StarNews August 2022 Op-Ed
Here is the OP-ED from the August, 2022 Star News by WGRTL President Duane Hack.
Another historic day occurred in the war for life in Georgia on July 20th, 2022. The federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction against HB 481, the LIFE Act, AKA the “Heartbeat Bill” and HB 481 went into effect immediately! Georgia law previously allowed abortions within 20 weeks of pregnancy. HB 481 will ban most abortions about the 6th week, which is approximately when cardiac activity can be detected via ultrasound. Rape and incest were added as exceptions to the law, as long as a police report is filed. In addition, later abortions are permissible if there is a risk or serious medical condition pertaining to the mother.
GRTL and WGRTL were not in favor with the inclusion of rape and incest in HB 481, as we believe that ALL LIVES MATTER, are a creation of God from point of conception to natural death. Rape and Incest creates a sub class of individuals that are now deemed as “less than human” due to the way they were conceived. The preborn babe in the womb “receives the death penalty for someone else’s action. They have to pay with their life for the sin of Father!”
What HB 481 does do is brings to light a point that GRTL and WGRTL have been proclaiming for over 50 years… that the babe in the womb is and should be considered a “person” and have rights declared in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution!
In 1973 Justice Harry Blackmon wrote this opinion supporting his decision to vote in favor of the “Roe vs Wade” legalizing abortion on demand:
“If the suggestion of Personhood of the pre-born is established; the abortions rights case (Roe v Wade) of course collapses. For the right of the fetus to life is guaranteed specifically by the 14th Amendment of the constitution…:
“Nor shall any state deprive any person of Life, Liberty or Prosperity, without due process of the law”
One has to beg the question: “If the babe in the womb is not a Person, than what it is?”
But Dobbs vs. Casey, Roe vs Wade victories for the pro-life movement are not the end of the pro-life battles. Yes, it represents the crowning achievement for a generation of conservative lawyers and prolife advocates who built a movement to countermand mid-century judicial excess and, above all, overturn Roe. As Abraham Lincoln argued in his 1854 Peoria speech, the relevant moral and legal question in the antebellum slavery debate was whether a black American "is not or is a man"; so, too, is the relevant moral and legal question in the abortion debate whether the unborn child is not or is a natural person.
We know the biological answer to that question: Emphatically Yes. Fortunately, a proper interpretation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, with its sweeping language securing the "equal protection of the laws" for "any person," codifies that intuition into our national legal charter. Because the unborn child is a natural legal person—a homicide statute that protects born persons but not unborn persons necessarily violates the Constitution's equal protection guarantee.
A prime example of protection of the born and unborn person is currently found in law today. Should an individual be found guilty of a DUI and during a driving accident kills both the pregnant driver or passenger of that vehicle who is pregnant, the DUI individual is charged with two homicides, 1st degree vehicular homicide to the mother and 1st degree vehicular feticide to the child.
Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs actually hints at this understanding of 14th Amendment personhood. Dobbs "sharply distinguishe[d]" other cases on which Roe and Casey relied based on the reality that "abortion destroys what those decisions called out “potential life” and what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an '”unborn human being.'" In other words, Dobbs rejected Planned Parenthood's noxious "clump of cells" disinformation and candidly acknowledged the moral existence of the unborn child.
The Dobbs ruling brings us closer to the existence of constitutional personhood. The hurdle is not one of moral, biological, or constitutional truth, but rather one of fortitude and sheer willpower.
In an 1858 address, Abraham Lincoln warned that "a house divided against itself, cannot stand." A patchwork federalism approach—what Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's frequent 1858 debate opponent, appealed to as "popular sovereignty"—to such a profound moral question as abortion is unsustainable. The United States could not endure "permanently half slave and half free." So too can we not endure a regime under which vulnerable unborn children could be legally protected in Texas, but not in California.
We are thank and praise God for the Dobbs and Roe v. Wade decisions. But for our generation of abortion abolitionists, the fight is not over until every unborn child in America is protected during pregnancy and provided for after birth…by love and by law.
Another historic day occurred in the war for life in Georgia on July 20th, 2022. The federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction against HB 481, the LIFE Act, AKA the “Heartbeat Bill” and HB 481 went into effect immediately! Georgia law previously allowed abortions within 20 weeks of pregnancy. HB 481 will ban most abortions about the 6th week, which is approximately when cardiac activity can be detected via ultrasound. Rape and incest were added as exceptions to the law, as long as a police report is filed. In addition, later abortions are permissible if there is a risk or serious medical condition pertaining to the mother.
GRTL and WGRTL were not in favor with the inclusion of rape and incest in HB 481, as we believe that ALL LIVES MATTER, are a creation of God from point of conception to natural death. Rape and Incest creates a sub class of individuals that are now deemed as “less than human” due to the way they were conceived. The preborn babe in the womb “receives the death penalty for someone else’s action. They have to pay with their life for the sin of Father!”
What HB 481 does do is brings to light a point that GRTL and WGRTL have been proclaiming for over 50 years… that the babe in the womb is and should be considered a “person” and have rights declared in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution!
In 1973 Justice Harry Blackmon wrote this opinion supporting his decision to vote in favor of the “Roe vs Wade” legalizing abortion on demand:
“If the suggestion of Personhood of the pre-born is established; the abortions rights case (Roe v Wade) of course collapses. For the right of the fetus to life is guaranteed specifically by the 14th Amendment of the constitution…:
“Nor shall any state deprive any person of Life, Liberty or Prosperity, without due process of the law”
One has to beg the question: “If the babe in the womb is not a Person, than what it is?”
But Dobbs vs. Casey, Roe vs Wade victories for the pro-life movement are not the end of the pro-life battles. Yes, it represents the crowning achievement for a generation of conservative lawyers and prolife advocates who built a movement to countermand mid-century judicial excess and, above all, overturn Roe. As Abraham Lincoln argued in his 1854 Peoria speech, the relevant moral and legal question in the antebellum slavery debate was whether a black American "is not or is a man"; so, too, is the relevant moral and legal question in the abortion debate whether the unborn child is not or is a natural person.
We know the biological answer to that question: Emphatically Yes. Fortunately, a proper interpretation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, with its sweeping language securing the "equal protection of the laws" for "any person," codifies that intuition into our national legal charter. Because the unborn child is a natural legal person—a homicide statute that protects born persons but not unborn persons necessarily violates the Constitution's equal protection guarantee.
A prime example of protection of the born and unborn person is currently found in law today. Should an individual be found guilty of a DUI and during a driving accident kills both the pregnant driver or passenger of that vehicle who is pregnant, the DUI individual is charged with two homicides, 1st degree vehicular homicide to the mother and 1st degree vehicular feticide to the child.
Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs actually hints at this understanding of 14th Amendment personhood. Dobbs "sharply distinguishe[d]" other cases on which Roe and Casey relied based on the reality that "abortion destroys what those decisions called out “potential life” and what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an '”unborn human being.'" In other words, Dobbs rejected Planned Parenthood's noxious "clump of cells" disinformation and candidly acknowledged the moral existence of the unborn child.
The Dobbs ruling brings us closer to the existence of constitutional personhood. The hurdle is not one of moral, biological, or constitutional truth, but rather one of fortitude and sheer willpower.
So how do we as a nation get to an “Abortion-Free” America!
- First, Congress should "enforce, by appropriate legislation," this proper understanding of the Equal Protection Clause. Congress is the institution primarily responsible for securing the Amendment's guarantees.
- Second, the judiciary should, in future cases where the issue is squarely presented, rule on the side of natural legal personhood for the most vulnerable and defenseless among us, the preborn and the aged.
- Finally, pro-life activists can advance the broader cause of constitutional personhood at the state level. This is where the rubber meets the road, where you and I as Pro-lifers must work, especially after Dobbs, to pass laws and state constitutional amendments defining legal personhood as beginning at conception through natural death. Such an incremental, state-by-state shift in the legal landscape could galvanize momentum toward a federal abortion ban—whether it comes from Congress, from the Supreme Court, or via constitutional amendment.
In an 1858 address, Abraham Lincoln warned that "a house divided against itself, cannot stand." A patchwork federalism approach—what Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's frequent 1858 debate opponent, appealed to as "popular sovereignty"—to such a profound moral question as abortion is unsustainable. The United States could not endure "permanently half slave and half free." So too can we not endure a regime under which vulnerable unborn children could be legally protected in Texas, but not in California.
We are thank and praise God for the Dobbs and Roe v. Wade decisions. But for our generation of abortion abolitionists, the fight is not over until every unborn child in America is protected during pregnancy and provided for after birth…by love and by law.
“Let’s not grow weary in well doing…a human life is hanging in the balance!”
Personhood-The new “Battle-Cry” within the Pro-Life Movement