Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka

If it's perfectly ok for the voters of Oregon to decide that they want to allow doctor-assisted suicide, then why isn't it ok for the voters of Oregon to decide that they want to limit doctor-assisted abortion?

Two reasons.

1) One is adding rights and one is taking them away. Hint: "allow" vs. "limit."

(This explanation fails if you believe that fetuses' rights are equal to people's rights, which you probably do, but whoever you're asking the question to probably doesn't.)

2) Basically, your question has an implied fallacy. Try it with different noun phrases.

It's like asking, "If it's perfectly okay for the voters of Klingon to decide they want to allow eating cheese on Tuesdays, then why isn't it okay for the voters of Klingon to decide that they want to limit driving to men?

In other words "allow[ing] doctor-assisted suicide" in no way implies "limiting doctor-assisted abortion."

I don't think that a fetus/baby has the same rights as the mother, I just don't believe that there is a constitutional right to an abortion just as there is no constitutional right to end your life.

They are both matters of public policy that should be decided by the voters and not by the courts.

I just don't believe that there is a constitutional right to an abortion

The Court disagrees with you.

Also, we don't get our rights only from the Constitution. See the 9th Amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Why should voters have a say in whether a doctor may voluntarily help a terminally ill and grievously suffering patient die? It doesn't affect them. Similarly, except for the issue of whether a fetus has rights, why should the voters have a say in whether a doctor voluntarily provides an abortion to a willing woman? Would you say that voters should be allowed to prevent a doctor from performing, say, cosmetic surgery?

Voters shouldn't be allowed to restrict others' rights unless the restricting of those rights is necessary to prevent others' rights from being restricted.

So do you think that a state has no right to ban a 9th month abortion?

I think at some point we have to say that the fetus becomes a person with its own rights. I think that where we draw the line is the fundamental difference between those who are "pro-choice" and those who are "pro-life." "Pro-lifers" (usually) draw the line at conception. I think that we certainly have to draw the line before the fetus is viable, but certainly after the fetus is only a clump of barely differentiated cells. Where exactly we should draw it I don't know.

And since you don't know, and since no one really knows, it becomes a judgment call. And that call should be made by the voters and not Sandra Day O'Connor.

Based on what?

You're own personal beliefs.

I meant on what do you base your belief that it should be decided by the voters rather than the courts? Do you believe that all judgement calls should be made by the voters?

I believe that all social policy judgment calls should be made by the voters/legislature and not the courts.

It's called living in a democracy.

"It is blindingly clear, that judges have no greater aptitude than the average person to determine moral issues."

Justice Scalia

Wasn't Brown v. Board of Education a social policy judgement call?

Probably, though there are strong arguements that the ruling was still correct, based on the 14th Amendment.

Either way, it wasn't Brown that led to the end of legalized discrimination, it was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Without Roe there would have been some consensus as to abortion policy through the democratic proccess.

Instead, the Court froze the debate, and we are left with those on the right who think every abortion is murder and those on the left who support partial-birth abortions.

If abortion would have been decided democraticly, then both these groups would have been marginalized a long time ago.

I think we're getting off-topic. You've already changed your reasoning from "if it's okay to allow X it should be allowed to disallow Y" to "social policy judgement calls should be decided by voters" to "Roe v. Wade led to bad consequences."

There are reasonable arguments to be made against Roe (mostly having to do with the "right to privacy") but yours are all fallacious. It seems to me that you reached your conclusion first and are grasping for arguments afterwards. (One could argue that the Justices did the same thing, of course.)

If it's ok to allow X (which is a social policy), then it's ok to disallow Y (which is also a social policy)

And by allow/disallow i mean letting the voters decide, not letting courts decide.

I don't need to go into the legal reasons why Roe is wrong, but my main point stands. Social policy is best left up to the democratic process, as the voters of Oregon demonstrated.

Have a good shabbos.

If it's ok to allow X (which is a social policy), then it's ok to disallow Y (which is also a social policy)

By that logic, it should be ok to disallow intermarriage, crew-cuts, and flu shots.

Memo to KWC...your logic, as already pointed out, is painfully flawed, as is your understanding of what voters can and cannot vote on.

Voters may decide on ballot issues that address whether a non-existant right should be allowed; they cannot, however, vote on whether an already existing right can be taken away. That is the domain of the judiciary.

Your opinions I won't touch; those you're entitled to (and can't be fixed anyway).

And I'm arguing that abortion isn't a right. (Yes I know that the SC ruled that abortion is a right)

At the end of the day, both issues are purely social policy, and the courts shouldn't be getting involved in them.

And who or what is KWC?

CWY -

Why isn't abortion a right? Don't say because it isn't already enumerated, because that's already been addressed:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

So, abortion is a reserved right, just as getting cosmetic surgery or tatoos are reserved rights that aren't enumerated.

The only way to infringe on that right is declare a government interest in abridging that right. The question then is left as, is this right fundamental, as to subject laws that abridge it to strict scrutiny? That's a topic for debate, and certainly the domain of the Supreme Court.

How can abortion be a reserved right if there were abortion laws on the book at the time when the 9th Amendment was passed? Besides, the Consititional "right" to an abortion is derived from the "right to privacy".

If there is no right to suicide why should there be a right to an abortion?

I don't think there were any abortion laws on the books of any state at the time the 9th amendment was passed. Check in your law library and I think you will find that the first ones are from the early 19th century.

My mistake... I was confusing abortion with sodomy.