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In this Thursday's edition of "find that right," I challenge the board to find the right to contraceptives in the American constitution. What amendment is this right in? Good luck!
Is this what keeps you up at night? After you prove your point and get rid of the right to contraception, you'll be complaining about people having kids they can't afford. Do you really not get that some things are beneficial to society as a whole--like not having unwanted kids running around because their parents could not afford contraception? Would you prefer the US be equated with a third world country where wealthy people must provide the basics because some self righteous people think that they should deem what the true rights are?
And if people only have rights that are spelled out in the constitution, there are an awful lot of activities and "rights" that will disappear. Let's abolish hunting because nowhere in the US Constitution does it say anyone has the right to hunt. How about driving--where does it say people have the right to drive? Where does it say anyone has a right to have kids at all? Your game show is boring.
Poor sad you. When you're finished whining about liberals, maybe you can tell me where in nature I can find these rights codified.
But I doubt it.
Constitutional rights are enumerated in the Constitution. They are not limited to the 4th and 5th amendments.
I never said anything about natural rights. There were some Founders who spoke of God given rights, as witnessed by that phrase in the Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Oh, I just completed minimal research on natural rights, something you could do yourself. There in fact is a long history of the argument.
I love people who hoot and stomp their feet but make no effort to educate themselves on the matter.
I'll leave it to you to do your own research, and to educate yourself in the matter. After all, if I were to post some links you would just hoot and stamp your feet, adding to the sound and fury that signifies nothing.
When the Constitution was written we hadn't invented effective drugs for contraception (That would be 190 years into the future) , I think a form of the rubber existed made out of silk or pigs intestines but I wouldn't vouch for its effectiveness. Like everything else that modern technology has provided in the last 238 years of our Republic to better the lives of Americans it is covered onder the General Welfare clause (Article 1 Section 8) that gives Congress the power to appropriate funds from taxes to do anything or provide any product that improves the general Welfare of the American citizens or people under their jurisdiction.
Well, when I read the constitution, the only thing I can see nothing on contraceptives. This leads me to believe the women have the right to purchase them, but they don't have an inherent right to them.
This notion that the General Welfare Clause should be read in such an expansive manner is plain and simply wrong.
The man who wrote the Constitution as well as several others involved in the creation and adoption of the Constitution explicitly wrote that the General Welfare clause should not be interpreted in this manner. Among other things, your interpretation would render the rest of the Constitution meaningless as the powers granted to the government would be unlimited.
To quote the man himself:
You are also very wrong because the notion that the general welfare clause should be read in an expansive manner and that other other legal priciple called elastic interpretation of the constitution is what has made the United States of America a living working nation that has grown enormously in population, complexity, technology, size wealth and World stature. If the Constitution were limited to what the Founders understood and knew The United States would have become a failed state and if remembered at all would serve as a lesson in what not to do, you know just like the The Directorate that governed France after the French Revolution of 1789. This is why I find the Conservative position of strict interpretation and original intent the position of incredibly stupid people!!! The United States Constitution was written by wealthy white males of middle age by the standards of the 18th century. There were less than 5 million people in a land of over 1 million square miles. The largest city had roughly 40,000 inhabitants (I live in a suburb of Washington roughly 5 miles square that has more prople than that nobody would consider it a city today. Most Americans lived on the coast or within a days ride of it. In large parts of 1789 America there were places where no Americans lived and you might have to travel over 100 miles to find any other American.
James Madison was a member of the landed gentry and a slave owning planter (His estate was called Montpelier in Orange County VA). His vision of America was like his fellow planters George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe was that of agraian plantation society where he and his peers would call the shots. They would be horrified that America has ceased to be such a bucolic world. Fortunately, the vision of others like Hamilton or Clinton is what has prevailed and that was the vision of an industrial and urban giant. If you read the second of your Madison quotes he betrays a fear of what America might become a land where public education is a necesscity (education in his mind was to be limited to the handful of plantation masters who might need it, and besides you wouldn't want the slaves to get the ideas they are full humanbeings now would you?), a nation with roads all over so if someone wants pick up an leave he can. police who might comew snooping around, and it goes on. All that he feared was that which would turn people like him into little men of no great importance. The Madison version of America and that of another man alive in 1789 named Andrew Jackson nearly destroyed the United States in the 1860s and we were very lucky we had a man like Lincoln who beat those ideas back and put us on the road that has gotten us where we are today.
I believe that would fall under 'pursuit of happiness'.
As conservative as I am, I find that funny, because it is so true.
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Do you really not get that some things are beneficial to society as a whole--like not having unwanted kids running around because their parents could not afford contraception? Would you prefer the US be equated with a third world country where wealthy people must provide the basics because some self righteous people think that they should deem what the true rights are? 
