RALPH  KENYON
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This page was updated by Ralph Kenyon on 2019-06-02 at 01:32 and has been accessed 1791 times at 24 hits per month.

The issue is much more than Abortion

Abortion, a medical procedure, is not the issue. The issue is ultimately a battle between the religious right who believe that conception should be equal to the legal right of personhood. Historically personhood was defined to come into existence at birth. Conception was a mysterious and unknown phenomena.

"[When pregnancy begins] is not primarily a scientific issue, since knowledge of human reproduction and development has become very refined; .... The issue poses larger social, legal, medical, religious, philosophical, and political ramifications because some people, such as Concerned Women for America, equate the beginning of a pregnancy with the beginning of an individual human being's life.[1] Many of these arguments are related to the anti-abortion movement. In this way of thinking, if the pregnancy has not yet begun, then stopping the process is not abortion and therefore can contain none of the moral issues associated with abortion, but if it is a pregnancy, then stopping it is a morally significant act.

A major complication is that ideological and religious concepts such as "ensoulment" (whether or not a human being is said to have gone from mere matter to having a spiritual entity inside) and "personhood" (whether or not a human being is said to be a distinct individual with innate human rights versus otherwise) exist outside of scientific analysis, and thus many individuals have argued that the beginning of pregnancy cannot be determined strictly through physical evidence alone. No experiment exists (or can exist) to measure the spirituality of an object or living thing in the same way that height, temperature, weight, etc. can be studied."

The Constitution is silent on the issue of when (legal) personhood begins. Roe v Wade made an attempt to provide a secular interpretation based on the viability of the fetus, (“capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb,”) in conformity to the first amendment of the Constitution, ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...")

As a result, Roe v Wade became the focus of the religious right in order to get their non-secular beliefs into law in contradiction to the first amendment. There began a coordinated attack on Roe v Wade via the means of the 10th amendment, by concentrating their efforts in state laws. Through the means of lobbying, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, the conservative Republicans obtained disproportional control of State legislatures, resulting in Conservative Republican control of Congress enabling the appointment of similarly conservative federal judges and even the supreme Court.

With McConnell controlling the Senate, Barr controlling the judiciary, and new conservative Supreme Court Justices as a result, (and foreign powers conducting cyber warfare uninhibited by colluding Trump), our Constitution and our legal way of life are more vulnerable to destruction by internal corruption than anytime since our declaration of Independence. 

It's not just women's rights and abortion, it's a plethora of concentrated efforts to destroy our principles: The Inversion of American Founding Principles


Ralph E Kenyon Jr.
191 White Oaks Road
Williamstown, MA 01267