Before the Supreme Court’s oral argument on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I was told by people I trust that Paul Clement was an outstanding lawyer. He proved it. The New York Times’ coverage of one exchange illustrates why.
Reporter Adam Liptak, after claiming that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s “touchstone and guiding principle” is liberty, went on to write this:
The point was not lost on Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who concluded his defense of the law at the court this week with remarks aimed squarely at Justice Kennedy. Mr. Verrilli said there was “a profound connection” between health care and liberty.
“There will be millions of people with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease,” he said, “and as a result of the health care that they will get, they will be unshackled from the disabilities that those diseases put on them and have the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of liberty.”
Paul D. Clement, representing 26 states challenging the law, had a comeback. “I would respectfully suggest,” he said, “that it’s a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase an insurance policy whether they want it or not.”
Clement is quite correct; it is a very funny conception of liberty. A distorted one, in fact. And it perfectly represents the intellectual state of modern liberalism, where coercion is synonymous with liberty.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the times.
It's a very funny conception of liberty that thinks that requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance is coercive; but that requiring all women seeking abortions to get medically unnecessary ultrasounds, which in early stages of pregnancy would have to be done transvaginally, and then to be forced to watch the ultrasound image, and to listen to a technician describe the fetus, and to take a copy of the ultrasound results home with them whether they want to have it or not, and then wait 24 or 48 or 72 hours until they can have the abortion, and *then* be forced to listen while the individual performing the abortion reads them a long tract about fetal pain and heartbeats, about all the social services and adoption services and help that they will get if they jump off the table and don't have the abortion, and THEN perform the abortion if the woman still wants to…. is NOT coercive, and totally consistent with liberty. n nYou guys (conservatives, right-wingers, not just Commentary editors) should look in the mirror and take 24 hours or 48 or 72 hours to think for a little while about your supposed support for liberty and opposition to coercion.
Yes, what an awful thing, requiring a woman having an abortion to face the fact that she is ending a human life! Much more pleasant for her to pretend it's just a bunch of cells with no feeling, no uniqueness, no potential for human individuality or greatness! n
I'm not an American but I think there is a legal argument for the state's requirement of some kind of pre abortion vaginal ultra sound and it's rooted, paradoxically, in Roe v. Wade and the case law that trails it. The balancing in the case law is the between the rights of the mother and her bodily autonomy as an incident of her right of privacy and the state's interest in protecting the unborn baby. As I understand it viability is the functional point when the state's interest starts to catch up with and eventually outweighs the mother's privacy right and the balancing looks at factors such as the mother's health, incest or rape as counter weighing the state's growing interest in protecting the unborn baby. On this reasoning, while the state's interest before viability may be relatively weightless, does it weigh nothing? Why can't the forcing of an ideally non invasive ultra sound so that the aborting mother can at least confront the reality of her actions vindicate such interest as the state has in protecting unborn life before viability?
Yes, because obviously women seeking abortions do not know that they are pregnant, or do not know what the word "pregnant" means. They want or need an abortion, but they don't know why they need it, and of course they haven't given any thought to the matter at all, and haven't "faced the fact" that they're terminating a pregnancy and have given absolutely no thought to the moral issues involved, and need to be humiliated, degraded, and treated like little children who have no clue where babies come from. n nAnd yes, sheraton, what an awful thing, requiring all Americans to have health insurance, so that young, healthy people who choose to go without insurance don't push the cost of health insurance up for everyone else when they finally get sick and have to be treated for free in the emergency room. And yes, sheraton, what an awful thing, to require all Americans to have health insurance so that people with preexisting conditions are not priced out of the market, and so that we don't have 50 million Americans without health insurance and no way to pay for medical care!
An ultrasound is medically REQUIRED before performing ANY abortion, to confirm the gestational age of the fetus, as Planned Parenthood admitted after the recent flap in Virginia. But no, it is not required that it be trans-vaginal; that is a fabrication. You may want to kill your baby, but you must still obey abortion regulations that try to keep you safe. It is also untrue that most women are making an informed decision (making a choice) when they go for an abortion; otherwise the majority of women wouldn't change their minds when they view their ultrasound (which is why some governments are requiring that women be told, and shown, the truth).
You are taking another human life Kathy. The government has a legitimate interest in homicide, legal or illegal.
The alternative perspective is that the law requires people to pay for something that they already receive – the assurance that if they go to a hospital, without insurance, they will be treated. n nThis should have been paid for with a tax, the same as with Medicare. But, any tax is politically impossible now.
"…a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase an insurance policy whether they want it or not.” n nY'know what's funnier? Showing up at the ER and forcing others to foot the bill.
This is so bogus. The real intent of the individual mandate is not to make deadbeats pay up, but to transfer wealth from the young (who are minor consumers of health care) to the old (who are major consumers of health care). All the President's phony-baloney blah-blah about "personal responsibility" is designed to cover up the fact that he's proposing to rip off the young for the benefit of the old.
Mandate macht frei.
Please, guys, abortion is not murder, but self-defense. Zimmerman was on his back, with a tall football player bashing his head in the concrete, and about to die. He fired back, killing his attacker. The public response is he fired because of the Stand Your Ground law. No! He did not want to die like a girl died a month ago when another girl bashed her head in the ground! Abortion is self-defense, regardless of whether the mother says so or not, for statistically a women will live longer if she does not carry to term. See the paper
Some how after my comment appeared here and then I edited it to correct a typo, it "was disappeared." So I'll try again in miniature. My point is that Roe v. Wade supplies one legal basis for pre abortion ultra sounds, apart form medical necessity. Roe seeks to balance the mother's right to bodily integrity as an incident of her right to privacy with protecting the rights of the unborn baby. In the first trimester under Roe the state's interest is light but is it totally weightless? The argument might be that pre abortion ultra sounds vindicate such interest as the state has in protecting unborn life in the first trimester, or before viability: which is to say, it would be salutary for the aborting mother to confront the factual reality of what she is doing. n