Roe v Wade, right or wrong, is a landmark decision. It does not say abortion is legal. It guarantees individuals the right to privacy, with regard to medical decisions and practices. By extension, that leads to a "right" to abortions, within guidelines set by each state.
Abortion is considered by some a medical procedure, and by opponents, it is considered murder. Murder of a potential child. In some states, guidelines exist that this procedure can occur until, and beyond, the ability of a fetus to exist outside the womb if premature labor occurs. It is a very thorny, complicated issue.
Suppose George W Bush, to minimize the number of abortions, gathered a classroom of children and had them stand before a press conference, to sign executive orders which included that all doctors who practice abortion (and use Medicare for payment) must be registered in a federal database; or that all women who receive an abortion, for any reason, must have their names stored in a similar database. Suppose he mandated the Center for Disease Control to study the practice which leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. His only goal is keeping our children safe. He wants that safety to begin a month or two earlier than currently is legal.
With the announcement of the 23 executive orders and the proposals for Congress, President Obama does not see the intellectual and moral disconnect. If we want to protect children, protect them at all times and guarantee their lives (which he passionately pleaded in his announcement) from start to finish, not simply when they arrive at the convenience of their mother or medical practitioner. Do not say you believe in protecting children by diminishing the rights of law-abiding citizens, taking away their privacy in purchasing a legal product, and enacting 23 policies that would not have prevented Sandy Hook.
Either there are Constitutional rights to privacy or there are not. Defining "correct" purposes (the President listed them. Hunting, collecting, security. Those are "acceptable" reasons for guns) suggests the government can limit choices; in how you live and manage your affairs. Do you want the government defining your rights based on what the President thinks is good and what is not? Remember, the next President may not share your values. Certainly the current one does not share the values of the previous one.
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