It’s amazing how hypocritical republicans can be. They keep harping about government being so bad and causing all of America’s problem. They want government to stay out everything except defense. Except when they want government to control personal behavior. Of course that only applies to behavior they disagree with. They don’t want government to tocuh their guns or cigarettes. They don’t want government to collect any taxes. But they want government to encourage religion, as long as it is their vision of religion. They want government to control womens reproductive choices. They want to eliminate a womans right to not have a child when it is not appropriate for the woman. And now along with saying that a woman cannot choose not to have a child, they want to tell a woman when she cannot have a child.
Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make
marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana,
including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do
become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”
According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every
woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother throu gh assisted
reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation,
and egg donation, must first file for a “petition for parentage” in
their local county probate court.
Only women who are married will be considered for the “gestational
certificate” that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the
pregnancy. Further, the “gestational certificate” will only be given
to married couples that successfully complete the same screening
process currently required by law of adoptive parents.
As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent “who
knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction
procedure” without court approval, “commits unauthorized
reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.” The criminal charges will be
the same for physicians who commit “unauthorized practice of
artificial reproduction.”
Where the fuck do they got telling anyone when they can and cannot have a child. Supposedly the legislation is intended to regulate surrogacy, but the wording is such that it will control all assisted reproduction in the state of Indiana. How can the Indiana legislators be so ignorant.
On a related vein, republicans also seem to hate “judicial activism” unless of course the activist judge is ruling in agreement with their beliefs. Right-wing republicans like to point at judges like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as the kind they would to see populate the supreme court. They also rail against judges that overturn legislation passed in congress and state legislatures and who overturn precedents. That is of course unless they don’t like the precedent in question or law in question. They would be thrilled if the supreme court overruled Roe v Wade and they pushed hard for the court to invalidate the McCain-Fiengold campaign finance reform bill. From the Village-Voice:
The potential conflict between these conservative positions is easy to observe. One cannot urge judges to abstain from government by judiciary while simultaneously asserting that the judges must advance a particular set of substantive positions, because vindicating the latter may require quashing contrary legislation. The protection of states rights, for example, comes by invalidating federal legislation.
A recent poll of the public by the American Bar Association found that 56 percent of respondents believe that there is a judicial activism “crisis,” in which judges “routinely overrule the will of the people.” Conservatives claim this as their position. According to a recent study, however, conservative darlings Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have voted to strike congressional laws 65 percent and 56 percent of the time, respectively, more than double the rate of Justice Stephen Breyer (26 percent), and well above liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (39 percent) and John Paul Stevens (39 percent).
There is another kind of conservatism, which might be called legal conservatism. This counsels adherence to precedent, self-restraint, judicial modesty, with an emphasis on preserving the autonomy and integrity of the court from the taint of politics. Chief Justice Roberts espoused this kind of conservatism. From the conservative point of view, the problem with this kind of conservatism is that it promises to lock into place longstanding decisions like Roe and the Warren Court’s liberal constitutional reforms. This is why the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue was unhappy with Roberts, and has already come out against Miers.
Given this constellation of conflicting conservative positions, any nominee would have raised ire from one conservative wing or another. The misfortune of Miers is that her views are so unknown that every conservative group feared the worst, and let loose their barrage of angst and frustration. After repeated failures, this was their best chance in decades to turn the orientation of the Court toward the right, and now it may be lost.
Republicans are only conservative when it suits them. They are also more pro-big government than anyone when it suits their desires.
