CA Supreme Court: Bullet stamping law survives despite being impossible to comply with
WUT? CA Supreme Court says the issue of the constitutionality of the law was not before it because no constitutional challenge was made.
This is a joke, right?
I thought there must be a misinterpretation when I saw this tweet from an AP reporter:
In ruling on bullet-stamping law, California Supreme Court says state laws cannot be invalidated on the grounds that complying with them is impossible.
I also thought people must be misunderstanding when I read this Mercury News story:
The California Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lawsuit that sought to invalidate a state law requiring new models of semi-automatic handguns to stamp identifying information on bullet casings.
The court ruled unanimously that gun rights groups could not overturn the law on the grounds that complying with it was impossible. The groups argued that technology did not exist to meet the stamping requirements, and a law couldn’t mandate something that was not possible….
The law requires new pistol models to have a microscopic array of characters in two spots that identify the gun’s make, model and serial number and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the gun is fired.
Gun rights groups say it is not possible to “microstamp” two areas of a gun. Only the tip of the firing pin can be microstamped, and current technology doesn’t allow the stamp to reliably, consistently and legibly imprint on the cartridge primer from that part of the gun, they say.
Attorneys for the state acknowledged in court documents that microstamping technology is “emerging,” but they said lawmakers often enact laws to force industries to innovate. They warned a ruling in favor of gun makers could take away that power.
The law, which took effect in 2013, doesn’t impact guns already on the state’s official firearm roster. Only new or modified semi-automatic handguns sold in California must be equipped with the technology.
No, No, surely you have it all wrong. There’s this thing called the 2nd Amendment, and the Heller case made clear you can’t make compliance so impossible that it effectively bans the ability to obtain handguns.
As we have said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home. It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable.
As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,27 banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.
* * *
It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed. It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon.
* * *
In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
The California law seems similar to the (now-changed) New York 7-bullet magazine law, which required use of a type of magazine that didn’t exist. Alan Gura, counsel in Heller, explained why this was unconstitutional:
“Well the 7-round limit to me is clearly unconstitutional, for the reasons mentioned, Americans have expectation to find in common use handguns that have more than 7-rounds, and so a 7-round limit is plainly unconstitutional.”
So everyone misunderstood the California Supreme Court, right?
WRONG.
From the Opinion (pdf.):
Civil Code section 3531 provides that “[t]he law never requires impossibilities.” In this case, plaintiff National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. (NSSF) argues that this provision authorizes a court to declare another statute, Penal Code section 31910, subdivision (b)(7)(A), unenforceable when a complainant alleges, and the court finds, that complying with the statute is impossible. The Court of Appeal agreed. Because such an interpretation of section 3531 is contrary to established principles of statutory interpretation, we reverse.
But, but the 2nd Amendment? The CA Supreme Court said the 2nd Amendment wasn’t before it on the appeal:
The sole dispute before us is whether a court can invalidate Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) on the basis of Civil Code section 3531’s declaration that “[t]he law never requires impossibilities.” We are not asked to consider a constitutional challenge to Penal Code section 31910(b)(7)(A) or an administrative challenge to the Department of Justice’s 2013 certification (see Code Civ. Proc., §§ 1085, 1094.5)….
Where “ ‘[t]he purpose of the statute is plain[, i.e.,] to prevent avoidable delay for too long a period’ ” (id. at p. 374, quoting Christin v. Superior Court (1937) 9 Cal.2d 526, 532), we can adopt “a statutory construction recognizing an implicit . . . exception” in particular circumstances (Lewis, at p. 376). But impossibility does not authorize a court to go beyond interpreting the statute and simply invalidate it altogether. Impossibility, as an aid to statutory interpretation, is akin to the absurdity canon, which counsels courts to “avoid any [statutory] construction that would produce absurd consequences.” (Flannery v. Prentice (2001) 26 Cal.4th 572, 578; see Lewis, at p. 377 [“It would be absurd to attribute to the Legislature an intent to construe the language and underlying purpose . . . so narrowly.”].)…
In sum, the case law recognizes that a statute may contain an implied exception for noncompliance based on impossibility where such an exception reflects a proper understanding of the legislative intent behind the statute. We are not aware of any appellate precedent in California that has invoked Civil Code section 3531 or impossibility of compliance to invalidate a statute itself….
NSSF has not brought a constitutional challenge to the statute, nor has it petitioned for a writ of mandate against the Department of Justice for improperly certifying the availability of dual placement microstamping technology (and we express no view on the merits of those possibilities). Instead, NSSF has invoked the impossibility of compliance as a basis for voiding the statute.
Assuming the CA Supreme Court correctly has state that there was no constitutional challenge to the law, then someone ****ed up big time. I don’t see how this would survive a 2nd Amendment challenge.
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Can’t we just get rid of California?
I mean, it’s way too much lunacy to try to fix it.
I do believe that California once belonged to Mexico. Perhaps it’s time to do The Right Thing, and give it back.
I don’t think Mexico wants California. I think they want to be conquered by the US, and become prosperous and law-abiding, instead of following California’s ignominious path.
Somebody in Mexico must have read “The Mouse that Roared,” and realized that the perverse result (the little country winning) is not going to happen right now.
They’ll have to pay for it. By the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US paid Mexico some $20 million 1848 dollars for the land and settlement of a number of other claims and debts. Of course, rates have gone up a bit since then.
Perhaps we could pay them another $20 million to take CA back.
All they had to say is President Trump thinks the law is Constitutional and the law would have been gone!!!
Perhaps gun owners could use a Sharpie and personally sign all their ammo, perhaps include a phone number, before firing them. That should make everyone’s job easier…
Insanity is the new normal !
I must disagree, they can comply. Just go out of business.
Exactly. This is a backdoor ban and the court is perfectly fine with that.
“The court ruled unanimously that gun rights groups could not overturn the law on the grounds that complying with it was impossible.”
Finally we have precedent. The Law of Gravity can be repealed despite the impossibility.
“California..Expect the Impossible!”
When I was in college, there was an actual political movement in congress to declare pi equal to three. Our engineering school got a good long laugh out of that one.
No, there wasn’t. Not while you were in college, or at any other time. and no, the Indiana legislature never passed a law declaring pi to be 3. (There may well have been a joke movement, but that’s all it ever was.)
Must be torturous to be an old stick in the mud, huh?
LOL
Huh? Facts matter. Truth matters, and lying is wrong. Rustyshamrock was not telling a joke, he was making a serious factual claim which was not correct. How can anyone object to my correcting him?
That’s how I remember what happened about 50 years ago. I didn’t lie about anything.
I didn’t say you lied. But what you wrote wasn’t true, and it’s important to know the truth and to correct misconceptions.
“Truth matters, and lying is wrong. ”
As a response regarding my post, it sure sounds to me like you’re saying I was lying.
And besides, it’s not a big stretch in this day and age when we have actual congressmen thinking that adding to the population of an island might cause it to capsize — to think they might want to redefine pi to be 3.
It may not be a big stretch, but it never happened. The “some legislature tried to make pi equal 3” story is mostly based on anti-Fundamentalist (or anti-Christian) bigotry, since it’s supposedly motivated by the Biblical account of Solomon’s pool.
The tiny kernel of truth behind the story is that the lower house of the Indiana legislature did once pass a bill that would set the definition of pi. But the bill had four mutually incompatible definitions, none of which were correct, and none of which were 3. The motivation had nothing to do with religion. Fortunately a senate committee bothered to read the bill, realized that it was being had, and killed it.
Sources please. Any other time covers a long period. So account any other time with sourced material.
There is no need for sources to demonstrate that a very unlikely thing did not happen, especially one that by its nature is very public, so had it happened it would be very widely reported. The lack of sources that it did happen is sufficient proof that it did not.
Do you understand the principle of “burden of proof” at all?
The person claiming something happened has the burden of citing proof of it happening. The burden is not on anyone else to prove him wrong, especially when it involves proving a negative claim.
Here’s proof it never happened: Had it happened there is no way Beckmann would have missed crowing about it in his amusing but not very accurate book.
Petr Beckmann, in his A History of PI (1971), explains at pp. 174-177 (contained in the chapter titled The Modern Circle Squarers) what happened. I won’t go through the whole thing but an Indiana legislator did introduce a bill (Jan. 18, 1897) which did in fact perform some mystical legislative manipulation of pi. The IN House did in fact approve the bill. When the bill moved to the IN Senate it passed a first reading. Then some common sense prevailed. “Professor Waldo [of Purdue], horrified that the bill had passed the House, then coached the senators, and on its second reading, February 12, 1897, the Senate voted to postpone the further consideration of this bill.” At 177.
Thank you!
Is 1897 correct?
No. I heard 1897 never occurred 😉
Found a wiki page on this,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
Beckmann was brilliant, but he was given to the occasional odd notion himself. That book is very entertaining but not strong on historical accuracy. In particular his anti-religious bigotry got the better of him in his chapter bitterly denouncing the Catholic church’s supposed anti-science history, most of which is pure fantasy. (No, Hypatia was not a martyr for science. Not even close. And neither was Bruno.)
Beckmann was brilliant, but he was given to the occasional odd notion himself. That book is very entertaining but not strong on historical accuracy. In particular his anti-religious bigotry got the better of him in his chapter bitterly denouncing the Catholic church’s supposed anti-science history, most of which is pure fantasy. (No, Hypatia was not a martyr for science. Not even close. And neither was Bruno.)Rustyshamrock, I apologize … I was wrong.FIFY
Small problem with that: I was not wrong, I was 100% correct. I was well aware of the Indiana bill — did you really think I wasn’t? — so pointing it out to me doesn’t change anything. As I wrote, none of the four different values of pi implied by that bill come out to 3. Therefore it does not give even the slightest support to rustyshamrock’s claim.
And since Beckmann’s book (which I have read) was brought up it’s incumbent on me to point out its flaws. I am familiar with his work, including the odder aspects of it. But his The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear is brilliant.
Hey, don’t give ’em any ideas!
Is judge Ito on the court?
Remember.
If Hillary had won bullshit like this would be coming out of the Supreme Court right now.
Laws can now be written which can not be humanly followed but will be prosecuted to the fullness of the law. Of course state officials and state law enforcement are exempt.
Impossibility is no longer an excuse.
This truly widens the field of creative law.
No, I don’t think they will be prosecuted. The court seems to be saying anyone prosecuted can use impossibility as a defense. The petitioners here wanted the law itself struck down on that basis, and the court said it has no authority to do that. So the law remains, but is apparently unenforceable.
Having now read the opinion, that’s what it says through most of it, but on the last page it contradicts everything it’s said before, and says yes, this is enforceable, without giving any explanation for the change. Justice Chin correctly points out this contradiction and dissents from that one final paragraph.
the idea is really meant to at any trial to so pauper the defense so that only the wealthy (i.e. elite wealthy JackAsses)
to defend themselves.
question – is there an exception for PIs ?
how about ‘protection’ people ?
which again means wealthy have no worries!
when will CA follow England and outlaw blades longer than 3″ ?
You need to realize that they don’t need to prosecute anyone. The purpose of this law is to prevent handguns being added to the list of handguns that can be sold in Ca. No handguns can meet this requirement and the ones on the list drop off when the manufacturers stop paying fees. Won’t take long till no one in Ca will be able to buy a handgun.
LOL can you imagine the possible damage when a reloader (as many are) uses a stamp to mark a cartridge? bang.
The stamps need to be applied by the gun when it fires.
Which will end reloading, since the stamp can’t be applied legibly in the same place more than once.
A world where Hillary won. Oct 2018 SCOTUS 6 liberal justices 4 desenters.
Remember what I said about Judge Alsup in yesterday’s thread, that he is a refreshing change from other 9th Circuit judges?
The CA Supreme Court is fettered by the same character flaws as much of the 9th Circuit. Hubris plus no sense of proportion is a sad combination in a judge.
Is this court part of The Ninth Circus in California? If not, it should be made the head of it.
No, but they aspire to be.
Buying and selling once-fired brass is a very common practice. If the CA required stamping technology can be developed, we’ll find bullet cases with multiple stamps on them.
That should be interesting to a jury.
Interesting thought: is there any kind of exemption for police or military in that law?
It might be fun to watch the LA trying to buy new guns for their police if not.
Of course, we all know the various gangs would honor that law, too, right?
The Kali legislature has no jurisdiction over the US military. So the exemptions they put in their gun grabbing laws for the military are just window dressing. As if they can require the USMC or any other branch of the armed forces to use special “Kali compliant” firearms in their s***hole state. Let them try to enforce it if they ever get that stupid.
Police agencies in Kali have been exempted from every single gun ban the party of Pancho Villa have imposed on ordinary citizens in the past. Kali bans .50 BMG rifles (including bolt action rifles simply by declaring them assault weapans). And neither do the assault weapons bans by the way; police officers can still possess them when on duty although I’m not entirely sure if they can own them. Police officers also were exempted from the high cap mag bans.
Since they’ve been they’ve been exempted from every other gun ban then I’m sure they’re exempted from this one. The Democrats in that one party state aren’t really stupid. They know the technology to do what the law demands simply doesn’t exist. This is simply a way to ban civilian ownership of firearms. They’re not going to apply it the police officers they control and depend on.
Which is why other states should take up the slack and tell gun manufacturers that if they bid on Kali police contracts while Kali citizens are barred from owning those those same firearms, you will lose our business. We will not let you bid on any police contracts in our state. Civil and criminal penalties will apply if you try it.
As I said in an earlier comment, some firearm manufacturers will voluntarily do this. Barrett firearms told Kali police agencies to pound sand after the .50 BMG ban went into effect back in the early 2000s. Not only won’t they sell their rifles to Kali police agencies, they won’t even repair the rifles they do have. And if they find a gunsmith willing to repair their rifles for Kali cops, they won’t sell them the repair parts.
Others will have to be persuaded by learning they will lose more money than they gain by bidding on Kali and they will lose more money then they will gain by doing business in Kali.
This sounds like the court is saying we can’t strike the statute down on the basis of impossibility, since there’s no precedent for such a thing nor any source saying we have such a power, but we can interpret it to include an implied exception for impossible cases, so if anyone is ever prosecuted under this statute they can claim to fall under that exception.
Hmm. See Chin’s concurrence. He agrees with my understanding of this paragraph, but points out that on the last page the majority opinion suddenly and without any explanation reverses itself and says courts can’t carve out implied exceptions to this law for impossibility after all.
The law does not require the impossible.
If the law said, “You must own a blue-green elephant,” that would be “requiring the impossible,” because there are no blue-green elephants.
See my post on blue-green elephants below for the rest of this point of view.
This reminds me a bit of when the EPA mandated the use of automotive finishes that were at the time NotvReady For Prince Time. The comply-or-else standpoint is what led to all those cars you sometimes still see with paint either peeling off in sheets, or with those odd white-shadow fades.
Worked for a government agency at that time. Could take one of the GOV’s through a car wash and watch the stuff come off in sheets. The dealerships offered a ‘under warrantee repaint’ for most of the lot, but our agency was so cheap they would not spring for the $50 copay. I’ll bet the GOVs used by the EPA were pristine and shiny with their new paint jobs, though.
Time to appeal to Natural Law and retire the CA Supreme Court.
Q: What’s the difference between a California Supreme Court justice and a paranoid-schizophrenic?
A: The paranoid-schizophrenic has a better grip on reality and his condition can be treated with medication.
I could defend myself with a Howitzer, from my old days as a GI 🙂
What the court is essentially saying is that the state can require an instrument to possess certain specific qualities, in order for that instrument to be sold, even if those qualities DO NOT Exist, at the present time. This would be the same as requiring all automobiles to be equipped with airbags before they could be sold in California in 1932. What this does is to essentially ban the sale of this instrument because the quality that it must have, in order to be legally sold, does not exist at the present time.
As to the argument that the Court can not strike down the law because it is impossible for anyone to comply with, this is silly. Courts do this all the time. The Court could have ruled that the law can exist, but because it is impossible for ANYONE to comply with the specifics of the law, it is null and void. The obvious reason for this is because the Court favored gun control through the restriction on the sale of semi-automatic handguns and so made up a reason to allow a law which would outlaw the future sale of such instruments in California to stand.
Even if there were a Constitutional challenge, why would anybody expect the California Supreme Court to uphold it?
If the only way to challenge the statute is the suffer the process and pray you get a judge that accepts your motion to dismiss nobody is going to do it. Too much risk a California judge is a typical progressive that will laugh in your face. They’re just going to stop selling in California. I wonder how much sales and income tax revenue they just threw away.
The law doesn’t mandate the impossible. It merely outlaws the possible.
Suppose the law said you can only own a blue-green elephant. This isn’t impossibly to comply with – compliance only requires that you avoid owning an elephant that is not blue-green. It doesn’t matter that there are no blue-green elephants to own, it only matters that you don’t own one of any other color.
This law is not unconstitutional for requiring the impossible (because technical compliance is possible), but it is unconstitutional in its effect.
Californians have a right to elephants (as articulated in SCOTUS’ Mahout decision). The state’s mandate that allows only the acquisition of blue-green elephants effectively bans the acquisition of elephants, because it is not possible to acquire an elephant that is within the type specified by law as that which may be legally acquired.
The law effectively blocks the citizen from acquiring an elephant, to which we know he has a right.
This is what happens when government is allowed to specify the conditions under which we can exercise our rights.
But that’s not what the opinion says, for most of it. Instead it says that Civil Code section 3531 simply does not give the courts the authority to strike down a law, and has never been held to do so. Rather, it allows the courts to read into the law an invisible clause that says “except where this is impossible”. Anyone prosecuted could use that implied clause as a defense.
It’s only on the last page that the court changes its mind with no explanation, and says the courts can’t read an impossibility exception into this law after all.
Note that not one white male (even a gay one!) sits on the California Supreme Court.
How is this significant? Why should there be any white males on the court? You’d be OK with a court consisting only of white males, so why not one consisting of none? Note that for nearly seven years the US Supreme Court had no Protestants, and nobody seemed to think that was a problem.
There needs to be one on there for the sake of diversity and to give voice to the white males who live in California. Duh.
It’s not california which is the problem. It’s the people that live there that need to be sequestered.
Using simple techniques we should be able to sort through the residents, find those that are sane and let them leave while making the remaining remain to agitate and pester each other.
You’d need a whole lot more wall.
Next up. Perpetual Motion machines will be required in each household.
We should be glad the the California Supreme Court interpreted the law, and the case before it, as written; that they did not try to read something into the case that wasn’t actually there. This is one of the “limited government” goals that we should be applauding.
Just stop supplying bullets to the Police an ALL agency’s but the federal level. Just dry kalifornica up, Manufacturers MOVE OUT. Let the HORDES run wild and loose. OR maybe parts of kalifornica could slip in to the Pacific? IMO
It’s actually the handgun that applies the stamp to the cartridge. So manufacturers will have to stop supplying handguns to Kali cops. Which would be a a good thing as then the mayors and sheriffs couldn’t instruct their cops to interfere with ICE raids.
But unfortunately that won’t work because some manufacturer will have dollar signs in their eyes because they’ll be the only bidder on the police contracts. Probably a European manufacturer like Sig or Beretta. So they’ll sell handguns to police agencies because they’re exempt from the law (they always are in Ksli). But I’d suggest we contact our state lawmakers and encourage them to pass laws making it illegal for police agencies in our states to buy handguns from any manufacturer who will bid on a police contract in Kali when law-abiding citizens in Kali can’t buy it because it doesn’t (can’t) meet the microstamping requirement.
What’s really stupid about this law is that you can easily modify the handgun so it can’t microstamp the cartridge. How is Kali going to prevent Kali residents from buying non-Kali compliant replacement firing pins? Normal wear will do that, so if I were in Kali and had to buy one of these non-existent atrocities I’d just shoot it A LOT.
This entire state is lost to America.
Why didn’t they go to the federal court?
This is effectively a ban on all handguns and therefore a violation of the 2nd amendment. How about getting Trump to help us out as this is a civil rights issue?
Only brain dead Lefttards could conceive of a statement so moronic.
The only way to stop states from infringing on your 2A rights is for the mfg to cut off all gov’t agencies in that state from purchasing your guns and ammo.
Some manufacturers will do that voluntarily. Some won’t. So I’m probably going to call my state rep and state Senators and ask they pass a bill that makes it illegal here in Texas to accept bids on government contracts from manufactures who continue to sell firearms to Kali police agencies when they don’t have products they can legally sell to normal law-abiding citizens.
Barrett put out a statement years ago which said they will refuse to sell their firearms…
https://barrett.net/firearms/model99
…or even repair them since nearly all of the firearms in their catalog are illegal for anyone who isn’t a police officer to own or possess.
If self-defense is a Constitutional right, as stated, a woman has the right to kill a fetus at any stage of development, since it is a threat to her life and health, not to mention freedom from being touched.
A normally developing baby does not pose an imminent threat to its mother’s life, so she is not entitled to kill it in self defense. In those rare cases where it does, she is so entitled and nobody claims she doesn’t.
Actually a normally developing baby never poses an imminent threat to the mother’s life. The key words are normally developing baby. An abnormally developing baby, such as in an ectopic pregnancy (i.e. when the zygote implants anywhere outside the uterus) does pose an imminent threat to the mother’s life. But that’s not what we’re discussing.
In 2011 a nun who was an administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix was excommunicated by her Bishop for agreeing to a direct abortion. As were all Catholics involved in agreeing with the decision and those performing the abortion.
Their reasoning was that the woman, who was eleven weeks pregnant, was suffering from severe pulmonary hypertension. They concluded they had to abort the chlld to save the mother’s life. And the hospital administration argued that there are gray areas in the Church’s ethical teachings on the matter since Catholic ethical teaching does allow for doctors to treat an underlying condition such as cancer even if they know the treatment will kill the developing child. That’s based upon the principle of double effect; the intent is to save the mother’s life. The fact that the treatment results in the child’s death is an unintended secondary result, even when it’s entirely predictable. So they were wrong on both counts. The treatment of the underlying condition can never be abortion. There is no gray area, unless they don’t know what the word “never” means.
As for the first premise, that there was no other way to save her life, perhaps the leading Catholic neonatologist and ethicist in the country weighed in and explained exactly why that was wrong. That it wasn’t necessary but merely more convenient for the medical staff.
https://www.catholic.org/news/national/story.php?id=36604
“…However, Dr. Paul A. Byrne, Director of Neonatology and Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, disputes the claim that an abortion is ever a procedure necessary to save the life of the mother, or carries less risk than birth.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews, Dr. Byrne said, ‘I don’t know of any [situation where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother].
‘I know that a lot of people talk about these things, but I don’t know of any. The principle always is preserve and protect the life of the mother and the baby.’
Byrne has the distinction of being a pioneer in the field of neonatology, beginning his work in the field in 1963 and becoming a board-certified neonatologist in 1975. He invented one of the first oxygen masks for babies, an incubator monitor, and a blood-pressure tester for premature babies, which he and a colleague adapted from the finger blood pressure checkers used for astronauts.
Byrne emphasized that he was not commentating on what the woman’s particular treatment should have been under the circumstances, given that she is not his patient.
‘But given just pulmonary hypertension, the answer is no’ to abortion, said Byrne.
Byrne emphasized that the unborn child at 11 weeks gestation would have a negligible impact on the woman’s cardiovascular system. He said that pregnancy in the first and second trimesters would not expose a woman with even severe pulmonary hypertension – which puts stress on the heart and the longs – to any serious danger.
A pregnant mother’s cardiovascular system does have ‘major increases,’ but they only happen ‘in the last three months of pregnancy,’ Byrne explained.
The point of fetal viability is estimated at anywhere between 21 – 24 weeks, he indicated, at which point a baby can artificially be delivered and have a good shot at surviving. In the meantime the mother’s pulmonary hypertension could be treated, even by such simple things as eliminating salt from her diet, exercising, or losing weight.
‘It’s not going to be any extra stress on the mother that she can’t stand,’ said Byrne. ‘Eventually you get to where the baby gets big enough that the baby can live outside the uterus and you don’t have to do an abortion.’
“I am only aware of good things happening by doing that. I am not aware of anything bad happening to the mother because the baby was allowed to live.”
‘The only reason to kill the baby at 11 weeks is because it is smaller,’ which makes the abortion easier to perform, he said, not because the mother’s life is in immediate danger.
‘I’ve done this work just about as long as neonatology has existed,’ said Byrne. ‘The key is we must protect and preserve life, and we have to do that from conception to the natural end.'”
At the time of the interview Dr. Byrne had been in neonatology for just short of 50 years. So, first of all, if he had never seen a case or become award of a case where an abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother I don’t think anyone here is qualified to second guess him. Second, I know that Planned Parenthood and the rest of the pro-abortion crowd would love to force Catholic hospitals to either perform abortions or shut them down. Then they could say, “See, we were right all along. Abortion is health care.” Their problem is that they have no evidence that is the case. If Catholic hospitals had a higher maternal death rate than hospitals that do perform abortions they and the media would be beating the public over their heads with that evidence 24/7/365. Note they aren’t. I’ve looked into the subject and I can find no evidence to support any such claim. And clearly, they don’t have any evidence either.
So I have to conclude that a normally developing baby never poses an imminent threat to a mother’s life.
To make this relevant to the topic, the principle of double effect also applies to self-defense. The goal of all ethical self-defense is to save life, either your own or in defense of a third party. The goal isn’t to kill the assailant, although that is an entirely predictable secondary result. The simple fact is not all assailants who are shot and stopped end up dying.