Like many other people who have posted on here, I found last week’s lecture very exciting and very engaging. I was aware of amendment 48 but I had no idea just how far it was trying to go. It worries me that people are very ignorant on it or just don’t know anything about it and what the consequences of that will be at election time. If people were well educated on this subject, there is no way that it would pass but that might not necessarily be the case. It’s scary to think that something with such catastrophic potential could be passed because people just have a general idea of what it means.
I was very happy and surprised to learn just how many pro-life or religious women/couples were against 48. That is exactly the type of crowd that amendment 48 is trying to target and it would be very easy for those groups of people to be tricked/persuaded into this because it appears to be the first steps in ending abortion. However, amendment 48 is not really about abortion but women's rights. For many years, I was oblivious to the privilege I had as a straight white male and the issue of privilege struck me while listening to the lecture. In no way whatsoever would anything remotely like this ever happen to a heterosexual male in America. By that, I mean where self-rights and freedom are being taken away based off other person’s opinions or values. This goes against everything that the United States stands for, yet people seem to ignore the fact that it violates women’s constitutional rights. Regardless of what people believe in, it frustrates people that our political system is being dominated by personal beliefs and values. There is no strong scientific evidence backing this claim and Americans have the right to freedom, yet both of those topics seemed to be ignored in amendment 48. I have a question and if anyone knows the answer, let me know in class. Even if this passes, could/would the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional?
3 comments:
So, I think I'm going to blog about this, but for another class I'm taking (Dr. Reich's Law and Politics of Reproduction) I had to read the original Roe v. Wade decision. In it, I feel like some precedent exists for overturning this particular Amendment if passed.
Yes, but we have to remember that the court looks very different than when Roe was written. I would not call it automatic. and keep in mind that lots of women are prosecuted for fetal harm, which has already been declared unconstitutional. So case law is not law on the ground.
I also found it very interesting that there are coalitions of pro-choice and pro-life women forming to oppose this amendment. I wouldn't haven't expected it. I would agree with you, Graham, that it gets at something important about how problematic this amendment is.
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