The claimed ends don't justify the means.
These bills, which define the child as a person, and then make "legal" provision for the killing of certain disfavored classes of these persons, are grossly immoral and completely unconstitutional.
Our Constitution ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES equal protection for ALL. There are NO exceptions. And it's NOT optional.
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.""No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
Right now, a moral law that prohibts the intentional killing of innocent human life from the moment of conception would be struck down immediately by the Supreme Court (and by every court on the way up to SCOTUS). We need to chip away at Roe v. Wade in order to get it struck down eventually. Besides, even if you believe that Roe can be overturned without there being any chipping away first (which may or may not be the case if a Republican president names Ginnsburg’s or Kennedy’s replacement), it is certainly the case that a law such as the one I would prefer and which is my eventual goal (banning abortion from the moment of conception, except if the continued pregnancy would likely lead to the death of the mother) would save zero lives (since it would be struck down immediately and would never go into effect) while a ban on abortions after 20 weeks and a requirement that women get the option to see an ultrasound of their baby would save thousands of lives.
As Father Frank Pavone would say, when we choose something that is not perfect, what some call “the lesser of two evils,” we aren’t “choosing evil,” but choosing to *reduce* evil, and that is an eminently moral choice. While a law that banned all abortions is the opposite of evil, the fact that it immediately would be struck down (and it *is* a fact, given the current state of our Judiciary) means that the effect of such a law is a continuation of the current abortion-on-demand at all stages of pregnancy. So even if we could convince a majority of members of the AZ House and Senate to ban abortion from the moment of conception (which I think would be unlikely), and the AZ Governor to sign the bill, it would not stop a single abortion.
If this law is upheld by the courts, it will be a huge victory in our long war to protect innocent human beings from the moment of conception. I know that “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” is overused and following the adage often leads to making weak choices, but in this particular instance we would save fewer lives if we passed on the AZ law and insisted that the law that we eventually want to see in place is approved right now.
I guess you’d rather have the status quo (up to day of birth) in your “all or nothing” approach.
I understand your point, but unfortunately, Roe v. Wade has tied the hands of elected officals who want to ban abortion.
If there were 1 million innocent children scheduled to be murdered this year, and you had the ability to save the lives of 200,000 of them, but were powerless to save the rest, would you let the 200,000 die along with the other 800,000 or save as many lives as you can?
Besides restricting certain abortions, and requiring sonagrams, which will convince some women to spare their babies’ lives, laws like this the push the limit back from “viability” (generally 24 weeks) to 20 weeks, might lead to constitutional challenges, that could potentially give the SCOTUS the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.
If Roe v. Wade was reviewed today, there would almost certainly be 4 votes to overturn (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito) and Kennedy (who upheld the partial birth abortion ban) might cast the deciding vote to overturn that evil decision.