Abortion should be illegal

C/P: 1. "False, Common law marriage only requirements very widely between states, But most if not all require the couple to agree to be married and reside together within the state. " I validate your Amendment to what i wrote. A couple living together does imply that they live together as a couple. Duh. C/P: 2. "The Supreme Court has decided that the important cut off point depends on fetal viability which occurs around the 24 week mark, Considerably later that the first trimester. " 4 weeks in a month. 7 days in a week. 24 x 7 = 186 days, This implies that the SC set the cut off date as the end of the 2nd trimester. Eight years before Roe was decided, The Supreme Court heard arguments in another case that would lay the groundwork for the coming abortion rights decisions. In Griswold v. Connecticut, The Supreme Court ruled that a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraceptives violated the constitutionally protected "right to privacy, " laying the foundation for the constitutional right under which Roe would eventually find shelter. But the arguments over what constituted a "right to privacy" were far from settled. In Griswold, The Supreme Court concluded that while there was no explicit mention of privacy in the Constitution, The privacy rights implied in the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments demonstrated that the Founders intended a general right to privacy to be recognized and respected by the state. For example, The Court reasoned that the First Amendment protected the privacy of personal faith, The Fourth Amendment protected the privacy of one"s person and belongings, And so on and so forth. The Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973 in which the justices ruled 7-2 that abortion was a fundamental right protected by the United States Constitution. Justice Harry Blackmun, Writing for the majority, Declared that the right of privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and previously outlined in Griswold "is broad enough to encompass a woman"s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. " While the Court recognized that a woman"s right to choose was protected by the Constitution, It also recognized the competing state interests of protecting a woman"s health and the "potentiality of human life. " The solution the Court settled on was the establishment of a legal balancing test that weighed the privacy interests of the mother against the interests of the state. The Court based its test on the trimester framework of pregnancy. During the first trimester of pregnancy, When an abortion was considered a safer procedure than childbirth, The Court reasoned that the decision on whether to abort must be left exclusively to the mother. Therefore, Any state or federal regulation that interfered with the right to have an abortion would be presumptively unconstitutional. For the second trimester, The Court ruled that the state could regulate abortion only in order to protect the woman"s health. During the last trimester, And after the fetus was considered "viable" (could survive on its own outside the mother"s womb), State laws were permitted to restrict and prohibit abortion except when an abortion would be necessary to preserve the health of the mother. The 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, The majority opinion of the SC ruled that the Court was re-affirming "the essential holding" of Roe that "if the right of privacy means anything, It is the right of the individual, Married or single, To be free from unwarranted government intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. " Most importantly, The plurality opinion overturned the "trimester framework" established in Roe to outline a different test that accommodated for the advancement of medical technology that made the "viability" of the fetus far different than at the time Roe was decided! Rather than set absolutes around trimester figures, The plurality articulated an "undue burden" standard, Which mandated that courts determine whether the abortion regulations at issue placed an undue burden on the person seeking the abortion. If they did, They were presumed unconstitutional. If not, They were presumed constitutional. Where the line is drawn on what constitutes an "undue burden" remains the topic of much debate in legal and political circles today. The trimester issue - bottom line - its a subject which remains open to debate. NOT at all like your black and white yes/no simpleton thinking seems to indicate. Hedonism has a long history, Your limited definition does not compare to the tablets of stone which Moses brought down from Sinai! C/P: "5. Your opening statement bases your entire argument around your preconceived notion that abortions will lead to hedonism in society. So not only does the textbook definition challenge your thesis, It uproots it entirely. " Bunk. Most abortions done by inexperienced teenagers and young adults in their 2os. This age group represents the golden age of hedonism. Young self centered people looking to enjoy their lives and experiment and rebel against the older generation. The title of this debate: Abortion should be illegal, 4 words do not define or limit my arguments other than that as pro I favor the broad opinion that Abortion should be illegal. You want to pretend that the 4 word title limits the pro position that all Abortion should be illegal. Bunk. I argue, In point of fact, That once the cells growing in the womb take on the shape of a human baby, Hands arms, Legs, Head, Eyes etc etc etc that then and only then should abortion become illegal.