The Constitutional Rights of the Unborn
I once participated in a debate
where I was asked to describe the constitutional rights afforded to the unborn.
For me, the answer was easy because I've studied the Founders. For
the other guy – who completely dodged the question – it was just another
opportunity to spout some platform slogans about choice and women's rights.
Many
people argue abortion based on what's fair, but our nation's laws are based not
on the left's version of "fairness" any more than statutes (ought to)
derive from government-mandated compassion. The supreme law of the land
is the Constitution, and our Founding Fathers provide incontrovertible insight
as to their understanding of the unalienable right to life.
The
very first sentence of the Constitution
declares that the document's central purpose includes the aim to "secure
the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." As Glenn
Beck notes,
"[w]ho are our posterity, if not our unborn children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren?" To deny the Constitution's application to
future generations is to erroneously deduce that the Founders intended their
labor to last only a few years. Every constitutional provision that
secures a human right was designed just as much for the protection of the
rights of the unborn as for the rights of the born.
James
Wilson, one of six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution and a member of the first Supreme Court, lectured on
constitutional law with Washington, Adams, and Jefferson in attendance –
ostensibly endorsing his interpretations. As such, scholars
typically concede that "Wilson, when speaking on the law, might be
said to be speaking for the Founders generally."
During
one such lecture,
"Of the Natural Rights of Individuals," Wilson clarified: "In
the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in
the womb. By the law, life is protected not only from immediate
destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from
every degree of danger."
Wilson's
explanation unequivocally guarantees the right to life for a fetus.
"When the infant is first able to stir in the womb" refers to
the "quickening," which Bouvier's
Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopedia, Volume 3 (originally published in
1839) describes as "the sensation a mother has of the motion of the child
she has conceived." This was the moment in which a mother of the
18th century would know for certain that she was pregnant.
There
is significant debate about when quickening occurs, with many citing Bouvier's
estimation of "usually about the sixteenth week from conception,"
concluding that abortion should thus be legalized before the four-month mark.
But to close the book there would be a grave injustice. First note
that when referring to the embryo at his initial stage of conception, Bouvier
calls him "the child." What kind of child exactly, if not a
human child?
Bouvier
continues, "The child is, in truth, alive from the first moment of
conception. ... As life, by law, is said to commence when a woman first becomes
quick with child, so procuring an abortion after that period is a misdemeanor.
... Quick with child is having conceived."
Indeed,
even if we subscribed to the notion that the baby's movement alone signified
life, we must acknowledge that a baby may move without the mother's noticing.
BabyCenter's
entry for eighth-week fetal development offers the following: "Your baby
has started moving around, though you won't feel movement yet." This
is reiterated at weeks eleven and twelve, not noting the mother's ability to
feel the infant's motion until week eighteen. The child's heart begins
beating as early as week five. Remember that Wilson attributed life to
the infant's ability to stir, independent of its mother's acknowledgment.
Speaking purely physiologically, we should at least be able to recognize
the child's right to life once his heart starts beating – and at five weeks,
that's roughly when a mother would find out anyway.
Either
way, a mother's recognition of her child is not what grants him life. God
is. As John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration, once
remarked, "[s]ome nations have given parents the power of life and
death over their children. But here in America, we have denied the power
of life and death to parents."
As quoted
above, Wilson explained that the Constitution protects the unborn "from
every degree of actual violence, and in some cases, from every degree of
danger." This explains statutes like one in early Virginian
law: "But if a woman be with child and any gives her a potion to destroy
the child within her, this is murder. For it was not given to her to cure
a disease but unlawfully to destroy the child within her."
This
law echoes the words of William Blackstone, whom James Wilson cited.
Says Blackstone,
"For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise kills
it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dies in her body, and
she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, ... remains a very
heinous misdemeanor." The Founders drew from such legal
observations.
But
we're missing the point. Wilson was referring not to medicine, but to
accountability, using a phrase his audience would recognize as the society's
current understanding of fetal development. The implicit principle of his
statement is that once you know, you are responsible. By
constitutional law and medical testimony, the child is alive whether the mother
knows it or not, and once she knows, she must take care of her child.
Some
might argue that Wilson's designation is set, that the Constitution remains
tethered to the 18th-century understanding of its writers. This is
ludicrous. The Founders well knew that medicine and technology would
advance. The 2nd Amendment applies not just to muskets any more than the
freedom of the press applies only to movable type. Morse code and phone
calls are protected under the 1st Amendment, as is the exercise of religious
devotion to a church not around at the time of America's founding, such as
Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-Day Adventists. The
Constitution must not be maligned to include areas not intended in the
document's writing, but it is clear that the Founders provided for advancements
in those fields that are protected, however many years into the
future.
As
attested by historian David
Barton, "[w]ith today's technology, it is now possible to know with a
certainty that life is within the womb ... only a few days after conception.
Regardless, whenever it is known that life was within, according to the
documents penned by our Founding Fathers, at that point, unborn life was to be
protected under the law."
The
Founders undoubtedly crafted their revolutionary texts so as to secure the
blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the unborn.
So
which constitutional rights do our future children enjoy? All of them.
Read any quote from the Founding Fathers about your right to life,
property, conscience, association, religious freedom, privacy, labor, and more,
and smile knowing that your posterity has been endowed with the same rights by
the same Creator. He is the one who gives life to the unborn, and we are
not to take it away.
Richie Angel is the co-editor-in-chief of The New Guards. Learn
more at thenewguards.net, on Facebook at The New Guards, and on Twitter
@The_NewGuards.
uly 9, 2017
The left's war on Christianity and why it hates Trump
Do you
remember the video that was played at the 2012 Democratic
National Convention, “Government is the Only Thing We All Belong To”? The
title of that video is the crux of the beliefs of the left, not just in the
U.S., but everywhere. In contemporary America, Democrats have
become congruent with the left, and the belief that the government owns us is a
pervasive sentiment.
Why is this?
Democrats, as a political party, have literally denounced religion,
particularly Christianity. At that same Convention in 2012, the delegates
filled the arena with loud booing during the attempt to reinstate the word
“God” into the Democratic Party platform.
Persecution
of Christians was practically Obama administration policy, including lawsuits
of Christians refusing to subordinate their beliefs to government
mandates. Even the Little Sisters of the Poor were made to suffer
for refusing to be a party to forced distribution of contraceptives .
In her book,
“Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” Ann Coulter
writes:
Liberalism is
a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal
soul. Their religion holds that there is nothing sacred about human
consciousness. It’s just an accident no more significant than our
possession of opposable thumbs. They deny what we know about ourselves:
that we are moral beings in God’s image.
In the
absence of belief in a higher power, government naturally becomes the almighty
deity. Without God, humans are soulless creatures no better than wild
animals, and it stands to reason that they should not be trusted with personal
freedoms. We must therefore belong to the government.
Then along
came Donald Trump. He does not believe in big government. He
dislikes politicians, regulations, and bureaucracy. The people he has
hired in his administration have similar beliefs. The Republicans, who
hold majorities in both houses of Congress, also believe in smaller government
(for the most part).
Imagine, if
you will, that your religion has been usurped by priests or ministers that do
not share your beliefs. Imagine that Satan has been elected Pope.
(No, I’m not comparing Pope Francis to Satan. But there are a lot of strange things happening at the Vatican
lately). This is the gut-wrenching horror that the left is currently
experiencing. Their god is slowly dying, trampled on by heretics and
blasphemers.
President
Trump is not your typical politician. His penchant for prolific Tweeting
is decidedly not presidential, at least to the true believers in
government. Trump is a heretic in the Church of State. He does not
take his role as secular Pope of the nation with the proper solemnity.
Trump says
that he is “modern day presidential”. As such, the
modern day president has set up his own rules. If these new rules failed
him, it would be painfully obvious to him and his administration. But
they haven’t, at least not to this point.
His
Tweets have successfully driven his sworn enemies, the left and the leftist
media, absolutely crazy to the point of making them lose focus on their mission
to “resist” and sabotage his agenda. Instead they have become obsessed
with his impropriety as the leader of their government religion. As a consequence,
he deserves secular excommunication, aka impeachment.
Trump’s
strategy is winning. He needs to continue to use social media to isolate
and completely cut the leftist media out of the loop.
The American
left has shown itself to be dangerously unstable. For them, politics is
not a trivial pursuit, it is a deadly serious bloodsport, and they play to
win. On the other side, Trump is playing political “rope-a-dope”.
Like Muhammad Ali bouncing against the ropes to dodge George Foreman’s powerful
roundhouse blows in the “Rumble in the Jungle,” he is fending off the
relentless attacks of the left with stealth and cleverness.
American
politics can be distilled down to whether or not you believe in a higher power
than government. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men
are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” Thus wrote Thomas
Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
Are human
rights endowed by our Creator, or bestowed by government? That is the
basic question and conflict in America. In order to resurrect their
government god, the Dems must destroy our Creator. But first, they
must destroy our President.
Andrew
Thomas blogs at Dark
Angel Politics
July 13, 2017
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