Am I Pro-Life or Am I Pro-Abortion?

I’d like to begin answering this question by stating that it is an infantile question that could only be accurately answered in its given form by a person with the brain of an infant.  Anyone who says they are one or the other is clearly living their life without a clue about much of anything.  For example, as much as I might wish to be, I can’t be considered pro-life because I believe there are certain circumstances in which the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment for certain people convicted of murdering one or more human beings.  I also can’t be considered pro-abortion because I am opposed to abortion in more scenarios than not.

I have taken the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America (Constitution) on many occasions since I was 21 years of age.  It seems silly every time I had to take it after that because once was all I needed.  I consider it an oath for life and I will support and defend that ideal until the day I die, and perhaps beyond.  From that personal perspective, I will now address the titular question.

Since the topic of abortion appears to be at the top of mind for most Americans as we approach the 2024 Presidential Election, let’s focus on how the Constitution informs my opinion about the topic of abortion.  To begin, the Constitution contains only two references to the word “born” with no references at all to pregnancy or anything else related to one human being giving birth to another human being:

1. No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President

2. 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.

Unlike born, words related to elect, such as election, appear in the Constitution about 46 times.  Election is defined as “a process in which people vote to choose a person or group of people to hold an official position.”  So, the Constitution makes many references to “We the people of the United States” (WtP) having choices about how the United States of America (USA) is to be governed.

Based on my reading of the Constitution and my oath to support and defend it, I am heavily pro-choice because WtP are given the exclusive responsibility to choose our government and how we are to be governed.  I don’t believe any of us should be making choices for others of us except for those WtP have properly elected to do so.

Without regard to individual choices, the government of the USA has a responsibility to protect its “born” citizens:  

“The Congress shall have Power To … provide for the … general Welfare of the United States”.

So, should Congress have a responsibility to protect “unborn” children without infringing upon the rights of WtP to make our own choices?  Personally, I believe it is reasonable to require the protection of any “unborn” person who could survive on their own, outside the body of the mother, without extraordinary medical or other scientific intervention.  Prohibiting the choice to abort a pregnancy before the prospective mother could even know for certain she was pregnant, on the other hand, would be a clear infringement of that person’s right to choose.

Those who claim to be pro-life, which is unlikely to be completely true, have used the argument that life begins at conception.  That, however, is an unknowable point in time and is a bit arbitrary since some could argue the life began with the independent creation of the egg and the sperm.  Such arguments about the beginning of life often arise from religious beliefs, but religious beliefs should not be used in a Constitutional discussion.  The USA is not a country that is governed by religion and it was clearly created with an intent to avoid being ruled by any particular religion.  Regardless, setting a time earlier than it could reasonably be known that a pregnancy exists clearly infringes on the person’s right to choose to have a pregnancy.

For the vast majority of WtP, conception is a non-starter due to the unknown factors.  For the vast majority of WtP, the due date is a non-starter because the child could survive on its own just like those who are already “born”.  What is that point in between that would be least objectionable to WtP as a collective?  That is what our elected representatives should be working to determine instead of trying to force the majority to one extreme or the other.

The question shouldn’t be about pro-life or pro-abortion.  It should be about the timing of a reasonable dividing line between being allowed to abort and not being allowed to abort.  Abortion should also be defined in terms of personal decision versus medical emergency.  Terminating a pregnancy that could very well end in a successful delivery is a reasonable definition for an abortion.  A medical emergency to save a life, on the other hand, should never be characterized as an abortion, and such decisions should be made between medical personnel and the patients who are at risk, not the government or other members of WtP.

If WtP keep pushing for extremes instead of reasoned solutions, the Constitution will cease to function as it was designed to function and the USA will be no more.  Being a Democratic Republic requires negotiation and compromise.  WtP consists of more than 300 million individuals each having different ideas about how things should be.  If we can’t once again figure out a way to combine those different ideas into how we are to be governed, then the Democratic Republic of WtP will suffocate and die.

“Independence Day USA” in 2023

As we celebrate 247 years of governing independent of the English Empire of the 1700s, there is a great deal of concern regarding the direction Our country will take in the next 247 years.  We appear to be locked in another Civil War where this time is Red vs Blue rather than Blue vs. Gray.  Can we survive another one?  Is our two-Party duopoly equipped to bring an end to the war this time around?

Written by a former colleague of mine:

“The term ‘tip of the spear’ has come to represent those individuals, companies or organizations who popular opinion has deemed the first to face whatever unknown danger is hurled at them.

The FBI is such an organization and many of its people have lived at the tip of the spear previously, before migrating to the FBI. They are, generally, solid unassuming men and women who do the job without seeking public praise nor fearing public scorn.

As this LA Times column makes perfectly clear, the nation must have confidence in its institutions, particularly in the FBI.

The FBI is most often in the vortex of having the sole responsibility for investigating politicians accused of criminal violations and conducting those investigations with consistent standards no matter whom the target might be.

Under the law, a former president is no different from any other citizen.

Hand-wringing over ‘optics’ or fearing the unprecedented nature of an investigation is not and should not be a factor when conducting an investigation. It falls to the FBI director and the Attorney General to underscore that point publicly and early in such cases. Even during congressional hearings.

Now is not the time to be timid. Now, more than ever, it is time to reinforce that the rule of law applies equally to everyone.

As stated in this piece, ‘The chilling effect from their harping is obvious in the crazy caution Justice and the FBI displayed toward Trump.’

When you're the tip of the spear, there is room for caution, but not crazy caution.”

The following article was shared with the text written above:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-21/weaponization-justice-department-fbi-republican-democrat-merrick-garland-bill-barr-hunter-biden

From the opening of the article:

Republicans keep gunning for Justice Dept. and FBI, but it’s Democrats who should have a beef with the feds

If Democrats are weaponizing the federal government against their political opponents, as Republicans charge, they’re doing a really bad job of it.

My reply to my colleague and the article:

Will we ever get people under the exclusive control of one of the two major Political Parties to remove their blinders long enough to see and face reality? How on earth has this corrupted form of democracy we have, a duopoly where less than 60% of voters exercise 100% control of government power, survived for 247 years.

And 100% of those registered to one of the two Parties hates the 28% (give or take) of registered voters that are in the other Party. It’s no wonder the country that is supposed to be controlled by 100% of #WtP has become so dysfunctional. It’s time to give control to the 40% that think for themselves!!!

Another former colleague then responded:

“It’s not a ‘Democracy’, it’s a ‘Republic.’ Many dismiss that statement by trying to equate the two, but the difference is significant. A Democracy is majority rule and infringes on liberties. A Republic provides for representation of all citizens, including the minority. The genesis of the duopoly is the reduction and now often outright elimination of the teaching of Civics. A majority of youth, fellow citizens, and even elected representatives I’ve encountered fail at demonstrating the genius of our founding fathers to put forth our Constitutional Republic which embodies power in the people. We do not elect ‘leaders’, we elect ‘representatives’. The word leader does not appear in the Constitution, but representative does. Most don’t understand the power they as individual citizens have and thus fail to exercise it. Most don’t understand the Article I branch is the most powerful as our representatives over the other two ‘co-equal’ branches. The Article I branch can overrule the Article II branch veto. The Article I branch can also overturn the Article III branch rulings via legislation passed into Law by the Article II branch signing it or having the veto overruled. It will take a generation of teaching to correct.”

To which I replied:

“It will take a generation of teaching to correct.” Except our Article I duopoly will continue to ensure that education is never allowed to happen in order to maintain self-preservation of the duopoly.

Shortly after the online conversation above, I came across the following article that is, coincidentally, completely independent of the conversation I had been having, but it has some striking similarities and so much more that should be read by every U.S. citizen before November 2024:

https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/04/politics/american-political-divisions-july-fourth/index.html

A couple excerpts from that one:

The ideal of national unity celebrated on July Fourth has almost always been overstated: the country from its founding has been riven by sectional, racial, class and gender conflicts. Large groups of people living within our borders have always felt excluded from any proclaimed national consensus: American Indians who were brutally displaced for decades, Black people who faced generations of legal slavery and then decades of state-sponsored segregation, women denied the vote until the 20th century.

To Wolfe, the US is now trapped in a “vicious cycle” of rising partisan and ideological hostility in which political leaders, particularly on the right, see a “benefit in fueling the rage even more.” While President Joe Biden, Wolfe says, has struck traditional presidential notes of emphasizing the value of national unity, Trump – currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination – has built his political strategy on widening the nation’s divides in ways that may be difficult to reverse any time soon. “I don’t know if [Trump’s] a political genius or just instinctively knows something, but he sure has exacerbated the shocks, and I don’t know how we are going to recover from him,” Wolfe says.

I’d say more from my own perspective and experience, but there isn’t anything I could say that wasn’t said above.  I know it’s been a long while since I’ve had the desire to post here, so thank you for checking in today.

America’s Collapsing Democracy

As a country, the United States of America (US) exists with its Constitution as its foundation.  As its foundation crumbles, so too does everything it supports.  Many are saying the US is heading toward a second Civil War.  Truthfully, this country has been locked in a second Civil War for more than a decade where the sole purpose of each of two sides has been to destroy the other side.  But how did the US get here?

For more than two centuries, the US Constitution has provided a solid foundation which has been strong enough to support both democracy and the political establishment (The Establishment) consisting of two political parties maintaining 100 percent of the power to govern the US.  Though the Constitution was never designed to create a country controlled exclusively by two parties, it has always been able to support The Establishment because there had been enough balance to place a nearly equal amount of stress on each side of the foundation.  In the 1860s, that foundation crumbled, and it took strong leadership from people like President Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the foundation and restore the balance required to sustain it into the future.

Civil War II

Civil War I

From 1789 until the 1850s and again from the late 1860s into the 1990s, The Establishment made up a vast majority of the US Electorate, with each half consisting of nearly 50 percent.  All that began to change as the US entered the 21st Century and voters began to become more and more disillusioned with The Establishment and renounce Party affiliation.  As of today, it is estimated that less than 25 percent of registered voters are affiliated with the half of The Establishment currently listed on ballots as the Republican Party, while less than 30 percent make up the Democratic Party.  That is less than 55 percent of the Electorate holding 100 percent of the power to govern.  Is that how democracy is meant to operate?

While many Democrats still get a bad taste in their mouths when they think about President Ronald Reagan, one of the things that made Reagan so successful was his ability to get the two sides of The Establishment to collaborate.  Since 2010, however, the US Congress has operated exclusively under the principle that whichever half of The Establishment had control at a given point in time would use their majority to pass legislation without any input or support from the other half.  It was that lack of compassion and compromise that began to crack the foundation.

Fast forward to 2016, when the Republican Party itself began to splinter.  By 2021, the two very separate and distinct pieces became the Party of Insurrection aka the Party of Trump (PoT) with Donald Trump as its leader and the RINOS (Republicans In Name Only, as Trump would refer to the other piece) with no leaders and no organizational structure.

Party of Insurrection

RINOS

Remember, the entire Republican Party for much of the 21st Century was made up of around 25 percent of the US Electorate.  Now that the Party has split in two, each piece is considerably less than 25 percent of the Electorate.  Because The Establishment has exclusive control of the US Government, the Republican Party is still allotted one of two lines on each ballot in every US election.  Whichever piece of the less than 25 percent wins the race will get rewarded with a near 50 percent control of the US Government.  Is that democracy?

The Establishment was built to ensure outsiders would have little access to get listed on election ballots and even less of a chance of being elected.  Before the splintering of the Republican Party, protecting The Establishment from the rise of third parties had always been the one issue for which Republicans and Democrats could always agree.  As the Constitutional foundation continues to crack, however, the chaos resulting from the division of what used to be the Republican Party will soon cause the foundation to completely collapse, just as it did in the 1850s.

Since its formation in 2016, the PoT has been shedding members like a furry dog sheds fur.  Does the PoT experience any growth to sustain itself, or does it only shed members?  Are the departing members of the PoT joining the ranks of the RINOS, the Democrats, or the Independents?  In six years of existence, what is the PoT doing, if anything, to grow its base?  Also, how can a Party successfully lead a government when it considers government institutions such as the FBI, the IRS, the CDC, the EPA, and many others to be among its biggest enemies.  I can tell you from experience, the FBI has many, many enemies.  Those enemies all have one common characteristic – they either are criminals or they love and support criminals.

Rest assured, any enemy of the US Government is an enemy of We the People (WtP), the owners of the US.  It is up to WtP to either preserve democracy by repairing the cracks and restoring the Constitutional foundation to be able to withstand the weights of the 21st Century or by letting it be replaced by a huge Trump Tower in 2024, with its brand new foundation designed by one person rather than WtP.  Vote for Democrats in November 2022 (VoteBlueIn22) or you’ll be voting to give up the rights of WtP forever.

Party of Insurrection, RINOS, or other?