Op-Ed: Want to Know What the Founders Thought of Abortion? Read What Their Teacher Taught Them
The Equality Act (H.R. 5) just passed by the House is itself a perversion of the equal right to life guaranteed to “ourselves and our Posterity” in the Constitution.
The scandal of this illogical act lies in its nonsensical theory that any protection of children targeted for abortion in their mothers’ wombs constitutes “discrimination” against their mothers.
Sadly, the Equality Act doubles down on Roe v. Wade’s illicit cancelation of the right to life for human beings “chosen” to be aborted. It authorizes lethal discrimination against “the unwanted child” (the term used in Roe).
An essential part of the inalienable right to life is the right of a child already alive and existing in her or his mother’s womb to go on existing. The right to life means nothing if it does not include the right of a unique human being already alive to go on living throughout the nine months of normal and natural gestation, free of unprovoked lethal aggression by her or his mother’s abortionist.
The Equality Act’s Twisted Language
In devious language, the Equality Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of a “medical condition” (abortion) “related” to pregnancy and childbirth. It recasts as a “victim” of discrimination any pregnant mother whose little daughter or son is spared through the efforts of pro-life helpers who would love both mother and child and provide for their needs before and after birth.
The Equality Act promises punishment for pro-life advocates. It also opens the way to violating the conscience rights of medical providers who refuse to kill any human being upon request.
The act will benefit the abortion industry. It will require taxpayer-funding of elective abortion in government health care programs and will mandate that private insurers fund abortion.
The Equality Act recycles the mistakes of the Equal Rights Amendment, which at the height of the sexual revolution in March 1972 spawned the ideological dogma that women could achieve equality with men only if they were given abortion “rights.”
Real Discrimination, Deadly Discrimination
And so, ironically, for all the talk of equal rights at that time, the Supreme Court majority in Roe v. Wade (January 1973) removed equal rights from members of “our Posterity” — from “the unwanted child” chosen for abortion while in her or his mother’s womb.
These justices removed equal protection for “ourselves and our Posterity” and replaced it with equal protection for “ourselves” only.
Now that’s the real discrimination — deadly discrimination.
Since Roe, over 62 million of our smallest children, though already alive and thriving in their mothers’ wombs, have been dubbed threats to women’s equality and aborted.
Why do pro-abortion ideologues even today believe that the rights of “our Posterity” must be sacrificed in order to achieve equal rights for women?
Founders’ Equal Protection for “The Infant Stirring in the Mother’s Womb”
Why was legal protection for a little daughter or son in her or his mother’s womb dubbed a burden that must be lifted from women?
Justice Harry Blackmun could not have made such a grievous error if, before writing Roe, he had made more than a perfunctory attempt to examine the Founders’ original common-law understanding of the right to life of an “infant en ventre sa mere or in the mother’s womb” as taught by Sir William Blackstone at that time.
Blackmun would have discovered that the right to life is recognized as an “unalienable” gift of God — “endowed by [the] Creator.” Significantly, it is the very first of the “unalienable” rights listed in the Declaration of Independence.
In the matter of the competing rights of a pregnant mother and the lively little daughter or son prospering normally and naturally in her or his mother’s womb, there is no constitutional basis for preferencing a mother’s self-absorbed liberty interest over her child’s whole-of-life interest. Nor is there any logical basis in Roe’s newfound “right of personal privacy” to exonerate commissioning the killing of “our Posterity” while in our wombs.
Indeed, Roe v. Wade’s finding of a brand-new privacy right for women was employed illogically and illegitimately to imply a negation of the natural right to life for those members of “our Posterity” being targeted for abortion.
The very concept of women exercising a superior claim to rights that overrides the inferior rights of their small daughters and sons in utero is inimical to the founding principles of the republic — an equality of rights and the blessings of liberty for ourselves and “our Posterity.”
It is an ignoble liberty that demands the killing of “unwanted” children while in their mothers’ wombs.
At the time when the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were being drafted, Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” identified in law “natural persons” who are “such as the God of nature formed us” who include “the infant … stir[ring] in the mother’s womb.”
Blackstone was the pre-eminent legal authority from the 1750s through most of the 19th century. All of the formative documents of the republic — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the seminal decisions of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall — were drafted by attorneys steeped in the legal concepts of Blackstone’s “Commentaries.”
In United States v. Palmer (1818), Marshall asserted there could be no lawful distinction in the Constitution between human beings and persons:
“The words ‘any person or persons’ are broad enough to comprehend every human being … the words ‘any person or persons’ comprehend the whole human race.”
The rule of law must protect every human being.
Yet, 203 years later, Congress is seriously proposing to outlaw any protection of “the infant stirring in the mother’s womb” on the grounds that it discriminates against the infant’s mother.
Such is the madness of a cruel ideology that must be defeated and retired to the most ignominious annals of all human history.
The original constitutional duty to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” was completely ignored in Roe and continues to be ignored in this latest bill.
The newest members of “our Posterity” — these smallest children in their mothers’ wombs – continue to be denigrated as less than human, merely fractional persons not deserving of human rights protection.
The Equality Act is anything but equal.
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