Statement 6 + Footnotes
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Statement of Facts #6 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) 10:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Finding #6: The full humanity of a tiny physical body is hard for many to grasp. But what separates us from animals isn’t physical, and has no known preconscious stage.
The Supreme Court has never disagreed with Roe v. Wade’s definition of “person” as including “infused with a soul”. [1] “Consciousness” is another word for what distinguishes us from animals, that has no physical explanation. Dictionaries list several differences. [2]
Unlike animals whose behavior is consistent within breeds, indicating a lack of meaningful conscious “choice”, we can choose between widely different behaviors, from that of angels to that of demons. We can choose contrary to our own physical needs: we can sacrifice our own interests for another, [3] which is how John 15:13 defines “love”. Or we can choose to destroy our bodies to serve hate. [4]
Such differences are what justifies greater legal protection of humans than of animals. [5]
Since a “soul” without consciousness has never been theorized and can’t be imagined,
</ref>More about “a ‘soul’ without consciousness has never been theorized and can’t be imagined”
I can’t decide whether to acknowledge, as an exception to this statement, this statement in Wikipedia’s article on “Ensoulment”: “Aristotle's epigenetic view of successive life principles (‘souls’) in a developing human embryo—first a vegetative and then a sensitive or animal soul, and finally an intellective or human soul, with the higher levels able to carry out the functions also of the lower levels—was the prevailing view among early Christians, including Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome.” The statement is followed by two notes saying “need quotation to verify”, and two more saying “failed verification”. But at least whoever posted the claim in Wikipedia theorized it, although I am skeptical whether anyone can actually imagine a pre-conscious soul.
Subsequently the article alleges that the Greek version of the Old Testament – the Septuigint, which was relied on by early Christians, clearly translates Exodus 21:21-22 as if causing death of an unborn baby triggers only a fine – not execution of the offender. So “the LXX could easily have been used to distinguish human from non-human fœtuses and homicidal from non-homicidal abortions, yet the early Christians, until the time of Augustine in the fifth century, did not do so.”
Wikipedia’s article on Aristotle doesn’t mention the claim about pre-conscious souls.</ref>
the consensus of fact finders is, in effect, that abortion kills babies with conscious souls. The lack of any physical explanation for a conscious soul rules out any basis for inferring immaturity of consciousness from physical immaturity.
Courts require witnesses to “affirm” that they will “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. America’s definition of “establishment of religion” must allow Americans in every venue, including courts, to tell the whole truth – to affirm reality. Courts must stop punishing people for telling the whole truth – in any venue – just because the whole truth favors God.
Courts must stop censoring a whole category of witnesses to the full humanity of unborn babies. Courts can’t “reject evidence as cumulative when it goes to the very root of the matter in controversy or relates to the main issue, the decision of which turns on the weight of the evidence.” [6] Many “jurors” in this “case” (voters and lawmakers) are persuaded by witnesses who are falsely ruled “irrelevant”.
The consensus of Roe, of dictionaries, and of common knowledge about the differences between us and animals that have no known pre-conscious stage is consistent with the claim of Psalm 22:10 that an unborn baby could place his trust in God.
It is consistent with the report in Luke 1:44 that a baby at 6 months heard a righteous voice [and/or felt the righteous Presence of God] and responded with joy,8 [7] a response not everybody chooses, indicating that even the capacity for choosing between good and evil precedes birth.
Roe v Wade was not out of line to “hold” that “those trained in... theology” who study souls, as well as doctors who study bodies, were appropriately consulted by SCOTUS to clarify who to count as human with an unalienable right to life.9 [8]
All this testimony indicates that when a baby is killed by dismemberment, acid, or sucking out the brain, it is not some non-sentient animal, some pre-human “potential life”, but a self-aware conscious soul that feels the pain, understands the cruelty, and if out-of-body near-death experiences are real, sees who is doing it, along with God.
Even considering the body only, there is no objective line between birth and conception distinguishing “humans” from “nonpersons”, or between “meaningful life” and life which courts are free to terminate.10 [9] Without such a line, there can be no stage of gestation at which killing a baby can be objectively distinguished from murder. No baby is safe while that line remains arbitrary.11 [10] The failure of some people, and of some religions, to grasp the full humanity of babies at any given stage is a dangerous basis for permitting killing, since as many fail to grasp the full humanity of many groups of born persons.
This mountain of consensus is not “canceled” by the fact that some religions justify abortion by claiming that “souls” do not enter babies until long after fertilization, or even long after birth.12 [11] Their testimony need not be censored along with dismissing them for irrelevance, but their context should not be brushed aside when that context is a pattern of dehumanization, with unequal rights and laws if not extermination, of entire classes of millions of other people.13 [12] American law rejects unequal law for disfavored groups, and will appropriately ignore rationales for unequal rights, while consulting the religion from which equal rights entered American law. The 1st Amendment prohibition against “establishment of religion” can’t mean the Right to Life and Equal Protection of the Laws must end because they establish rights unique to the Bible while hostile to other religions.
Nor can it require censorship of truth because the truth favors God and the Bible.
There can be “free exercise” of religions which do not equally reverence all human life only to the extent their “exercise” does not threaten the rights of others or violate the laws enacted to protect them.14 [13]
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 SCOTUS never denied that state personhood laws are strong evidence in an abortion case.
Statement_10_+_Footnotes “Exceptions” do NOT Mitigate or Undermine Personhood Assertions.
Statement_11_+_Footnotes The 14th Amendment requires this state, as every state, to thoroughly outlaw abortion. Restrictions of abortions for the purpose of saving mothers cannot be reviewed by strict scrutiny,1 even though the safety of mothers is a fundamental right, because the safety of their babies is an equally fundamental right. Legislatures can best delineate the most life-saving balance of harms.
Statement_12_+_Footnotes Judicial Interference with Constitutional Obligations is Impeachable.
FOOTNOTES
- ↑
More about “Part of Roe’s definition of ‘person’ was ‘infused with a soul’.”
“These disciplines [philosophy, theology, civil law, canon law] variously approached the question [of “when life begins”] in terms of the point at which the embryo or fetus became ‘formed’ or recognizably human, or in terms of when a ‘person’ came into being, that is, infused with a ‘soul’ or ‘animated.’” Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113, 133 - ↑
More about “Dictionaries list several differences (between us and animals).”
Judges look everywhere but in a dictionary to learn what Americans who ratified the 14th Amendment understood the word “person” to mean. In 1868, Webster’s dictionary, published in 1828, was the only American dictionary.https://webstersdictionary1828.com. “Person: 1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature; the body when dead is not called a person. It is applied alike to a man, woman or child. A person is a thinking intelligent being.
“Child: 1. A son or a daughter; a male or female descendant, in the first degree; the immediate progeny of parents; applied to the human race, and chiefly to a person when young. The term is applied to infants from their birth...To be with child [means] to be pregnant. Genesis 16:11, Gen 29:36.”
One of the modern dictionaries listed at freedictionary.com includes “soul” as part of a definition of “person” or of “human”. It lists four other qualities unique to humans: we are conscious, we can reason, we have a sense of morality, and a “mind”.Collins English Dictionary, 2014.
Person: 1. an individual human being
5. (Philosophy) philosophy a being characterized by consciousness, rationality, and a moral sense, and traditionally thought of as consisting of both a body and a mind or soul.
Human: 3. having the attributes of man as opposed to animals, divine beings, or machines: human failings.
noun: a human being; person
A “person” is a “human”, distinguished from animals by “capacity for speech”, “Kindness” to a degree beyond the capacity of animals, and “weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans”. This last phrase is ironic, since humans are worlds ahead of animals in their capacity! How are we more “fragile”, “imperfect”, or “weak”? Not in any serious physical sense; yet the ability of humans to feel these things, which we can’t imagine any animal feeling, points to an amazing quality of Consciousness.Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, 2010: Person: “A living human.”
Human: Noun. 1. A member of the primate genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other apes by a large brain and the capacity for speech.
Adjective: 2. Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals: an act of human kindness.
3. Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans: a mistake that shows he’s only human; human frailty.
Collins English Dictionary, 2014
1. aware of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
2. fully aware of something: not conscious of the passage of time....
4. known to oneself; felt: conscious guilt.
Conscious, aware, cognizant refer to a realization or recognition of something about oneself or one's surroundings.... to be conscious of one’s own inadequacy.... implies having knowledge about some object or fact based on reasoning or information
We can “think”, in a way animals can’t; in this sense, “thought” means “consciousness”. We are “aware”.We have “free will” (Even Calvinists admit of a kind of human “choice” absent in animals). We can “give value” to an idea, meaning to prioritize – to choose.American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2016
Conscious: aware; capable of thought or will: a conscious decision; cognizant: She was conscious of the stranger standing close to her.
2. Capable of thought, will, or perception: the development of conscious life on the planet.
3. Subjectively known or felt: conscious remorse.
4. Intentionally conceived or done; deliberate:
b. aware of one’s surroundings, one’s own thoughts and motivations, etc
2. a. aware of and giving value or emphasis to a particular fact or phenomenon:
Our “soul” is “capable of moral judgment”. If animals have such a capacity, they must be swimming in perpetual guilt for what they do to each other! Our “soul” is also widely believed to survive the death of our bodies. </blockquote>Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree 2013 by Mary Embree
Soul: a. A part of humans regarded as immaterial, immortal, separable from the body at death, capable of moral judgment, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
b. This part of a human when disembodied after death.
American Heritage Dictionary 2016
Soul: 1. (Theology) the spirit or immaterial part of man, the seat of human personality, intellect, will, and emotions, regarded as an entity that survives the body after death.
2. (Theology) Christianity the spiritual part of a person, capable of redemption from the power of sin through divine grace
Collins English Dictionary 2014
1. the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical.
2. the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come.
3. the disembodied spirit of a deceased person.
Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002
Soul: 1. The vital principle or animating force within living beings: breath, divine spark, élan vital, life force, psyche, spirit, vital force, vitality.
2. The essential being of a person, regarded as immaterial and immortal: spirit.
3. A member of the human race: being, body, creature, homo, human, human being, individual, life, man, mortal, party, person, personage.
4. The most central and material part:</blockquote> - ↑ More about “Love, as defined by John 15:13, [means] to sacrifice one’s interests for another.” John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
- ↑ More about “we can choose to destroy our bodies to serve hate”
Our Capacity to destroy our own bodies – to choose against our own physical needs, proves the part of us which is ultimately in control is not our physical bodies. Our “wills”, or “minds”, or “souls”, behave as if they came from another dimension than the physical, and treat our bodies as their tool, not their master.
This is true whether our anti-body choices are motivated by hate as in the terrorist facing the “glory” of facing a hail of bullets, or by shame as in the Judas who sees his crime and can’t bear the shame, by lack of understanding of the meaning of life as in the wealthy pop idol who drowns himself in drugs to deaden his imagined meaninglessness, or the love of the Christian martyr who shares love and meaning with enemies of love and meaning known to torture anyone who talks about it.
Suicide verses:
2 Samuel 17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.
Matthew 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
A famous “choice” verse:
Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. - ↑ More about “...greater legal protection of humans than of animals...”
Although most of our laws protect humans more than animals, among irrational exceptions is the penalty for taking a single eagle egg compared with the penalty for an abortionist who has murdered 60,000 babies over his career, as late term abortionist George Tiller had claimed on his website before he was shot to death by Scott Roeder, who is now serving a 25 year prison sentence for it.
Though two consecutive Attorney Generals tried to prosecute him, courts threw it out. But the clear penalty for taking an eagle egg: “A violation of the Act can result in a fine of $100,000 ($200,000 for organizations), imprisonment for one year, or both, for a first offense. Penalties increase substantially for additional offenses, and a second violation of this Act is a felony.” https://www.fws.gov/law/bald-and-golden-eagle-protection-act - ↑ More about “Courts can’t “reject evidence as cumulative when...the decision...turns on the weight of the evidence.”
“When Does the Number of Experts Used By One Side Become Cumulative?” by Christine Funk, May 25, 2020 (www.expertinstitute.com/ resources/insights/when-does-the-number-of-experts-used-by-one-side-become-cumulative/)
Excerpts: (In Shallow v. Follwell,) (https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/ supreme-court/2018/sc96901.html) Plaintiffs argued that the testimony of the four experts was cumulative, as the testimony of each expert overlapped that of some or all of the other testifying experts. ...
Evidence is relevant “if it tends to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” However, courts must still engage in a balancing test to determine whether the relevant evidence poses the risk of unfair prejudice, cumulativeness, confusion of the issues, misleading the jury, or is an undue delay or waste of time. Where the cost of admitting otherwise relevant evidence “substantially outweighs” the benefits, the evidence should be excluded.
...[Evidence is “cumulative”] when evidence “relates to a matter so fully and properly proved by other testimony as to take it out of the area of serious dispute.” [But courts can’t] “to reject evidence as cumulative when it goes to the very root of the matter in controversy or relates to the main issue, the decision of which turns on the weight of the evidence.”
...An excessive number of expert witnesses can create the risk that the trier of fact will simply resolve inconsistencies in expert opinions by merely counting the number of witnesses each side calls, rather than providing due consideration to the credibility and quality of each expert’s opinion. While not the only measure, one measure of prejudicial testimony is where the testimony tends to “lead the jury to decide the case on some basis other than the established propositions of the case.” federal rule, which states:The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.
Because what is and what is not considered cumulative is, by and large, a [subjective] judgment call, attorneys and experts would be wise to delineate their differences for the court prior to the beginning of testimony. - ↑
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