<p>Whoops, my mistake. There is more to law than abortions, such as property rights. The government directly affects you, my friend.</p>
<p>You might not need an abortion - but if you get your girlfriend pregnant and she doesn't get one, it's 17% of your paycheck for 18 years, my friend.</p>
<p>Men are usually the biggest supporters of abortion, once they realize that abortion makes women more comfortable having sex. It's really sad. </p>
<p>Just me, but I think that the best thing to happen would be to LEGISLATE abortion - and thereby take it out of the courts. It would probably be the compromise from hell, but it would work. IMO, the Dems, if they are smart, should only confirm a nominee IF the GOP consents to legislation on abortion rights.</p>
<p>Areisathena, does that mean they would leave the "right to privacy" thing unresolved in the courts?
I guess that's what Madison would have wanted.</p>
<p>I think that abortion as a privacy right is a stretch. Aside from that, between notification laws, waiting periods, and ultrasounds before abortion, there isn't much private about it. </p>
<p>I'm very pro-choice, by the way - just think that the <strong>methodology</strong> used to legalise abortion is a little weak.</p>
<p>From the pro-choice & feminist perspective, I do think that the best way to secure rights is to align them with other rights. For example, someone could reasonably argue that we don't legislate how any other surgeries are performed, so to legislate abortion methods (even in second trimester) is discriminatory - 1964 Civil Rights. There was a thread about the violinists a while back - imagine that you woke up with a violinist attached to you. He needs you to live for the next nine months, and he deserves to live, because violinists are people, too. We see this as a massive invasion of our rights. We could argue that we don't require parents to donate kidneys or parts of their liver to their children who would die without them; ergo, it's ridiculous to demand that women remain pregnant. </p>
<p>Just trying to say that abortion law could be aligned with other law, and it could be found to be discriminatory to single out abortion (which can, by definition, only be a woman thing). Privacy is just too attenuated.</p>
<p>In some ways, I'm not completely pro-choice - not sure how I feel about a woman having an unnecessary for health/well-being/life abortion in the second trimester. IMO, 1973 was a lot different from now. Currently, kids who are born at 2 lbs are viable - they go into the NICU, do the incubator thing, and end up being healthy kids. In 1973, a kid that small would have died - so we can agree that the time for viability outside of the womb has changed. That makes for a very problematic issue with the Roe decision - allowing abortion through the end of the second trimester. Legislation, IMO, would be able to come to a compromise. Most Americans are not polarized on this issue - they really do see the problems with killing fetuses or forcing women to be pregnant. Legislation could possibly deal with the nuances - the fact that we want doctors making a decision about life, health, and abortion if the fetus cannot be viable outside of the womb (for something like the babies who are born with only a brain stem). Then again, having a woman being six months pregnant and deciding that she's had enough of it makes us uncomfortable. I do think that some thoughtful legislation could put an end to the horrible state of abortion in the country. JMHO.</p>
<p>For one.. i'm definetely against abortion. I wanted, however, for Bush to pick a woman.</p>
<p>Considering Bush will likely have another Supreme Court appointment during his remaining time as president, I wouldn't be too concerned about the current assumed loss of a female justice.</p>
<p>true ...true</p>