We Done It Wrong

Folks, I'll be brief. (no pun intended)

The people who have been arguing for the unborn in the courts across the land have been arguing on the wrong legal grounds.

And if you did it right, there would be no need to argue the personhood, or even perhaps the humanity of the unborn.

Our defense of the unborn should be based on the Preamble of the United States Constitution. That Preamble reads:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Webster's Unabridged tells us that posterity is: "1. succeeding or future generations collectively... 2. all descendants of one person."

An unborn child of whatever age is certainly one of the descendants of her mother and father.

So if we argue that the Preamble says that the United States Constitution was ordained and established to establish justice for our posterity, provide for the common defence of our posterity, promote the general welfare of our posterity, and secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, the Court would be hard put to say that there is some kind of private right to destroy our posterity through abortion.

I can't take credit for this idea, and I don't remember who first suggested it, but I pass it along to you.

Second point:

It seems to me that we distinguish between unborn humans and born ones in unintended ways. By making abortion the subject of a separate law, we are setting the unborn apart from us in terms of who qualifies as being fully human. I believe that this is one of the fundamental reasons why we are having a problem with abortion in the first place.

If we had included the unborn under the protection of the homicide statutes from the very beginning, I believe that we would not be having the problems with abortion we are having today.

So it is obvious, to me at least, that the way to remedy this situation is for state prosecutors to prosecute abortionists under the existing homicide statutes. Already I see that occasionally, this is being done. I think it needs to be tried in as many places as possible.

'Nuff said?

Background graciously provided by: