those examples begs the question.)

The point on which the case turned was the conflict between the established
rights of the mother, and the unestablished rights, or lack thereof, of the
unborn. By default, it left the question up to the mother.

Ed Huntress