Did anybody see Catherine Crier's show today?

[hopein08]

After the Roberts' hearings she had the super scary Brownback on and schooled him! It was great. He kept yammering about how SCOTUS should only decide what's in the Constitution, defending what Roberts' had said on privacy, and saying some things should be up to legislatures alone.

I'm paraphrasing here but Crier came back with, "But the founders made it clear that the Bill of Rights are CERTAIN enumerated rights, AMONG OTHERS that the people are entitled to unless they give up those rights to government."

Brownback stumbled a bit, I tried not to listen to him too closely.

The last thing I saw was Crier saying (paraphrasing again), "I din't think we're going to agree on this, Senator. But there is one thing I would point out to viewers, ABORTION WAS LEGAL AT THE TIME THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN."

That was one of the best lines I've heard.

[Maat]

1. Yahoo, Catherine Crier!

You see, she is not only a lawyer with analytical skills that are sharp-as-a-tack; she has experience as a judge, too!

Can't use stupid terms, like 'strict constructionist,' with her.

[Gloria]

2. She should be coaching Democrats.....Why isn't this point made

by them??

[KT2000]

3. Well there you have it

discussion over - even for the bushbots.
That is great news.

[meow2u3]

4. Back then, men decided if women were to abort

It was the early feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and the like who wanted to outlaw abortion because men dictated to women whether or not to abort their kid whether the woman wanted to or not. She had no say.
Most women would not have been driven to the abortion clinics if their husbands didn't tell them to. This is an underreported fact.

[hopein08]

5. Thank you for pointing that out...

I did know that abortion was used when men decided that it should be or, it would seem, most often when a woman became pregnant when she was unmarried or through some other socially unacceptable means such as adultery. It often also had to do with economics and other social ideas of the various eras. So, I do agree with the idea that men controlled women in many areas of life. I also recognize that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul went against abortion on the principle of male domination of women. And it is definitely underreported.

But I think that Catherine Crier's point is that, if one is going to use the idea of "strict constructionalism" in terms of interpretation of the Constitution, you have to realize that it was legal in the late 1700's, regardless of how it was used, by what people, and for what purposes.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul came many years later with there arguments.

[MissMarple]

8. Abortion was usually allowed before "quickening".

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_000400_abortion.htm

"Abortion has been practiced in the United States since the founding of the Republic, but both its social character and its legal status have varied considerably. Through the early decades of the nineteenth century, Americans regarded abortion primarily as the recourse of women wronged by duplicitous suitors or pregnant as the result of illicit relationships, though records exist of married women having abortions. Americans tolerated the practice, which had long been legal under colonial common law and remained legal under American common law, provided the pregnancy was terminated before quickening: the first perception of fetal movement by the woman. Quickening generally occurs near the midpoint of gestation.

As married women moved to lower their fertility rates after 1830, abortion became a widespread practice in the United States. Abortionists advertised in the daily press and pharmaceutical firms competed in a lucrative market of purported abortifacients. Women spoke to each other and to their doctors in straightforward terms about their abortions. When physicians estimated American abortion rates in the 1860s and 1870s, they used figures strikingly close to those of the 1960s and 1970s: approximately one abortion for every four live births.

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century several state legislatures began to restrict the increasingly common practice of abortion. Some lawmakers feared for the safety of women undergoing abortions. Others reacted negatively to what they considered indecent advertising. Concerned about falling birthrates, many opposed all forms of fertility control, not just abortion. But the greatest pressure for legal change came from the American Medical Association (ama), founded in 1847."...there's more.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. IF crier is waking up

this is starting to smell like a lynching... not kidding

[pushycat]

7. Huh? Pls elaborate on Ms Crier

waking up and how that connects with lynching. my naivete showing..