Difference between revisions of "Forum/Statement 9 + Footnotes"
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<br> Far from treating a single state personhood law as impotent, SCOTUS said that were it coupled with a clear penalty, that “will be time enough to reexamine Roe, and to do so carefully”. ''Webster'', Concurrence by O'Conner, Id. at 526. How much more the uncontradicted findings of 39 states are enough to outlaw abortion as thoroughly as slavery! </ref> | <br> Far from treating a single state personhood law as impotent, SCOTUS said that were it coupled with a clear penalty, that “will be time enough to reexamine Roe, and to do so carefully”. ''Webster'', Concurrence by O'Conner, Id. at 526. How much more the uncontradicted findings of 39 states are enough to outlaw abortion as thoroughly as slavery! </ref> | ||
<span style="color:blue">That evidence is not mitigated by a ban’s exceptions. | <span style="color:blue">That evidence is not mitigated by a ban’s exceptions. | ||
| − | <ref> </ref> | + | <ref>'''More about “That evidence is not mitigated by a ban’s exceptions.”''' |
| + | <br> Evidence of Life is not disproved by an “exception...for the purpose of saving the life of the mother” and/or by not charging the mother with being a “principal or an accomplice” to murder, as Roe’s footnote 54 was generally interpreted, and as many prolifers still believe. | ||
| + | <br> Although Roe is officially “overruled” by Dobbs v. Jackson, not every lie in it has been dislodged from prolife legal thinking, and there are still prolife lawmakers who are afraid to support any bill that fails to save every baby, believing that will be taken by baby killers as evidence that prolifers don’t really believe babies are fully human. This Finding is for them. | ||
| + | <br> Another example of a Roe myth that still lives is the idea that babies aren’t real people because centuries ago, the penalty for murdering your baby was only serious after “quickening” (when mom can feel baby kicking). It’s not a myth exclusive to Roe. It is part of the doctrine of “Substantive Due Process”, an intimidating phrase used to empower courts to invent “rights” like the right to murder your baby, if they can pretend the right is “well rooted in history”. | ||
| + | <br> All that is explained and criticized elsewhere in this document. See <span style="color:blue">“How SCOTUS morphed the Constitution’s end of racial tyranny into its own tool of judicial tyranny in only five years // ‘Substantive Due Process’: how SCOTUS turned the Constitution’s Authority to Define Rights, and Congress’ 14th Amendment Authority to Enforce Rights, into its own authority to reclassify abominations as ‘rights’ ”.</span> But as to whether it was even true that babies were historically considered not so human before quickening, <u>Foundation for Moral Law, Lutherans for Life</u> explains: | ||
| + | |||
| + | <blockquote><br> Quickening is different from viability; quickening is the time when the mother first feels the child move within her. One could be convicted of homicide for the killing of an unborn child, only if quickening had already taken place. | ||
| + | <br> But this common law rule did not mean that the child became a person only at quickening or that there was a right to abortion before quickening. Rather, it was a procedural matter of proof. One can be guilty of homicide only if the homicide victim was alive at the time of the alleged killing, and at that stage in the development of the common law, medical science had no way of proving the child was alive until the mother had felt the child move within her. (<u>Foundation for Moral Law, Lutherans for Life</u>, amicus brief filed in ''Dobbs v. Jackson'', https://storage.googleapis.com/msgsndr/JTZoYWv3fly6h Femb8mU/media/63b73813b7386028645df690.pdf)</blockquote> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <br> Although the ideal of law is equal protection of all humans, human law is as imperfect as humans. The very legal, political, and Biblical necessity of “innocent until proved guilty” illustrates the inability of human courts to equally protect every human, without that inability proving crime victims are not fully human! | ||
| + | <br> Practical reasons to prosecute abortionists but not moms are (1) to get moms to testify against abortionists, and (2) the greater ease for juries of imputing culpability to adult doctors than to mothers suffering varying degrees of youth, deception (by culture, schools, pastors, and judges) and pressure (by family and fathers). | ||
| + | <br> Legal and moral reasons for a “life of the mother” exception are that (1) while babies have a fundamental right to live, so do mothers; and (2) while we are inspired by people who give their lives for others, we can’t require them to by law. Even our Good Samaritan laws, requiring people at accident scenes to help, are sparse and inconsistent. | ||
| + | <br> It would be hypocritical to charge aborting moms with being accessories to murder, without first charging judges. The degree to which laws fail to give “equal protection” to all humans is no evidence of the degree to which people are not humans. Such a legal theory is absurd, cannot be taken seriously, merits no attention as it faults laws for being no better than is humanly possible, and is unknown outside Footnote 54 of ''Roe v. Wade''. | ||
| + | <br> Unknown outside ''Roe'', that is, unless you count the “Substantive Due Process” nonsense that courts should call mass murder of a particular class of people a “constitutional right” if it is “deeply rooted in American tradition”. Which ''implies'' dehumanization of the class of people so targeted. Yet not even that foolish analysis goes quite so far as to claim to prove said class is ''not'' human. Although in “Operation Rescue” cases where people blocked doors of Houses of Abortion, lower courts have ruled that the legality of mass murder (abortion) makes the humanity of those murdered constitutionally irrelevant. | ||
| + | <br> Are you following this reasoning? It took me years to wind my way through it this far. Is it as goofy as I describe it, or do I misunderstand something? | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | </ref> | ||
<span style="color:blue">It is not made irrelevant because baby killers “rely” on killing babies. | <span style="color:blue">It is not made irrelevant because baby killers “rely” on killing babies. | ||
<ref> </ref> | <ref> </ref> | ||
Revision as of 16:02, 16 November 2023
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Statement of Facts #5 from:
Reversing_Landmark_Abomination_Cases
Saving Babies from judges & voters
Saving Souls from ‘Scrupulous Neutrality’ about Religion
by proving in courts of law and in the Court of Public Opinion that:
The right to live of a baby and of a judge are equal The Bible & reality-challenged religions are NOT equal
A strategy of Life that relies on the Author of Life
for pro-life, pro-Bible Lawmakers, Leaders, Lawyers, and Laymen
by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 18:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Try to imagine how a judge, reviewing a prolife law with these Findings of Facts, would be able to dodge this evidence - in fact, see if you can find ANYONE who can refute these facts - as opposed to not caring about facts - that is, not caring about reality:
Statement of Fact #9 of 12:
When pregnancies develop into medical emergencies requiring separation of mother and child to save the mother, the child has an equally fundamental right to life and medical care. [1]
A legislature’s balancing of their interests cannot, therefore, be reviewed by “strict scrutiny”. [2] Nor does alleged insufficiency of a “medical emergency” exception from a general abortion ban justify a court overturning the ban in the 99% of cases where no emergency is alleged. [3] Legislatures are better equipped to deliberate about and secure the rights of all citizens than courts whose focus is the parties before them. [4]
SCOTUS never denied that a legislature’s “personhood” statements in an abortion ban are strong evidence. [5] That evidence is not mitigated by a ban’s exceptions. [6] It is not made irrelevant because baby killers “rely” on killing babies. [7]
The footnotes below are enriched by selections from the Amicus Brief filed in Dobbs v. Jackson by: Foundation for Moral Law <> Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation <> 396 State Legislators from 41 States.
INDEX to all 12 Statements of Facts
Statement_1_+_Footnotes Courtrecognized, court-tested Finders of Facts unanimously establish that unborn babies are fully human
Statement_2_+_Footnotes Courts Accept the Fact-Finding Authority of Legislatures, Juries, Experts for the same good reasons their findings persuade the public.
Statement_3_+_Footnotes The FACT that Babies are Fully Human was never denied or ruled irrelevant by SCOTUS.
Statement_4_+_Footnotes Heartbeats & Brain Waves are Legally Recognized Evidence of Life.
Statement_5_+_Footnotes Legislatures should regulate abortion, as Dobbs held, just as legislatures regulate the prosecution of all other murders.
Statement_6_+_Footnotes The full humanity of a tiny physical body is hard for many to grasp. But what distinguishes us from animals isn’t physical, and has no known pre-conscious stage.
Statement_7_+_Footnotes Congress has Already Enacted a Personhood Law as Strong as a “Life Amendment”. The 14th Amendment already authorizes Congress to require all states to outlaw abortion.
Statement_8_+_Footnotes Roe, Dobbs, and the 14th Amendment agree: All Humans are “Persons”.
Statement_9_+_Footnotes When pregnancies develop into medical emergencies requiring separation of mother and child to save the mother, the child has an equal fundamental right to life and medical care.
Statement_10_+_Footnotes Tyranny over any class of humans by any other is prohibited by the Constitution, by the Declaration which gives the purpose of the Constitution, and which rests its own authority on the revelation of God in the Bible.
Statement_11_+_Footnotes The 14th Amendment gives courts no authority to invent rights not specified in the Constitution, like the right to murder, and gives legislatures no authority to legalize violations of Constitutional Rights.
Statement_12_+_Footnotes Judicial Interference with Constitutional Obligations is Impeachable.
FOOTNOTES
- ↑ More about “...the child has an equally fundamental right to life and medical care [as the child’s mother].
This footnote assumes that the prolife law incorporating this Finding of Fact contains a “life of the mother” exception whose applicability is clear enough that mothers are not denied life-saving care until doctors are assured by lawyers that said care will not put the doctors in jail, which has been a legal argument for blocking any abortion restriction raised in Iowa, North Dakota, and Idaho, that I know about, and probably several other places. (www.savetheworld.saltshaker. us/wiki/ND_Court_Gives_Moms_Fundamental_Right_to_Save_Themselves_from_their_Babies)
Here is an example of a clear exception:“The duty of a doctor is to save the life and health of both mother and child if possible. Separation of mother and child is justified when that will reduce danger to the mother. That will still give the child a chance to live who is old enough. A child not old enough will be at little greater risk of death outside the mother, while receiving responsible medical care, than inside a mother at risk of dying. A child separated to reduce danger to the child’s mother has a fundamental right to the same care as any other prematurely delivered baby.”
Not that confusion among doctors about how to save both mother and baby, without clear legal language, is significant, argues the Amicus Brief of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation filed in Dobbs v. Jackson:
In modern obstetrical practice, the physician treats two patients—the mother and her unborn baby—and strives to maximize and protect the health and well-being of both. Good medical practice requires this. It is rare that the interests of one of these patients, from a medical standpoint, conflicts with the other. Even in those instances where the mother’s condition may place her physical health at greater risk, the pregnancy can generally be managed satisfactorily with a successful outcome for both the mother and baby. In those very rare circumstances when this cannot be done, laws like Mississippi’s allow pregnancy terminations to take place in order to protect the mother.
….1. Basic medical texts, for decades, have made it clear that there are two patients that must be cared for in modern obstetrical practice. For example, in explaining the need for significant revisions to the 1980 edition of Williams Obstetrics, the authors stated: “Happily, we have entered an era in which the fetus can be rightfully considered and treated as our second patient. . . Fetal diagnosis and therapy have now emerged as legitimate tools the obstetrician must possess. Moreover, the number of tools the obstetrician can employ to address the needs of the fetus increases each year.” Jack A. Pritchard & Paul C. MacDonald, Williams Obstetrics, vii (16th Ed. 1980) (emphasis supplied).
A later edition made it even more obvious that obstetricians must be cognizant of the unborn baby as a separate entity when managing a pregnancy. It stated: Obstetrics is an unusual specialty of medicine. Practitioners of this art and science must be concerned simultaneously with the lives and well-being of two persons; indeed, the lives of two who are interwoven. F. Gary Cunningham, et al., Williams Obstetrics, vii (18th ed. 1989). In a chapter entitled “Techniques to Evaluate Fetal Health,” it was stated:
“Until relatively recently, the intrauterine sanctuary of the fetus was held to be inviolate. The mother was the patient to be cared for; the fetus was but another albeit transient, maternal organ. . . Indeed, the fetus is no longer regarded as a maternal appendage. . . . Instead, the fetus has achieved the status of the second patient, a patient who usually faces much greater risks of serious morbidity and mortality than does the mother.”The many advances in diagnosis and treatment that now clearly establish the fetus as a patient have also contributed remarkably to legal considerations involving the fetus. Fetal legal rights are emerging; for example, in some courts, the fetus has been allowed to file suit. Id at 277.
Obstetric ultrasound technology was in its infancy at the time of Roe, and was not widely used in the United States until well into the 1970’s. Malcolm Nicolson & John E.E. Fleming, Imaging and Imagining the Fetus 233 (2013). It has since given rise to whole new fields of medicine and top pediatric hospitals across the country regularly perform surgery on this second patient.2
Abortion proponents disregard these basic facts when they ignore the existence of the second patient within the womb and suggest that unborn children are just appendages of the mother to be discarded upon her request. In so doing, they suggest a return to an outmoded and discredited approach to pregnancy and obstetrical practice.
2. It is rare that the interests of one of these patients, from a medical standpoint, conflicts with the other. And, on those rare occasions when it does, the pregnancy can generally be successfully managed. So, medically speaking, abortion is almost never needed to manage a pregnancy. Honest abortion proponents long ago admitted to the overall safety of pregnancy and the lack of a need for abortion for medical reasons. - ↑ More about “A legislature’s balancing of their interests cannot, therefore, be reviewed by ‘strict scrutiny’.”
For an example of what “strict scrutiny” can do to a law limiting abortion to save moms from pregnancies that are developing into “medical emergencies”, see http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/ND_Court_Gives_ Moms_Fundamental_Right_to_Save_Themselves_from_their_Babies
From that article:The court held (concluded, ruled): “there is a fundamental right to an abortion in the limited instances of life-saving and health-preserving circumstances, and the statute is not narrowly tailored to satisfy strict scrutiny.”
Translation: the North Dakota Supreme Court said moms have a fundamental right to live and their lives are threatened when their pregnancy develops into a “medical emergency”, so any restriction on abortions to save them must be reviewed by “strict scrutiny”. That is, the restriction has to be the least restriction possible of their “fundamental right”, and it must effectively serve a “compelling government interest”.
The fundamental right of those babies to live is never mentioned, was therefore not weighed in the balance with mothers’ rights to live, and apparently was never brought up by the legislature, if we may trust the Court’s report of the legislature’s defense.
Background: The North Dakota Supreme Court on March 16, 2023 shot down a “trigger law” (passed in 2007, whose outlawing of abortion was set to be “triggered” by SCOTUS’ repeal of Roe) because doctors worried that they could not kill babies to save their mothers without uncertain consequences in court. Legislatures always have a moral responsibility to minimize legal uncertainties, (with “sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement”, Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357 (1983) But courts also have a moral responsibility to not add to any unavoidable uncertainties. (Laws should not be applied or interpreted in a way that produces an “absurd result” when a rational alternative is possible. Pacific Employers Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 306 U.S. 493 (1939)
The North Dakota court confused matters by reviewing the law by Strict Scrutiny, (a restriction of a fundamental right must be the least restriction possible that is necessary to achieve a compelling government interest), by calling the safety of mothers a fundamental right while ignoring the fundamental right of babies to life. See the North Dakota ruling at https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ North-Dakota-Supreme-Court-Order-PI.pdf See highlights of the ruling with my analysis at http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/ND_Court_Gives_Moms_Fundamental_ Right_to_Save_Themselves_from_their_Babies
In Iowa, an amicus brief of “Non-Iowa Abortion Care Providers” submitted in the review of an injunction against Iowa’s 2018 Heartbeat Law made the same argument, and added testimonies of doctors in neighboring states with similarly allegedly vague “life of the mother” exceptions. They moaned about leaving their patients with developing emergencies to go out into the hall to call lawyers to see if they could save their patients without going to jail. See the brief at www.iowacourts.gov/courtcases/18325/briefs/ 5800/embedBrief Because these testimonies were submitted in an amicus rather than a trial court, they could not be cross examined to establish whether their cases were true “life of the mother” situations, not to mention whether their medical credentials qualify them to provide better emergency care than just abortion, and whether their medical records are without scandal and fraud.
When the Iowa Supreme Court for the ?th time killed Iowa’s Heartbeat Law June 16, 2023, (with a tie vote that left the district court ruling standing) the “life of the mother” exception was not mentioned. But neither was the fact mentioned that babies of people are people with a constitutionally “protected” right to live. In any Court of Law or of Public Opinion, for as long as the fundamental right of babies to live is thought not worth establishing, the fundamental right of mothers to live will outweigh any “state interest in preserving life”. There will be no balance, no equal right of both to live.
If the Court ever reaches the merits of a law saving the lives of babies, it will be the prayer of babies that Iowa lawmakers will make it about, not some ephemeral “state interest”, but about babies’ God-given, “unalienable” right to live. - ↑ More about “...insufficiency of a ‘medical emergency’ exception from a general abortion ban [doesn’t] justify a court overturning the ban in the 99% of cases where no emergency is alleged.”
From the same article as Footnote #1 quoted:
The North Dakota Supreme Court ruled March 16, 2023 that mothers have a “fundamental right” to “abort” their babies to save their own lives, so therefore the state law outlawing all abortions needs to be put on hold until a clearer “life of the mother” exception can be added. Not added by the legislature, but added by the lower court, which the supreme court commissioned to work out the details.
The ruling makes zero mention of the fact that babies are people/humans. So what does that leave for a basis for babies' right to live?
Oh, wait, it doesn't talk about babies' right to live either. Corrected question: So what does that leave for a basis for moms' fundamental right to murder their babies? Why, if they've been murdering babies from half a century ago to a century and a half ago and farther back in time, in other words if baby murder is "well rooted in our history", then it's a fundamental right. That is THE TEST for whether something we get to do is a "fundamental right".
Never mind that by that test, we have a Fundamental Right to discriminate against free blacks, keep women from voting, work children 20 hours a day in dangerous mines and factories, and sell homemade "medicine" loaded with cocaine in traveling minstrel shows. Owning slaves is likewise "well rooted in our history".
Fortunately the ND Supreme Court isn't planning to overturn ALL of ND's abortion ban PERMANENTLY. Yet. Just for another few years while courts mess with it. Their discussion focuses on just the ban on abortions when a mother will likely die without one. That distinction - abortions allowed only to "save the life of the mother" - is clear in ND's history which shows that from ND's beginning, abortions were legal to save the life of the mother, while all other abortions were outlawed. But of the Supreme Court's many mentions of the fundamental right to an abortion, that caveat is omitted, and the Court is returning the issue to the lower court to hammer out details like that.
A huge opportunity for the devil is in the details about a woman's "health". We remember how "Doe v. Bolton" expanded the word to cover anything from a toothache to toenail rot. The law put on hold by this ruling has an exception for the life of the mother, which this Court said is too legally complicated, but this ruling adds protection of "health" to what it deems as a "fundamental right", without defining "health", and then tells the lower court to go ahead and figure it out. Never mind that abortion generally is no "fundamental right" according to Dobbs, surely the lower court will drive through the supreme court's green light as fast as it pleases.
This would be a really great time for ND prolife lawmakers to introduce a bill that includes the consensus of court-recognized fact finders that babies are people - unborn babies are legally recognizable as fully human, which makes killing them legally recognizable as murder, which no state can legalize.
This won't necessarily protect babies whose existence threatens their mothers' lives, because as the Court observes, self defense laws give us the right even to kill other people who are trying to kill us. (Although the Concurrence that made this point overlooked the fact that self defense laws give us that right when others are deliberately trying to kill or seriously injure us, not when the very existence of someone else who simply wants our love is what is threatening us.)
In any case a "life of the mother" exception is legally, morally, and so far as I can tell Biblically complicated and may or may not be affected by the unanimous finding of fact that babies are "human persons", as Dobbs called them. But that evidence is desperately needed in court to save babies whose existence does NOT threaten their mothers. - ↑ More about “Legislatures are better equipped to...secure the rights of all citizens....”
“Legislatures are equipped to deliberate about and secure the rights of all persons as they identify and specify the boundaries between rights....“In many respects, legislatures are better equipped for this task than courts, whose job is to secure the rights of the litigants who happen to appear in any case or controversy. The job of a court is to specify a right in a legal judgment resolving a dispute between two parties. To generalize that particular judgment, to make that right universal and absolute for all persons, carries the risk that the tribunal will unintentionally invite infringement of the rights of persons who are not parties to the litigation. Significantly, most constitutional abortion cases proceed without any involvement of the persons who are most interested in, and affected by, the outcome: expectant mothers, fathers, grandparents, physicians and other health care professionals who are called to deal with the fallout of abortions, and, critically, unborn human beings. By contrast, legislatures hear evidence and find facts about the rights of all interested persons.
“Furthermore, a lawmaker must fashion remedies and sanctions for rights infringements that are commensurate and responsive to the particular wrong. Because not all persons who contribute to a person’s death are equally culpable, legislatures justly distinguish between them. The sanction for reckless acts that cause death need not be as severe as the sanction for intentional homicide. Legislatures also reasonably take into account the circumstances of the person whose life is lost. For example, remedies for wrongful death may take into account a person’s stage of development and relationship to any dependents.
“....For example, the right to life remains inviolable and absolute though a legislature may choose to sanction those who are most culpable for its deprivation and not others
“Similarly, state legislatures have long recognized that abortionists are the true, culpable parties in an abortion. Mothers are often victims of coercion. And mothers suffer the consequences of the abortion procedure itself. For these and other reasons, legislatures may choose not to impose legal sanctions on them, notwithstanding that their unborn children have a right to live.
“The Roe Court failed to understand this. The Court looked to state laws that impose criminal sanctions on abortionists, rather than on the mothers themselves, and then erroneously inferred that the law is indifferent to the lives of the unborn. Roe, 410 U.S. at 157 n.54. ...”(From the amicus brief filed in Dobbs v. Jackson by 396 State Legislators from 41 States - www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185121/20210728125120809_Dobbs Amici brief_State Legislators_07272021.pdf)
- ↑ More about “SCOTUS never denied that state personhood laws are strong evidence in an abortion case.”
SCOTUS never said Personhood Laws are impotent. SCOTUS only said a personhood law by itself, without penalties, (that is, a law that says ‘babies are people, but we won’t stop their murderers’) doesn’t yet restrict abortion, so it can’t yet generate a case. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services 492 U.S. 490 (1989) did not say Missouri's personhood law had no power to topple Roe, but only “...until... courts have applied the [personhood] preamble to restrict appellees’ [abortionists] activities in some concrete way, it is inappropriate for federal courts to address its meaning.” - Webster, p. 491. (First paragraph)
15 pages later the principle was repeated:
“It will be time enough for federal courts to address the meaning of the [Personhood statement] should it be applied to restrict the activites of [the abortionists] in some concrete way.” Id at 506.
Similarly, Dobbs v. Jackson did not address whether Mississippi’s clear “personhood” declarations called for outlawing abortion in every state, because those declarations were not applied to any challenge to murdering those persons before 20 weeks, and because in oral arguments, Mississippi’s AG explicitly denied he was asking SCOTUS to outlaw abortion. The issue of whether babies are people who should never be murdered, at any age, was not before the court.
(When Justice Kavanaugh asked the AG, “And to be clear, you’re not arguing that the Court somehow has the authority to itself prohibit abortion or that this Court has the authority to order the states to prohibit abortion as I understand it, correct?” the AG answered, “Correct, Your Honor.”)
Far from treating a single state personhood law as impotent, SCOTUS said that were it coupled with a clear penalty, that “will be time enough to reexamine Roe, and to do so carefully”. Webster, Concurrence by O'Conner, Id. at 526. How much more the uncontradicted findings of 39 states are enough to outlaw abortion as thoroughly as slavery! - ↑ More about “That evidence is not mitigated by a ban’s exceptions.”
Evidence of Life is not disproved by an “exception...for the purpose of saving the life of the mother” and/or by not charging the mother with being a “principal or an accomplice” to murder, as Roe’s footnote 54 was generally interpreted, and as many prolifers still believe.
Although Roe is officially “overruled” by Dobbs v. Jackson, not every lie in it has been dislodged from prolife legal thinking, and there are still prolife lawmakers who are afraid to support any bill that fails to save every baby, believing that will be taken by baby killers as evidence that prolifers don’t really believe babies are fully human. This Finding is for them.
Another example of a Roe myth that still lives is the idea that babies aren’t real people because centuries ago, the penalty for murdering your baby was only serious after “quickening” (when mom can feel baby kicking). It’s not a myth exclusive to Roe. It is part of the doctrine of “Substantive Due Process”, an intimidating phrase used to empower courts to invent “rights” like the right to murder your baby, if they can pretend the right is “well rooted in history”.
All that is explained and criticized elsewhere in this document. See “How SCOTUS morphed the Constitution’s end of racial tyranny into its own tool of judicial tyranny in only five years // ‘Substantive Due Process’: how SCOTUS turned the Constitution’s Authority to Define Rights, and Congress’ 14th Amendment Authority to Enforce Rights, into its own authority to reclassify abominations as ‘rights’ ”. But as to whether it was even true that babies were historically considered not so human before quickening, Foundation for Moral Law, Lutherans for Life explains:
Quickening is different from viability; quickening is the time when the mother first feels the child move within her. One could be convicted of homicide for the killing of an unborn child, only if quickening had already taken place.
But this common law rule did not mean that the child became a person only at quickening or that there was a right to abortion before quickening. Rather, it was a procedural matter of proof. One can be guilty of homicide only if the homicide victim was alive at the time of the alleged killing, and at that stage in the development of the common law, medical science had no way of proving the child was alive until the mother had felt the child move within her. (Foundation for Moral Law, Lutherans for Life, amicus brief filed in Dobbs v. Jackson, https://storage.googleapis.com/msgsndr/JTZoYWv3fly6h Femb8mU/media/63b73813b7386028645df690.pdf)
Although the ideal of law is equal protection of all humans, human law is as imperfect as humans. The very legal, political, and Biblical necessity of “innocent until proved guilty” illustrates the inability of human courts to equally protect every human, without that inability proving crime victims are not fully human!
Practical reasons to prosecute abortionists but not moms are (1) to get moms to testify against abortionists, and (2) the greater ease for juries of imputing culpability to adult doctors than to mothers suffering varying degrees of youth, deception (by culture, schools, pastors, and judges) and pressure (by family and fathers).
Legal and moral reasons for a “life of the mother” exception are that (1) while babies have a fundamental right to live, so do mothers; and (2) while we are inspired by people who give their lives for others, we can’t require them to by law. Even our Good Samaritan laws, requiring people at accident scenes to help, are sparse and inconsistent.
It would be hypocritical to charge aborting moms with being accessories to murder, without first charging judges. The degree to which laws fail to give “equal protection” to all humans is no evidence of the degree to which people are not humans. Such a legal theory is absurd, cannot be taken seriously, merits no attention as it faults laws for being no better than is humanly possible, and is unknown outside Footnote 54 of Roe v. Wade.
Unknown outside Roe, that is, unless you count the “Substantive Due Process” nonsense that courts should call mass murder of a particular class of people a “constitutional right” if it is “deeply rooted in American tradition”. Which implies dehumanization of the class of people so targeted. Yet not even that foolish analysis goes quite so far as to claim to prove said class is not human. Although in “Operation Rescue” cases where people blocked doors of Houses of Abortion, lower courts have ruled that the legality of mass murder (abortion) makes the humanity of those murdered constitutionally irrelevant.
Are you following this reasoning? It took me years to wind my way through it this far. Is it as goofy as I describe it, or do I misunderstand something?
- ↑