But hey Beth, thanks!

As I have worked in the field of OB/GYN for 20 years, I simply feel this is dangerous. Prescriptions can be filled by one person and given to another, people can bleed to death without medical attention, etc.

All pregnancy terminations have risks, but I feel this is far too great, to let the patient do it themselves. Physicians have been trained to do this procedure and I feel it should be left to them!

Well, Beth, we’re not talking about the abortion pill, RU-486. We’re talking about Plan B, which does *not* cause bleeding, and merely causes a fertilized egg to slough off the uterine lining (something that happens in up to 50% of pregnancies anyway, and the woman never notices.)

Also, if we followed your logic out, nobody could ever fill any prescription, because “someone else might get it”! No Valium, no Viagra, no Amoxicillin — because it can be filled by one person and given to another.

The fact that you apply this only to medications that allow a woman to refuse to have a child, indicates where your agenda really lies.

BTW, I recently found out that Costco is also one of the chains with that dipshit “conscience exemption” for its pharmacists. I would have expected better from them, but live and learn.

Goddammit! I always thought they were one of the more or less good guys, too. That bums me out.

—Myca

Pregnancy is pretty dangerous. What if one miscarries ? Shouldn’t all pregnant women be placed under house arrest in a hospital for the duration ? You know, better to be safe than sorry.

BTW, I recently found out that Costco is also one of the chains with that dipshit “conscience exemption” for its pharmacists. I would have expected better from them, but live and learn.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Gerard1130.htm

As I have worked in the field of OB/GYN for 20 years, I simply feel this is dangerous. Prescriptions can be filled by one person and given to another, people can bleed to death without medical attention, etc.

All pregnancy terminations have risks, but I feel this is far too great, to let the patient do it themselves. Physicians have been trained to do this procedure and I feel it should be left to them!

I love the fact that prisoners can not appeal the conditions of their imprisonment under the new measure, so, while you can’t legally torture prisoners, if you chain them to a wall and blare loud music at them 24/7 while feeding them saltines and a cup of water a day, they have no right to raise their conditions in court. How exactly is the prohibition against torture supposed to be enforced?

A grim day for this country.

I’m actually not clear what rights of habeas corpus detainees at Guantanamo Bay have left, nor why the Legislative branch isn’t just pointing at the Constitution and reminding Bush that he has no right to overturn it.

However, I’ll grant you that the current amendment is an improvement on the situation of last week, when Senator Graham got an amendment passed (49 to 42) that stripped all habeas corpus rights from Guantanamo Bay inmates.

I note that anyone arbitrarily labelled an enemy of the state and sent somewhere other than Guantanamo Bay still has no right of habeas corpus. Mahar Arar was sent to a prison in Syria, for example.

Neither had Mahar Arar. (Details in a series of posts here. This did not save him from being arrested and tortured. Nor is he unique - except, perhaps, in getting home to Canada and getting his story out.

No, Ron: having “No intent to execute terroristic acts” will not save any non-US citizen from imprisonment and torture. White skin and not being a Muslim likely will: I’m not happy with that safety.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,

An established religion is an official state-supported religion, such as the Church of England was (and still is); the clergy are paid by the state, the 20 most senior bishops have a legislative role, public officials have to belong to it (that’s been relaxed, but the King/Queen still can’t be a Catholic), etc. That was a big problem in the colonies, and it’s what is forbidden to Congress. Supporting a public policy that coincides with a moral stand that is supported by numerous religions does not come anywhere close to being a law that establishes a religion, so that doesn’t really seem to apply. Plus, there’s also “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”; barring a proposed public policy because it is congruent with many religions’ moral stance or that it’s proponents are acting out of their religious convictions would seem to interfere with this and with their right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Heck, if we did that, then we couldn’t have laws against murder, since pretty much all religions bar that.

Fourteenth Amendment:

I imagine you’re pointing to Section 1 of this amendment, but I’m not sure what part of it you’re saying applies here.

It is also generally accepted that while the right to privacy is not addressed generically in the Constitution, the Framers were conscious of that right and addressed the most urgent aspects of it in their day: the right not to have soldiers quartered in your home, the right not to have your home searched: and certainly all anti-choice laws represent a violation of a woman’s right to privacy between herself and her physician, and indeed a violation of the right to the privacy of your own body.

If I recall correctly, extending certain specific rights enumerated in the Constitution to the general case of a “right to privacy” is just where the SCOTUS started using terms like “preumbras” and other such things that have led numerous critics to say that Roe was bad law, even by those who agreed with the ultimate objective. There’s plenty of laws that violate our privacy for what the legislature has considered the greater good; your mail can be opened, your private conversations can be listened to, your body can be probed for illegal drugs, your DNA profile can be taken from you; if you use a cordless phone in your house, I can quite legally sit outside with the same phone, find the channel you’re using and listen in. I can tape a conversation I’m having with you and use it without your consent (the cops need a warrant to tape us; I don’t need a warrant to tape us, though). Your personal information can be sold without your consent. I quite agree that the law should do more to protect our privacy, but there’s no general overarching “right to privacy” that the Constitution protects, or all the above things would be illegal.

If you think you have a right to privacy in your own body, try going into a hospital and having your arm cut off, or a kidney taken out and thrown in the garbage. Heck, the state regulates who and where you can get a tattoo from, and can even ban it entirely.

As far as non-citizen rights and the Bush administration; let me say right off the bat that while I’m obviously to the right of many posters here, no one should regard me as a Bush supporter. He and his administration have done things that are foolish, and others that are just flat out wrong and immoral. His assertions of a right to do what you are talking about, in a general case, qualify as the latter. But I think you’ll find that if you travel in the U.S., your freedom from being arrested and tortured lies not in your skin color or religion, but in the fact that you have no intent to execute terroristic acts in the U.S.

Fourteenth Amendment. (Also the First Amendment, given that most opponents of the right to choose are trying to impose their religious beliefs on others.)

It is also generally accepted that while the right to privacy is not addressed generically in the Constitution, the Framers were conscious of that right and addressed the most urgent aspects of it in their day: the right not to have soldiers quartered in your home, the right not to have your home searched: and certainly all anti-choice laws represent a violation of a woman’s right to privacy between herself and her physician, and indeed a violation of the right to the privacy of your own body.

RonF: But there’s quite a burden to be met in designating someone as an “enemy combatant”

No, no burden to be met at all, as the Bush administration have gone to some trouble to establish. The Bush administration’s definition of “enemy combatant” can be met by any non-US citizen without any action on their part whatsoever, and the legal rights of a non-US citizen on being designated an “enemy combatant” appear to be, in real terms, nil. Even one of the most basic rights of any prisoner, the right of habeas corpus, is being removed from non-US citizens by the Senate as we speak.

Further, the Bush administration has claimed it has the right to imprison any non-US citizen on arrival in the US, and hold that person in indefinite confinement, with no right of appeal. The Bush administration has further claimed it has the right to deport any non-US citizen to any country of its choice, there to be imprisoned and tortured. The Bush administration claims it need never present any evidence to any court showing that a non-US citizen was in fact an enemy combatant. Not only is this possible, Ron, it has happened - and we know about the process in the detail we do only because one victim was eventually released and returned home.

Now, granted, it’s never likely to happen to me; I am white and I am not Muslim. But I choose not to travel to the US any more, because I prefer not to know that my freedom from being arrested and tortured lies only in my skin color and my religion.

Quite true. But there’s quite a burden to be met in designating someone as an “enemy combatant”, so it hardly equates to the blanket statement of “non-US citizens have no legal rights whatsoever”. Resident aliens enjoy the majority of rights that American citizens do, and even illegal aliens, law-breakers though they are, have basic rights.

But right now, the only reason that abortion is protected as a civil right in the U.S. on a national basis instead of state-by-state is because a few SCOTUS justices decided so. Even many proponents of abortion rights look at the legal reasoning in Roe vs. Wade with suspicion. Regardless of whether you think that abortion rights equate to “equal rights for men and women”, it’s pretty hard to see that they guaranteed by reading the Constitution. The very weakness of the reasoning in that case is why the selection of a new SCOTUS justice is controversial. It’s just not that hard for a couple new ones to justify overturning Roe vs. Wade as a case of some Justices wanting to find something in the Constitution, as opposed to actually finding it there.

If you want any right preserved by the Federal government, you better be able to find it in a plain reading of the Constitution. Or it can be changed.

Really? Non-US citizens have no legal rights in the U.S.? That will come as news to the various resident aliens here in the U.S. that work, own homes, join the armed forces, etc., etc. - in fact, probably as well to the huge number of illegal aliens doing the same thing. Ask the INS if any of these folks are being denied their days in court.