Monthly Archives: April 2011

From the desk of tortured logic and tortured words, we humbly submit this political flimflam and falderal:

NASHVILLE, TN: The Tennessee state Senate recently voted 24-8 to amend the state constitution giving future state legislatures the right to enact laws putting new restrictions on abortions in Tennessee.

Why?

Because in 2000 the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution gave Tennesseans, and particularly Tennessee women, greater rights in this area than the U.S. Constitution.

Now, the Tennessee bicameral legislature is majority Republican in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the House is expected to also vote for this resolution.

I thought Republicans were for giving individuals the rights to determine their lives and here is a case where the state constitution gives individuals more rights, more individual power than the federal constitution. After all, one must remember that this is the same legislature that recently voted to allow Tennesseans to refuse to follow the new federal health care laws.

This amendment would read:

“Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

There was an unsuccessful attempt by Senator Roy Herron, Democrat from Dresden, TN, to amend the amendment to protect the right to an abortion in the case when the mother’s life is in danger. According to Herron, the amendment, as drafted, says “the Legislature can protect you if they will or harm you if they want.”

In response to this, Senator Mae Beavers, a Republican from Mount Juliet, TN, said adopting the amendment would “convert the Supreme Court into a roving constitutional convention.” She went on to say that the amendment “is about returning to the people, through their legislators, the right to enact reasonable regulations to protect the health of women and the unborn.”

But the Tennessee Supreme Court has already ruled that the Tennessee Constitution, as presently written, gives the people, including women, more rights than the federal one to regulate her health and even that of her unborn child. It doesn’t say a woman has or should or is required to have an abortion. It says it’s not the government’s business.

Shouldn’t this be something Republicans should cheer, hold dear, almost sacrosanct?

But the Republican-controlled state Senate and House, the party of small government and fewer regulations, the party that believes that people can better regulate themselves than government, has decided here, the individual can’t be trusted to regulate herself, and wants to give that power to the state legislature, because in this case they know better. They want to be the roving constitutional convention, roving over individual rights as they see fit.