OPINION:
As we await the final opinion in Dobbs, we do well as a nation to recall who we are and the creed that binds us together.
The Declaration of Independence serves as our charter and the Constitution our bylaws. Taken together, they provide an inspired operator’s manual for good government. By-laws can never conflict with the charter. The Declaration declares rights endowed by our Creator as the enduring standard.
The preamble to the Constitution serves as a bridge from the charter to the by-laws. In 52 words, the preamble expresses the eternal context: A government of, by, and or the people to secure “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade itself is 67 pages in length with 21 pages of appendixes and footnotes for a total of 98 pages altogether. Truth can be said concisely. It takes a lot of words to beat around the bush. The draft opinion reverses and strikes down Roe and Casey, but leaves nothing in place to protect preborn children. As Aristotle observed, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Life begins, like everything else, at the beginning.
In the draft opinion, the Court writes, “We, therefore, hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
The Court just as well may have said “the authority to regulate the killing of preborn children must be returned to the people under their elective representatives.”
The Declaration of Independence declares what is self-evident. The Creator endowed the right and the right is to be ensured for the entire nation. This is not a matter to be decided state by state. As Lincoln said about the “peculiar institution,” this is not a matter of popular sovereignty. And as Lincoln said to Congress a month before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, “We cannot escape
history.”
The 14th Amendment, one of three reconstruction amendments, exists to ensure that never again will we treat a human being as property. In the words of the Amendment, “equal protection.”
Since the draft court opinion was leaked two things dealing with the sanctity of human life have surfaced: 1. The legislature of the State of Oklahoma passed and the governor signed a law protecting preborn children from conception (the only exceptions being
rape and incest). 2. The horrific shooting of school children brought the nation to tears and on their knees in prayer. We mourn children we do not know just as God mourns the loss of preborn children, all of whom He knows.
The Supreme Court should revise the draft opinion to delete all language passing the buck back to the states. To send the matter to the states overlooks unalienable rights, rights that are not dependent upon a majority vote.
The court rightly speaks of our national heritage and traditions. The Declaration of Independence began our history. The words of equality in our Declaration of Independence applied to the women’s suffrage movement. They applied to the Civil Rights movement. And they apply
to our nation’s greatest civil rights movement – the right to life. In truth, the Declaration of Independence is a declaration of dependence upon God.
The killing of our nation’s own Posterity must be purged from our land. Just as our forefathers took down their quill pen and wrote the inspired words of the Declaration of Independence, our present Supreme Court needs to take down their own quill and secure this right to life.
The Court has acknowledged that Roe was an egregious error. Roe was the use of raw judicial power (per Justice Byron White in his dissent). Killing 63 million innocent preborn children is a blot on our nation’s soul.
In overturning Roe and Casey, the Court must affirm the preborn child’s right to life and restore the culture of life enshrined in our nation’s history and traditions from the beginning.
- Michael O. Kenney, J.D., Pro-Life Partners Foundation; R. Martin Palmer, J.D. The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children NAAPC - National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children
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