{"id":41474,"date":"2019-05-10T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T10:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=41474"},"modified":"2019-05-09T16:10:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:10:10","slug":"why-abortion-can-never-be-an-inalienable-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/05\/why-abortion-can-never-be-an-inalienable-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Abortion Can Never Be an “Inalienable Right”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kansas is predominantly a pro-life state with a pro-life legislature.\u00a0 But abortions\u2013even late-term abortions of viable children\u2013will be legal in Kansas even if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade.\u00a0 This is because the state<\/em> Supreme Court ruled that under the\u00a0Kansas<\/em>\u00a0constitution abortion has to be seen as an \u201cinalienable\u201d right.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the state of Kansas passed a law prohibiting \u201cdilation and evacuation abortions,\u201d the technique used in late term abortions of dismembering a child in the womb and then extracting the parts, piece by piece.\u00a0 An abortion provider filed suit to challenge that law, and the case made its way to the state Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\n

In April, by a 6-1 decision, the court overturned that law, ruling that it violated the Kansas Constitution.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because that document includes language guaranteeing \u201cequal and inalienable natural rights.\u201d\u00a0 The court made a leap from the that principle to the non sequitur<\/em> that the phrase\u00a0\u201callows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life \u2014 decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.\u201d\u00a0 Therefore, completely disregarding the viable child\u2019s inalienable rights regarding his or her body, the court ruled that \u201cdilation and evacuation abortions\u201d must be allowed.<\/p>\n

Since this decision has to do with the Kansas constitution and not the U.S. constitution, it cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.\u00a0 And if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturns its Roe v. Wade decision (which actually allows restrictions on abortions after the point of viability), that would have no bearing in the state of Kansas.\u00a0 Unless Kansas citizens and lawmakers can amend the state constitution\u2013which some are planning to try\u2013that state will have to allow all abortions up to the time of birth, and no one can do anything about it.<\/p>\n

Timothy M. Jackson discusses the ruling in a brilliant analysis in The Federalist,<\/em> entitled Why Women Can Never Have a Constitutional Right to an Abortion<\/a>.\u00a0 You should read it all, but here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n

The claim that human beings have inalienable rights is an affirmation that all human beings by nature have rights as human beings, independent of any government ruling. This is what the Kansas Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged in their reasoning.<\/p>\n

However, what necessarily follows from this reasoning is that a human being has rights from the moment she begins to exist. This, by the way, would include any claimed right to bodily autonomy.<\/p>\n

If human beings have the right to bodily autonomy, you cannot consistently claim this is an inalienable right that is intrinsic to every human being\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0claim a human being only acquires this right at birth. It is hard to imagine a more acute violation of bodily autonomy than the intentional and forcible poisoning or dismemberment of their body to the point of death.<\/p>\n

Yet what right did the court acknowledge of the live human beings who have not been born? If human beings are only conferred rights at birth, this not what the word \u201cinalienable\u201d means. This is the expression of the opposite, in fact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jackson goes on to explain that inalienable rights must exist in harmony with each other and cannot be in conflict.\u00a0 The appearance of conflict is a sign that one of the \u201crights\u201d is counterfeit.\u00a0 He gives the example of the 19th century legal conflict over slavery:\u00a0 We have a \u201cnatural,\u201d \u201cinalienable\u201d right to property, one side argued.\u00a0 Therefore, we have a right to own slaves.\u00a0 But that conflicts with the \u201cinalienable\u201d right of human beings to liberty.\u00a0 \u201cA right to property for some that inherently denied liberty to others, without due process, showed quite clearly it was not a valid claim to property.\u201d<\/p>\n

The abortion debate, Jackson shows, is exactly the same.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>One argument insists that women have the right to control \u201ctheir own\u201d body\u2013thus invoking the \u201cproperty\u201d right, as with slavery\u2013over against the child\u2019s right to life and protection from harm.\u00a0 A related argument insists that women\u2019s right to liberty means that they have authority over the life of their child, but, as Jackson says, \u201cthis is a false application of our natural right to liberty. There is no such thing as liberty to intentionally kill an innocent human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

In rulings like this one, as well as in Democratic position papers and in pro-abortion arguments in general, there is no<\/em> consideration of the humanity of the \u201cfetus\u201d or of any rights that this might entail.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t refuting the pro-life position that the fetus is a human being.\u00a0 Nor are they usually putting forth an argument that the fetus is not<\/em> a human being.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t mentioning the issue at all.<\/em>\u00a0 They jump immediately to the rights of the mother, and that is all they consider.<\/p>\n

To be sure, some pro-abortion arguments do maintain that the developing fetus is not fully human, that \u201cit\u201d is just a collection of cells that are part of the mother.\u00a0 But you cannot make that argument for a full-term, viable baby shortly before birth!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The fetus is not just a collection of non-differentiated cells, but, at that stage, it is a fully-formed human being.<\/p>\n

And that was the case before the Kansas Supreme Court, whether a late-term abortion procedure, which inflicts great pain and cruelty on a child that could just as easily be delivered alive and put up for adoption, should be legal.\u00a0 The court, as far as I can tell, had nothing to say about the central issue in the case before it!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image by Gerd Altmann<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a>, Pixabay License.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kansas is predominantly a pro-life state with a pro-life legislature.\u00a0 But abortions\u2013even late-term abortions of viable children\u2013will be legal in Kansas even if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade.\u00a0 This is because the state Supreme Court ruled that under the\u00a0Kansas\u00a0constitution abortion has to be seen as an \u201cinalienable\u201d right. In 2015, the state of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":41591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,27],"tags":[72,2736,8333,1055,8339,8336],"class_list":["post-41474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics","category-law","category-life-issues","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-laws","tag-hodes-nauser-v-schmidt","tag-human-rights","tag-inalienable-rights","tag-kansas-supreme-court-abortion-ruling"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Abortion Can Never Be an "Inalienable Right"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that abortion is an "inalienable right." 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