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.
True, Wilberforce never gave up, and Britain eventually banned slavery (the final vote came right after he died). But earlier on, when Wilberforce knew that a total ban on slavery wasn’t possible, he not only did not try to block a bill to end the slave trade, he supported it and got it to pass in Parliament. We can’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Father Frank Pavone (longtime leader of Priests fir Life) has written that we must act based on the choices before us, and if there is an election between a pro-abortion candidate and one who would ban some abortions but does not agree with us that abortion should always be prohibited (except incidentally and unintentially when the true aim is to save the life of the mother), we should support that imperfectly pro-life candidate, and that our act would be not for “the lesser of two evils,” but to reduce evil, so it is an affirmative act for good. By the same measure, the options for Congress are to (i) do nothing (which keeps abortion legal until birth), (ii) pass a lbill that would give us everything we want but that even if it were to become law would be struck down by SCOTUS and thus would not ban a single abortion and would help cenent Roe v. Wade, or (iii) pass a bill that, if it became law, would have a good chance of being upheld by SCOTUS and thus would ban many abortions, chip away at Roe and help move the courts towards eventually overturning Roe altogether. I’m heartened to see that all but three pro-lifers in the House voted the right way yesterday.
Unfortunately, in the real world Judie Brown has taught her followers to boycott elections and to turn in ballots that are mostly blank. Examples:
New Hampshire – Pro-Life Catholic activist Jennifer Horn lost a close primary to Charlie Bass in 2010. A.L.L. affiliate did not support her because a 3rd minor candidate jumped n the race and they did not think it right to decide between him and Horn. Two GOP candidates, O’Brien and Lambert, are running vs. Kuster in ’14. A.L.L. will find flaws in both.
Massachusetts - A.L.L. bad-mouthed Scott Brown in ’10 during his campaign vs Martha and then publicly advocated a blank ballot vs. Lizzy Warren. In the special that elected Mrs. Tsongas,, they campaigned for 3rd party candidate who received 3% giving Tsongas a 2% victory. In western Mass, they bad-mouth Dr. Jay Fleitman (anti-Obamacare activist in the medical community) and opponent of Neal and Olver.
NY: they trashed Tedisco, 99% pro-life voting record in Albany, in his race in the open 19th. Perhaps “pro-choice” Gibson (who votes pro-family) is getting worse treatment against his NARAL opponents. They did nothing for Doug Hoffman NY=23.
Nan Hayworth (opthamologist and anti-Obamacare activist), voted against the sex-selection bill (which is the ALL position!), and ALL folks purged her, giving us openly-gay NARAL celebrity Sean Maloney.
CT: They bragged about blank balloting in the DeLauro race even though her opponent was a pro-lifer. “we didn’t know”. Same with Martha Dean AG candidate (”She’s a lawyer and they aren’t usually pro-life”.) They smeared pro-life candidate Mark Greenberg (”he’s a Jew and has been married 4 times!”) The Jew part is true although he is non-practicing Jew. The “4 wives” is a lie. He’s a happily married man.
In Tolland, Nancy Wyman’s house seat just went to a pro-lifer. The large ALL group in the town boycotted cuz Waterbury didn’t tell them to get involved. The gun owners did the door knocking and phone banking.
The A.L.L. Cult is teaching people to boycott society and to become non-voters. It’s the Pontius Pilate card. “Piety in place of duty is no piety at all”. Boycotters are Morons.
As I mentioned to another poster, given that Congress has only those powers delegated to it by the states via the Constitution, what clause given Congress the power to define personhood? There is no such clause as far as I can tell.