THIS Is Moderate?
Ms. Johnsen is President Obama's nominee to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Here are a few more gems of wisdom from Ms. Johnsen.....“Statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.”
– Dawn Johnsen, in a Supreme Court amicus brief she authored in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
“The woman is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends. Thus, abortion restrictions, ‘reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers.’”
-Dawn Johnsen, in a Supreme Court amicus brief she authored in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
“The experience is no longer traumatic; the response of most women to the experience is relief.”
– Dawn Johnsen, in a Supreme Court amicus brief she authored in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
“The argument that women who become pregnant have in some sense consented to the pregnancy belies reality…and others who are the inevitable losers in the contraceptive lottery no more ‘consent’ to pregnancy than pedestrians ‘consent’ to being struck by drunk drivers.’”
- Dawn Johnsen, in a Supreme Court amicus brief she authored in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
Pregnancy is equal to "involuntary servitude" who are "losers" who did not consent....excuse me ma'am but when you decide to have sex, you ALWAYS run the risk of becoming pregnant. NO FORM of contraception offers 100% protection. Even the birth control pill is only about 98% effective!
This is why there will never be any solution to the abortion issue. As long as pro-abortion radicals like Ms. Johnsen have positions of influence in government, there will never be dialog between the two sides.
Nice "post partisan" work Mr. President.
Labels: Abortion, President Obama
posted by The Lady Logician at
8:30 AM
4 Comments:
I don't remember ever asking Obama to be moderate.
Also, what with elections having consequences and all, who's listening to the center right anymore anyway?
Sounds a bit whiney, if you ask me. Boo hoo. Our ideas aren't popular, and we can't win elections! Boo hoo. Why doesn't anybody do what WE want?! Boo hoo.
Seriously, LL. You kill me sometiems.
By
Jason The, at 11:28 AM
You may not have asked Jason, but he campaigned as a "moderate". That is what a majority of the non-base voters voted for.....
LL
By
The Lady Logician, at 7:56 PM
Oh and Jason - come on - defend these statements. Please!
LL
By
The Lady Logician, at 7:57 PM
Let's let the man whose law review article is at the heart of this defend the statements. In his letter to Senator Spector accusing those who trumpet what the Lady says of distortion and misrepresentation, Professor Andrew Koppelman writes:
"It has come to my attention that a footnote in my article, Forced Labor: A Thirteenth Amendment Defense of Abortion, 84 Northwestern U. L. Rev. 480 (1990), has been cited for the proposition that the brief that Dawn Johnsen wrote in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services claims that the Thirteenth Amendment guarantees a woman’s right to abortion. The Webster brief to which my article referred, however, was not the brief submitted by Dawn Johnsen but was an entirely different brief.
The footnote in question, note 24 on p. 484, cites a brief in Webster, filed by the California National Organization of Women and other organizations, and notes that this is an updated and revised version of a similar brief filed by California NOW in Roe v. Wade.
In my article, I argue that “[w]hen women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to ‘involuntary servitude’ in violation of the thirteenth amendment.” Id. at 484. In the footnote, I observe that “[t]his argument was raised by an amicus brief in Roe,” and goes on to note that a “revised and updated version” of this brief – the California NOW brief – was filed in Webster. Id. at 484 n.24. The Roe brief makes an argument very similar to mine, relying on similar precedents; I quote it a few more times later in the article. See id. at 489, 493.
While she was chief counsel of the National Abortion Rights Action League, Professor Johnsen submitted an amicus brief in Webster on behalf of “Seventy-Seven Organizations Committed to Women’s Equality.” The brief argues that the state restrictions at issue in the case violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of individual liberty. There is one footnote in the brief, note 23, which states:
While a woman might choose to bear children gladly and voluntarily, statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest. Indeed, the actual process of delivery demands work of the most intense and physical kind: labor of 12 or more grueling hours of contractions is not uncommon.
To say that one thing is “disturbingly suggestive” of another is hardly the same as saying that it is identical to that other thing. Johnsen makes this point to support her Fourteenth Amendment claim, by showing the serious nature of the liberty interest that is at stake. The brief does not argue that the state laws violate the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the only time the Thirteenth Amendment is ever mentioned in her Webster brief."
Professor Koppelman explains the statements as follows:
"The argument does repel many people, so much that they have trouble taking it seriously. They take it to be a libel on motherhood, which far from being like slavery is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring and joyous experience. The objection gathers whatever force it has by focusing on the experience of women who want to be mothers. But the Thirteenth Amendment doesn't apply to them. The servitude it is concerned with is involuntary. The distinction between wanted and unwanted pregnancy is like the difference between wanted and unwanted sex. Can rape be defended on the grounds that sex is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring, joyous experience? Are arguments that focus on the degrading and violative aspects of rape a libel on sex? Plantation slavery cannot be justified on the grounds that many people find gardening deeply satisfying."
By
Anonymous, at 4:36 PM
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