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Life Issues blog
How to testify at your statehouse when an assisted-suicide bill is heard A step-by-step guide to finding the bill, signing up, writing a three-minute statement, meeting staff and following the vote, with no medical claims. Why Single-Issue Voters Hold a Coalition Together, and When They Break It Pro-life voters, gun owners and taxpayers each joined the right over one provocation; here is how they got in, why they matter, and what keeps them. The case against assisted suicide that does not depend on religion Legal assisted suicide pressures the vulnerable, and that holds without faith. Autonomy at its strongest, then the enacted laws of Oregon, Canada and the Dutch. Washington v. Glucksberg and the 9-0 refusal to find a right to assisted suicide In Glucksberg (1997) every justice rejected a constitutional right to assisted suicide, and its history test later shaped Dobbs. The facts and what followed. 'My body, my choice' is a slogan, so let's take it seriously for once The slogan assumes the answer to the one question in dispute: whether a second human body is involved. Its history, its best argument and its limits. Fifty years from Roe to Dobbs in twenty dated turns of the law Twenty dated turns of the law between Roe in 1973 and Dobbs in 2022, each with a line on why it moved the ground under both movements. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and what the law requires A 2002 federal law says an infant born alive at any stage is a person. What the statute says, how it passed, and why the later fight is over enforcement. California told pro-life pregnancy centers what to say, and the Court said no NIFLA v. Becerra (2018) struck California's forced notices for pregnancy centers as compelled speech. The facts, the opinions, and why it protects all sides. After Dobbs, should pro-lifers seek a national law or win state by state? Pro-life conservatives disagree about federal protection versus state action after Dobbs. Both sides get a fair hearing here, then a verdict. From Bracton to 1868, the legal history Dobbs put back on the record Dobbs rests on a historical finding about abortion at common law and in the states of 1868. The authorities, the statutes, Roe's account and the dissent. Dred Scott, Roe and the danger of a Court deciding who counts as a person Twice the Supreme Court drew a line around who counts under the Constitution, and the people undid it. The history, and the honest limits of the comparison. Size, development, location, dependency, the four tests that exclude no one Every difference between an unborn child and a newborn falls into four categories, and none decides a human being's worth. The case and the best reply. The famous violinist argument for abortion, and why it never fit the case Judith Jarvis Thomson's 1971 violinist is the best bodily-autonomy argument for abortion, and it fails on its own terms. Here is the argument and the replies. Eight myths that keep good families from adopting a child Cost, age, income and birth parents are the reasons families give for not adopting, and most rest on myths. Here are eight, tested against the record. Baby Moses laws, from one Texas statute in 1999 to all fifty states Safe haven laws let a parent in crisis leave a newborn with a hospital or fire station, and they spread from Texas to every state with votes from both parties. Dobbs v. Jackson Read Closely, From Alito's History to the Joint Dissent A close reading of Dobbs, the Mississippi law behind it, the history test it used, its five-factor case for overruling Roe, and the best of the dissent. Roe v. Wade Was Weak Law Even to Scholars Who Liked the Result The first serious legal critics of Roe supported legal abortion, which shows that the objection was about constitutional method, not politics.