I am going to comment on some things our friend TigerHawk said here in his piece on government payment for abortions. Says he:
I do not believe that the Constitution can reasonably be read to confer a "right" to an abortion.
The US Constitution was not designed to "confer" rights: it was designed to circumscribe the power and jurisdiction of the Federal State by a group of independent states who, knowing human nature, were deeply suspicious about any expansion of Federal, centralized power after their experience with Britain. According to our founding documents, human freedom is conferred by God to us as individuals, not by man and not by government.
The "Bill of Rights" Amendments were not designed to confer rights either. They were added, on the insistence of the feisty New York delegation, just to make some of the implied meaning crystal clear (and I suppose they were wise to do so, but it makes it appear that unspecified freedoms - or "rights" - do not exist)... except for Amendments lX and X which were intended to cover almost all human actions:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Thus, in my view, abortion should have been ignored by the Supremes. Not a Federal case. It may be rightly a legal issue on the state level, and is certainly an individual moral issue.
The language of "rights" is tricky, easily abused and distorted, and I do not like it. As an American, I do not and should not need specified "rights" to anything - all I need is a clear delineation of the limit of the powers of government, and I will find a way to get on with it in life.
I can bear arms - and do a million other things that aren't listed. But that doesn't mean that the government should buy me guns. So the question of who pays is another issue entirely. Insurance plans vary widely in the elective things they cover. Most people prefer less expensive plans which do not cover elective procedures, and clearly most people do not want to pay for other peoples' elective abortions.
They don't want to pay for other peoples' IVF either.
Am I right or wrong about all this? Just to be clear, this is not a pro-abortion post...
Are women pickier about men than men about women? Kelo update: It's a vacant lot How Muslim piracy changed the world SISU, a few weeks ago: "It compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies" Jim Carrey: Self-hating capitalist Pol
Tracked: Nov 11, 13:26