Do unborn children have a right to life?

Do unborn children have a right to life? 

Yes, the right to life is a right to not be executed. Because their mothers cannot be executed while pregnant, this right has always been secure.

Do unborn children have a right to vengeance against those who harm their mothers?

Yes, but this law also affirms a federal right to abortion and this should have been argued in Dobbs.

What are liberty interests regarding abortion?

For women, the right to have available abortion providers and to be immune to questioning on whether the police have a power to question them about receiving a therapeutic abortion.

Doctors want to provide the best care for their patients, which includes both saving their lives and their health - because carrying a pregnancy doomed by a life ending defect is increasingly harmful as the pregnancy is long and immunity from prosecution, investigation and their freedom to participate in their medical society - and for others to participate as well. The latter is a property right. Making abortion illegal means that the government must be given access to the medical records of their patients - and subject doctors to second guessing as to when the pregnancy began. This will stop some doctors from performing procedures to end the pregnancy when the child is already dead - which risks the life of the mother - not just her health.

Medical societies have a freedom of association right to police their membership, as non-members are already prohibited from performing abortions - and no one is arguing that this should change. The problem may be that some doctors do not like the concept of abortion - so rather than arguing the issue internally, they seek common cause with other elites in the political realm.

State government is, by nature, more conservative. Most voters don't pay attention to Assembly elections, especially liberal voters. Elites, like doctors, lawyers and clergy, have an outsized influence - especially the latter - although COVID has decreased this. People thought missing services was a sin, especially Catholics. Making Mass optional changed that perception. This leaves Catholics who are on the fence on abortion immune from October letters from the bishop on who to vote for.

BTW, on the God issue - God does not care about the issue. He has no sovereignty or rights to protect. Any God who needs such assistance is a reflection of the clergy, not the divinity. Souls also are fine with leaving the planet and the associated pain and going back to Heaven. People get squeamish about those abortion procedures which cause a pain reaction when performed - but the antidote for that is sedation (rather than simply stopping the heart with sodium chloride - which is painful) or for confining later term abortion to induction of labor - because no one has a right to not be born.

The ACLU and National Center for Abortion Rights made a mistake in not answering the questions in the Dobbs oral argument regarding viability. Viability is the ability to be born - in essence, citizenship. This is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which stops the states from changing that boundary. Ceding that point would give power to Congress to ban abortion before viability. That was too much of a concession for the Respondents, whose argument was based on a right to abortion rather than denying the power of state government. Now state government has the power it sought.

This issue is as much about power as rights. The Church wants power over its members and employees (its called the freedom of the Church - which it invokes in gay marriage cases - wrongly). The GOP wants power in states where they are favored by religious demography - but again, that power is waning and there is a reaction to Dobbs. 

Vice President Harris thought this would help her win the White House, not counting on both mid-range Catholics for whom a federal abortion law is a bridge too far - so they stayed home - and sexism in the Black and Hispanic voting blocs. Ignoring abortion was Obama's secret sauce. Catholic surrogates - like me - carried the water on this. Harris and Clinton made promises that made some uncomfortable.

This leads us to the core question: the control of men over women's bodies. In some states, they say it out loud by requiring that fathers be notified and allow an abortion to occur. Most places they claim that this is not one of their intentions. These people are lying. Note the pregnant pauses in the video when I bring that subject up. Not without irony.

When talking about a right to abortion, the Respondents should have gone there rather than citing precedent. If the women had been united on this point, Roberts would have voted with them.

Men want to know when their partners are pregnant - not just their wives. It really is about control and the basic rights of women over their lives.