Below is Section 1 of 14A. Will you please point out the exact wording in Section 1 that you believe substantiates your assertion about Congress officially declaring that unborn children are persons?
14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Note that when Sen. Rand Paul references 14A when he talks about making a federal law defining life beginning at conception, he always ignores the Section 1 part about being born.
Regarding the part about being born, also note that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1, probably didn't foresee problems with the wording of Section 1 and abortion. After all, our pioneering ancesters deliberately had large families because not all children could be expected to live to adulthood.
“Nor shall any state deprive any person of life . . . without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection the equal protection of the laws.”
I didn’t say that the 14th Amendment defines “persons” specifically to include unborn children. What I am saying is that Congress could make a finding that unborn children are indeed persons under our Constitution and that the Equal Protection Clause applies to them.
There have been many laws passed pursuant to Section 5 to effectuate the purposes in the 14th Amendment. Usually said laws were to address or correct states with histories or then existing practices of denying voting rights or other fundamental rights to classes if citizens deemed unworthy of equal protection.
My position is that it is perfectly reasonable for Congress to find that all persons (born and unborn) enjoy the the right to life and the equal protection of the laws (prohibition on murder applied equally), and no state may deprive them of such without due process of law.
From a Constitutional perspective I think this fits much better than a flawed commerce clause jurisprudence (Wickard v. Filburn 1942) that was reigned in to some degree beginning with US v. Lopez 1995.
I am a very strong advocate of the 10th Amendment and extremely limited (based on enumerated powers and limited use of the 14th Amendment) Federal government, but I don’t think the right of human beings to live absent due process should be left to the states to deprive as they see fit.
As a practical matter I could envision the Supreme Court leaving it to the states since the right to abortion is clearly not mentioned in the Constitution. I don’t see them doing a 180 and declaring that states may not allow abortion. It is interesting to note however that in Roe the Court said that if an unborn child is indeed a “person” under the Constitution then their holding would fall apart (my paraphrase).
This appears to be the route to go for state legislators from my standpoint.
Personhood and citizenship are two very different categories. All citizens are persons. Not all persons are citizens but all persons present in any state are entitled to equal protection of the laws.
If an "illegal" alien is peacefully going about his business in, say Louisiana or Texas, he may be arrested for illegal presence in this country (as might any non-citizen illegally present here) but he may not be deprived by any state of the equal protection of the laws. Would Louisiana or Texas eagerly protect the lives, liberty and property of its own citizens? Then the same treatment is owed constitutionally to the "illegal" alien present in such state.
By obvious analogy, the unborn may be regarded as persons (if not yet citizens) and must be protected. Herod Blackmun may well have disagreed with the personhood status of the unborn as would Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Kennedy and a supporting horde of eager baby-killing toady magistrates (federal, state and local) from coast to coast and border to border. Then again, Congress, in enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment may disagree with those federal judges and yank their jurisdictional ability to continue the American Holocaust as is a specific constitutional power entrusted to the Congress by the Constitutional Convention's work as ratified by the states.
Now, it is also true that the Senate will not join in and neither will the Hawaiian/Illinois (inter alia) AntiChrist who is POTUS and who managed to ask God's blessings on the Planned Barrenhood abortion mills and its baby-killing industry.
OTOH, Great Britain's MP William Wilberforce never relented for a moment in his long Parliamentary career in his crusade to end slavery in Great Britain, regardless of the odds. As he was dying, Parliament granted his wish and abolished slavery.
Campaign Pete R-CT:
Judy Brown is no Wilberforce but she is also no moron. She never relents in staking out the position with which we should all eagerly agree. Someone has to do that to hold our standard high and to remind us of what we are seeking to accomplish which is complete abolition.
Some of us may take a more practical tack and stop as many abortions as we can. Ban partial birth abortions and come back for more. Then ban third trimester abortions and come back for more. Then go after second trimester abortions and come back for more. First trimester surgical abortions, IUDs, morning after pills, etc., etc., etc. and come back for more until abortion is no longer tolerated by law, by popular standards and by public opinion and consensus and until the abortion lovers are shunned and relegated to the status of the moral pariahs and untouchables that they are. . Meanwhile, we must also continue an educational effort to ever keep before the public eye the specific facts and nature of abortion to facilitate its abolition.
The Judie Browns have the high ground but there is room for the efforts of those inclined to a more gradual approach as well. In the process, we should never disrespect the Judie Browns or grant any acceptance whatsoever to any abortion, not even one. It is one thing to take what you can when the votes are not there to do more but we have no moral authority to accept even one abortion as an acceptable trade-off. The life destroyed would not be ours to give, but that of the baby who has a right to live.
To all:
Finally, I have no standing to speak for other faiths, but Catholics well understand that we cannot accept any abortion. The Joseph Bidens and various Kennedys of the Hyannisport crime family, and the Nancy Pelosis, and Rosa DeLauros and John Kerrys, and that Sebelius creature and so many others in public life who claim Catholicism while perpetuating the American Holocaust need splashy public excommunication.
We actual Catholics, in very rare instances, apply a moral principle of double effect that recognizes the ending of, for example, a tubal pregnancy, as the only moral choice since the child will surely die in any event (given current technology) and the action is to save the only life savable, that of the mother, at the cost of the tube. If and when the technology changes, every effort should be made to save the unborn as well but that appears not yet possible at this time.
In any event, the text of the Constitution's 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause fully empowers Congress to protect all human persons. The natural law requires that protection. The Tenth Amendment, to the extent that the Fourteenth Amendment disagrees with it, is superseded by the Fourteenth and it is. And Judie Brown may advance the pro-life agenda more strictly that many pro-lifers find comfortable but she is no moron, nor are those who agree with her morons.
P.S.: To Campaign Pete R-Ct Pete, you and I are well-acquainted. I trust that you will concede that a) I am not a moron (nor are you); and b) that I spent a lot of time and effort, politically (as have you) and as an attorney, advancing the pro-life agenda.
In the 14th, a child has to be born to be a citizen. Read later that it says ‘nor shall any state deprive any PERSON (not citizen) of life, liberty or property...”
It does not say that you must be born to be a person but you must be born to be a citizen.
Is it legal to murder someone (a person) in this country illegally (a non citizen)?
Why is legal to kill the unborn (person) just because they have not been granted citizenship (born) yet?