Yes, the atheists have it easy here 
. Christians have body/spirit/soul distinctions … or not, and also Image of God considerations which may come into play.
Perhaps it would make sense if the the soul developed alongside the body. In that case maybe there was one soul that split into two. I really don’t know, but it doesn’t seems like if we look at the soul as “mind, spirit, person-hood” then it’s not unreasonable to think that perhaps it mirrors the biology to some degree. Just a thought.
That’s occurred to me a couple of times reading things today actually 
good grief my comment was flagged.!!
Anyways.
The supreme court would trump state constitutions etc.
Twins are normal cases.
Yes. Since much of the positional information used during embryogenesis is laid down in the oocyte, why not before?
What is so spectacular about a calcium depolarization?
So your position has to be ruled out as impossible, no matter how improbable it is.
It depends on the translation.
Read it again. God isn’t doing it on His own initiative. The whole thing only happens if the husband suspects infidelity.
Sure it is. Just as making a cornerstone of your Christianity something that Jesus Christ never even mentioned is simply ridiculous.
Sorry. That’s politics, not serious theology.
That’s commendable. You might consider hanging out with Congregationalists or UUs in person too.
Indeed. But we don’t treat those as bright, white MORAL lines, do we? We understand that they are arbitrary.
And I’ll only believe that it has ANYTHING to do with life beginning at conception when I see more people picketing fertility clinics than picketing abortion clinics. The former are killing far more of these alleged persons.
Until then, it’s clearly just a phony excuse to regulate the sexual behavior of others.
I don’t think you understand the significance of the Kansas decision. Kansas became the first state in the nation to say that abortion is a right guaranteed by the Kansas State Constitution. It is independent of Roe v. Wade. The US Supreme Court has no ability to take back rights of Kansasans. The Kansas Court looked at Section I and II of the state’s Bill of Rights and found a more expansive right to an abortion than the United States Supreme Court found using the 14th Amendment.
I don’t think it’s quite that far. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution says that federal law is above state law (even state constitutions apparently) so if Roe vs. Wade was overturned, I believe it would default to the status before (i.e. states determine legality of abortion individually) and that’s when the Kansas Constitution would kick in immediately. I think it would take an additional, subsequent, ruling to say that abortion is specifically illegal federally before the Kansas Constitution would be overridden, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Sorry your interpretation of the Supremacy Clause is incorrect. The Kansas decision is completely independent of Roe v. Wade. Once a right under the constitution is established that right can’t be taken away. It would be unconstitutional. Nationally a woman already has a right to an abortion under the 14th amendment of the US Constitution so the Supremacy Clause doesn’t apply. In Kansas a woman’s right to an abortion is guaranteed under both the US Constitution and the Kansas Constitution. This is not going backwards, just like same sex marriage and slavery. The government can’t ban abortion nor ban same sex marriage because it is an inalienable right.
But that doesn’t impact any woman (Christian or otherwise) in the United States who chose NOT to have an abortion.
This particular ruling cannot be appealed because it was decided based on the state constitution, not on Roe. The Court found that the existing law was unconstitutional at the state level because the state Bill of Rights in the state constitution guaranteed a right to reproductive decisions, including abortion.
SCOTUS does not have the subject matter jurisdiction necessary to take appeals on rulings that interpret a state constitution. For example, if the state of Kansas (the appellant in this case) tried to appeal this particular Kansas Supreme Court ruling to SCOTUS, SCOTUS would say “screw off, we don’t care about interpreting your state constitution.”
However, if Kansas lawmakers amended the Kansas constitution to exclude abortion from the Kansas bill of rights, this would have the effect of nullifying this ruling. Kansas lawmakers could then re-pass similarly restrictive laws, prompting yet another suit, and this time the state Supreme Court would not be able to cite the Kansas Bill of Rights because the Kansas Constitution had been amended to prevent it. The state Supreme Court would have to make a ruling based on Roe as a superceding decision, which could then be appealed to SCOTUS.
On the other hand, if Roe were reversed tomorrow, it would have no effect in Kansas because Kansas Supreme Court caselaw now enshrines abortion as a constitutional right in Kansas.
While merely reversing Roe would not have any immediate effect anywhere, except on the specific case being ruled upon, it would open the door for the re-passage of laws restricting abortion or outlawing it entirely, similar to how things were before Roe.
Now, there is a fashion in which a Roe reversal could include a much broader effect. For example, suppose that the decision included a finding that the 14th Amendment not only did NOT contain a right to privacy, but in fact created a right to life for the unborn under the due process clause. This would have the effect of nullifying any state or federal law expressly permitting abortion, and would overturn rulings like this one by the Kansas Supreme Court, but would not itself limit abortion.
Of course the possibility of this is zero. Roe already explored the deprivation of life argument in the light of the due process clause and limited the court’s ability to rule on the question of personhood. Stare decisis would have to be completely abandoned at that point.
What’s more likely is that SCOTUS will slowly undermine Roe in small steps until its protections are all but null. So decisions like the Kansas Supreme Court one will do a lot to protect women in those states if increasingly partisan justices do what conservatives have been hoping for.
I am far from a lawyer, could you explain to me how you get that from:
All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The part you’re missing is the phrase “among which”. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not an exhaustive list of inalienable natural rights; they are among the inalienable rights which are possessed by all. SCOKS stated on page 3 of its decision that the right of personal autonomy is another inalienable right possessed by all, and that it therefore must be protected by the constitution.
SCOKS did not elucidate the origins of the right of personal autonomy, but I suspect it would be considered to be related to (though perhaps independent of) the right of liberty.
Put plainly: If the state forces a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, the state is depriving her of the right to liberty just as plainly as if they imprisoned her for nine months or tracked her location with a GPS anklet for nine months or required her to work without pay for nine months. SCOKS argues that all such acts, without due process of law, constitute an infringement upon inalienable natural rights. Unless the state has a compelling interest, it cannot justify its infringement and thus its action is barred by the state constitution.
Thanks @David_MacMillan, that was super helpful. I figured it had something to do with “liberty” but wasn’t sure the reasoning.
OK, so if we were to determine that an embryo/fetus/baby has the same rights — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, could that constitute a compelling interest?
“Compelling interest” in law signals that the right in question is a fundamental and natural one. Examples of non-fundamental laws could include the right to conduct business wherever you choose, the right to practice a particular profession, the right to bring a civil suit for redress, or the right to enter into a collective bargaining contract. Such rights, while important, are not considered to be fundamental and therefore can be more easily abridged. Even if a law infringing a non-fundamental right is burdensome or ridiculous(for example, some arcane hoop-jump for plumbing certification), a court will not nullify the actions of the legislature unless it can be shown by the plaintiff that the law is actually irrational. Burdensome laws ought properly to be redressed through corrective legislation, not through the courts; otherwise the courts would have entirely too much power.
When you see the term “compelling interest” then that means we are dealing with fundamental rights, and the state action in question is subject to a strict scrutiny standard. The burden now falls on the state to show that it actually has a very good reason AND that it is taking the smallest, narrowest possible action in pursuit of that interest. For example, we have a fundamental right (related to both “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness” but independent of both) to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The state may argue that the prevention of human trafficking is a compelling interest, and therefore it can abridge that right in pursuit of its compelling interest, e.g., by requiring internet service providers to disclose the addresses of individuals who visit prostitution-related websites. In order to make that argument (which, I might add, it probably would lose), they would not only have to show that the state’s interest compels the infringement on that right, but that they were casting the narrowest possible net so as to limit their infringement as much as possible. E.g., they might argue, “We recognize that this initiative is intrinsically infringing, and therefore we are limiting the requirement to those who pass financial information to those sites.” Again, it’s an argument they’d probably lose, but that’s the gist of it.
In this particular case, the state needed to express a compelling interest and show they were taking the narrowest possible action in pursuit of that interest. Because the law in question merely banned a particular procedure, it was nearly impossible for the state of Kansas to show any sort of compelling interest. “Limiting the barbarity of surgical procedures” is not a commonly-recognized state interest.
Instead, the state argued that its law did not actually infringe on the right of personal autonomy at all, because other procedures exist which will also end pregnancies. The court found this line of argument to be without merit, because the banned procedure (dilation & evacuation) is significantly safer than other procedures, and thus banning it infringes on the right of a woman to decide under medical care which procedure is safest and best for her.
A state could pass a law banning abortions generally, or banning abortions after a particular point, and argue a “compelling interest” in preventing the death of an unborn person. Such an approach would likely not pass the strict scrutiny test because the state has not previously take broad steps to further that interest in areas where it would not infringe on a fundamental right. For example, the court could point out that universally-available, publicly-funded contraception would measurably and indisputably reduce the number of abortions without any impact to fundamental rights, and therefore banning abortion is not the narrowest possible infringement capable of achieving that purported state interest.
Wow, @David_MacMillan again very helpful! I heard the “compelling interest” and “strict scrutiny” phrases on NPR (where I first heard the story) but wasn’t sure of their exact meaning. Thanks for clearing those up.
Maybe I still need a little help. I guess I’m still looking at it big-picture as two fundamental rights (life and liberty) conflicting, not just the state trying to make a case for limiting one fundamental right (which seems to be where this case is). Is it just the first established fundamental right wins? Maybe I’m just not thinking about it the way the legal system does. What if the Kansas constitution was changed, not to ban abortion, but to specifically give the fundamental right to “life” to unborn persons, would that change anything?
Wow @David_MacMillan Impressive.
FFRF has legal intern positions. Internship Opportunities - Freedom From Religion Foundation You would be great at Constitutional Law.
Federal courts always take precedence over lower or state courts.
Haven’t you noticed that trend over the decades?
Yeah, I don’t get this part. Most European countries, even the most secular ones, have banned abortion after the first trimester (expect in the case of rape, incest, deformity or a health danger to a mother or child) what’s up with USA choosing between two extremes?
I should, once again, note that I am against any law that criminalizes abortion or makes it difficult for a woman to get an access (or an information about access) to one.
Sure, I’m just trying to talk about one constitution at a time