The Problem with Roe v Wade

The problem with Roe v Wade is that it's become a catch phrase to mean abortion on demand. Even Attorney Generals who are nitpicky in some areas have accepted this wider definition. Listen to Martha Coakley below.

In talking about a bill that would allow Emergency Room personnel to chose not to provide contraceptives to rape victims because, as Catholics, it would be against their religion Coakley responds:

"If people believe that they don’t want to provide services that are required under the law and under Roe v Wade that they can individually not follow the law. ..."  (At .22 seconds below.)

There are plenty of problems with Roe v Wade, and even more in people's interpretations of it. Regardless of any interpretation Roe v Wade does NOT require that physicians or Emergency Room personnel provide contraceptives to rape victims or anyone else.

Obama is not pro Roe v Wade

Rush Limbaugh and many other political commentators are wrong. Obama is not pro-Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade clearly delimits the time in which a doctor may perform an abortion: that time limit is the first trimester. Partial birth abortions, which Obama supports, are far outside this time limit. Clearly then Obama is opposed to Roe v Wade. This is not a matter of semantics. I know that phrase Roe v Wade is often substituted for abortion but Roe v Wade has a definition. If you don’t like it, either because it allows limited abortion rights, or if you don’t like as it limits abortion rights then you are NOT pro-Roe v Wade.

What makes one Left-Wing or Right-Wing?

Are there points or positions that all left wing people share? Are there points which all right wing people share? What makes someone left or right wing?

If you are pro-choice are you left or right wing? If so, what about abortion is left or right wing? Can you be left-wing and not be pro-choice? Can you be right-wing and be pro-choice?

For years socialist countries were opposed to abortion in their attempt to keep population levels high? Does that mean that being pro-choice is really "right wing?" No, the contrary decision by the Chinese to lower their population and increase abortion shows that there is nothing intrinsically "left" or "right" about abortion.

What about gay marriage? Can you be left-wing and be against it or be right-wing and be for it? If gay rights, culminating in gay marriage, was a left-wing issue then gay marriage, or at least greater rights for gays, would have been achieved in the former Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and other places in the world which have embraced Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

Instead we saw homosexual men and women imprisoned and executed simply for being gay excuse me, for being a counter-revolutionary. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, considered homosexuality to be part-and-parcel of the bourgeois, decadent west.

What makes someone Left or Right? It's simple: do you want to live in a state which respects individual liberty or a state where experts/bureaucrats/those-who-know-better/dictators make virtually all decisions for you.

Is it more complicated than that? Yes. But not much - as it all boils down to the nature of individual liberty.

Right to ones own body - abortion

I find few, if any, liberals believe in the right to one’s own body. Oh yes they mention it with great enthusiasm when it comes to abortion but if one tries to apply it anywhere else they run from it.