Right to Live

Right to Life

Ohio is embroiled in controversy.  Issue One, an amendment to the Ohio State Constitution, guarantees women the right to make their own determination about their own bodies, including ending pregnancy.  The words of the actual amendment (not the “synopsis” on the ballot, authored by opponents of the Issue) echo the long accepted Roe v Wade logic.  The state government has a duty to “protect human life”, and that duty grows with the growth of a fetus.  When the fetus is viable, able to be born and survive with assistance, the state has the power to regulate medical care.  To end a pregnancy after that point, a physician would have to determine that either the fetus is not viable, or, the health or life of the mother is at risk.  Those are the only allowable reasons for abortion after five and half months of pregnancy, under the Roe logic.

The core issue is, and always has been, when does a fetus become a human life (rather than a potential human life).  It is about balancing the rights of that fetus against the rights of the mother.  This is the moral argument of my lifetime.  I was seventeen when Roe was decided, and sixty-six when the Dobbs decision overturned it, sending the determination back to the states.  It was a core discussion in every Government class I taught, and many of the political campaigns I helped.    

I hope that the people of the State of Ohio will determine that this argument is one that individual women have the right to determine themselves, not the “old men” of the state legislature.  My wife and I will vote next week, adding our voices to the call for individual choice over government mandate.

Right to Live

What we won’t get to vote on, here in Ohio or anywhere else, is the right to stay alive.  

No one is arguing that a living, breathing, existing person is a “life”.  Yet my right to live, and yours, relies on whim, on pure luck.  We, the United States, are a Nation under attack;  and it’s not from Hamas, or Iran, or even Russia.  Last night demonstrated the threat:  in Lewiston, Maine, a man used an assault rifle to kill at least fifteen people and wound dozens more.  He attacked two locations: a local pub, and a bowling alley on “teen night”.  The shooter is still at large, a threat, still well armed and obviously ready to kill.

Many in the United States argue that women should not have a choice about abortion.  But many of those same people argue that it is an “American Right” to have a weapon of war.  This isn’t a hunting rifle, not designed to hunt deer or elk (or bear in Maine).  This weapon, and the more than twenty million in the United States like it (Forbes), is designed to kill people in battle.  And beyond that, the ammunition used in assault rifles is designed to create massive wounds, requiring the enemy to deplete their fighting force to care for the injured.

That force was aimed at teenagers bowling  at Sparetime Recreation last night, and at patrons of Schemengee’s Bar and Grille.  Lewiston is a college town, home of Bates College.  When the literal smoke clears, and the final “butcher’s bill” is written, the casualties are likely to be much higher.

Ban Discussion

But we are not allowed to talk about banning assault weapons.  We are not supposed to use the “right to life” argument against a weapon of war.  The automatic response is, loudly and boldly, “SECOND AMENDMENT”.   The reality of our partisan divide is that assault weapons represent the minority “right” to overthrow the government; the right to apply their view against the vast majority of Americans, by force if necessary. 

 How embedded is that in their current ideology?  Look at yesterday’s events before the Lewiston shootings: the Republican Party; the Party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower; choose a man who wanted to overthrow the 2020 election to be Speaker of the House of Representatives.  He is now second in line for the Presidency.   And he is a staunch opponent of any form of gun control.

There is nothing in the Second Amendment that prohibits controlling assault rifles.  At least, that’s the interpretation of the past two-hundred and thirty-five years of Supreme Court decisions.  What this current Court, dominated by the same extreme ideologic majority might say, is an open question.  But the power of the IDEA that the Constitution somehow guarantees the “right” to overthrow the government is a real threat to our America.  It challenges our individual “right to live”.  

If you question that, talk to the parents of the murdered kids at the bowling alley.  Some still don’t even know yet.

Guns

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.