By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
January 20, 2003
As we approach the 30th year anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision Roe vs Wade which legalized abortion on January 23, 1973, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has a campaign underfoot to block any nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court or other Federal courts that might question the 1973 decision and its 30 year consequences, demanding “full public disclosure” of the Bush nominees’ opinion of Roe vs Wade. So, let’s talk a little about “full public disclosure” about the impact Roe v. Wade and the numerous more recent Supreme Court Decisions that have followed the 1973 decision have had on America.
First, very few people in this country have actually READ the 1973 Supreme Court decision which states: “State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, …violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.”
To reach that conclusion, however, the Justice Blackmun first discussed at great length the history of abortion, beginning with the oath dating back to the great Greek physician Hippocrates in about 380 B.C. , that all American doctors took upon graduating from medical school: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” This simple oath addressed two issues that have been debated vigorously in the past 30 years – abortion on demand and assisted suicide.
However, the Hippocratic oath was somewhat summarily dismissed by Blackmun based on the question of whether or not the unborn are protected by the 14th amendment and the U.S. Constitution. Blackmun noted, “The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”
This was exactly the same question that faced the U.S. Supreme court in the Dred Scott case in 1856 when ruling on the question: “can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen”? It was ruled that, based on The Supreme Court decision of 1856 about Dred Scott, a slave, ruled “the court is of opinion, that, upon the facts stated in the plea in abatement, Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” The 1856 court ruled that, “A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” Chief Justice C.J. Taney wrote: “The only two provisions which point to them and include them treat them as property and make it the duty of the Government to protect it; no other power, in relation to this race, is to be found in the Constitution.”
Black slaves to the Taney court where not persons, but were actually merely the property of the slave owner. Thirty years ago, the Blackmun court used almost the same wording and arguments to conclude that the unborn were not “persons” but are, in reality, the property of the mother. The father has no say in the matter, until the mother decides whether or not she will do with that property, to destroy it or permit it to be born.
Blackmun wrote, “The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to "person." The first, in defining "citizens," speaks of "persons born or naturalized in the United States." The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause.” While the word “’Person’ is used in other places in the Constitution,” Blackmun reasoned, such as in the “…Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in §§ 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment… the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.”
The Dred Scott decision codified into the Constitution the notion that those of an African ancestry were not even people, but merely property and, therefore, did not have the feelings or the mind to really suffer or to learn. The Roe vs. Wade decision codified into the Constitution the notion that unborn babies did not have the feelings or the mind to really suffer or to learn. Yet, Ultrasound technology and research in the past 30 years have proved both notions totally wrong. Unborn babies do feel and can even respond to music being played. They can also learn, and there are now websites devoted to teaching unborn babies.
The Dred Scott Decision, as awful as it seems to modern Americans was never actually declared invalid. – It was reversed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, as it pertained to persons of African descent. However, the legacy of Roe v Wade is 44,010,378 of the under 30 generation in America who were discarded as rubbish by abortionists over the years or, more recently, their body parts sold as marketable commodities with the active support of the National Organization for Women.
Only a people “without natural affection,” as the apostle Paul put it (2 Timothy 3:3) could kill 44 million of their own children and sell them for body parts.
Click here to comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
Links:
1. NOW Resolution to block any pro-family judge
2. Banner of Liberty Action Center – Judges
3. U.S. Supreme Court -Roe V. Wade Decision – 1973
4. U.S. Supreme Court – Dred Scott Decision – 1856
5. Human Life - Life before Birth- Learning in the womb –
6. National Families Network - Learning in the Womb
7. National Association for Women – Fetal Tissue Sales -
8. Bible - 2 Timothy 3:3