For a woman i can see how Choice is the more apt term. . .and for the male i can see where abortion is the preferred term. . .The varying lens of this discussion go back much further than Roe vs. Wade. Perhaps back to the time before the institution of marriage. . .. A time in the evolutionary development of the species, woman came forth with the first choice. . . After slowly figuring out the cause of pregnancy and bringing forth an offspring with an unusually large head women evolved into a “no” in order to insure her life. . . Child birth often resulted in the loss of life to the human mother. The female human unlike the biologically positioning of other animals, she was physically able to claim a choice and to regulate when and if she would become pregnant. . .

Leonard Shlain's book Time, Sex, and Power postulates, woman's choice to regulate her reproductive rights was a predominate cause of Patriarchal domination, that brought in marriage as restriction to woman's biological upper hand in choice. Strict judicial codes seized the power of woman's choice by placing a woman's body and sexual rights in the hands of the masculine to shore up his own insecurity concerning mortality and to insure his material possessions actually would be handled to his biological off springs

. . . Jill i am sure you already had this info. . . I found Leonard Shlain's book Time, Sex, and Power a fascinating read because it shed so much light on this ancient quagmire over choice of reproductive rights. . .Does it belong to the Church and State or does it belong to the the only one that really can authentically render choice?. . .Abortion vs. Choice, it seems to me the scrabble over language goes back thousands of years, long before Roe vs. Wade, i believe. . . .

Jill i can see you, 10,000 years ago taking a stance and having even back then, a strong rightful evolutionary Choice in order to insure survival.. . . I would like to read something on evolutionary biology that would project the current issues of Choice and Anti-abortion. . .I do not know if their are any sources on that, but could see that also leading to patches of thin ice in the modern debate. . .

How do you describe acts by Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for starters? Got some words about illegitimate actions for them?

Honestly – you are trying to bolster what is your opinion by asserting it is fact when, in fact, these issues are 100% debatable. That's why they continue to be issues. If they were settled fact, we'd move on to something else.

Oy.

It is a fact that Roe v. Wade was illegitimate judicial activism. Opinion would lie in the realm of how I view the worst defenders of such activism (similar to the most loony who demand federal gun control of all kinds, though it's obviously prohibited absolutely until the Constitution is amended to eliminate the prohibition _and_ grants the power explicitly to Congress — not the Supreme Court — to regulate the issue). Assuming the federal government even has been granted the power to regulate abortion or other similar personal conduct (the burden of proof is fully upon those who say there is a legitimate federal role here, and something explicit or incontrovertible has to be easily and openly demonstrated), show us all where in the U.S. Code the laws were that the Warren Court would properly be fulfilling a role of clarifying or explicating, if you deny it was inventing “law” [sic] out of thin air and imposing its whims, existed, when it issued the trimester rule. Also show us exactly where in the Constitution abortion is found if it is legitimate for the Court to strike down state or local abortion laws. There is no “privacy” and “penumbras” are nothing but ether.

All those acts are similar choices, Rudi, if you understand what you wrote.

I'm not anti-abortion in the way those are who are consistently and honorably against both abortion and euthanasia on anti-killing grounds. For me there happens to be a convenient point of agreement (which isn't required, so “agitant” leftists still need to GROW UP in addition to needing to learn to be honest and direct) where there ought to be absolute opposition, namely viability (or lacking that, legal as well as moral convergence where, for example, separate legal charges are filed in the case of loss of a woman's fetus due to the acts of another, something the lefties are too often incapable of grasping or revealingly unwilling to face; why the discomfort?), beyond which there is no question what is happening. The only question is what and how do we define what is happening between conception and viability. Blind militance among the extremists on the left in the latter case simply leave better people like me filled with contempt.

Facts like that have never been accepted or respected by the Left (selected for deliberate defiance, which is a separate subject, but which need not be addressed here). You are correct — it is bad law. The core (literally — think “heart”) of Roe v. Wade is, in fact, an outstanding, if not the best as well as best-known (to the honest and intelligent) example of judicial arrogation of legislative power. (Reynolds v. Sims is a competitor. I'm surprised Warren didn't order the U.S. Senate reorganized or even abolished in association with that ruling.) The core of Roe v. Wade is not only the invention out of thin air of the abortion right that was found to exist, but the trimester rule — pure invention out of thin air by the Court.

As I've said to too many who are unable or unwilling to learn or face the truth — defenders of judicial activism and legislation by fiat by courts deserve to have judges revise the clear meaning of, or choose (word properly selected and used here) to substitute their, the judge's, desires and thoughts and wishes, for what is clearly written and intended in the defenders' deceased parents' wills.

1. “the fact that I keep discussing this point”? I placed it as an update and you labeled it extreme. I followed up your labeling. I would call that “keep discussing.”

2. You assert, “the “constitutional protections” that you claim support abortion's legality don't really exist.” I went to law school, passed the bar – lay it on me – why don't they really exist? Are you against most of what the Warren Court did due to beliefs that it was an activist court? Are you a four corners person like Scalia? You're bandying about a lot of conclusions, but you aren't providing the back up. I'm not going anywhere.

I support of the rule of law in this country but Roe is bad law. Unfortunately, the “constitutional protections” that you claim support abortion's legality don't really exist. But the propaganda machine of the pro-choice movement has lead far to many to believe that they do. The purpose of the court was to interpret law, not make it.. This is a controversial issue and Roe robbed it from the hands of elected officials and ultimately the people of the US to decide for themselves. It placed this issue in the hands of 9 people who have no accountability to anyone. It politicized the Supreme Court in a way that still poisons politics to this day. Roe may have been a victory for the pro-choice movement but it was an ill-gotten gain and our political process has been a victim. Most people in the abortion debate fail to see this point.

My belief about abortion is irrelevant to the constitutional protections afforded reproductive rights of women. There's always been moral ambiguity in our society, within each of us as well as between us when looking at different issues.

Roe is the law of the land and I support it.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/38140...

While we're on the subject of semantics, please remember that anti-choice folks regularly blog about Obama as a murderer who approves of infanticide. And they also routinely without blinking call doctors who perform legal medical procedures “abortionists.” So – there's wordplay all around.

I actually think that calling pro-life proponents anti-choice is more accurate, because from my perspective, that's what they oppose – my legal, constitutional reproductive right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, within certain other very specific guidelines defined by law.

Remember what WC Fields said: It's not what they call you, it's what you answer to. (see here: http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_jun2004/Fields_G...)

So if a dictator of a country decides to mass murder millions of innocent civilians because it is more convenient for the dictator to have those people dead than alive, and we think that's wrong, you're saying we're ok to stand by and watch… as long as we don't participate in it