This Sunday is observed by many as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, in response to the anniversary of the infamous Roe versus Wade decision of January 22, 1973. Those who honor life as sacred hold that unborn babies are living human beings who need protection from having their lives ended.
In the Roe v Wade decision, an overturning of many years of legal precedent and a new approach to the role of the US Supreme Court was established. In this decision precedent and even the very language of the Constitution were overthrown.
The decision was based upon a new interpretation of Amendment XIV, which amendment is quoted below:
AMENDMENT XIV
(Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.)
Section 1.
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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
(Amendment XIV has 5 sections, but section 1 is the one utilized in the argument for the Supreme Court’s declared decision.)
The argument is that this Amendment guarantees a right to privacy in the due process clause. However, this argument demands deliberate ignorance of the intention of this amendment. This amendment intends to insure “All persons” their right to protection under the Constitution from being deprived by any State of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
This amendment first guarantees citizenship rights, then rights to all persons living in the USA. What rights are protected? The rights of Life, Liberty, and Property are protected. These are protected from two plainly prescribed perspectives. First, the government is never to deprive any person of these rights without due process of the law. Secondly, the protection of these rights is declared as the duty of the State governments, and that such protection is never to be denied to any person within its jurisdiction.
It is very interesting to note the priority assigned to each of these rights by both this amendment as well as the Fifth Amendment. Life is first, then liberty, then property. This is both logical as well as practical. If a person is not guaranteed life, then liberty and property are meaningless.
Therefore, this amendment binds every State to its obligation to apply protection to every person equally. Life is to be protected above liberty and both are to be protected above property. Thus, when one person’s life depends upon depriving another person of liberty, Life prevails under the US Constitution.
In 1973 the Supreme Court decided that this order that is plainly stated in two amendments, as the Declaration of Independence also clearly articulates, should be overturned so that one person’s liberty of privacy was made to be more important than another person’s life. Moreover, the prejudicial discrimination that both amendments are intended to prevent is actually mandated by the Roe v Wade decision. Prejudicial discrimination by a specific group, defined by gender, is declared to be right and legal against another group that has no absolutely no voice of its own. And this prejudice is of the most extreme nature, leading to the extermination of the weaker and defenseless group.
Is this not the very kind of tyrannical decisions and actions that led to the July 4, 1776 “Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies”? Consider the first half of the second paragraph:
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. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Has the USA become that from which it separated itself? If one group is allowed to extinguish the lives of another group without due process of the law, who will be safe?
Who has the final say in these matters, a government appointed group of judges or the citizens who depend upon the clear declarations of the Constitution? Without the Constitution to protect them the founding fathers went to war to obtain for future generations what they themselves did not have. With the Constitution speaking on our behalf, can we not speak out for those who are being deprived of their lives by the very judicial branch that is created by this Constitution? How long shall the citizens of this nation permit the helpless to be overpowered by the whims of those who count them as an inconvenience? How long shall we deny that unborn babies are people who deserve the protection of the States in which they live?
Certainly no one wants to have the Government deprive anyone of the right to privacy without due process of the law. But does our beloved Constitution not have the priority right in declaring that life must be protected even at the expense of privacy? Is this not especially valid when due process is preserved, as it is when a State passes laws to protect a person from being counted as non-human and without the right to life?
It is amazing to note the cause of changing from protectors of life and liberty to tyrants who dictate who lives and who enjoys liberty. The founding fathers acted from the belief that the Lord is God over all. They based their Declaration of Independence as well as their Constitution upon this belief. Those who have overturned this have done so on the rejection of the Lord as God over all in favor of the belief that a person is god unto himself. It is undeniable that the two different beliefs produce different perspectives regarding one’s attitude and actions toward others.
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