[Vision2020] Compassion for All Life

[Tony]

Yes, Nick, killing innocent human beings prior to their birth has for 
centuries been accepted moral and legal practice.  As was slavery, the 
subordination of woman, and a host of other practices viewed today as 
barbaric.  What I find curious is how the decidedly barbaric practice of 
snuffing out our offspring has avoided the collective censure of an evolving 
society.

As for the personal convictions of the authors of our Constitution and 
Declaration as concerns abortion, none of us can say.  We can however, 
clearly read their unambiguous writings with regard to the unalienable 
rights of all human beings.  Perhaps they were even more correct than their 
contemporary frame of reference allowed them to perceive.  I ask you Nick to 
join a growing host of Americans and allow your thinking on this question to 
break from the shackles of the distant past and meld with a more humane and 
evolved present.

Yours for a compassionate and humane view on this critical issue,

-Tony Simpson
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 11:43 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Compassion for All Life


> Greetings:
>
> The remarkable men (and equally remarkable women behind them) who wrote 
> our founding documents would have followed English Common Law with regard 
> to the rights of human persons and the legality of abortion.
>
> Early American jurists would have read Sir William Blackstone, who 
> believed that abortions could be performed up until the time of 
> quickening.  Following this legal tradition, abortions were common in 
> early America reaching a peak in the mid-19 Century.  At this time it was 
> estimated that one in four pregnancies ended in abortion, a rate equal to 
> that of the 1970s and 80s.  (Gasp! Americans were baby killers then!)
>
> Interestingly enough, America's Protestant churches were much more 
> concerned about freeing slaves than banning abortion.  Indeed, infanticide 
> was widespread in Reformation Europe but Luther and Calvin had nothing to 
> say about it.  Roman Catholic Law did not move their abortion ban back to 
> conception until 1917, keeping it at quickening before the.
>
> The American Medical Association (founded in 1847) made the first moves to 
> ban abortion.  The doctors' main motivation was to eliminate midwives and 
> protect women's health; and it had very little to do with the rights of 
> the fetus.
>
> The Supreme Court decision of 1973 was not written in a vacuum, and the 
> good justices were well aware of English Common Law as it was practiced in 
> early America.  A cursory reading of the footnotes will show that they did 
> their homework.
>
> So there is a seamless thread from Judge Blackstone (18th C.) to Judge 
> Blackmun in 1973.  It is absurd to think that there is somehow a break 
> between the Declaration of Independence in the 18th Century and the 
> Supreme Court of the late 20th Century.
>
> Yours for clear thinking and accurate history,
>
> Nick Gier
>
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