Thursday, August 25, 2011

Is It Good News Rick Perry Signed Susan B Anthony Pledge On Abortion ?

Creative Minority Report has Perry Signs Pro-Life Pledge

Very reasonable pro life people can disagree I think if parts of this pledge are overkill. It appears that one major pro-lifer that appears to think that is a certain Romney adviser
that just happens to be the very PRO LIFE former Ambassador to the Vatican.

However let me focus on this part:

FOURTH, advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.

I am not sure people have thought this through in all cases. Cardinal rule is whenever you see Congress DOING something you need to ask WHERE does Congress have the GRANT OF AUTHORITY in the U.S. Constitution to do that.

The jurisdiction of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act is based on the Commerce clause.

An expansive view of the Commerce Clause in fact.

An expansive view that legally sort of collides with Perry's view of the Commerce clause elsewhere. However that is not the point of the discussion.

It needs to be pointed out that bytrying to protect the unborn here we could be hurting them in the long term. What's to stop for instance pro-choice folks from using this authority grant of Congress to regulate abortion to wipe hard fought in the state State pro-life wins by a simple majority?

This is unpopular to say ,but if we want to think past next week I think we should discuss it . I have no problem with Congressmen that vote for the Protection act ,and if I was in their shoes I might do the same . I realize pointing out the potential long term problems here in a soundbite world might be a uphill task

Add to this is another real big problem. I am not sure one Supreme Court Justice ( that is viewed as Pro Life Friendly) would go along with this. So if this issue should be pushed now with the current make up of the court is another issue.

As I mention I think reasonable Pro-life can disagree on what I say above. However if a person thinks the above problem is a real threat to the pro life movement long term should they be signing this PLEDGE at this moment?


2 comments:

Rick67 said...

I appreciate your wise and thoughtful comments.

I was president of Cornell's pro-life group for 3 years. My pro-life street cred is solid if out of date. But since becoming uninvolved - without really changing my views much - I can see that some of what right-to-life movement says and does is not necessarily effective or productive.

James H said...

Thanks.

Again I can see why people support this position and heck maybe its a right one. But strategy wise it could have major implications.

Now maybe we should do it anyways but people need to be aware of the precedent we are putting up