Collegiate Times

Wow, is this article on the comedy page? Just what we'd expect from one sitting in the ivory tower of the economically privileged. Planned Parenthood provides low cost health care for those that don't have it available to them. Those are what you would call "poor people." Can you relate?, I doubt it. In addition, Roe v. Wade didn't make abortion a constitutionally protected right. It confirmed an individual's constitutionally protected right to be free from government intrusion...to make their own health-care decisions. Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than Operation Rescue, and any of its other related terrorist organizations, combined.

Once again, great Article Allison. I appreciate all the articles you have written. Keep up the great work. We need to stop Planned Parenthood from receiving federal money and shut the door on abortion. Here is a Roe v Wade IQ test people should take: http://www.roeiqtest.com/ui/index.php This might open their minds to what a desastrous policy it is and why it should be overturned.

I don't even understand why abortion is still such a hot topic. Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. Yes, I am saying never and maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so. Look at how many decisions the Supreme Court has overturned... liberal or conservative. Furthermore, if you don't like abortion then don't get one. It's a right and controversial, no doubt, but it should be left up to each individual. There are so many more issues that should be at the forefront. i.e. look at the economy, you may not even be able to afford that abortion soon!

Thanks for this article. For Justthefacts: There are many many legal scholars, lawyers, and judges who have said that Roe V Wade was a bad ruling, even without political bias, because it essentially created a right (that of privacy) which was not actually in the Constitution implicitly or explicitly. The case should be re-examined and re-decided, pure and simple. And, while it may be true that the courts will never overturn their own poorly made decision, it is possible to add an amendment to the Constitution to protect the unborn. As for “don’t get one” all I can say is this: if you don’t like murder, don’t commit one; if you don’t like burglary, don’t commit one; if you don’t like embezzlement, don’t commit it; if you don’t like speeders, don’t speed. These are all things that are illegal based upon some sense of morality. If these things can be made illegal because they are in someone’s perspective “immoral” why should abortion not be added to the list? It’s not as simple as “don’t get one” if we consider the act itself as immoral. It is immoral, therefore it should be illegal. It is immoral because it is murder, the killing of a human being without due process or proper application of justice.

Murder, burglary, embezzlement... illegal and immoral. Speeding, illegal, but don't see how it's immoral. And, look at how many people murder, steal, embezzle, and speed even though it's illegal. Even if abortion is made illegal it won't stop women from getting them. They will just get it done in a back alley. Abortion is sad, but again it should be left up to the individual.

Jonathan, I disagree that immoral acts ought to be illegal, as you suggest. In theory, the reason that murder is illegal is not because it is immoral, but because it infringes upon the Constitutional rights of others. The same is true of burglary and embezzlement. Once we accept the premise that all are created equal, one shouldn't need a "moral compass" to recognize that these actions ought to be illegal. As you point out, a primary problem with abortion is that many see it as murder. But the conclusion here shouldn't be to legislate based on morality; rather, we should be focused on interpreting what rights, if any, should be given to the unborn under the Constitution. As for speeding, that seems to be an example of the government seeing fit to create legislation it believes will benefit the overall safety of society. I doubt you'll hear too many people debating the morality of speeding.

Jonathan, you're putting the cart before the horse. Roe v. Wade didn't create any rights. In fact, no case-law creates rights, and the Constitution doesn't create any rights. The starting point is...you have the right to do everything, and to be free from anyone imposing on those rights. Now, the Constitution, and case-law, and statutes, go about listing many of your rights as "self evident" and placing restrictions on those rights. Thus, a right of privacy doesn't have to be implicitly or explicitly in the Constitution to be "created." It already exists. Roe v. Wade just prohibits the Government from infringing upon it. (See Amendment IX of the Bill of Rights) And Jason T, there are no rights given to the unborn under the Constitution. They're not "born" so they're not citizens of the U.S. with protections equal to or greater than those supporting the fetus. (See Amendment XIV of the Bill of Rights).

That last sentence should read: They're not "born" so they're not citizens of the U.S. with protections equal to or greater than those rights of the person (and citizen) supporting the fetus.

Excellent point, JusttheFacts. Thanks for filling in that detail.

The problem here, in my mind, is that (generally speaking) the same crowd clamoring for the rights of 'enemy combatants' who, they claim, are 'unlawfully detained' (but not US citizens in most cases) clamors to prohibit the unborn from having rights. Either the US Constitution applies exclusively to US Citizens or it doesn't, but you can't have it both ways. An accurate reading of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, actually, would sustain Roe v. Wade (Article XI does just this, per JustTheFacts); the problem with the caselaw is that the Supreme Court generated a right to privacy as part of an umbrella coming from the first and, I believe, 4th amendments. It is this 'umbreally' concept which many legal scholars find offensive, as it grants, to a large extent, the SCOTUS power to simply generate rights for the citizens. At the end of the day, the real trouble here is that abortion should have been a state issue (see Amendment X), but instead it wound up in Federal Court so the case was decided without proper standing. I am personally opposed to abortion, but I am even moreso opposed to federal powers overstepping their Constitutionally-appointed bounds of jurisdiction.

"Enemy combatants" are non-citizens by definition pursuant to the Presidential Order; Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism, so no, I don't think that is a fair comparison. That is an issue relating to treaties, international law, or in rare cases, "entitlements" to rights of US Citizens because you happened to be arrested on US soil. The abortion issue is fairly summed up as: whether you or I (the government) can force another human being to gestate. The Courts don't generate rights. They simply point them out. It illustrates the Tao of rights. I try to force you to do something, and your right not to do it is defined.

I don't disagree with your assertion regarding the nature of courts, but a careful reading of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights presents itself as a specific list of protections against Federal intrusion. My ultimate point is that the SCOTUS was out of its jurisdiction in ruling as it did in Roe, and even if it HAD been within its jurisdiction, its legal reasoning was faulty because of the invocation of the umbrella of rights concept. My personal feelings about abortion aside, the issue ultimaely should be hashed out (if anywhere) in the state legislatures, since the right to an abortion (and more broadly, the right to privacy) is not enumerated anywhere in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Thus, it falls under the scope of the 10th amendment, and as such should be left to the states to decide. A lot of the philosophical end of the argument comes from a disagreement about when a fetus becomes a human (since we operate under the assumption that humans have rights, and this is what fundamentally separates them from fetuses). From this perspective, it seems logical to assert that perhaps abortion ought not be illegal any more than the removal of a tumor ought to be illegal, but in practice we as a society still have practices (or had practices) wherein a fetus is actually 'mostly delivered' (and so can ostensibly be called partially human - although, we might want to discuss whether having your feet still in the womb really disqualifies you from being a human), and yet we still condone abortions at this point (partial-birth abortion). It is interesting to note the principle of viability as well - can it be successfully argued that a viable fetus is, effectively, being detained and killed against its will simply because the mother will not let it out of her womb? This is to say, if the fetus is capable of living outside of the womb, but the mother would prefer an abortion, why is the fetus not given the option to decide for itself (through, of course, a court-appointed guardian)? Interesting philosophical questions.

I love it when Kyle gets into these discussions. I was wrong to say "created a right" Kyle pretty much summed up what I meant to say but didn’t. It's interesting that you should bring up citizenship and the 14th amendment TO the Bill of Rights in this discussion since I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in this country to kill non-citizens. The discussion does not pertain to citizenship as much as to the philosophical and scientific question of what defines a human being. If we define a fetus as a human being, scientifically and philosophically, it should have a right to live as all human beings do, citizen and non-citizen (“all men (humanity to the PC) are CREATED equal” not “All men are BORN equal”). That inherent right should not be infringed upon by the Federal Gov’t or by the States. And, if a fetus is indeed alive and a human being, the next question should be: does its right to live trump the “right to privacy” of the woman carrying it? Think logically on this one, it is an extremely fuzzy line to draw between life and “non-life.” It would be far better to err on the side of caution than have blood on your hands.

I love how a bunch of MEN are on here arguing over abortion. It's ironic and even more so that the decision is left up to a bunch of men on the Supreme Court. What a joke.

Yes, because we all know men have no part in the conception of children and despite sharing half the genes responsible men should not have any right to protect the life of thier child.

The joke is...that men apparently care about civil rights more than women do. "Oh, whatever shall we do?!? (hanky wipe), burn our bras?" How about mobilizing the female voting base? How about addressing the article in the name of sisterhood?...assuming Allison Aldrich is a female. Ah, easier to take a gender swipe. Whatever.

Justthefacts: you obviously don't care more about civil rights than women do if you're going to take such an ignorant jab at feminists. Maybe women like myself waited a whole day to respond because we actually wanted to think about the article before reacting to it. I thought you had some decent points until that last post. My response to the article follows this post.

First of all, I’ll say that I have a pro-choice bias. That wasn’t so hard was it? Maybe if everyone was straightforward about their opinions then we wouldn’t have misleading articles like Allison Aldrich’s. I wouldn’t mind reading an intelligent, well-supported pro-life argument in the paper but this is nothing short of pure slander. Allison Aldrich goes from MLK to abortion in some sort of unintelligible stream-of-consciousness and ends up saying that all of the Planned Parenthood clinics are run by murderous racists. Now I have no idea what MLK would say about abortion, but I know he was intelligent enough to listen to both sides of an argument before verbally bombing Planned Parenthood. Her “theory” is that we should drop Planned Parenthood, an organization providing reproductive health care and family counseling to low-income women who can’t afford it, because it has a vague past connection to eugenics. That’s like saying we should dismiss everything in the Constitution because the founding fathers were racist and *#*ist (apparently the CT doesn’t allow the “s” word.) News flash: everything that occurred in the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century was at least somehow influenced by eugenics. Does that mean we should ditch women’s right to vote as well? Eugenics was a massive pseudoscientific movement that affected a lot of otherwise decent human beings. It is in no way related to the mission or services performed by Planned Parenthood: an organization providing information and counseling to women more often than it provides abortions. How does this fit into the Planned Parenthood eugenics conspiracy? Are they counseling them to death? The eugenics movement is guilty of forced sterilization and genocide; regardless of political or philosophical leanings, I think we can all agree that Planned Parenthood is not guilty of either of these crimes. Aldrich also claims that Planned Parenthood targets low-income women and women of color. Her only supporting evidence is that Planned Parenthood’s are placed in inner cities and most of the women seeking services are from low-income neighborhoods. Planned Parenthoods are opened to all women seeking help regardless of socioeconomic situation. Since middle to upper class white women are not the majority of women seeking the services of Planned Parenthood, this organization ensures that it is accessible to the population of women who historically have needed it the most.

I have an anti-government-oppression bias. One other point, Planned Parenthood, being a completely under-funded organization that provides free and low cost health care--in other words--not a money making operation, is located in "inner" cities and low-income neighborhoods because the real estate is cheaper there. It's not some sort of master plan. It's economic reality. And Planned Parenthood has a hard time leasing...because there are people like Eric Rudolph out there. Landlords don't like their property to be targeted by the psychos.

Just another thought about the article: Ms. Aldrich quotes a note from Sanger to Dr. Clarence Gamble about not wanting people to think that extermination of the black population is the goal. Ms. Aldrich takes this to mean, "eradicating black people is the goal, but we must cover it up." It seems to me that the statement could just as easily read, "we don't want to eradicate the black race, but just in case people mistakenly think that, please reassure them that we are providing a service to them." It doesn't seem unlikely to me at all that black citizens in the early 20th century would be wary of the intentions of such an organization, so such reassurance may have been appropriate. As for the KKK reference, Sanger's statement is not necessarily incriminating. She uses a basic "any press is good press" argument as justification for spreading her ideas to anyone who will listen. I realize that many of Ms. Sanger's views are now dated, but let's take a moment to recognize that there are different ways to interpret these statements.

Just a note on facts; neither Margaret Sanger did not endorse abortion and indeed she wrote that "care is the only cure for abortions." Planned Parenthood endorsed abortion only years after Sanger's death. Additionally, numerous civil rights figures did endorse Sanger's efforts including "The Amsterdam News" of Harlem, The Urban League, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, W.E.B. DuBois and, perhaps surprisingly considering the basis for this article, Martin Luther King who praised her efforts for the minorities of New York City.

Wow, great editing. I'm surprised the CT doesn't come out and say that Jesus endorsed abortion. "True, the Son of man is going away, just as it is written concerning him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been finer for him if that man had not been born." (Matthew 26:24, Mark 14:21)

To those dissenting to the article, Sanger said herself that "the campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics."

Yes, but Doug, that doesn't necessarily equate to her saying that we should eradicate the black race. As I understand it, eugenics seeks to eliminate the "unwanted" element of our population. If even the parents-to-be don't want these aborted children, why should the rest of society? While it seems that you're trying to use this quotation to shock us about Ms. Sanger's callous attitude, her point is very accurate, almost to the point of being self-evident.

By the way, Matt's point is excellent. It is so often overlooked that most women probably never "want" an abortion. For many women, it is a way to try to make the best of a bad situation. But no matter which side of the issue you're on, I think you'll agree that the ideal solution is to eliminate the NEED for abortions by eliminating unwanted conceptions.

My comment is better late than never. Sanger practiced with and studied under Hitler's doctors. She was for the elimination of imperfections. Her life is not a shining example for those of the nursing profession. Is not Eugenics and Planned Parenthood really rather the same concept, with implied differences? Can you trust the words of someone who had no regard for the most helpless of our species, whose own organization used the word "baby" in their family planning fliers circa late 50's and early 60's without the term "fetus" or "product of conception". I do believe that she felt that all black women should be placed on the table and sterilized. I believe this was quoted in a biographical text. Without dispute, abortion stops a Beating Heart, no matter what race.

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