Answers to Lawmakers' Objections

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This article was started by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 04:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC). Interaction from other writers will be distinguished from my writing with horizontal lines above and below. Your response to anything you read here is most welcome. Please add your response next to what you are responding to. If your reaction is not to any specific part of this article, please add general comments on the "Discussion" page.

Introduction

So far the objections to the plan of "How States can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts" are not that the plan is legally incorrect or politically unrealistic. Rather, they are mostly justifications for not studying it. If a challenge emerges to the legal correctness of the plan, that will be addressed first. The lawmakers who raised these objections are not identified except by code.

"Your plan might work where courts have not made abortion a fundamental right. Not in this state."

(This reason to not study the opportunity to end legal abortion, in a state whose courts made abortion a "fundamental right", was given by ER. ER further said it doesn't matter that state courts are subject to the U.S. Supreme Court; they will do whatever they want anyway.)

Response: The same evidence which no federal judge can squarely address and keep abortion legal, will also force any judge in any state, with or without a "fundamental right to abortion" precedent, to acknowledge the "collapse" of abortion's legality. Let me explain. It is not necessary, although it wouldn't hurt, to first have a "no right to abortion" state constitutional amendment.

State courts really are subject to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is rebellious enough to declare themselves the masters of legislatures. This they dare to do by alleged authority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Without that, they don't have sufficient cultural capital to declare themselves supreme over legislatures AND SCotUS. (Supreme Court of the United States.)

Roe v. Wade's holding, that once we find out babies are people then "of course" legal abortion must "collapse", is just as binding precedent as its holding that until we find that out, a woman's right to manage her own health is unmitigated by any right of any baby to live.

But that ruthlessly repeated "collapse" clause invokes a greater authority than SCotUS itself. By saying "of course", Roe concedes that even if SCotUS had never said it, it would still be true, and obviously so. Once some state finally places before courts all of the court-recognized evidence that babies are people, establishing conclusively that abortion is not just murder but is legally recognizable as murder, no court will be able to keep it legal without undermining its own reason to exist.

From page 37, "How States can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts":

As ignorance passes, so must abortion. Abortion’s legality and aura of “constitutional protection” can continue only in the absence of this “establishment” – only as long as uncertainty is alleged whether the unborn babies of human mothers are humans.

Roe’s “of course” acknowledges that it is obvious that abortion’s legality cannot survive knowing it is murder. That is, alleged ignorance cannot rationally or legally be made an obstacle to letting fact finders “establish” this fact. If there is evidence, it must be heard. Because it is unthinkable that we would knowingly want the blood of innocent human lives on our hands. So if the babies of human mothers turn out to be humans, we need to protect them.

Many abortion supporters hope, and prolifers fear, that even after our nation’s laws and courts officially acknowledge that abortion is the legal equivalent of murder – that the babies abortion kills are humans/persons, it will be possible, even likely, for other rationales to replace Roe’s rationale – Roe’s official ignorance about “when life begins”.

Appendix G deals with some of them inside and outside case law and shows this is simply impossible. It is just as obvious today as when Roe’s “collapse” clause began with “of course”, that SCOTUS can’t decide who lives and dies as a question so exclusively of law as to render irrelevant whether SCOTUS’ rulings protect murder.

The 14th Amendment “equal protection of the laws” is for all who are in fact humans/persons. Had it been only for those who are legally recognized as human, we could still have slavery simply by declining to legally recognize a discrete class of people as fully human.

From page 66:

Possibly what motivated the Roe justices to say they found it relevant to consult theologians, is that a relevant, practical problem is created for courts by the conflict between Imago Deo and logic alone.

Faith looks at this virtually unrestrained killing of lives whose humanity logic struggles to grasp, and sees genocide. It sees the blood of 60 million slain running down the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. This dangerously erodes public confidence in American justice. The only reason "we the people" created courts was to prosecute crime. Murder is the ultimate crime, and genocide is the ultimate murder. To the extent judges promote genocide, and especially after it becomes clear that is what is done, judges undermine the reason for their existence.

Fortunately the American legal system is able to balance doubt and faith and allow America to move forward, although no one is happy that it takes so long.

People debate facts and faith. Their debate spills into courts. America's court-recognized fact finders rule. As the facts become clearer to everybody, there is a point of decision whether to ignore reality or accept and accommodate it. The process of legal recognition through fact finders is for a nation like the conscience is for an individual, from which courts stray at peril to their own credibility.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created with unalienable rights...life...."

The "self evident" status of our fundamental "rights" establishes the role of popular understanding in legal reasoning. Rights are the Gift of God, our Declaration says. But in few nations during few centuries have they had the support of popular understanding. Popular understanding of our rights, which can exist only to the extent of reverence for Imago Deo, acts as a nation's acceptance of God's Gift. Popular understanding is not to be ignored. Not to be dismissed as irrelevant. Without it, no rights are safe.

No Roe backup is possible. Several wannabe replacement rationales wait in the wings to take Roe’s place when it “collapses”. 12 of them are addressed in Appendix G. None of them can survive “establishment” that all unborn babies of humans are humans/persons.

“Indeed, our decision in United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62 (1971), inferentially is to the same effect, for we would not have indulged in statutory interpretation favorable to abortion in specified circumstances if the necessary consequence was the termination of life entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection.” – Roe v. Wade at 159.

In oral arguments in Roe v. Wade, Justice Potter Stewart asked Sarah Weddington “If it were established that an unborn fetus is a person, you would have an almost impossible case here, would you not?” Weddington audibly laughed and acknowledged “I would have a very difficult case.” Stewart pursued, “This would be the equivalent to after the child was born...if the mother thought it bothered her health having the child around, she could have it killed. Isn’t that correct?” Weddington answered, “That’s correct.”

This exchange is what presumably provoked Justice Blackmun to write “[If the] suggestion of personhood is established, the case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”

....There is only one skeletal sustaining principle...in Roe, to which a succession of rationales may attach in turn: alleged uncertainty whether the unborn babies of humans are human.

This alleged uncertainty is articulated in Roe’s “collapse” clause where it is explicitly identified as Roe’s sustaining principle, in the sense that without it, Roe’s holding cannot stand.

This uncertainty as a matter of law cannot still seriously be alleged. Granting that the unborn babies of humans are humans, making their killing the legal equivalent of murder, will this Court still insist their murder is some kind of “private and personal right”, a “sacred choice” with which courts and lawmakers ought not interfere? Once this “outer shell” of alleged uncertainty who is human “collapses”, no rationale can stand.

"We are already paying for legal minds to work on it."

(This reason not to look into the opportunity to completely end legal abortion was given by RGC.)

Response: A state lawmaker doesn’t want any information about how to end legal abortion because “we are paying lawyers to figure this out?” What is scary about that statement?

This man is a “Law Maker”. How happy can we be that a law maker is comfortable understanding less about law than a lawyer?

A judge’s role is to understand law only enough to apply it, not enough to write it. A lawyer’s job is only to bend the law to his personal interests. A Law Maker’s job is to write laws which can’t be bent for personal interests, and which can be sensibly applied to life situations.

We are all human, not knowing everything, so it is understandable that a law maker might know less about some areas than others. But this lawmaker doesn’t merely admit how intimidated he is, thinking he cannot understand the laws he enacts as well as a lawyer; he abdicates any responsibility to learn any more than he already knows! He has hired a lawyer to study so he doesn’t have to, so there is no need for him to take his precious time to examine the research I offer him.

Furthermore, it cannot be that any other human, than the one he has hired, may have valuable information on the subject. It is a waste of his effort to even try to understand what he has hired a lawyer to understand.

Not that he is less responsible than the rest of us; he merely articulates what probably most Christians feel. Intimidated. Not qualified. Therefore, not responsible.

Creepy, that not feeling qualified to understand law until a lawyer tells you what it means seems somehow irrelevant to the struggle of so many activists to become Law Makers!

But just as creepy that the rest of us feel so little responsibility to even try to understand law and lawmaking yet without any sense that our competence to elect lawmakers is thereby diminished!

The fact is the Rule of Law requires all of us to think for ourselves at least a little. To the extent we allow ourselves to be intimidated from even trying to question the experts, or from looking for better solutions than the old familiar, comfortable, official solutions which do not work as well as anyone wants, then even if we hire a lawyer to think for us, how will we trust the very lawyer we hired, when an EXALTED JUDGE rules that your LAWYER is wrong?

Even when you hire a lawyer, you need to understand your case as well as you can, or you won’t have any idea whether your lawyer is even doing what you want, and frankly, your lawyer won’t know either.

One other problem is that even if the Law Giver Himself, Jesus, were the one hired by a bunch of lawmakers who expected Jesus to do all their thinking for them, so that we could be confident that everything He advised was a 100% answer to everyone’s prayers, Jesus would still face the resistance of lawmakers who don’t understand what He offers, and who therefore will not support it. Two examples of God having to diminish the blessings He wanted to give mankind are 1 Samuel 8 and Matthew 19:8. By the same principle, any expert advising lawmakers must consider not just what bills should pass but what bills will pass, given not just the resistance of ideological enemies but the mental inertia of friends.

Civilization: specialists serving each other. Civilization is a structure made of of specialties; we develop our own area of expertise and serve others, as others with their specialties serve us. But whether we are hiring an electrician, carpenter, computer geek, or auto repairman, to the extent we don’t understand what we are asking them to do, we are at the mercy of both their integrity and their competence, and moreover, our lack of understanding will create many problems for which we will have to hire them back again and again.

In the case of abortion, law and precedents are so tangled up with twisted rulings which people who know better have been too intimidated to plainly expose, for so long, that the only way to unravel Mr. Death is for a lot of prolifers to jump off the fence about what certain plain words mean, so they can recognize, in significant numbers, the next time judges ignore plain evidence and law, and hold them accountable.

God calls us to think, decide, and act for ourselves. Christianity is a thinking man’s religion. Proverbs is a 31-chapter call to seek wisdom.

Proverbs 4:5 Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. 6 Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. 7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. 8 Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. 9 She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee.

Proverbs 8:1 Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? 2 She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. 3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. 4 Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. 5 O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. 6 Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. 7 For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

By contrast, Hindus don’t think anything is “true”, but rather, all is “illusion”. The goal of their meditation is to remove all cogent thought from their minds.

Ancient Greeks, observing how persuasively “rhetoric” is employed by politicians to promote lies, asked with Pilate, “What is ‘truth’?”

Moslems establish what is “true” by beheading anyone who tries to submit "insulting" evidence.

The Loveliness of Truth. Millions of Christians truly “love” (Proverbs 4:6) truth so much that it is harder for them to renounce it than to bear being tortured to death. Even though no man knows all truth! We Christians, many of us, are willing to die for devotion to the little glimpse of truth we have, even though many of our questions remain unanswered!

Jesus told Thomas, John 20:29 “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Thomas had not lacked for evidence. A man born blind, seeing; a stormy sea walked on; 10,000 or more fed from a single lunch box; three dead people raised to life! Yet Thomas was determined to stay on his safe comfortable fence, about whether Jesus was actually alive, until every last question had been answered – until every last excuse for doubt was vaporized.

Why did Jesus say people are “happy” (the meaning of “blessed”) who don’t stay on their fence that long? Why does God especially value the willingness of people to jump off the fence between conflicting positions before every last question is answered?

The evidence that Jesus died and rose again is overwhelming, but only for those willing to look at, and think about, the evidence. (For example.) The fact that Jesus did that, and no one else did, proves that what Jesus says about God, and about what happens beyond death, is more reliable than what anyone else says. But it only proves that to those who think about that evidence.

Why does God want us to think? Why did God leave Adam and Eve alone with the devil, or at least so they thought? Why wasn’t God right there visibly, refuting the devil – better yet, silencing if not killing him? Why does God leave our faith at the mercy of our thinking?

A condition of Heaven is helping the least of Jesus’ brethren.

Matthew 25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:....45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

Jesus’ brethren are destitute and tyrannized partly because of natural conditions, and partly because of evil within humans. Delivering the destitute is therefore as complicated as humans are. Since we are humans that means delivering those in need stretches us to our full capacity. It requires thinking. It requires sorting through the evidence for and against each step of how to proceed.

The American model for Christian activism is half a dozen people per issue per state becoming expert on an issue, sending out fundraising letters with no more wisdom than will fit in four pages, in order to get salaries so the half dozen can keep studying, but who are too busy to process the flood of suggestions they receive from people who are not credentialed, qualified, certified, official experts.

This system rules out better solutions than the old familiar, comfortable, official solutions which do not work as well as anyone wants. But it is the preferred system. It has a very important advantage.

The Advantage of old, tested, official, failed solutions. This system spares most people from responsibility for deep, independent thought. Deep thinking – especially when the only people it benefits is other people – is costly.

Even when we are in the best of health, deep thought can be as physically exhausting as heavy manual labor. When we are sick, or in pain, the very idea of thinking deeply just for the benefit of others can be quite offensive.

Independent thinking, by definition, is lonely. It separates us from friends and even, sadly, sometimes, family. Matthew 19:29, Luke 14:26. (The Greek word μισει translated “hate”, means “love less”.) To independently understand some truth which is critical to helping others, and then to articulate it openly, both because you love truth and because you want to bless others, makes you the target of those who want to continue oppressing those you want to help, as well as the target of those who share your concern for the oppressed but are not ready to take the action which your truths demand.

That’s why God values those who are ready to jump off their fences and help, without waiting until reality sends fire ants up every last board. God wants Heaven full of people who love each other so much they are willing to suffer when that will help.

The Solution to Old, Tested, Failed Solutions. God offers a solution in one word: in Greek, He wrote the word, εκκλεσιαν. We translate the word “church”, but we define the word quite differently.

By the word, we today mean a large crowd gathered to hear one man speak, where decisions are rarely made by the group, nor action taken whose effects reach very far beyond the group. For example, action needed to deliver those being led away to slaughter with the blessing of government, Proverbs 24:10-12, may not be addressed, nor disagreement resolved through reasoning, nor action steps strategized on church premises, because that is both “politics” and “controversial”.

By contrast, the Greek word εκκλεσιαν meant, to Greeks, the gatherings of all the people of the city for the sole purpose of making political decisions as a body, with no single voice dominating the rest. This view of εκκλεσιαν is supported by an honest reading of 1 Corinthians 14, the Bible’s most detailed description of the format of a worship service, in which seven different verses call upon “all” to verbally contribute.

Obviously, were this what we mean by “church” today, the world would be blessed by a forum where real solutions would be discussed, vetted, perfected, and implemented, along with the personal spiritual development necessary to shine Light out where it is darkest. Fellowship would become a laboratory where participants could practice reasoning with each other in love, building the relationship skills needed to heal marriages, and to reason with unbelievers to bring them into the fold. “Church” would become CHURCH, a lighthouse for the land, an engine of healing for the culture.

Meanwhile. Until that next step in the progress of Daniel’s “stone...cut out without hands” (Daniel 2:34 – compare with Luke 22:25-27) takes root, consider that my book, “How States can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts” may not be the only original idea or solution offered by Christians struggling to get their solutions looked at by the very people praying for them.

Consider, when someone offers you an opportunity that is so close to matching your bravest prayers that you are suspicious that it is “too good to be true”, that God explicitly promises happy endings that are “too good” to believe, but which are indeed true. Romans 8:28, 1 Corinthians 2:9. Be suspicious, instead, that you and your friends may be rejecting God’s answers to your very own boldest prayers, just because they are gift wrapped in hard work, a little persecution, or are delivered by a messenger you would be ashamed to bring to your country club.

You say you don’t know that the solution being offered to you will work? Until you have actually studied it enough to be certain it will not work, and cannot be made to work with some attention and prayer, you may be frustrating God’s efforts to bless you.

Get off the fence. Open it. Test it. See if it is real. Think for yourself. If the experts aren’t paying attention to it, find out if they have good reason, or are merely suffering from mental inertia.

That is a process that will expose you to a lot of nonsense, but at least you will thereby confirm that it is nonsense. That is also the process by which you will finally recognize God’s answer to your prayers – the means to finally bring down the mountains of evil (Matthew 21:21-22) that have tempted you to ask why a “God of Love” would allow them. You will learn the answer to that question: God has left them there for you to have something to pull down, to fill your own life with meaning.