Fox's Garrett deceptively cropped Obama remark on judicial role
SUMMARY: Fox News' Major Garrett deceptively cropped a remark by President Obama that Garrett said "aggravates those who believe justices should follow the Constitution and legislative intent," omitting Obama's statement that he would seek a Supreme Court nominee who "honors our constitutional traditions" and "respects ... the appropriate limits of the judicial role."
Saying it was a "description of how the president hopes his nominee will interpret the law," Fox News congressional correspondent Major Garrett, during the May 1 edition of Special Report, aired a clip in which President Obama stated: "I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes." Garrett then said: "That aggravates those who believe justices should follow the Constitution and legislative intent." But Garrett omitted Obama's very next sentence, in which he stated: "I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role."
From Obama's May 1 statement, with the words Garrett aired in bold:
Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives -- whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded, and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.
From the May 1 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:
GARRETT: Mr. Obama spoke to Souter after receiving this letter saying the justice would resign at the end of the court session in June. In saying farewell to Souter, Mr. Obama appeared to delight in his record of disappointing conservatives.
OBAMA: He never sought to promote a political agenda, and he consistently defied labels and rejected absolutes, focusing instead on just one task: reaching a just result.
GARRETT: The evident pleasure the president and his advisers took in the prospect of filling the Souter vacancy is likely to rankle conservatives even more, especially in light of this description of how the president hopes his nominee will interpret the law.
OBAMA: I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.
GARRETT: That aggravates those who believe justices should follow the Constitution and legislative intent.
OBAMA: He never sought to promote a political agenda, and he consistently defied labels and rejected absolutes, focusing instead on just one task: reaching a just result.
So if you're objective, think in nuanced terms and are interested in fair judgment, you're going to disappoint conservatives. Thanks for that definition, Major, and for a solid reason to ignore any input from conservatives on the upcoming nomination.
Abortion is a tragic national sin. It is a horrific holocaust, especially against poor black people, and is plainly in violation of every value that makes the United States a great nation. That our nation's Supreme Court Justices are so nuanced and objective that they can't recognize abortion's evil is proof positive that what Mother Teresa said about western civilization - that western civilization has no future - that any civilization that will kill its young has no future, also applies to the United States.
Souter was a disappointment to conservatives because he was too foolish to be able to recognize evil.
Please be specific. What American values are being violated by abortion?
In all honesty, I have trouble taking Mother Teresa seriously.
"I never forget one day when I met a lady who was dying of cancer and I could see the way she was struggling with that terrible pain. And I said to her, I said, you know this is but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close to Him on the cross that He can kiss you. And she joined her hands together and said, 'Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me.' "...Undaunted, Mother Teresa continues. "This is the joy of suffering, the kiss of Jesus. Do not be afraid to share in that joy of suffering with Him because He will never give us more suffering than we are able to bear."
I suppose it is the same mode of thinking that more life is always better. Overpopulation isn't a problem if you assume it to be God's will. Don't worry about the crime problem that comes from millions of unwanted children or anything. It's wrong simply because someone who thinks people should suffer horrible pain while dying thinks it's wrong.
Life and liberty of the unborn human.
Ask yourself: would I rather be dead, or alive? If you answer, "Alive," you should be willing to allow that same right to everyone else, including the unborn.
What you are arguing for in this statement: "Don't worry about the crime problem that comes from millions of unwanted children or anything." is that it's OK to kill people we don't want around if we are able to do it.
Is that what America was created for? Is that consistent with "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"
If you can't apprehend the evil of abortion, there is little to no chance that you can understand the assumptions of this nation.
Abortion isn't going away no matter how much you whine about it. It's tragic, but it's reality. And unless you're a woman, you really shouldn't be lecturing anyone on the "life and liberty of the unborn human."
And what pray tell, would inhibit a man, a human being, a person with inalienable rights bestowed by His Creator, from speaking out for life and liberty of all humans - born and unborn, male and female? Wrong is wrong, no matter what your gender. Evil is evil, no matter what your political persuasion. "All that is necessary for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing."
Unfortunately, I think you are right about abortion not 'going away.' Unless this country is the recipient of a massive dose of God's redeeming grace, it is headed for the ash heap of history. We need a spiritual awakening similar to the one that brought this country into being.
You open yourself up by this reasoning to trying to identify when a human being comes into existance at some point other than conception. But the reality is that human life begins at conception and continues on through all stages of gestation, childhood and adulthood. There is no point along this continuum where one can definitively say that the minute before, the child was not a human being, and the minute after, it is.
You guys seem to think if you repeat "human" over and over and over that somehow you're going to establish a fetus as a legal entity that trumps the will of a woman. It's not going to happen.
The legality question is one thing, the more important consideration is the moral one.
Let me as you this: Regardless of the law, do you believe it is okay to kill an innocent human being?
The law did allow for abortionists to deliver a fully viable, developed fetus to the point of pulling it's legs out of the womb and then before the head comes out, sticking a sharp instrument into it's skull and sucking the brains out, killing it.
This was legal, but was it moral? If it is moral, would it be any less moral to have delivered the baby and then stick that sharp instrument into it's brain, killing it while it took it's first few breaths?
Why is one murder, the other not?
The legality question is one thing, the more important consideration is the moral one."
Absolutely incorrect. When we are taking about seating a Supreme Court justice we are talking about legality and law, not about personal morality.
Just because you believe a fetus is the same as a man or a woman does not necessarily make it so. I believe it does. I believe it is a human life and would never support an abortion by anyone. However, I understand that others do not believe this. And, in this country, I do not have the right to project my personal morality onto the behaviors and choices and beliefs of others in order to make it illegal.
It's not "OK to kill people". It is OK for a woman to hold precedence over a potential human being. And again, if you're arguing on a secular level, then you have to recognize the crime issue. There is such a thing as "too many people". Overpopulation is a problem, and this is especially relevant when we're talking about people who aren't in a position to properly raise children to begin with.
Either the fetus or the woman has to hold the power. Since the fetus is not a person, much less a citizen, the woman holds the power. She doesn't lose her liberty or ability to pursue happiness because of it.
What are the "assumptions of this nation"? What is that even supposed to mean?
Biologically, there is no place other than conception to mark the beginning of human life. Your statement that a fetus is not a person is scientifically naive, and/or willfully ignorant. Your argument about an 'unwanted zygote' says that you have the right to life only if others value you. If you are 'unwanted' you have no right to life.
Here in the U.S., overpopulation is not a problem, so it is unreasonable to suggest we here are justified in killing people because of it. Your argument, though, consists of saying that you only have the right to life if you have the properly equipped parents, so orphans have no right to life.
That you would argue that a woman's happiness is of more value than another person's life, I won't try to explain to you what the assumptions of the nation are. You wouldn't understand.
Again, you're arguing on a secular level here. On that basis, what rights does a fetus have? If someone gets pregnant and gets an abortion without telling anyone, who knows the difference? Don't say "the fetus", because you're not arguing on a religious level. It's not an entity, as far as society concerned. Nobody has given it any rights, or promised any protection. Why is a Supreme Court justice supposed to see things differently than that? You're not giving any reason whatsoever.
Part of the issue here is that you're arguing absolutes. What I'm talking about is the argument I hear from your type about the millions and millions of "people" "killed" by abortion. Let's say that they were all born instead. How much higher of a population would we have, considering that many of those millions would have had several generations of descendants born by now? Probably another 150-200 million. And if you want to argue that any fetus or zygote has inalienable rights, then you're in a position where you're looking at half a billion people in this country and saying that it doesn't matter if the rate keeps going that way, because every fetus has rights and any woman who has an abortion is a murderer. This absolutism on your part is neither a practical nor reasonable way of viewing the situation.
"If you are 'unwanted' you have no right to life."
If you are unwanted then there's no legal obligation to carry out the pregnancy. The rights of no legal entity are being violated.
I'm not saying orphans have no right to life. Once a woman reaches the end of the second trimester (which I think could reasonably be cut back to the beginning of the second trimester, personally), then that fetus has been promised protection by her and by society as a whole. This is why people who kill pregnant women can be sometimes charged with two murders, because the woman is assumed to value the future child. The key is that it rests on the will of the woman, not on arbitrary rules of society. It's not like a woman on her way to get an abortion would get killed and the murderer would get charged with double homicide. The will of the woman is what determines the value of the potential life.
Again, an unborn child is not a person. If you can't explain what "the assumptions of the nation" are, then you shouldn't have used the phrase in the first place.
Just to correct one of your many misconceptions, I am not making a religious argument. Either a fetus is a human being or it is not. Since a fetus is demonstrably a person -whatever society's opinion is does not change that fact.
The assumptions of this nation include the concept that all humans have certain inalienable rights: Life; Liberty; Property. Scientifically, culturally, and legally (until Roe Vs. Wade and in some cases, even yet) a fetus is a human being. But according to your argument(s), that human only has rights after a certain (arbitrary) point in time, and under certain conditions (if the mother values that life). But we are a nation of law, not of arbitrary personal preferences. If a fetus/person has the 'protection' of law in some instances (when valued by the mother), our assumption as a nation is that that child has inalienable rights and deserves our protection at all times.
Actually, the number of abortions in the U.S. is somewhere between 32 and 45 million, not half a billion. But whatever the number it is that number too high in a society that claims to hold civil rights as its highest priority. We can't 'pick and choose.' Either all human beings have civil rights or they don't. If some don't, all don't. Abortion is the death of liberty in the U.S.
It's not that I can't explain the 'assumptions' of the nation. You have shown yourself unwilling to understand what I'm saying.
The Supreme Court could have easily said at no time is the fetus a separate being and therefore abortion is legal throughout the pregnancy but they chose the viability route.
Forcing women to carry something in their body that they want out is the death of liberty in this country.
Again, if you can't apprehend the evil of abortion, you won't understand the genius of the American experiment.
Evil is subjective. I thought the Bush administration was evil. I'm guessing you thought differently. You think abortion is evil. I think abortion should be available to women as an option and no one should be able to take away that liberty. Just mine your own business.
If the majority of people don't find something to be evil, then labeling it that has no place in a discussion on society. That would be a religious argument, not a secular one.
Actually, we have made some laws to restrict personal liberty, but I happen to disagree with that line of thinking.
If evil is merely a 'subjective' assignment, then on what basis can you say 'torture' is objectively evil? Was the holocaust objectively evil? Were Stalin's pogroms objectively evil? Was it objectively evil that Pol Pot murdered millions? If these things were only subjectively evil, then it's just a matter of changing the consensus to make them good. The Japanese and Germans would be justified in re-writing their part in the history of the Second World War as good instead of evil.
Certainly there is a subjective side to discerning evil and good. But just because a man can't distinguish between colors doesn't mean that colors are not part of the light spectrum. That you are unable to distinguish evil doesn't mean that evil doesn't exist. Just because you insist something is not evil doesn't mean that is isn't evil. You may be wrong!
You're basically trying to have things both ways here. You admit that there's a subjective side to evil, but at the same time if one recognizes that, then you suggest there's a slippery slope where the consensus might change and make something acceptable. Well, that's always true. It doesn't make it likely, because our sense of ethics dictates that trying to wipe out an entire race, for instance, is wrong.
Evil is subjective, period. Some things are easily agreed upon, and some are not, just like when discussing beauty, or what makes for good music, or art, or any number of things.
"life, although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction." A fetus qualifies as a living being. If a human fetus is alive (by science's standards), it is a human life.
Shutting your eyes won't help, Solon.
So, you don't know when life begins, so abortion is justified. If you gave a helpless fetus the same benefit of the doubt you gave a convicted killer, you would oppose abortion, on the grounds that it might be a human life.
An embryo or fetus relies directly on the woman, so it's not exactly "separate". I'm not sure what your thought process is there.
People don't have funerals after miscarriages. There's no death certificate, the police don't automatically ask questions to find out if there was "foul play" involved on the part of the mother. Do you see what I'm getting at? We don't treat it as if a "person" died. It's potential life, not a person. It is not its own entity.
I understand perfectly well that you think a fetus is a human being that has rights. That's your belief, not any sort of widely accepted reality. And again, you're making zero attempt to explain why a justice is supposed to buy into that. There's nothing objective behind it, it's purely emotional. I would also expect that anyone with an IQ of 40 would figure out that if you establish inalienable rights for a fetus, then the circumstances of conception make no difference whatsoever. Rape, incest, it doesn't matter. How about if the life of the mother is at risk? You can't infringe on the rights of the fetus, so too bad.
It's not like anyone wants more abortions. It's not a good thing, we all know that. There should be more prevention, so that the option is rarely exercised. But the reality is that the option needs to be available. We can come to a compromise on deadlines and circumstances and the like, but the various circumstances of life preclude the complete ban of abortion for such a tenuous justifications such as "they're people" and the idea that the very concept of liberty somehow hangs in the balance.
I forgot to comment on this gem. You're arguing that abortion is going to destroy our society because liberty is lost, but at the same time society's opinion doesn't matter.
Think about that. Society makes its own definitions. If it's society's determination that a fetus is not a person, then it follows that it doesn't accept the relevance to liberty to begin with. It doesn't have any sort of impact on the rights of anyone else, because it's not accepted that anyone's rights have been violated at all. There's nowhere to start a slippery slope. Your argument makes no sense.
Even without an objective Deity, though, it is certainly not the case that society 'has determined' that a fetus is not a person. There is robust disagreement about that very issue. The only way that abortion got legalized in this country was through judicial activism, the usurping of legislative and executive power by liberal judges.
Think about this: from your perspective, the people who founded this country were in error in their determination that there is a God. Did the social consensus create a God? You would say, "No." Facts are facts, regardless if they are believed or not. It is scientifically demonstrable that an unborn fetus has all the qualities necessary to humanity. An unborn fetus, according to your standard of truth (scientific realism?), is a human being. Does that mean that if society redefines a fetus as a non-human, it is no longer human?
What you fail to grasp is that if 'government' has the authority to decide when life begins, it also has the authority to decide who should enjoy life and when that life should end. In other words, tyranny. If the unborn fetus has no rights, neither do you. Thus, abortion is the death of liberty in our nation.
"There is robust disagreement about that very issue"
Then explain why is it absolutely essential for a justice to embrace [i]your [i]side of that disagreement? I think you've lost track of your argument here. A justice doesn't have to believe in your god, nor choose your side in order to be qualified for the job. And if there's disagreement, then there is no established basis for any rights that you're insisting are there.
"Facts are facts, regardless if they are believed or not. It is scientifically demonstrable that an unborn fetus has all the qualities necessary to humanity."
Again, a fetus is a potential human. Yes, it has all the qualities necessary to become human. Nobody's arguing that. The point is that it is not a separate entity, much less a legal one. You're trying to establish a definition, which is not a fact. If it was actually a fact, then there would not be "robust disagreement" over it.
"What you fail to grasp is that if 'government' has the authority to decide when life begins, it also has the authority to decide who should enjoy life and when that life should end. In other words, tyranny."
But you want them to determine that life, as a legal definition, begins at a certain point. Doesn't that lead to tyranny, by your logic? As I already pointed out, if society isn't accepting that someone's rights are being violated, then there's no place to start a slippery slope. Everyone else's rights are already established. Nobody else is in the same circumstances as a fetus, so the principle applied there doesn't apply anywhere else.
Are you a separate entity? Do you grow your own food? Manufacture your own clothes? Provide the fuel for your electrical and heating needs? You are interconnected with society, and dependent upon others, just as a fetus is (only they more so). Is a physically handicapped person less of a human because they can't walk? How about mentally handicapped? (Slippery slope - many Downs Syndrome babies are starved to death in hospitals across America today.) If the governing authority is able to say that a helpless fetus has no right to life, you have no right to life. Because that fetus is just as human as you are.
If you can't grasp the evil of abortion, you can't understand liberty.
"Only they more so" is sort of an important concept here. I'm not saying people live completely independent of everything. A fetus relies on a woman for everything. And again, once someone is born, they are promised protection. The slippery slope for handicapped people does not work. No matter how many times you throw that crap out there, it's been addressed multiple times already.
I still have a right to life whether someone else has an abortion or not. They don't have rights. I do.
Right?
REGION: When a fetus is killed, intent matters
By TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer
Nearly five years ago, a 25-year-old Rincon man shoved a shotgun into the face of his girlfriend, who was seven months' pregnant, and pulled the trigger.
One shot killed the mother and her unborn baby girl.
A jury convicted Andree Calac of two counts of second-degree murder ---- one for the mother, the other for the baby.
http://nctimes.com/articles/2009/01/11/news/sandiego/zb90c9768b06de42788257537007b6bd1.prt
The unborn baby had the "legal" right to live according to California law. There are other cases that back that up across the country. This is an example of a secular court convicting a murderer for killing a fetus. your attempted argument about legality and secular arguments does not hold water.
What EdRoss has been arguing is that a fetus has legal rights from the moment of conception onward. That's the context of my post. Note the phrase "unwanted zygote" and contrast it to your story about a woman who is seven months pregnant and clearly intending to give birth.
I hope that clarifies things for you.
Civil rights battles are always fought for the weakest, least desirable member of the class. If the Nazis can't march in Skokie, the VFW won't be able to march in Podunk.
I saw a report from the BBC about an empty hospital in Great Britain - a generation ago, it had housed severely handicapped Down Syndrome babies. With abortion and euthanasia, it is no longer needed. The babies killed (actually in the U.S. they are starved to death) were mostly viable, albeit handicapped, 'born' children - without the right to life, apparently. It was chilling to watch this 'doctor' gloat over the deaths of so many 'undesirable' children.
If every human life does not have inalienable rights, no human life has inalienable rights. There is no scientific 'place' for human life to start but at conception. Therefore, if we will not protect the human fetus, we have lost our liberty.
Its not that you are wrong in the details of your argument, you are wrong at the bases of your argument. You are unable to grasp the horrid evil in abortion. You have no grasp of what liberty, and the United States, means.
"What is the basis for your rights? If your rights are merely a social consensus, granted by the government, then I argue that you have no real "inalienable" rights."
You're talking about God, as you were before, after chastising me for the "misconception" that you were making a religious argument. Make up your mind, already.
There's a very important distinction you're missing here, which is that nobody's rights have been taken away. It's not as if there were established rights for the fetus and then they were gone. If that were the case then you would at least have some argument that "it could happen to you" or whatever. Those rights were never established in the first place. They were never there. So nothing has changed except the recognition of the need for abortion, and I defy you to explain how that can apply to any born person in the country. It just does not.
I really don't think I need to explain the realities of abortion again to you. It's just how it is, whether you like it or not. You've pretty much abandoned your original argument about how this is some great requirement for nominated justices, you won't explain how it makes sense for women to be forced to give birth in cases of rape, incest and potential death of the mother, so all you have is your tired lines about "evil" and "liberty", and to assert that anyone who doesn't share your views doesn't understand the entire country.
You reek of desperation and mindless zealotry.
No, I'm quite content, really. But I appreciate your concern :).
"It's not as if there were established rights for the fetus and then they were gone....Those rights were never established in the first place. They were never there." Your statement is just historically ignorant. Fetal rights were firmly ensconced in law in all 50 states when Roe vs. Wade was decided (ie. abortion was illegal, a criminal act, though I think there were a couple of states that had 'liberalized' abortion laws at the time). Until 1973, the states officially protected the fetus, recognizing the wisdom of the ancients who affirmed that "what will become a (hu)man is a (hu)man."
I have not changed my argument in the least. Those who can't grasp the horror of killing unborn children don't understand the concept of liberty on which this country was founded. That concept relies on "inalienable rights" which the Founders attributed to God. I don't think one can affirm inalienable rights without appealing to God, but for the sake of the argument, I allow that one might somehow appeal to inalienable rights without appealing to God - some objective standard, perhaps. Like the scientifically established fact that a new human life starts at conception.
I have not said that those who can't grasp the horror of abortion don't understand the entire country, I've said repeatedly that they can't understand the genius of the country - her liberty.
An abortion means that an innocent human being is killed. That is a direct abnegation of the American concept of liberty. Anyone who is willing to set aside the concept of liberty should not be a judge, especially a Supreme Court judge.
Concerning liberty
To take two definitions of liberty, which I think applies to the discussion at hand:
1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions
Are the liberties of women being dissolved by forcing pregnancies to term? Brabantio also brought up forced pregnancies, and instances where the potential mother's life is at stake.
Concerning God
If God is indeed a foundational piece of this discussion, then is it safe to assume the that christian God's morals are being held as true, and not another deity?
I think liberty was mostly the absence of government coercion when the country was founded. The American revolution was really pretty conservative, except in the area of religious freedom. They pretty much adopted English Common Law, but were ground-breakers in the idea of freedom of conscience and religious expression (Following the Puritans of the 1640s in England). The Puritan/Christian influence is also very evident in the recognition that law is needed to inhibit the sinful tendencies of man - hence the unique system of 'checks and balances' in the Constitution.
Another very important factor that is missed in our more pluralistic age is that there was an overwhelming consensus that Biblical righteousness constituted good citizenship. (I think it was Adams who said that our political system could not succeed without a 'religious' people - by which he meant a people following the Bible. Unless the context demands otherwise, you can assume that the Founders meant Christianity when they said religion.) Because of that consensus, it was assumed that American citizens would conform to Biblical morality. What Brabantio misses is that the consensus was about something 'outside' of themselves, something 'higher' than themselves (nature and Nature's God). It was not a mere consensus, but an conviction that God's law was beneficial and worthy of their submission.
I think you could distill the revolutionary idea of liberty into this: 'We will be free to follow God however our consciences (informed by the Bible) lead us.' (I think that both Jefferson and Franklin could subscribe to that, obviously Paine would not have.) The idea that freedom was 'the right to do whatever I want' would have been repugnant to most Americans at the time of the Revolution. So, it's mostly #1, and not very much #2.
The American Revolution is really the outworking of the 'Great Awakening,' that 'amazing work of God' all through the colonies with George Whitefield as the epicenter. In addition to Whitefield, patient pastors had been preaching revolution for 40-50 years prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The revolution would not have happened without the leadership of the Christian (and most importantly, Puritan) clergy.
In a society that values human rights, the idea of abortion is antithetical to freedom. There is a quantitative difference between the loss of convenience and personal privilege inherent in a pregnancy and the loss of life. Killing an innocent child is not an appropriate response to rape. In every pregnancy, there are two patients, the mother and the child. technical questions of viability, etc. may have to be answered, but in the context of two lives, not one life and a blob of tissue.
"I have not changed my argument in the least. Those who can't grasp the horror of killing unborn children don't understand the concept of liberty on which this country was founded. That concept relies on "inalienable rights" which the Founders attributed to God."
"Just to correct one of your many misconceptions, I am not making a religious argument. Either a fetus is a human being or it is not. Since a fetus is demonstrably a person -whatever society's opinion is does not change that fact."
"I have not said that those who can't grasp the horror of abortion don't understand the entire country, I've said repeatedly that they can't understand the genius of the country - her liberty."
"You have no grasp of what liberty, and the United States, means."
The conjunction "and" separates the concepts of "liberty" and "the United States". But whatever, to accuse someone of not understanding liberty simply because they disagree with you is desperate. I understand liberty just fine, it's just that it doesn't apply to a fetus.
Please address the point about forced births for rape and incest and cases where the woman's life is at risk. As Axel points out, that's a violation of the liberty of the woman, which has been my point all along. Why should a Supreme Court justice ignore that?
Axel indicated above that we seem to have differing definitions of 'liberty.' Liberty is not 'the right to do whatever I want, as long as I don't harm anyone else.' That is called 'license.' The concept of liberty foundational to the United States is a liberty of conscience to do what is right. There's the rub: How does one determine what is right? If, as Solon says,"evil is subjective" then there is ultimately no right or wrong and liberty, as envisioned by the Founders, is a useless anachronism. If 'right and wrong' are merely societal consensus without an objective standard, then there is no such things as 'inalienable' rights and your right to life is subject to review at any time.
I wouldn't use the term 'forced births.' Pregnancies by rape are so infrequent as to be statistically insignificant (except to the woman impregnated and her child, of course - a good illustration of the civil rights precept that these issues are fought on the extreme edges). There are two victims in those crimes - the woman and the child. It does not seem to me to be a very difficult question as to which right has priority - there are no other civil liberties without the right to life. To kill a child because her mother was raped seems quite wrongheaded to me. Of course, if we really value human rights, we have an obligation to the mother. (It is mostly Christians who have been at the forefront in providing homes and shelters for unwed mothers.)
The pregnancy because of rape or incest is a result of the violation of a woman's civil liberties. The violation occurred in the rape or incest, not in the pregnancy. We must make a distinction between civil liberties and personal preference if we are to maintain our rights.
"I understand liberty just fine, it's just that it doesn't apply to a fetus." Pray tell, why not? Science shows conclusively that human life begins at conception. The only differences between you and a fetus are ones of location and viability. Civil liberties are 'all or none.' Either the right to life is inalienable to all living or it is inalienable to none living. Without inalienable civil rights, there can be no true liberty. Unless you are willing to protect the right of the unborn, you cannot maintain your own liberty.
Abortion is antithetical to the American ideal of liberty and civil rights.
Demanding absolute standards regardless of circumstances leads to more demonstrable problems than what you're talking about. Take China, for instance. You could say that restricting couples to having one child is "wrong". Well, what would be recommended, then? Does it make more sense to say "there's a problem which requires this solution", or to say "if they do that then people's rights are being violated"? We have the ability to reason out what is right and what is wrong on a societal level, and circumstances have to play a part in that. We are not nearly so weak that we need to have absolutism as a crutch.
Living genetic material does not qualify as a human being. It is not an entity as far as society is concerned.
Your position is diametrically opposed to the position of the people who founded this nation. Thus my statement: if you can't understand that abortion is a horrible evil, you have no apprehension of America's genius - liberty.
I think you're confusing government action with societal norms. Even if not, the suggestion that our society is comparable with Nazi Germany in any way is rather odd.
Whether civil rights are inalienable or not isn't the point. The point is that they don't apply to a fetus. They are not legally recognized entities. No matter how many times you say "life begins at conception", it doesn't change that.
The liberty (and in some cases, life) of the mother is the legal decision being considered on abortion. The courts have decided that they cannot substitute their own personal morality onto the law if that infringes on the liberty of the pregnant woman. True liberty is tough to live with, and is tested in a society as great as ours. I was raised Catholic and do not agree with abortion personally. But, when I think that this country has made the decision to not make laws based on the morality of my religion (or the religion of others), but has made the decision to not prosecute and to not incarcerate the women who make this decision and the doctors who help them all I can say is....God Bless America.
Also, I think you are having an issue "comprehending" the meaning of "apprehend".
Every law has a moral basis. Laws say, "You shall or you shall not." Because they seek to control human behavior, and because human behavior expresses morality, law is a moral expression. The question is: "Whose morality shall this nation express?"
This nation was founded on the assumption that its laws would be based upon the Bible and it was governed by that assumption until the early 1900s.
Without that awful 'absolutism' of the Bible, liberty degenerates into antinomianism. That is the position we find ourselves in today. Instead of liberty, we have license. The absence of law does not mean liberty, it means anarchy. And that can only lead to tyranny.
You labor under the delusion that morality and religion are conjoined twins. They aren't. Laws against things that harm others can easily be established from a secular viewpoint as well. The difference is the lack of dogma.
Do things like this sound like the activities of a legitimate news organization?
{Don't answer; that was a rhetorical question . . .}