Law professor Carliss Chatman follows the "logic" of the recently enacted Alabama law virtually ending abortion rights to its "logical" conclusions:
Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act, as the new statute is called, subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as 99 years in prison. The law, enacted Wednesday, has no exceptions for rape or incest. It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “a human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”
Child support starting at conception? Sure!We ought to take our laws seriously. Under the laws, people have all sorts of rights and protections. When a state grants full personhood to a fetus, should they not apply equally?
Claim a fetus on your taxes? Makes sense!
Deporting a pregnant immigrant with an American citizen/fetus in her womb? Better not!
How about detaining that pregnant immigrant's American citizen/fetus without arraignment or trial? Unconstitutional!
How about counting that American citizen/ fetus in the census? Now you're talking!
It's an interesting read showing the absurdities of the Alabama law beyond, for example, the brutality of having no exceptions for rape or incest and criminalizing a medical procedure. The application of the 14th Amendment's definitions of personhood and citizenship is the foundation for what would become an issue for the courts:
... States have been allowed to define the personhood of unnatural creatures — such as corporations — since very early in our nation’s history. In exchange for this freedom, states are not permitted to go back on their deal. In other words, once personhood rights are granted, a state may not deny life, liberty or property without due process, nor may a state deny equal protection under the law. States have never had the right to define the personhood of people. This was a subject — influenced either by place of birth or by complying with immigration and naturalization requirements — for the Constitution and federal law. State grants of natural personhood challenge this norm.Since different states have laws that protect women's reproductive rights (eg., New York), applying the "logic" in the Alabama law in a post- Roe world would lead to the unintended consequence of what Chatman calls a bonkers system of "two- tiered fetal citizenship" across the country. It's a timely and thought- provoking article. Go read! (h/t FOB P.E.C.)
BONUS: Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has more on Chatman's op/ed.
3 comments:
And in addition to defining personhood and the responsibilities thereof, howsabout the financial explosion that illegal abortions will bring? Will our fanatical Right to Lifers foot the bills for ballooning childcare, for foster care, for hospitals and delivery centers? Is their actual goal to discourage sex outside of marriage? Because married women get abortions, too. And society will always have sex out of wedlock. None of their Draconian practices is going to stop that.
What about jails? Where will we keep all of the women who seek illegal abortions, or the doctors who try to provide them? Where will the women who have miscarriages go?
These fanatics want to control women, that's the bottom line. Sex is for procreation, not pleasure. They want to police the personal lives of women and keep them under their heels. I thought we were past this, but clearly we're not. The fact that these monsters would completely allow a president who paid for abortions for mistresses while using him to get their Supreme Court justices just proves what rotten, non-Christians they really are. It's disgraceful.
So I'm going to make my voice heard. I'm a woman who saw Roe v Wade put into place, and I'm not watching it be ripped apart.
donnah -- I liken it to having a sieve and the only ones that pass thru are the people without shame, without ethics, without empathy, without scruples, etc. Those people are Republicans. Good to have you back, btw!
Thanks! I was out of the country for ten days and the place where I was staying only had wifi in the hotel lobby. By evening time, after working all day, I was not inclined to head downstairs to do any reading or typing. Also, it was pretty nice to be away from the political maelstrom for a little while.
But I did miss my Hackies! And I'm glad to be back!
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