Posted on 06/10/2021 7:14:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
The right-to-life movement’s sole aim is to ensure that the rights of all humans, unborn and born, are legally protected. Let’s start acting like it.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to reconsider Roe v. Wade this fall, Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel for Americans United for Life and perhaps the most well-known pro-life attorney, proclaimed:
The court desperately needs to decentralize the [abortion] issue and send it back to the states … pro-life leaders need to think long and hard about overturning federalism and taking the issue away from the states.
Forsythe’s view is consistent with his recent Wall Street Journal article, which advanced the view that “the high court could put questions about gestational limits [for abortion access] back into voters’s hands — where they belong.”
Since America is a constitutional republic and not a direct democracy, Americans don’t vote to decide who deserves the protections guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Imagine a state with anti-immigrant leaders convincing its citizens to amend state homicide laws so they only apply to victims who are citizens. Unthinkable.
Unfortunately, however, this is a matter of debate in the pro-life movement. While some advocate for the use of a states’ rights approach to overturning Roe, others support pushing for protecting the unborn’s right to life.
Members of the first camp argue the Supreme Court should merely allow states to craft whichever abortion laws their citizens prefer. The second camp believes the Supreme Court should recognize unborn humans as persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, an interpretation amounting to a constitutional mandate requiring states to protect unborn humans with the same homicide laws that protect born humans outside of the womb.
Law professor Mary Ziegler describes Forsythe as “a brilliant strategist” and the states’ rights approach as a “savvy argument.” She recently boosted years of speculation that the only difference between the two camps is merely a matter of strategy. This theory suggests people such as Forsythe do not truly believe the legality of abortion should be democratically decided; they solely support the states’s rights approach as a moderate, incremental step on the path to rights for the unborn.
But is the divide genuinely borne out of differences of opinion on timing and strategy? Or, might there be sincere, fundamental differences between those who oppose Roe due to its federalization of America’s abortion laws, and human rights advocates, who oppose abortion because they believe all humans equally deserve constitutional rights?
Consider the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a proud pro-life Catholic and hero to many in the pro-life movement. In the 1992 case that upheld Roe, he endorsed the states’ rights approach by claiming the Supreme Court “should get out of this area [of abortion law], where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining.”
Years later, during an interview on “60 Minutes,” he rejected the rights of the unborn argument:
They say that the Equal Protection Clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that’s wrong. I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons.
They say that the Equal Protection Clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that’s wrong. I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons.
Actually, I would tend to agree. The Constitution doesn't mention medical issues, so I think the Federal government ought to not play any role in medicine. Leave it to the States. If they overturn Roe v Wade and throw this back on the 50 separate states, then I think that's a big win.
However, I think the legal angle under consideration is that the 5th Amendment says "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and the 14th Amendment says "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"
The 14th moves back and forth between discussing "citizens" and "persons" but the key part is about "persons" and it echoes the 5th which covers due process of law. If you're not a criminal, you should be safe.
If the Supreme Court declares unborn humans to be "persons", then they WOULD have protection at the federal level.
“unless that want to treat abortion as murder”
Any rational person would want just that
Premeditated Murder is...”the planned killing of an innocent human being”.
So by definition, abortion is murder.
And it should be treated like other murders.
So what you wrote was nonsense. Well, unless you’re a liberal. As this matter shows, they believe that some persons are not entitled to the protection of the law against murder. They say its somewhere in the Constitution..
So, based on the content of these and other articles, the general consensus at the time was that the pre-born should be protected after “quickening”, which was when it was believed that an infant took on a “soul.” Interestingly, this corresponds roughly to the “viability” timeframe.
The question then becomes whether the founders, though not being of one mind on the subject, deliberately avoided clarification of the issue, or would have extended the right to life to the pre-born given what we know today and how medicine has advanced.
No, what I wrote is not nonsense. I’m not arguing about, whether abortion is murder or not. I’m talking about the constitutional aspect of this. There is no constitutional right to an abortion, therefore should be thrown out and sent back to the states. Let each state decide what it wants to do on its own. Now, on the other hand, if everybody could agree that abortion is murder, then sure Address this at either state or national level, using laws. Regarding the second amendment, that is a constitutional issue, and the courts do need to step in, not leave it to the states to decide what the federal Constitution means.
Well put. However, in my view, for the protection of natural rights to life, and constitutional rights to life, require that a person be born.
“No Supreme Court dared to outlaw slavery”
Because they weren’t legislating from the bench. Judicial usurpation wouldn’t become the norm until the 20th Century.
Congress and the states outlawed slavery with the 13th Amendment, which is how our system was designed to operate. Not by slaughtering opponents in civil war. Not by Justices dictating from the bench- which of course is exactly what they did in Roe v Wade, and why it is often considered bad law even by abortion proponents.
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