I tried looking up the exact text of these rights, but it's 3:20 am and I'm tired so I gave up. Here's my non-expert thought process:

1. It would depend on the rights being discussed. Anything applied to a US citizen is out, for example, because the unborn have yet to be born and thus cannot legally be US citizens.

2. The fact that certain states have attempted to enact "personhood amendments" declaring fetuses as people would indicate that fetuses are, generally, not legally considered people, which would imply a lack of equal protection under the law afforded to those legally considered people.

I can't say for certain that it is invalid, but it seems very likely to be.

It's the fifth and fourteenth amendments, to clarify.

No. Mike Huckabee hasn't said anything valid in years.

We already established he's a candidate.

I was going to go with, "it depends on how you interpret..." But when it comes to the 14th, i'd say no, clearly not: "Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

This explicitly denies citizenship to the unborn. So no rights until you are born.

The 4th refers to a person, which depends on your definition of personhood. This is open to interpretation.

The strictest definition i've, a comedian said "you're not a person until you're in my phonebook" ie if he doesn't know you personally then he doesn't give a shit about you as a person...

Wider definitions include adult mammals and birds, with great apes being offered some protection against unfair imprisonment in some parts of the world.

600 years ago a child wasn't considered to be anything until the 'quickening' because miscarriage was so common and thus you wouldn't get a person's hopes up until it started moving and was obviously alive (more research could be done on this, or a specific date given, but feeling the fetus moving would have proved it was alive...)

The catholic church measures things not in terms of 'alive' or personhood, but in terms of a soul. And makes the claim that ensoulment occurs at conception (though i haven't heard them explain how many souls are attached if the zygote is going to split into identical twins - or if one whether they go on to share a single soul, or if a spontaneous abortion will occur in the first few days or no implantation will occur, whether the soul so attached will go to hell... Nevermind conjoined twins, which probably blur the line between one person and two)

The word used in the 4th amendment is person, and so we can interpret that as we like. When it was written, did it mean white wealthy able-bodied male of voting age? I doubt it, but it may have ignored the rights of blacks, children or the mentally ill.

In fact at the present time there are a lot more serious issues regarding the rights of non-whites, children and the mentally ill.

From police violence killing a mentally ill man whose family called them for help; to massive systemic abuse and discrimination of non-white, to children whose are not protected from their families... The arguement over rights of the unborn is rather distracting from serious issues which need to be addressed!

Wait unborn are not citizens, but if Huckabee is right and the are people; doesn' that make them illegal immigrants?? I mean they have no legal papers, thus not right to be there, and the contribute nothing to tue economy, just suck valuable calories from working citizens and leech off the state...

Why aren't the republicans calling for deportation of these 'people'??

There are countless people who "contribute nothing to tue economy, just suck valuable calories from working citizens and leech off the state..." So I don't know how much of an argument that is.

For those keeping score at home, the relevant portions of the American Constitution (the two Due Process Clauses) read thusly:

Amendment 5: "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . ."

Amendment 14: "No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."


Ironically, the 14th Amendment to Ireland's Constitution relates directly to abortion and reads thusly: "This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State [i.e. in Ireland], subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services [i.e. abortion services] lawfully available in another state." This amendment is not, however, under discussion here.

"Regardless of your position on abortion, is this a valid argument?"
Yes. I think the following syllogism expresses the argument pretty accurately:

Premise 1. Under the Due Process Clauses, no person can be lawfully deprived of life without due process of law.

Premise 2. Every unborn child is a person.

Conclusion. Under the Due Process Clauses, no unborn child can be lawfully deprived of life without due process of law.

Given the wording that Huckabee is invoking (and on which personhood laws proposed in various states are based; Marco Rubio also alluded to it), Premise 1 is true. It thus becomes extremely relevant who counts as a person, which is where Premise 2 comes in with an (admittedly controversial) answer. If Premise 2 is not true, then the argument remains valid but, because the premise is false, the conclusion becomes unsound and is a dubious basis for public policy. If Premise 2 is actually true, then the argument is both valid and sound and may form a decent basis for public policy.

"Do we really need a second thread on abortion right now?" (DemonOverlord)
I'm inclined to ask the same question. I don't necessarily object to there being two threads, but if the moderators choose to lock one of the threads (preferably this one, since the other one has been running longer and has a lot more posts), I certainly won't complain.

In the 14th amendment it refers to people who are born in the U.S. OR naturalized in the U.S.. It may be possible to argue that, upon conception, any unborn children are automatically naturalized and given the same rights as all other U.S. citizens. To determine the validity of this possibility, it would require a thorough review of the nation's naturalization laws, but a quick scan of the government's own "10 Steps to
Naturalization" document that can be found online clearly states that "If you have a U.S. citizen parent who is a U.S. citizen by either birth or naturalization you may already be a citizen". By some definitions, a woman can be labeled as a mother (and thus, a parent) even before she has given birth.

Sounds like the kind of loophole a lobbyist would use to claim that women who become pregnant are automatically mothers even if the baby is never born. A mother is someone who has a child, not someone who has been impregnated. You will never catch a woman who lost their only child prior to childbirth calling herself a mother, or at least I haven't.

"You will never catch a woman who lost their only child prior to childbirth calling herself a mother, or at least I haven't."
They do exist. They may be a minority (and they may belong disproportionately to pro-life sectors of society), but they do exist.

Is getting a vasectomy unconstitutional? Wearing condoms? We're depriving Sperm of having a chance to impregnate a woman during sex, so that's depriving the chance for life! It's a bit more catholic, but then again our law shouldn't be decided by religion.

It's cutting off the link in the process that leads to a baby's birth. so where do we draw the line?
Pre conception?
At conception?
Which one of the various trimesters after conception?

Where is da line...

"We're depriving Sperm of having a chance to impregnate a woman during sex, so that's depriving the chance for life!"
I've heard this argument and never really understood how it was substantively different from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk. I'm sure the solid Catholics on here can explain it, because I assume there must be a reason behind it.

But while this may relate to an argument whether contraception should be legal (which is not the one we've been having), it's entirely irrelevant to the debate over abortion since it has nothing to do with arguments for why abortion should be illegal -- including Catholic arguments on the topic (with which I am a bit more familiar).

Alright, i'll address abortion directly, fair enough OS27

"It's cutting off the link in the process that leads to a baby's birth. so where do we draw the line?
Pre conception?
At conception?
Which one of the various trimesters after conception?

Where is da line..."

Most ardent pro-lifers will answer "at conception" because there's a clear distinction between pre-fertilization and post-fertilization in terms of difference of person (a DNA sequence that is distinct from either parent's) and the fact that, if the genetic instructions function properly and are not interrupted, a zygote will always grow into someone that everyone understands is human whereas a gamete never will. (For the religious among us, there's also the matter of when a living soul begins to live, and that's generally considered to be at conception.)

Contraception and abortion are not the same thing. Abortion is not a contraceptive, it is a last resort. An abortion is not, as contraceptives are, painless and easy to do/use. Birth control pills have side effects, obviously, but nothing compared to the effects of a complicated pregnancy. They're totally different.

"They do exist. They may be a minority (and they may belong disproportionately to pro-life sectors of society), but they do exist."

mother - |ˈməT͟Hər|
noun
1) a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth.
• a female animal in relation to its offspring: [as modifier] : a mother penguin.
• archaic (esp. as a form of address) an elderly woman.
• (Mother, Mother Superior, or Reverend Mother)(esp. as a title or form of address) the head of a female religious community.
• [as modifier] denoting an institution or organization from which more recently founded institutions of the same type derive: the mother church.
• informal an extreme example or very large specimen of something: I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams.

2) vulgar slang short for motherfucker.

verb [ with obj. ]
1) (often as noun mothering) bring up (a child) with care and affection: the art of mothering.
• look after kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so: she felt mothered by her older sister.
2) dated give birth to.

Sorry, I'm not seeing "got pregnant." I am seeing a couple of references to giving birth.

I'm also seeing motherfucker, which makes me stupidly happy. Thanks Apple Dictionary.

Bo Sox, i was talking about it from an ideological standpoint. It cuts off the link to a baby being born. I understand it doesn't perfectly apply, but I'd like people to keep in mind the different things we find acceptable and unacceptable, and the religious teachings that are behind such thoughts.

^Given that we're debating exactly what the proper definition of mother should be, I'm not sure that a dictionary entry is of much use.

Also, how a dictionary definition of what a mother is supports the statement that "You will never catch a woman who lost their only child prior to childbirth calling herself a mother" and refutes the counter-claim that "[such women] do exist" is beyond me.

+1 bosox. brilliant

Sorry, James, didn't mean to cross-post there. I was referring to bo's last comment.

Dictionary definitions of words are typically the accepted definitions of words.

But still, even if you're not a mother, you still have a direct related link,

it's known to in the streets as a 'plump muffin' or the one i've heard around da ghettos 'belly bitch'

one cannot dismiss such honored titles so easily

"I understand it doesn't perfectly apply, but I'd like people to keep in mind the different things we find acceptable and unacceptable, and the religious teachings that are behind such thoughts."

Considering that religious groups tend to group contraception and abortion as immoral for the same reasons (because they want to prevent sex from occurring unless specifically for childbirth, because apparently feeling good and having fun is sinful), it seems to me that religious groups do in fact believe that they are one in the same, or at least that abortion is a form of contraceptive, even though it is its own process.

"Dictionary definitions of words are typically the accepted definitions of words."
That's true, since typically there IS an accepted definition of the word and there ISN'T controversy. But this sort of consensus clearly doesn't exist in the case of the word "mother" (or, to a certain extent, in the case of the term "human being").

James, since we are evidently debating a religious definition rather than the lexical one, please find me some Biblical references to mothers who never actually had a child. Then point out how they are not mothers in any of the other less literal ways defined in my post, and then point out how they are referred to as mothers because they lost a child and they still believe that they earned that title even though they never underwent the great majority of the things that earn the honor that comes with that title.