Maryland Republican Threatens Impeachment of Pro Gay Rights Judge

[Steve Savicki]

http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=9&id=8710

How is one Republican going to do just that? And I suppose the only replacement is an anti-gay judge?
Basically, a black and white situation where the Repubs only see it there way.

[Warham]

Tell me, Savicki, do liberals like it when pro-life judges are nominated for the Supreme Court?

[FORD]

By "pro life", do you mean judges who are opposed to wars based on lies which do nothing to secure the United States of America?

[Warham]

No, by pro-life, I'm talking about abortion, not other issues.

For instance, Diane Feinstein said she wouldn't vote for Alito just for the fact that he was pro-life. He could have been liberal on every other issue, but that one was THE most important, the only one that mattered.

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
He could have been liberal on every other issue, but that one was THE most important, the only one that mattered.


Rightly so. Plus you're talking about someone who's against the rights of EXISTING people, not 'potential' ones....;)

[FORD]

So being "pro-life" only involves the unborn, and murdering those who are actually alive is acceptable?

How the fuck do you sleep at night, if you actually believe that?

[Warham]

Originally posted by jhale667
Rightly so. Plus you're talking about someone who's against the rights of EXISTING people, not 'potential' ones....;)

Really? What's the list of rights he's against?

If you're going to claim it, prove it.

[Warham]

Originally posted by FORD
So being "pro-life" only involves the unborn, and murdering those who are actually alive is acceptable?

How the fuck do you sleep at night, if you actually believe that?

I dunno, do you think Darryl Littlejohn should be kept alive?

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
I dunno, do you think Darryl Littlejohn should be kept alive?

Considering he hasn't even been tried or convicted yet, I would have to say yes.

Ask me again if he's convicted.

I have mixed feelings on the death penalty, and I'll be the first to admit it.

And my views on abortion have been stated enough. Not going to leave the door open for another threadjacking on that shit.

But anyone who supports the Iraq war cannot possibly call themselves "pro life".

[Nickdfresh]

And by "babies," do you mean a sperm that has just entered an egg?

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
Really? What's the list of rights he's against?

If you're going to claim it, prove it.


Uhhh...were we not talking about someone wanting to impeach a judge over an OPINION? ;)

[Warham]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
And by "babies," do you mean a sperm that has just entered an egg?

Are you asking me?

If you are, I believe all abortions after the 1st trimester should be illegal, period. If any doctor is caught doing any kind of partial-birth abortion, they should do some serious jail time.

[Warham]

Originally posted by jhale667
Uhhh...were we not talking about someone wanting to impeach a judge over an OPINION? ;)

Usually people don't impeach judges on opinions, but rather on their decisions they've rendered, such as in Massachusetts, where they are trying to get rid of the majority judges who allowed gay marriages in that state.

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
Are you asking me?

If you are, I believe all abortions after the 1st trimester should be illegal, period. If any doctor is caught doing any kind of partial-birth abortion, they should do some serious jail time.

See, I'd almost agree with you there, but I'd say no 3rd termers....

[Warham]

Originally posted by FORD
Considering he hasn't even been tried or convicted yet, I would have to say yes.

Ask me again if he's convicted.

I have mixed feelings on the death penalty, and I'll be the first to admit it.

And my views on abortion have been stated enough. Not going to leave the door open for another threadjacking on that shit.

But anyone who supports the Iraq war cannot possibly call themselves "pro life".

Do you think WWII was justified?

[Warham]

Originally posted by jhale667
See, I'd almost agree with you there, but I'd say no 3rd termers....

When I can see babies wiggling their toes and fingers, that about seals the deal for me. Actually, they start doing that after a few weeks, but if I'd allow exceptions, it would be the mother's health and rape and incest only.

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
Usually people don't impeach judges on opinions, but rather on their decisions they've rendered, such as in Massachusetts, where they are trying to get rid of the majority judges who allowed gay marriages in that state.


OK, but are they not basing their decisions on existing law and precedent? And are the people trying to oust them only trying to do so because they DISAGREE with said decision?

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
When I can see babies wiggling their toes and fingers, that about seals the deal for me. Actually, they start doing that after a few weeks, but if I'd allow exceptions, it would be the mother's health and rape and incest only.

I'm against it when it's possible the fetus could survive on its own ala a premature birth. But this isn't a thread on abortion...


But hey, what do you guys think of the 'Roe vs. Wade for men' case? That's kinda curious.....

[Warham]

Originally posted by jhale667
OK, but are they not basing their decisions on existing law and precedent? And are the people trying to oust them only trying to do so because they DISAGREE with said decision?

Sure they disagree, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to impeach, but I have to ask, where's the existing law and precedent for gay marriage?

[Warham]

Originally posted by jhale667
But hey, what do you guys think of the 'Roe vs. Wade for men' case? That's kinda curious.....

He should have to pay for child support (a meager $6000 a year). He's irresponsible and and appears to be a deadbeat.

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
Sure they disagree, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to impeach, but I have to ask, where's the existing law and precedent for gay marriage?


Where's the existing law and precedent AGAINST it? ;)

[jhale667]

Originally posted by Warham
He should have to pay for child support (a meager $6000 a year). He's irresponsible and and appears to be a deadbeat.

Seems like I heard he was a well-to-do computer programmer, not a deadbeat...the only irresponsible thing he did was not wearing a rubber and taking the girl's WORD for it that she was barren (admittedly a stupid move)--- chicks never LIE about that shit, right?...;)

[Warham]

Doesn't matter if she lied or not. He's still responsible. No birth control method is 100% reliable anyway. I believe in this case, he said that she said she was on the pill. Every time you bang some chick there's always that LITTLE chance that nature works it's magic despite all measures against that happening.

[jhale667]

Right, but if that's her claim, and she intentionally misrepresented herself, he should bear no responsiblity, IMO. Having said that, his case would be a LOT stronger if he HAD worn a helmet....

[Warham]

He doesn't have a prayer. She'll get the $500 a month out of him. He should just pay up and learn from his mistakes.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
Do you think WWII was justified?

Prescott Bush's best buddy Adolf killed millions of people because of their religion, or sexual orientation, or ethnic background. Clearly, even by himself, Hitler represented a real threat to the entire world. With the assistance of Japan, even more so. So, yes the war to stop that very REAL threat was justified.

[Warham]

But thousands upon thousands of innocents were killed by our servicemen, FORD.

That's justifiable?

Oh, you forgot Henry Ford in that list of buddies.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
Sure they disagree, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to impeach, but I have to ask, where's the existing law and precedent for gay marriage?

Uh, remember those two states that are right next door to you?

The state courts in Vermont and Massachussettes both ruled in favor of gay marriage under the equal protection provisions of the 14th ammendment. And in Vermont's case, Governor Howard Dean signed a civil unions bill into law after the court decision, in a common sense move that pre-empted an extended ugly battle with the religious reich.

The Vermont model seems reasonable to me. Gay couples should be able to have a legal marriage under the law with all the rights of a married heterosexual couple. Churches, synagogues, etc should also be allowed to determine what religious ceremonies they will or will not perform. Some would perform gay weddings, some would not. And that's fine. Churches should be allowed to make their own policies, but NOT government policies.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
But thousands upon thousands of innocents were killed by our servicemen, FORD.

That's justifiable?



You simply cannot create a moral equivalency between the Third Reich and Saddam Hussein.

Saddam was NEVER a threat to anyone but his immediate neighbors, and in all probability wasn't even that after the 1991 invasion.

There were no "business" motives in defeating Hitler. Roosevelt wasn't trying to take over the Autobahn or the VW factories, he was trying to stop a genocidal madman

[Warham]

Originally posted by FORD
You simply cannot create a moral equivalency between the Third Reich and Saddam Hussein.

Saddam was NEVER a threat to anyone but his immediate neighbors, and in all probability wasn't even that after the 1991 invasion.

There were no "business" motives in defeating Hitler. Roosevelt wasn't trying to take over the Autobahn or the VW factories, he was trying to stop a genocidal madman

So Hussein wasn't a genocidal madman?

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
...If any doctor is caught doing any kind of partial-birth abortion, they should do some serious jail time.

What if a partial-birth abortion is done to save the life of the mother? The vast majority of them are BTW (a little fact many like to leave out)....

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
But thousands upon thousands of innocents were killed by our servicemen, FORD.

That's justifiable?

Oh, you forgot Henry Ford in that list of buddies.

Um, we didn't start WWII; so to ask if it was justified was a moot point. We held out as long as we possibly could, though we did goad the Japanese a bit over China...

[Roy Munson]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
What if a partial-birth abortion is done to save the life of the mother? The vast majority of them are BTW (a little fact many like to leave out)....


First, I agree with you that there should be a choice when the life of the mother is in peril.

But, where are your numbers regarding the fact that a majority of partial-birth abortions are done in order to save the mother's life?

[jhale667]

Originally posted by FORD


The Vermont model seems reasonable to me. Gay couples should be able to have a legal marriage under the law with all the rights of a married heterosexual couple. Churches, synagogues, etc should also be allowed to determine what religious ceremonies they will or will not perform. Some would perform gay weddings, some would not. And that's fine. Churches should be allowed to make their own policies, but NOT government policies.

Sounds reasonable.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Roy Munson
First, I agree with you that there should be a choice when the life of the mother is in peril.

But, where are your numbers regarding the fact that a majority of partial-birth abortions are done in order to save the mother's life?

I can't find anything specific, so I must retract that claim. The problem is that there is so much misinformation surrounding this issue...

Here's a primer from NPR:

'Partial-Birth Abortion:' Separating Fact from Spin

by Julie Rovner

NPR.org (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5168163) February 21, 2006

Protesters demonstrated outside the Supreme Court in 2000, when the court last considered the issue of "partial-birth" abortion. The court plans to take up the issue again by weighing the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act.

The Supreme Court's decision to consider the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has once again pushed the abortion issue into the spotlight.

The law, which was signed by President Bush in 2003 after an eight-year-long congressional fight, prohibits doctors from knowingly performing a "partial-birth abortion," a procedure it defines as one in which the person performing the abortion "deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother."

But "partial-birth" is not a medical term. It's a political one, and a highly confusing one at that, with both sides disagreeing even on how many procedures take place, at what point in pregnancy, and exactly which procedures the law actually bans.

So to better understand the facts behind the controversy, we asked NPR health correspondent Julie Rovner to explain the origins of both the name and the procedure.

--Where does the term "partial-birth" abortion come from?

The term was first coined by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in 1995 to describe a recently introduced medical procedure to remove fetuses from the womb. Alternately known as "dilation and extraction," or D&X, and "intact D&E," it involves removing the fetus intact by dilating a pregnant woman's cervix, then pulling the entire body out through the birth canal.

After a physician presented a paper at a conference of the National Abortion Federation describing the new procedure, the NRLC commissioned drawings to illustrate it and published them in booklet form, as well as placing them as paid advertisements in newspapers to build public opposition. In an interview with The New Republic magazine in 1996, the NRLC's Douglas Johnson explained that the term was thought up in hopes that "as the public learns what a 'partial-birth abortion' is, they might also learn something about other abortion methods, and that this would foster a growing opposition to abortion."

In 1995, Rep. Charles Canady (R-FL) included the term as part of a bill he proposed that would make it a federal crime to perform a "partial-birth" abortion. (That year, the Ohio state legislature also passed the first state ban, but it was struck down by a federal district court; the Supreme Court later refused to hear an appeal.)

--If this procedure is so controversial, then why was it developed in the first place?

The further along a pregnancy is, the more complicated -- and the more controversial -- the procedures are for aborting it. Abortions performed after the 20th week of pregnancy typically require that the fetus be dismembered inside the womb so it can be removed without damaging the pregnant woman's cervix. Some gynecologists consider such methods, known as "dilation and evacuation," less than ideal because they can involve substantial blood loss and may increase the risk of lacerating the cervix, potentially undermining the woman's ability to bear children in the future.

Two abortion physicians, one in Ohio and one in California, independently developed variations on the method by extracting the fetus intact. The Ohio physician, Martin Haskell, called his method "dilation and extraction," or D&X. It involved dilating the woman's cervix, then pulling the fetus through it feet first until only the head remained inside. Using scissors or another sharp instrument, the head was then punctured, and the skull compressed, so it, too, could fit through the dilated cervix.

Haskell has said that he devised his D&X procedure because he wanted to find a way to perform second-trimester abortions without an overnight hospital stay, because local hospitals did not permit most abortions after 18 weeks.

--How often is the D&X procedure performed?

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group that conducts surveys of the nation's abortion doctors, about 15,000 abortions were performed in the year 2000 on women 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancies; the vast majority were between the 20th and 24th week. Of those, only about 2,200 D&X abortions were performed, or about 0.2 percent of the 1.3 million abortions believed to be performed that year.

And contrary to the claims of some abortion opponents, most such abortions do not take place in the third trimester of pregnancy, or after fetal "viability." Indeed, when some members of Congress tried to amend the bill to ban only those procedures that take place after viability, abortion opponents complained that would leave most of the procedures legal.

--Under what health circumstances are D&X abortions performed?

There is currently no statistical information available on why "dilation and extraction" abortions are performed.

In a widely-publicized interview with The New York Times in 1997, Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, estimated that in the majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother and healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along in development.

Yet the procedure is also performed in cases where the woman's health is at risk, or when the fetus shows signs of serious abnormalities, some of which don't become apparent until late in pregnancy.

Take, for example, cases in which the fetus develops hydrocephalus (commonly known as water on the brain). Often undetectable until well into the second three months of pregnancy, the condition causes enlargement of the skull up to two-and-a-half times its normal size. It not only results in severe brain damage to the fetus, it can also create severe health risks to the mother if she tries to deliver it vaginally.

Some doctors say D&X abortion is a preferable method for ending such pregnancies without damaging the woman's cervix. Those in the anti-abortion camp, however, argue that the procedure is never medically necessary, noting that enough fluid can be drained from hydrocephalus babies in the womb to ensure a safe delivery.

Indeed, many abortion opponents believe even severely deformed fetuses should be delivered regardless of their prospects for a healthy life.

"We don't believe that sick babies -- babies with disabilities -- should be pulled out by the legs and struck through the head," Right to Life's Johnson told The New Republic. "We believe they should live out their life -- whether it's a few minutes or six hours."

--Are there any alternatives to these procedures?

Sometimes. Labor can be induced, or the fetus can be removed by caesarian section in some cases.

--Has the Supreme Court weighed in on this issue before?

Yes. In the year 2000, the court struck down a Nebraska law banning any abortion procedure that "partially evacuates fetal material through the cervix into the birth canal."

By a 5-4 ruling, the majority in Stenberg v. Carhart said Nebraska's ban was unconstitutionally vague and lacked a needed exception allowing the procedure to be used to protect the health of the pregnant mother.

--How does all this relate to the larger abortion debate?

Activists on both sides of the issues see the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act as pivotal to the larger debate. Abortion-rights backers say the ban is a first step toward trying to outlaw all abortions. Even some supporters of the ban say that if it is upheld, they could then move on to try to outlaw the far more common D&E procedure, whose description is nearly as unpleasant as that of the D&X.

The court could also use the law to address the "health" exception currently required for all abortion restrictions. Abortion foes say the current health exception upheld by the court is so broad -- encompassing mental health problems as well as physical ones -- that just about any abortion-procedure ban would have to be invalidated. But abortion-rights supporters say that without a health exception, women could be forced to carry to term fetuses with no chance at life, but whose birth could leave the pregnant women unable to carry a later pregnancy, or could exacerbate serious ailments such as diabetes.