I happen to be pro-choice but I think I should lay out the legal problem faced when anyone argues that “abortion is murder” but then turns around and tries to argue that it is acceptable in the case of rape, incest, saving the life of the mother, ensuring the health of the mother, or for birth defect reasons. Perhaps I am missing something that people who are pro-life think, but do believe that it is important to deal with this from the standpoint of the law and why the “abortion is murder” argument is highly problematic for those who want some exceptions (it is perfectly consistent if you demand that there be absolutely no exceptions whatsoever regardless of the circumstances, though this does lead to a different problem and that is the denial of the mother’s agency, but I will leave that for another time and place).
Necessity is different from self-defense. One can never murder a person simply in order to survive even if the only way to survive is to terminate the life of one of the individuals. For example, if you were in an escape room with eight others and the only way to escape the room is to have one person murdered (you are not allowed to kill yourself to save the others), the law would treat this as a murder, even though, by necessity, the only way for seven of you to survive is to kill one.
On the other hand, if someone does try to kill you so as to escape the room, you are permitted to defend yourself since self-defense is a valid defense to murder. Thus, ironically, the only way out of such an escape room is to kill the person who is trying to kill you.
Since fetuses do not try to kill their host mother, self-defense is not a valid defense even to save the mother’s life. However, if the mother were to try to kill the fetus, the fetus would under the law be allowed to then kill the mother in self-defense. This presents a problem, of course, since the fetus often cannot survive without the mother.
Hopefully, this comment helps people understand the issue that pro-life individuals need to face when dealing with the exceptions of rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother, which is why there are really only two tenable positions in the pro-life/pro-choice debate: either you believe that abortion is murder, in which case there can be absolutely no exceptions, or you believe that abortion is not murder. If you believe that abortion is not murder, you may still set limitations on abortion but these then must be based on public policy arguments (i.e., likely a utilitarian calculus).
To understand from where I get the “necessity is not a defense to murder” argument, please see the court case of R v Dudley and Stephens (1884).
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Monday, March 4, 2019
The Complicated Story of How Much Twenty Dollars Actually is with Respect to the 7th Amendment to the US Constitution
The 7th Amendment to the US Constitution provides that "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
So what does this mean? Well, going by the Coinage Act of 1792, that established a dollar as being at parity with the Spanish dollar (after considering the wear and tear on the coin), it might be that we ought to use the current rate of silver to establish what a proper value is in interpreting the clause. However, there is a problem:
The Constitution actually says “twenty dollars”, not 20 dollar coins. Why is this important? Well, the same Coinage Act of 1792 allows for the minting of $10 GOLD coins (called Eagles) that weigh 16.04g pure or 17.5g standard gold. So there is actually a discrepancy and thus it is subject to interpretation whether in a world where the value of silver and gold fluctuate relative to one another (sorry – the US Constitution really cannot change that singular fact). Given the current world price of Gold and Silver, we can EITHER choose to use gold OR silver. I think it is best to choose gold. As I write this, the value of silver is a mere $0.49 per gram of pure silver based on federal reserve notes (I will leave the Constitutionality of fiat for another day but let’s just say that we are using our current fiat money for sake of argument). That leads us to a value today in terms of the 7th Amendment of $0.49/g x 24.1 x 20 = . $236.18.
Oh, and the coinage act allows us to use copper for pennies, which at $0.01/g x 17.1 x 2000 = $342.00
Finally, we can use gold, which based on today’s value would lead us to a value for the 7th Amendment of $41.63 x 16.04 x 2 = $1,335.49.
Now let’s compare that to what the value would be in dollars based on inflation rates (and thus allowing for fiat currency and a strict literal reading of “dollar” but placing it in terms of real value from the Coinage Act of 1792):
$100 in 1792 is equivalent to $510.67 based on the data from this website: https://www.officialdata.org/1792-dollars-in-2017
Hmm….maybe our fiat money isn’t so bad after all in terms of holding up its value relative to gold, silver and copper as we might at first think.
Oh, but it gets EVEN MORE INTERESTING. Why? Well read Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution that states:
“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”
So the Federal government was issuing a coin (in copper) that could not be used as “a Tender in Payment of Debts” in any state. Hmm…. Seems like those copper coins were a problem….
In any case, though, it makes sense to use gold, not silver, as the basis for addressing the 7th Amendment because there literally is nothing in the US Constitution that says that we ought to base these decisions on the price of silver. This is also true because a twenty dollar GOLD coin (called a Double Eagle) was used in Spain at that time. The whole “regulate the value thereof” clause was designed to maintain a silver coin’s parity with gold, since you can really only have one standard, not a bimetal standard unless the price of gold and silver are in a fixed exchange rate. Unfortunately, they are not and they cannot be made to be in a fixed exchange rate.
Indeed, the mere fact that the $10 coin was a gold coin argues that the Constitutional provision should be read with gold, rather than silver, in mind.
So what does this mean? Well, going by the Coinage Act of 1792, that established a dollar as being at parity with the Spanish dollar (after considering the wear and tear on the coin), it might be that we ought to use the current rate of silver to establish what a proper value is in interpreting the clause. However, there is a problem:
The Constitution actually says “twenty dollars”, not 20 dollar coins. Why is this important? Well, the same Coinage Act of 1792 allows for the minting of $10 GOLD coins (called Eagles) that weigh 16.04g pure or 17.5g standard gold. So there is actually a discrepancy and thus it is subject to interpretation whether in a world where the value of silver and gold fluctuate relative to one another (sorry – the US Constitution really cannot change that singular fact). Given the current world price of Gold and Silver, we can EITHER choose to use gold OR silver. I think it is best to choose gold. As I write this, the value of silver is a mere $0.49 per gram of pure silver based on federal reserve notes (I will leave the Constitutionality of fiat for another day but let’s just say that we are using our current fiat money for sake of argument). That leads us to a value today in terms of the 7th Amendment of $0.49/g x 24.1 x 20 = . $236.18.
Oh, and the coinage act allows us to use copper for pennies, which at $0.01/g x 17.1 x 2000 = $342.00
Finally, we can use gold, which based on today’s value would lead us to a value for the 7th Amendment of $41.63 x 16.04 x 2 = $1,335.49.
Now let’s compare that to what the value would be in dollars based on inflation rates (and thus allowing for fiat currency and a strict literal reading of “dollar” but placing it in terms of real value from the Coinage Act of 1792):
$100 in 1792 is equivalent to $510.67 based on the data from this website: https://www.officialdata.org/1792-dollars-in-2017
Hmm….maybe our fiat money isn’t so bad after all in terms of holding up its value relative to gold, silver and copper as we might at first think.
Oh, but it gets EVEN MORE INTERESTING. Why? Well read Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution that states:
“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”
So the Federal government was issuing a coin (in copper) that could not be used as “a Tender in Payment of Debts” in any state. Hmm…. Seems like those copper coins were a problem….
In any case, though, it makes sense to use gold, not silver, as the basis for addressing the 7th Amendment because there literally is nothing in the US Constitution that says that we ought to base these decisions on the price of silver. This is also true because a twenty dollar GOLD coin (called a Double Eagle) was used in Spain at that time. The whole “regulate the value thereof” clause was designed to maintain a silver coin’s parity with gold, since you can really only have one standard, not a bimetal standard unless the price of gold and silver are in a fixed exchange rate. Unfortunately, they are not and they cannot be made to be in a fixed exchange rate.
Indeed, the mere fact that the $10 coin was a gold coin argues that the Constitutional provision should be read with gold, rather than silver, in mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)