Abortion Ban Passage Looks Likely
None by KCPW
(KCPW News) An abortion ban that would directly challenge the Supreme Court ruling of Roe versus Wade and launch a million dollar lawsuit for Utah appears destined to succeed in the State Legislature. Senate leaders today confirmed they likely have the votes to pass it:"The Senate has generally been favorable in defending the right of the unborn," says Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble.
He adds that the Utah Legislature has been supportive of previous laws that limit abortion, and conservative Republicans believe their voters will agree with the ban. The Utah Attorney General says it will cost one to three million dollars to defend the ban in court. Senator Lyle Hillyard says money should not be an issue - and many of his conservative colleagues agree.
"I don't want the message ever to go out of the Legislature that some principal is so important but that we wouldn't fight it because the costs were too high," says Hillyard.
In the 1990s, Utah lawmakers passed an abortion ban that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before being found unconstitutional. State Legislators now say the make-up of the courts has changed enough to warrant another run.
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom, Legislative Coverage, and 2007 Legislative Coverage. Copyright 2008 KCPW
1. lacey said:
I'm 29 years old and I've never needed to have an abortion. I have never needed to because my mom was "open" enough to talk to me about sex and put me on birthcontrol. I have several friends that where not as lucky as me. They went on to be single parents or now divorced single parents. I do know some who have had abortions and they are THANKFUL to have had the ability to do so. They have spoken to me about how there lives would be if they had not, and the thought is scary. I don't think that abortion should be used as a means of birthcontrol, however mistakes happen and why should a young girl or woman have to live with that mistake for the rest of their lives? Especially when MEN get to WALK AWAY and have no responsablity to that child. Utah should be teaching sex education and making it possible for young people to make the decision to prevent std's and pregnancies. Kwowldge is power educate a young person on sex and they may do exactly what you want and choose abstinence. Abortion is an idividuals right over their own body not a Senates.
3. Eli said:
How dare a bunch of mormon people (MEN), who cannot separate their personal, non-scientific views from what is good for a people (their constituents), tell me I cannot have an abortion! Shame on them and to everyone that STILL makes a big deal out of abortions. I have never met anyone who uses abortion as birth control.
What good christians these people are!
These are the same people who support the death penalty! "Unborn fetuses can live, but criminals have to die."
IT SURE SHOULD BE UP TO SOME STATE REPRESENTATIVE WHO LIVES OR DIES...
4. JJC said:
Brilliant, Misty. You should be able to figure this one out--it's legal to challenge a previous ruling because the law allows it! By definition, that's legal.
5. Ed said:
Our Declaration of Independence states that inalienable rights come from God, and it is the role of government to protect those rights. One of those rights is the right to life. The unborn are individuals, and thus, the inalienable right to life is extended to them as well.
To condemn a yet unborn individual to death for having committed no crime is a disgusting and gross violation of the right to life as declared in the United States Declaration of Independence. It has nothing to do with the mother's right to choose, it has to do with an individual's right to live.
We all started as a fetus, we were individuals yet unborn at one point, and as nature took its course, we came into this life.
This isn't a MEN vs. WOMEN thing, or a Mormon vs. enlightened humanist thing, or any other such divisive contest. It is America trying to return to the principles of freedom that make us great, that make us different that the rest of the world.
I am very proud of the two Representatives who are bold enough to stand up to the perverse changes that have entered our system of government, and to tell the Supreme Court that they too are accountable to the founding documents of our nation ... which reverence the laws of nature and of nature's God.
The death penalty is administered to those who have infringed on the rights of others, and thus they forfeit their own rights and are subject to the law. The unborn are guilty of no such infringements.
6. Eli said:
Reply to Ed:
Thanks for the rhetoric Ed, but the Declaration of Independence has no relevance here, you're a little off topic. Anyway, we should not try to divine dead mens' perspectives on abortion.
No, this is not a men vs. woman thing but it definitely is a mormon (or insert here any other self-righteous religious person) thing. Mormon men make the laws in this state, and they can't seem to think outside of their little blue book.
You missed the point on the death penalty. The point is that it should not be up to any justice or jury to decide whether a criminal deserves to die. Maybe it is up to a God instead...if you believe in that.
By the way, the "principles of freedom", as you put it, are also the freedoms to choose what i want to do with my body and my pregnancy, without getting harassed for it.
I still do not understand what business it is of anyone else, an individual but especially a government, what I choose to do with my pregnancy. After it is born, will you care that it doesn't have enough food, or that it is abused, or that it got straight A's? You people care so much about an unborn fetus, and its so called rights, but what about the rights of the children when they are born? What about a governmentally supported social welfare system to help single mothers? Or governmentally funded pregnancy leave? I guess that's too "communist" to say. Utah brags that it cares so much about women and children but just look at the facts.
7. John Sims said:
Abortion is not something to take lightly and is a serious issue; I do not think that there are many if any people that would disagree. However, there are common-sense things that can be done that do not include banning abortion. Women are going to get abortions regardless of the law as they did before Roe v. Wade. Banning abortion will simply push it out of the public eye and needlessly endanger the lives of women that will continue choose for themselves. Rather than banning abortion, we should invest in sex education, and birth control access. The puritanical and naive beliefs that teens do not have sex and that the amount of teen sex will increase with education and access to birth control are completely unfounded. There would be far less unwanted pregnancies and therefore fewer abortions, both are things that will make everyone happy.
8. Elizabeth Dehart said:
I'm sickened that my legislators, whom we voted for, choose to WASTE MY TAX DOLLARS on this uncalled for lawsuit. On abc4 news tonight there was a phone poll about this exact subject. 90% DID NOT want tax dollars to fund this. LEGISLATORS listen up!
9. Misty Fowler said:
I'm against abortion. I think it's wrong. But, I think it's also wrong to waste taxpayer money setting up a defense fund for a law you know is going to be ruled unconstitutional. If Utah wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, this isn't the right way, even if you ignore the fact that it's not gonna happen.
10. Tim Heaton said:
To Lacy:
You say, "They have spoken to me about how th[eir] lives would be if they had not [had an abortion], and the thought is scary." You fail to make the obvious counter-point: Once-living fetuses have not spoken to us about how their lives might have been had your friends not had an abortion because they are dead, and that thought is scary.
You also say: "mistakes happen and why should a young girl or woman have to live with that mistake for the rest of their lives?" In other words, why should a person have to be accountable for their actions? What should a person have to take responsibility for him/herself? The answer, Lacey, is because without personal accountability and responsibility, societies crumble. You are free to choose your actions, but not the consequences.
No Lacey, outside of rape, incest, and other rare exceptions, abortion is an immoral and selfish attempt by irresponsible women to evade accountability by murder, not your blessed personal right.
To Misty:
Our legal system, thank goodness, has procedures that enable us to realize and correct terribly wrong constitutional decisions by such challenges.
If "this isn't the right way" to overturn Roe, Misty, what do you believe is the right way?
To Eli:
You are perhaps the most ignorant of the bunch to assume that only Mormons men want Roe v. Wade overturned. As of a few days ago, similar bills had already been discussed in nine states. Camps in every state in the union have been planning for the day of Roe's destruction since 1973.
Utah's constituents, Eli, are against abortion on demand by a super-majority. You sound ridiculous to act as if the senate is betraying the people. If you want to persuade, you mustn't sound as if you got your information from a grade school playground.
As for your mention of single-mother welfare, pregnancy leave, etc., these are reasonable topics of discussion. That is where you should spend your effort.
To John Sims:
You argue for abortion since women will get them dangerously in private if illegal. Some will, yes. Simple economics, however, states that as costs increase, the quantity demanded decreases. This is historically true of abortion. The numbers will vastly decrease. Similarly, economics states that as costs decrease, the quantity demanded increases. This is true of teen sex. Increased availability diminishes costs and increases the quantity demanded. In addition, teens knowing that they can get on demand abortions if need be further decreases the costs of irresponsibility, thus further increasing the quantity demanded of irresponsible sex. Many teens do have sex, yes, but economics is not "puritanical." Your conclusion, Mr. Sims, is the unfounded one.
To Elizabeth:
Were you to conduct a general poll among the citizenry throughout instead of hearing from self-selected callers, you would hear quite different numbers.
Tim
11. Cody said:
I knew a girl in my old high-school that had a abortion when she was only 15.She smokes, suffers from depression and does drugs now. Plus she regrets having the abortion.
Interesting how the lady that brought about Roe v. Wade is now Pro-Life and trying to overturn it.
Being a father myself, we had our first child 'earlier then expected', yet abortion never enter our minds.
Abortion is simply, murder of a unborn child, and to argue that women should have a right to kill their unborn child is the same as arguing for infantcide. It is a disgusting practice that should only be given the ok in rape/incest situations or to save the life of the mother or in medical complications.
BTW, there are things called 'condoms', 'cervical caps', 'birth-control pills'- USE THEM!
If you don't want your child, then why not wait and place the baby in adoption? If you never want a child in your life and want to be forever a bachelorette, then why not get your tubes tied?
I not only applaud this legislation, but I reccomend that Utahans write or email their local politicians to support this bill, and urge the Governor to sign it!Even if this bill was taken to the ballot, the people of Utah would approve of such a ban, unlike in South Dakota.
As a Latter-Day Saint, it occures to me that Eli would make a spended female officer for Aryan Nations, her bigotry equally matches her own ignorance.
One more thing, whether abortion is legal or not, back-alley abortions always happen. There are people stupid enough to get them no matter the legal status of abortion.
12. Kathy Caudle said:
February 21st, '07
No, Utah doesn't need to keep spending money trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. Everybody jumps on the "abortion bandwagon" because it's a trendy issue that keeps everybody riled, which is what abortion opponents want, that way they can sludge their way through to waste the courts' time including that of the highest court in the land.
Friends of mine nearly died in the 1960s from back-alley butchers performing abortions with wire coat hangers yanking on the umbilical cord and then not doing anything medically because the law prohibited them from helping the young woman and so he was forced to let her hemhorrage almost to death. Stop tryng to shame young women for being sexual miscreants because believe me, when I say this, by the time a young woman discovers she's un-expectedly pregnant and then delivers her un-wanted baby she feels degraded and berated enough!
This is what the so-called abortion debate is really about, one class of women who snidely consider themselves better than the "other" classes of women who get pregnant out-of-wedlock--because "women of means don't do such things" which is bunk anyway--and the uppidy women want to preach to the "lesser" women, and everybody knows this. We've all had occasion to know the two types, here, those christian women who go to church every Sunday and also attend mid-week services but view the world through rose-colored glasses and then there's those women who don't necessarily attend church weekly and thereby fully exercise their First Amendment Freedom of Religion rights but are anchored enough to know the world doesn't revolve around any puritan ideals they may have so these women are grounded in reality.
Just like the old cliche says the law-makers should stop trying to legislate morality. Stop infringing on womens' reproductive rights.
Kathy CaudleSalt Lake City
13. Its as safe as birth control pills. Emergency contraception pills are not abortion pills. If a woman said:
Its as safe as birth control pills. Emergency contraception pills are not abortion pills. If a woman is pregnant at the time she takes the ECP it will not abort an embryo. WBR LeoP
14. I am going on a pill or medication STRIKE!!! No more pills for this no more medication for that just said:
I am going on a pill or medication STRIKE!!! No more pills for this no more medication for that just good old fashioned warm water salt gargling, lemon & honey, brandy and tea... WBR LeoP
2. Misty Fowler said:
How is it even remotely legal for a state to make a law they know is unconstitutional, going so far as planning to set up it's defense fund prior to even getting the bill voted in?! This is insanity.