Read the Fourteenth Amendment. What it says is the law. No state may deny any person the equal protection of the laws. Either homicide is illegal or it is illegal. It cannot be illegal to murder some people, and legal to murder other people. The fact that the amendment was written with the primary purpose of guaranteeing equality before the law to former slaves and to negroes is irrelevant. The amendment is made of words, and the word used is not “former slave” or “negro,” but “person.”
Roe v. Wade says that if Congress finds that a fetus is a “person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment,” then “appellant’s [Roe’s} case collapses.”
It is obvious that Perry has given the whole issue of abortion and the Constitution about thirty seconds’ thought, probably while jumping in or out of a limousine.
In some states, it is legal to kill a person if they are in your home without permission. In other states, it is illegal.
In most states, it is illegal to help a person kill themselves. In at least one, it is legal.
Criminal law is primarily a state issue, and different states have different rules about manslaughter and murder, just as they have different rules about many things.
We also have the 14th amendment which was supposed to stop the south from mistreating blacks who were now free. It provides all people with the same rights.
But states are allowed to consider circumstance -- hence the "kill inside door=LEGAL, kill in front yard=ILLEGAL" that some states have. A state might decide that a baby inside a womb is in a special circumstance that they make it legal for the mother to terminate the pregnancy.
I wouldn't agree with that, but I understand the logic of it.