You’d need an airtight constitutional amendment which would ristrict the right to privacy and/or establish a zygote as a person in the eyes of the law. In either case, such an amendment would be a very slippery slope and it really isn’t necessary.
It would not be necessary to establish a zygote as a “person” in order to create a constitutional amendment protecting the life of an unborn human in the mother’s womb.
That is true. However, if you don’t define what you mean by “unborn human,” you leave it to the courts to define.
A pro-abortion supreme court justice is now being appointed (singular). This justice will replace Justice Stephens, who was already pro-abortion. What did change the balance of power was the retirement of Justice O’Connor, who was generally pro-abortion. She was replaced by Justice Alito, who is more conservative on this issue. So while O’Connor was the swing vote, Justice Kennedy (who was generally a bit to the right of O’Connor in rulings on this issue) is now the swing vote, as the most liberal of the 5-justice “conservative bloc” on the court. The trouble is respect for precedent - stare decisis. While I think the five conservative justices in the absence of precedent would severely limit instances when abortion would be allowed, instead the court at this point is mostly fighting over the narrow middle ground, occasionally pushing it one way (mostly in the conservative direction in the past few years).
Right, but you don’t need to define the unborn humans as “persons” and give them all the rights of the born. You can define human life as beginning at conception and restrict what can be done to that life (i.e. ending it is not an option).
If McCain had been elected President, then the previous Obama appointment would have been pro-life. AND the current appointment would also be pro-life.
Of course it would. If your aim is to amend the Constitution then you have to select a section to amend. There are only two options; amending the Ninth Amendment to ristrict the privacy rights of the people or amending the Fourteenth Amendemnt to define a zygote as a person.
Not at all…in amending the Constitution there is no requirement to classify a zygote as a “person” to apply protection to a zygote. You can create a completely new protected class of human life (e.g. “unborn”) and give limited protection (e.g. life) to that class. It would, necessarily, modify the idea of a woman’s “right to privacy,” because this class of human life would not be considered part of the woman (as it, in reality, is not).
If your aim is to provide protections for life beginning at conception then you will have to take zygote. “Unborn” is vague enough to allow for interpretation on the part of the Courts and would likely result in absolutely no change in case law as it relates to the first trimester. Whether or not a zygote is alive is irrelevant in the eyes of the law; what matters is whether or not it is a person.
Defining a zygote as a person would also be vague…and unnecessary. I never said that it would be defined as just “unborn” either…that was an example of the categorization. The bottom line is that the amendment would have to clearly spell out the protections and that the protections apply to unborn human beings from the point of conception. Even if the term “zygote” is never used, “from the point of conception” would include a zygote.
There is no need to pick a specific section, or clause, or amendment that you wish to modify. An amendment stands on its own, and may impact one or many other sections of the Constitution. Or it could even impact none at all - you could in theory have an amendment establishing the koala as America’s official cute furry primate.
Exactly.
I am guessing that you know how to ‘count the votes’ with either the Supreme Court or with Congress. You may not like the point I made earlier, but it reflects the reality of the political situation.
Being that your “chances” are pure, unsupportable opinion, your point is moot.
You made a pronouncement about the future. It is the “reality of the political situation” today, but you can’t count future votes. You can only make assumptions. Your conclusions, based on assumptions about the future, are hypothetical (i.e. if nothing changes). Therefore, you deemed other discussions as “purely hypothetical” based on the purely hypothetical conclusion that Roe v Wade won’t be overturned and an Amendment can’t be passed.
