Protecting the unborn

Is it time for a Human Life Amendment?

I’ve used this photo from a 2015 March for Life a couple times before but I would still be honking.

As I’m sure you’re aware, I keep tabs on what the opposition is doing. If you recall, the 2022 mid-term election was made into a referendum on the Dobbs decision, which a lost and secular population believes is wrong. Guess what will be a focus this year for Democrats?

Heck, this literally popped into my mailbox yesterday as I started writing this:

We're just over two weeks away from the anniversary of the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe and led to abortion bans throughout the country. And that means we’re just over two weeks away from our Majority Over MAGA Weekend of Action when Indivisible groups will host rallies, protests, and vigils to focus public attention on Trump and MAGA Republicans’ attacks on reproductive rights. 

More like a Democrat attack on our God-given rights.

If you live in a swing district, and you’re willing to hang out with Democrats, find a “rally, protest, or vigil” to go spread some true information. But I was thinking more about working the other way with soft Republicans who need a reminder that we should be ingraining a culture of life, not one of death.

However, what got me writing this was the whining of my so-called representative in Congress, Lisa Blunt Rochester (I call her LBR) about the House not voting on the (so-called) “Right to Contraception Act.”

Today, I signed a discharge petition to force a vote on the Right to Contraception Act.

For the first time in our nation’s history, a constitutional right was taken away from us because of the Dobbs decision.

We cannot let the right to contraception experience the same fate.

Yeah, she’s going to run on that. (LBR is trying to be our next Senator, basically because Delaware has never had a black woman as one. Hey, that was her schtick in winning our House seat in 2016 because she didn’t have a whole lot else going for her.)

So as I reminded her, first comment off the top just seconds after it was posted (yes, I was lucky):

No Constitutional rights were taken away. In certain truly progressive states, rights were restored for our most vulnerable population.

Yes I will define the terms of the argument, thank you.

And states are where the fight belongs. Granted, I live in a state that’s trying to combine the depravity of California with the corruption of Illinois, the tyranny of New York, and the fiscal irresponsibility of Maryland, but at least it’s easier to fight these things in Dover than it is in D.C.

But the pro-life community worked hard to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to make their own decisions on the subject. You see, back when no one ever thought SCOTUS would do the right thing, Democrats lied about wanting to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” This was back in the Clinton era when the SCOTUS was left-of-center despite GOP presidents selecting 7 of the 9 - the only reliable conservatives were Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia. So Roe was deemed to be a safe backstop and America was nominally pro-choice. (I looked up Gallup and the peak of pro-choice vs. pro-life was back in 1995, when it was 56-33.)

This is why I don’t couch things in the idea of choice like they try to do, because the time for a woman to make a choice about whether to get pregnant or not was before they slept with the guy. When it comes to birth control, abstinence works 100% of the time. If you are “pro-choice,” you are pro-abortion regardless of whether you try and deny it or not.

(I don’t like it, but I would accept the compromise of abortion being allowed in the 1% of the time there are cases of rape, incest, or the doctors agree there’s a risk to the life of the mother. That was the pre-2017 law in Delaware. However, I would strongly encourage adoption in those instances given the number of infertile couples who would like a child.)

Instead, I put the argument in the arena of rights: in this case, the rights of our most vulnerable population. It says right in our Declaration of Independence that we have inalienable rights, including that of the right to life. Who are you to deny that for your selfish reason of convenience?

So, while it would be Constitutional, I’m not sure I’m down with a Human Life Amendment for many of the reasons I’m against codifying Roe like the Democrats want to do. We should work one heart, one person, and one representative at a time to instill a culture of life. If we have that, law takes care of itself.

Think of how society has changed since Roe was decided in 1973. When human life became disposable in the womb, it wasn’t too many years before it became disposable through abuse of alcohol and drugs, and disposable like an NPC in a video game that’s gunned down. Despite Dobbs, we still have close to a million abortions annually in our nation, and that’s close to a million whose rights were denied. We grouse about women not having rights in some parts of the world, but at least they’re alive to enjoy that right.

If we work things back the same way we lost the thread, perhaps we can preserve our liberty and the right of the unborn to have the opportunity to enjoy a full life.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.