Thanks in large part to Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, the great abortion debate is news once again. As recently reported on Liberty Nation, Kentucky is one of seven states with only one abortion provider each – and they may well become the first abortion-free state since Roe v Wade back in 1973. The abortionist and their supporters say that Bevin closing the clinic over a licensing regulation is just a ploy to block women from carrying out a Constitutional right. As far as the U.S. Supreme Court is concerned, they’re right – but the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong.
What Roe v Wade Really Says
The ruling in Roe v Wade is based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
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.
The Court determined that the part about not depriving anyone of life, liberty, or property without due process of law established the right to individual privacy, including a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. They further determined that the word “person” in this clause and other parts of the Constitution didn’t include unborn children – meaning that they have no Constitutional rights. If the unborn aren’t people, then the issue has a clear answer – anti-abortion state laws violate women’s rights.
There is no Legally Protected Right to Privately Kill a Person
There is no constitutionally protected right to privacy when trying to end another’s life. Even in legitimate cases of self-defense, all killings that are discovered are investigated. Should the
investigation uncover that a life was taken out of malice or simply as a matter of convenience, it would be deemed murder – a charge which could well lead to the guilty party being deprived of liberty, property, or even life – and all through due process of law.
Life Begins at Conception – and That’s Science, not Religion
Many abortion advocates like to claim that all pro-life arguments stem from religion. Convenient as that claim may be for abortionists, it’s simply not the case. Life begins at conception – and that’s science, not religion. Crack open any biology text book, or look up any embryology resource, and you’ll see many variations of the same thing:
Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.
It’s not a matter up for debate: as soon as the male and female haploid cells meet, the resultant diploid cell is both alive and a genetically unique member of the species Homo Sapiens – a human being. Anyone who argues otherwise ignores all that is currently known about reproduction. They would be – as the left often likes to say of those who argue against climate change – “science deniers.”
Unborn Human Beings are Human Persons
Some might argue the difference between human being and person – often citing one or more of a few “differences” between unborn children and people.
They aren’t self-aware. If this is true of the unborn and a valid justification for killing them, then this reasoning could also be applied to the newly born, the comatose, and even those experiencing an altered state of reality via drug use, disability or mental illness such as dementia, or dreaming.
They’re not people until after they’re born. This argument is absurd. The only permanent change from just before birth to the moments immediately after is the child’s location. You can’t stop being a person simply by moving from one place to another (unless doing so kills you). Likewise, you didn’t become a person because you moved from one location to another.
Unborn children can’t survive on their own. Infants and even toddlers would not survive without care and supervision – few would argue for the right to kill them (though some, unfortunately, do). Those dementia patients mentioned in the first argument? You guessed it, they’re not people either according to this reasoning – neither are those on life support, anyone in need of emergency care, or those dependent on medicine or treatment such as insulin or dialysis.
Why the Supreme Court Was Wrong
The Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade reasoning hinges entirely on the idea that an unborn child is not a person. Even the Court of 1973 would not have likely claimed that the right to personal privacy ensured by the Fourteenth Amendment grants anyone the right to commit murder. Therefore, all that is required to prove SCOTUS wrong, and that the states absolutely have the right to ban abortion, is to show that even the unborn are people.
“Pro-choice” arguments fail to demonstrate that the unborn aren’t people; either they are, or a whole lot of folks currently protected by law aren’t. The Court of 1973 was half right – the Fourteenth Amendment does seem to grant some degree of individual privacy against the state. However, they missed the mark in their definition of a person. Unborn children are people, and no argument of viability, development, location, or moral status can change that. Despite SCOTUS’s mistaken logic, there is no Constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. No provision in any of the founding documents can be – or has yet been – taken to grant any person the right to murder another as a matter of convenience.
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