Shoulder To Shoulder #1263 -- 11/1/21 ---- "The Folly of Forgetting God -- Demise of a People: Part 6 -- Sacrificing To Molech (Part D)
Posted by: lifeunlimited <lifeunlimited@...>
SHOULDER TO SHOULDER is a weekly letter of encouragement Bob has written since 1997, covering many topics
selected to motivate people to be strong students of the Word and courageous witnesses of Jesus Christ.
It is a personal letter of encouragement to you, written solely to help "lift up hands that hang down".
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,
but by those who watch them without doing anything." -- Albert Einstein
“There is a common, worldly kind of Christianity in this day,
which many have, and think they have -- a cheap Christianity
which offends nobody, and requires no sacrifice, which
costs nothing, -- and is worth nothing.” – J. C. Ryle
"Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica,
for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the
Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so." -- Dr. Luke (Acts 17:11)
Shoulder To Shoulder #1263 -- 11/1/21
Title: "The Folly of Forgetting God -- Demise of a People: Part 6 -- Sacrificing To Molech (Part D)
My Dear Friend and Co-Laborer With Christ:
Greetings today from the Sonoran Desert of far southwestern AZ. We are slowly getting settled in as official Yuma residents, and just six days away from beginning the Chapel de Oro season with our first service next Sunday, Nov 7th. We've heard from so many, and everyone has been expressing over being excited about being back together after the absence of our Canadian members and others who were in either government mandated or self-imposed quarantine or lock-down. This year's theme is built on Paul's first prayer to the Ephesian Christians, . . .
"I pray . . . that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, . . . " -- Eph 1:18-20 (3-23).
That theme is "Finding Today's Strength and Tomorrow's Hope", and I will begin the series from the larger passage, with a sermon entitled, "Everything I Need is Everything He Is." Needless to say, we are so looking forward to that first Sunday even though half or more of our people will not have yet arrived. Most of our Canadian members will actually arrive that following week.
In the meantime, today is filled with work at the "new" house, tomorrow with doctors' appointments and errands, and then Wednesday we head to Gilbert, AZ, to honor my sweet cousin, Sara Mae (Crouse, Brittain) Rex, with her Celebration of Life on Thursday morning. She was an exceptional cousin -- more like a sister to me than a cousin -- was inspired by my father to enter the music arena, and was my accompanist for two years of my vocal music major at Grand Canyon College in Phoenix. She was a brilliant pianist who received her degree in piano performance.
We will return to Yuma Friday just in time to put the finishing touches on Sunday's service.
In the meantime, I am continuing the series, "The Folly of Forgetting God -- Demise of a People" by once again addressing the issue of abortion. In doing so, I realize two or three things ----
First, is the idea that it's entirely possible to "beat a dead horse" after it's already "dead" in some people's minds. Many have heard or read much of what I have written and will write today, so it is merely "old hat" and they don't want to hear or read more.
Second, the topic is -- at least in the world's view -- a very complex and multi-faceted issue with an incredible range of ramifications. However, it is not so complicated in the Bible, which is pretty specific.
Third and finally, the probability that my views -- both morally, biblically, and legally -- are not held by others is extremely high. While I cannot speak for any of my subscribers, I can assure you that my fundamental views have not changed at any point in my life, but have been strengthened over the years through further study, research, and ongoing medical and scientific discoveries.
I have virtually no struggles with any aspect of abortion with the possible exception that I do not have a clear understanding when it comes to the life of the mother being endangered. And yet, even then I find my heart being comforted by knowing that God is more than capable of protecting the mother AND the baby during pregnancy and birth. It is a matter of whether or not the mother and father will be able to fully trust God with the outcome.
So, today, I want to look at the topic again, while, first and foremost, acknowledging that I am a true novice at constitutional law and jurisprudence, and make no claim to having any degree of serious knowledge in our Constitution's intricacies. Still, this time, through some pretty serious research of history and legal precedent, I want to look more closely at it from a historical and constitutional perspective. (No, I don't think it will be as boring as you might think.) And we'll do that, right after you consider . . .
THIS 'N' THAT:
+ SCOTUS and Texas Anti-Abortion Law: No case has the potential of impacting Roe v. Wade than the case the Supreme Court is currently hearing. Monday they heard opening arguments and will form some kind of judgment in the next few weeks. Read Family Research Council's Travis Weber as he assesses the situation. Go to https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA21K03&f=WU21K01 .
QUOTES FOR THE WEEK:
>"Abortion is unequivocally the single greatest evil of our time. Sadly, many in Congress and this administration want to authorize the killing of more innocent babies. The latest comes to Congress in the form of what Democrats disgustingly call “the Women’s Health Protection Act.” This despicable legislation would allow for abortion of the unborn for any reason and at any stage of pregnancy, including up until birth. . . . Americans should be outraged and ashamed that we have created and supported a culture that fails to protect life in this country. Every innocent human being has value." -- Paul Gosar (Arizona Congressman, Oct 31, 2021)
> “The rights of children as individuals begin while yet the[y] remain the fetus... I hold abortion to be just as much murder as the killing of a person after birth is murder.” -- Victoria Claflin Woodhull
> "Allowing abortion conflicts with the unalienable right to life recognized by the Founding Fathers of the United States. The Declaration of Independence states that “[A]ll men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [51] Abortion takes away from the unborn the unalienable right to life that the Founding Fathers intended for all human beings." -- Penny Young Nance, "Celebrate Life, Embrace Grace...End Abortion," foxnews.com, Jan. 23, 2012
> “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life--the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life.” -- Ronald Reagan
> "It is by no coincidence that a morally bankrupt man is behind the violation of the 2nd Amendment in the State of Virginia: Governor Northam, a man otherwise known for his support for after birth abortion and the wearing of "black face." someone with a defective moral compass, who does not know the sanctity of life, can't very well be expected to know the value of defending it.” -- A.E. Samaan
> “Life is a civil right. Abortion is a civil wrong.” -- Alveda C. King
> "It is clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Life is an unalienable right. It's straightforward. Furthermore, the Constitution passes our rights to our posterity. Who is that? Our unborn children yet to come." -- Glen Beck
> “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of every person's understanding of happiness was once considered an unalienable right. Now Americans murder more than one million babies in utero. Where's their unalienable rights?” -- Kathy Barnette, (Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America}
> “The idea of a natural right is to preserve life, not to kill it; and a constitutional right cannot supersede the natural right to life. The whole point of natural rights is that they cannot be superseded by the power of the state.” -- Robert J. Spitzer, (Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues)
>
"The 'right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' begins with 'life', and 'life' begins at conception.” -- A.E. Samaan> "Can America discern that if we do not to protect the 'Wee little ones' among us – then why should God bless 'We the people?”'-- Rev. Ron Hale (The Christian Index, April 10, 2016)
FOUNDING FATHERS:
"I once participated in a debate where I was asked to describe the constitutional rights afforded to the unborn. For me, the answer was easy because I've studied the Founders. For the other guy – who completely dodged the question – it was just another opportunity to spout some platform slogans about choice and women's rights." --Richie Angel (The Constitutional Rights of the Unborn,July 8, 2017)
In order to better understand the thinking of our nation's founders, we need to approach it from some presuppositions, one of which was that abortion was looked upon so negatively and so universally as being wrong, that it was a foregone assumption that everyone recognized that fact. The assumption that abortion was wrong was just as clear in the minds of our founders as was the fact that those "unalienable rights" -- Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- came directly from God Himself, and not from man. From all that I have read from our founders on abortion, I have not found a single reference to the idea that abortion was acceptable.
On the LifeIssues.Net website, Jameson Taylor stated, . . .
"The right to life is inalienable because it is not of human, but of divine origin. Because man does not create himself, he cannot deprive himself of the primary goods that are inherent to human existence: life, freedom and happiness. Just as no government can deny its citizens these inalienable rights, neither can a man deprive himself of these rights. The '[u]nalienable' right to life thus precludes abortion as well as suicide."
On May 10th, 2016, conservative television and radio talk show host, Glen Beck, began a series of programs on the topic of abortion. Introducing the first program entitled, Abortion Part I: The Founders' Views, the announcer said, . . .
"It should be noted that the United States Constitution actually says nothing about abortion specifically. And while it is true that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legalized abortion in 1973, the high court cannot write constitutional amendments, meaning women's reproductive rights are still not mentioned in the Constitution. However, it would seem that the unborn babies would qualify as our posterity, and thus, deserve a chance for life and liberty. While there is no specific language in the Constitution regarding abortion, the Founders did leave behind their beliefs on the topic."
The Family Policy Institute of Washington, headlined an article with this question: "Is abortion constitutional? Let's ask the founders."
As to the question, "Is abortion constitutional?", the Supreme court Concluded in Roe v: Wade (1973) that an expectant mother has a 'fundamental right to abortion'."
Blaine Conzatti, a columnist and research fellow at The Family Policy Institute of Washington, show that this was clearly NOT the view of our founders. In his concise commentary on the understanding of our founding fathers, noted above, he wrote, . . . "To see whether the Roe decision is an accurate interpretation of constitutional rights, it is important to understand the intentions of the authors of the Constitution. Did they advocate legal abortion protected by the Constitution?
"One of the most authoritative sources for learning law during the founding era was William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone, a distinguished English jurist, was so well-liked by the founding fathers that he was the second most frequently cited thinker in the American political writings of the founding era. American law students studied his work so religiously that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that
. . . 'Blackstone is to us what the Koran is to the Muslims.' . . .
"Blackstone affirmed in his Commentaries that an individual’s right to life is an 'immediate gift of God.' This right to life is legally binding 'as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb.' Per Blackstone, . . .
“'For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise kills it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dies in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was, by the ancient law, homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor.'
"Interestingly, Blackstone also explains that fetuses 'in the mother’s womb' are legally considered 'to be born.' Thus, the law considered a fetus to be his or her own person, independent of the mother."
So, we can easily conclude that, from Blackstone's commentaries, the founding fathers learned that any abortion that was carried out after any movement from a fetus in the mother’s womb was understood to be a 'heinous misdemeanor.' American courts upheld this traditional common law approach in understanding abortion to be a misdemeanor. Now, don't forget that the term "common law" was understood to be "natural law" -- that which is naturally understood and assumed -- and that "natural law" were those "laws of nature" that came directly from "nature's God".
Here's another example -- founding father James Wilson, a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution, and an original U.S. Supreme Court justice. Recognized as “the most learned and profound legal scholar of his generation,” Wilson’s lectures were attended by people like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and many other political noteworthy's.
Constitutional scholar, Walter Berns stated, “Wilson, when speaking on the law, might be said to be speaking for the Founders generally.” Wilson unequivocally taught his law students that abortion was wrong because it was protected by "common law", . . .
“With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb. By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from every degree of danger." (Lectures on Law, chapter 12)
As another example, Sr. George Tucker, a judicial appointee by President James Madison, was professor of law at the College of William and Mary. He explained in his legal treatise on American law that it is, ". . . a great misprision [misdemeanor]" to "kill a child in its mother’s womb."
Still another example comes from Rev. John Witherspoon, member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He powerfully declared, . . .
"Some nations have given parents the power of life and death over their children. But here in America, we have denied the power of life and death to parents."
Member of the Continental Congress and author of the Articles of Confederation, when writing about the three rights noted in the Declaration of Independence, John Dickenson stated, . . .
"“Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals, but come from the king of kings and the Lord of all the earth.”
Since one of those liberties or rights is "Life", then nobody has a right to take it from anyone, even the unborn. America's very first Supreme Court Chief Justice, Joseph Storey stated that . . .
“the common law of England [was] the fundamental law of all the Colonies.”
Even preceding the writing of the Constitution itself, numerous states had already adopted laws that criminalized abortion. For example, Virginia law outlawed the practice of using “potion” to “unlawfully destroy the child within her [womb].” These laws were created by many of the same people who later framed the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention. So, to say that the members of that Convention intended constitutional protections for abortion as a 'fundamental right' is both a lie and an attempt at intentionally dishonesty, distortion, and constitutional revisionism.
As the historical records show, the framers of our Constitution believed exactly the opposite from a legal standpoint. Their overwhelming viewpoint was that an unborn child has a fundamental right to life, a right that would be violated and taken away if an abortion ended his or her life. A 'fundamental right to abortion' does not exist in the Constitution or its amendments.
It is my personal view, as one not even remotely qualified as a legal scholar, that it is the height of intellectual dishonesty to argue that the authors of the Constitution and its amendments intended to protect abortion under some vague and unwritten 'right to privacy.' Having said that, I must be honest to acknowledge that abortions did occur in the United States during those days, and many of our founders recognized it as being a somewhat common occurrence.
As an example, when Benjamin Franklin’s former employer, Samuel Keimer, published an encyclopedia in which a detailed article on abortion -- including directions for ending an unwanted pregnancy -- (“immoderate Evacuations, violent Motions, sudden Passions, Frights … violent Purgatives and in the general anything that tends to promote the Menses.”).
Franklin's contention, which he penned under the pseudonyms of Celia Shortface” and “Martha Careful” was not so much on the idea of abortion being bad as it was that Keimer had the outrageous audacity to bring "bedroom" issues out into the common public for all to read. Franklin believed it was a private matter to be considered within the confines of family and doctor.
Another example is that of Dr. Benjamin Rush, medical doctor, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and first Surgeon General of the U.S. In his book, Medical Inquiries and Observations (1805), he described blood-letting as a possible treatment to prevent miscarriage during the third month of pregnancy, when he believed there was a special tendency to spontaneous abortion, Rush asked the question, “what is an abortion but a haemoptysis (if I may be allowed the expression) from the uterus?” This does not mean that Rush approved of abortion, but that he recognized its presence and practice in the infant nation.
As a final example of abortion being recognized, practiced, accepted, -- but not necessarily with approval -- we see Thomas Jefferson's view as pertaining to the native Americans for whom he had enormous respect. It appears that he put no moral judgment on abortion, and in his Notes on the State of Virginia, he observed that for Native American women, who accompanied their men in war and hunting parties, “childbearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said, therefore, that they have learnt the practice of procuring abortion by the use of some vegetable, and that it even extends to prevent conception for some time after.”
Having said all that, the overwhelming sentiment of the founding fathers was that abortion took the life of a living human being still in the womb, and that it was exceptionally wrong. Even those I mentioned above were not endorsements per se, but rather a "matter-of-fact" recognition that abortions were practiced. Duane L. Ostler writes in his book, Abortion: What the Founding Fathers Thought About It (2013), . . .
". . . the founding fathers were firmly against abortion. Furthermore, both colonial statutory law and the common law in that day were also against abortion."
OUR FOUNDING DOCUMENTS:
A couple days ago I queried a dear friend about the question of whether or not Roe v. Wade was constitutional, or actually legal. A highly qualified judge in his own right, appointed by President Bill Clinton, he suggested that my question is the wrong question. Since the Supreme Court ruled decades ago on Roe v. Wade, I should instead be asking whether or not there is a constitutional right to an abortion. In other words, in light of various states having laws that make abortions illegal, is there anything in the Constitution itself that would strike down those laws by indicating they do not satisfy the parameters found in the Constitution.
I'm not sure, but I think I get my friend's point. In that the Constitution was crafted 184 years before Roe v. Wade, the question is whether or not that ruling legally falls within the parameters of the Constitution itself. It is obvious that I don't believe it does. The Warren Court and I do not agree, but since I had no say in the decision, nor am I even remotely qualified to sit in judgment from a legal perspective, my opinion -- no, my deep conviction -- bears no weight in the eyes of those who believe Roe v. Wade is "the law of the land". It's merely a conviction -- my conviction -- my deeply held conviction.
Having said that, however, I still want to make my case that Roe v. Wade is both morally, legally, and spiritually wrong. To do that, I'd like to go back to our founding documents.
President of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry Arnn succinctly points out in his masterful treatise on our founding documents, The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It, that one cannot understand the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution apart from the other. Arnn stated that, from their initial creation to this very day today, the Declaration spells out the reason for the founders declaring independence, and the Constitution explains the mechanism by which that independence was to be maintained. He said that without the Constitution, the Declaration has no lasting weight and cannot be sustained, and without the Declaration, the Constitution has no legitimacy to exist or authority to be enacted (my words, and not his).
So, let's break this down into three elements -- the Declaration, the Constitution, and the 14th Amendment -- and consider the three-fold unbreakable connection in light of aborting unborn babies. First, . . .
+ The Declaration: Arnn stated that the Declaration of Independence was not only our declaration that we are free from Britain, but that it was even more importantly our declaration of rights -- our unalienable rights, the Declaration calls them.
I want to focus on four key phrases which our founders carefully chose. First, the word . . .
1. "Unalienable" is a strategic word here. This adjective tells us simply that the rights immediately to be mentioned not only cannot and must not be "alienated" from us, -- that is, taken away, stripped, stolen, or otherwise removed. The word goes even further than that and declares they are incapable of being taken away. It has a similar meaning to the word we often use in describing the Bible -- "Immutable", meaning, "incapable of". In other words, the rights about to be identified, are incapable of being denied.
Why? Because they were given to us. We did not earn them, nor did we create them. They were . . .
2. "Endowed". That word makes it clear that these are rights that were given to us. They were already in existence before the founders wrote the Declaration. Our founders didn't create these rights. Those rights, therefore, didn't come from them. Why is that true? Because if something is "endowed", it has to come from somewhere before, somewhere outside, and somewhere beyond us, from someone other than us.
In his book, The Death Peddlers War on the Unborn Paul Marx wrote, . . .
“But tradition and law are not the source of man's equality; They only acknowledge its presence as a fact of nature. The Declaration of Independence speaks of men as created equal -- created, not born; it seems likely that its authors intended to express their conviction, today verified by science, that humanity is conferred by human parents at conception. 'All men are created free and equal,' we say with those Founding Fathers.”
That "endowment", therefore, came . . .
3. "By our Creator". This phrase leaves no doubt as to the origin of those soon-to-be-identified rights. You see, there were certain rights that didn't come from man, but came from a far higher, greater, and more powerful origin. They were not mere human ideas conjured up in the mind of man. Since God is our Creator Who brought us into existence, those rights are given by God alone. They are "unalienable" -- impossible to be alienated from us. They are "Immutable" -- incapable of being taken away from us. Therefore, only God can take them away, if He so chooses. He has not chosen to do so in the past, He has not chosen to do so in our day, and it is nigh on unthinkable that He would decide to take them away from us in the future. We will discover why a bit later in the study.
4. "Life" is one of those three God-given rights without which the other two can never be attained. The idea of life is paramount for us, because it covers all aspects of life, all forms of life, and all degrees of life -- including life inside the womb. In a technical and legal application, this includes life inside the womb as well as outside. For the founders, there was no distinction, as we saw above in the statements of some of our founders.
The bottom line is this -- if you simply understand the intent of our nation's founders, and if you understand the profundity of this statement in the Declaration of Independence, it becomes abundantly clear that abortion savagely violates the facts that they understood, respected, and declared Life to be sacred and untouchable.
+ The Constitution:
Based on the reasoning, then, of the Declaration of Independence, our founders created the most extraordinary and profoundly unique legal code ever written in the history of man outside that contained in the Bible itself. Why is that the case?
That is the case because of what it states as early as the preamble itself, and then in the designations found in its various Articles.
1. The Preamble -- Let's look at the words themselves:
"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."
In that our founders universally accepted the fact that an unborn baby was as much a human being as someone outside the womb, the assumption is legitimate that children in the womb would be included in establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing a common "defence", promoting the general welfare, and securing all the blessings of liberty.
For those who claim that such a statement is presumptuous, then let me ask, why would the founders NOT have included the unborn as well as the born, especially since they so openly acknowledged in the Declaration that "life" included all of life "from the womb to the tomb" as one person has described it, and that life was one of those three rights given by "the laws of nature and nature's Creator"?
2. The Body -- While I would love to dissect each Article and Section that has some degree of affect on the practice of abortion in general, I will simply say that any person examining it will find three things that work like re-bar linking and locking everything in its respective place. They are . . .
1. Separation of Powers -- We understand that our founders, having seen the chaotic and despotic dangers of the concentration of all power into one single authority which King George had as head both of the nation and the Church, divided the power of the nation into three separate branches -- Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Through a sometimes cumbersome but nonetheless highly effective way, each branch had authority to wield its power within its own branch, but not superimpose it on the other two.
2. Delegation of Powers -- Each of the three branches of government was given certain constitutional power and authority to act.
+ The "more powerful" of the three, by virtue of its role, was the Legislative Branch because it had the responsibility to, through detailed deliberation and consideration, establish laws -- laws for the nation as a whole. The parameters of such laws were clearly defined in Article I.
+ The Judicial Branch, then, was to determine whether or not those laws were just and in keeping with the Constitution itself. It had no right or authority -- and still doesn't -- to rewrite an existing law or create a new law. Its role is to adjudicate, but never to legislate.
+ The Executive Branch, had a singular general responsibility, and that was to execute or carry out those laws declared by the Legislative Branch and declared to be legal and in harmony to the Constitution by the Judicial Branch. Nowhere was the Executive Branch given the power to create law NOR determine whether or not a law met the litmus test of the Constitution.
3. Jurisdictional Authority -- Now, not only were the three branches of government restricted to the powers given to them by the Constitution, but that jurisdiction also made a clear distinction between national and states' power and authority. The Constitution is clear between the two -- national (or federal) authority is extremely limited in scope, while the overwhelming weight of power and authority lies on the side of the respective states.
This is why our country is officially called the United States of America, and NOT the Federal States of America, or the Uniform States of America, or the Single State of America.
Robert J. Spitzer wrote the following in his book, Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues . . .
“. . . the power behind any constitution or charter is derived from the legitimate authority of a state; the legitimate authority of a state, in turn, rests upon a mandate to promote and protect freedom, justice, and peace; this mandate requires that every state recognize the natural rights and the intrinsic dignity of every human being (because freedom, justice, and peace cannot be achieved without the protection of natural rights). If any state fails to protect the natural rights of human beings, that state loses its legitimacy and its right to govern and can be legitimately rebelled against in the interest of justice, peace, and freedom.”
He went on to declare, . . .
“The idea of a natural right is to preserve life, not to kill it; and a constitutional right cannot supersede the natural right to life. The whole point of natural rights is that they cannot be superseded by the power of the state.” -- Robert J. Spitzer, Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues
So, once again, we come back to those basic God-given rights, the first and the one from which the other two emanate -- Life! Nowhere in our Constitution is the right -- nor duty -- given to kill unborn babies as "the law of the land". Nowhere! Absolutely nowhere! It is on that fact that Roe v. Wade should have never been ruled as it did. Even many liberals then and since have stated that the ruling was entirely inconsistent and incomprehensible. You will be surprised to read some of their remarks near the end of today's letter.
+ The Fourteenth Amendment:
In reading through the 14th Amendment somewhat casually, I truly needed to "scratch my head" to see how the Warren Supreme Court could possibly come up with that being the reason to rule the Texas law in Roe v. Wade as being unconstitutional. So, I needed to research what circumstances created the 14th Amendment, how it was modified over time, and how all of that led up to the idea that the Texas law would be struck down, subsequently leading to a national legalization of abortion.
To set the stage, by the time the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, 99 years after the ratification of the Constitution and 105 years before Roe v. Wade, 36 states and territories had already enacted abortion laws. Two excellent sources to study the 14th Amendment are Brian Young’s A Brief Survey of U.S. Abortion Law Before the 1973 Decision and the History.com website. You might want to check them out. In essence, they both state the following fundamentals.
Bear with me on this, because you need to understand the role the 14th Amendment had in Roe v. Wade. To quote one liberal whom I will quote near the end of today's letter, its use was a ruse and a perversion of justice.
+ The 14th Amendment consists of five Sections: -- Second One defined American citizenship. Section Two effectively repealed the three-fifths clause (see Article I, Section 2, Clause 3) of the original Constitution, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning congressional representation. It also clarified that all residents, regardless of race, should be counted as one whole person, and guaranteed that all male citizens over age 21, no matter their race, had a right to vote.
+ Section Three gave Congress the authority to bar public officials, who took an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, from holding office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution. The intent was to prevent the president from allowing former leaders of the Confederacy to regain power within the U.S. government after securing a presidential pardon. It reads, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
+ Section Four of the Amendment prohibited payment of any debt owed to the defunct Confederate States of America and also banned any payments to former enslavers as compensation for the loss of human "property" (enslaved people). Finally, Section Five reads, “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”. In that statement, the Amendment gave Congress power to pass laws to safeguard the sweeping provisions of Section One, effectively altering the balance of power between the federal and state governments in the United States. Congress used this authority in passing major landmark civil rights legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Section One is the primary part of the Amendment that apparently, at least in the minds of the majority of the 1973 Supreme Court Justices, opened what I would call a "back alley door" to almost unlimited acts of now legalized abortions.
Section One has four primary clauses. Clause One defined U.S. citizenship, stating, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside", effectively repudiating the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that a Black man, even if born free, could not claim rights of citizenship under the federal constitution.The second clause stated, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”, significantly expanding the civil and legal rights of all American citizens by protecting them from infringement into those rights by either state or the federal government. While it does not address abortion directly, abortion can certainly be included in a litany of areas including the "unalienable right" to Life.
Known as "the due process" clause, the third clause is where pro-abortionists found their "back alley door" to advance the legalization of abortion. It states, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” and it further expanded the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment so that it applied to the states as well as the federal government. Throughout the years since 1868, the Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to guarantee a wide array of rights against infringement by the states, including those enumerated in the Bill of Rights -- our freedom of speech, our free exercise of religion, our right to bear arms, etc..
However, it also guarantees "the right to privacy" and other fundamental rights not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution. It is this "right to privacy" that Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington -- particularly Weddington -- used as that "back alley door" that led to the Supreme Court effectively opening the door to rampant abortion in America where nearly 63 million pre-born babies have been killed since 1973 under the guise of a woman's "right to privacy".
You see, as I noted in my previous letter, Coffee and Weddington did not argue "for abortion" before the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Rather they argued that a woman has a "right to privacy" in how she deals with unwanted pregnancies, insisting that is her right, and hers alone, to choose "in private" what she wants to do about the baby she has decided she doesn't want, -- unwanted for a variety of medical, economic, moral, or lifestyle reasons.
So, in that sense, the third clause of the 14th Amendment was argued not as an abortion issue, but a "right to privacy" issue. And this ingenious slight-of-hand brilliance led to Texas and other state laws being struck down. In doing so, it once again took away from the states the right and authority to govern their own affairs and protect their own citizens. Up until Roe v. Wade, abortion questions were the sole responsibilities of the states, simply because the matter -- and many others, as a matter of fact -- are not included in the enumeration of federal responsibilities and authority.
Finally, there is the “equal protection clause” or fourth clause which states, “. . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”, which was clearly intended to stop state governments from discriminating against Black Americans. Over the coming years it would play a key role in many landmark civil rights cases.
On July 9, 1868, Louisiana and South Carolina voted to ratify the 14th Amendment, making up the necessary two-thirds majority of states needed for ratification. Little did those states know what the 14th Amendment would create in modern America.
Impact of the 14th Amendment
Apart from the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments) few Amendments have had more dramatic impact on American culture than the 14th Amendment. I won't detail them, but it has had major effects on limiting the rights of states, increasing the range of civil liberties, further guaranteeing personal freedoms, strengthening the control of the federal government, and perhaps unintentionally, opening Pandora's Box of rampant and medically unnecessary abortions.
The 14th Amendment effectively desegregated public schools, legalized the use of contraception (1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut), validated interracial marriage (1967’s Loving v. Virginia), legalized abortion (1973’s Roe v. Wade), determined the outcome of a highly contested presidential election (2000’s Bush v. Gore), challenged the parameters of gun rights (2010’s McDonald v. Chicago) and legalized same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015).
The 14th Amendment has provided us with many wonderful rulings that have either further expanded or further protected our rights in freedoms. However, Roe v. Wade is not one of them. In his book, Abortion Is Not Logical, E. Reltso wrote, . . .
“In a fascinating admission, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade acknowledged that under another, separate common law rule, an unborn child has inheritance rights. (Roe v. Wade, page 162). What they failed to mention (for obvious reasons) was that the common law clearly says these inheritance rights exist from the moment of conception! (Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England ,Vol. 1, pg. 126 (1765). Doesn’t it seem ironic — as well as exceedingly illogical — that an unborn child would have his property rights better protected from the moment of conception than his life?”
Later in the book Reltso went on to state, . . .
“At this point we see another interesting provision of the common law come to light. A little-known common law rule stated that an unborn child who was the intended victim of abortion, and who was injured but nonetheless born alive, has a legal claim against the person who caused his/her injury!”
In writing his scathing minority dissent to the Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe vs. Wade mentions that same thing. I also agree as a novice layman in the legal world that the Warren Court ruling seems totally illogical and, frankly, irresponsible and inexcusable, but I'm just an ignorant layman when it comes to legal technicalities, so what do I know!
EVEN LIBERALS CONCEDE ROE V. WADE IS ABSURD:
As I was trying to close out today's letter, I went to the web one final time to try to find some interesting quotes. To my total shock, I found one website, http://www.Illinoisfamily.org that had what seemed to be an endless list of quotes entitled, "Some Leftist Thoughts By Leftists About Roe v. Wade".
I could hardly believe what I was reading -- not because of what was being said (almost all quotes were what I have been convinced of for many years), but because of who said them -- outright liberals and those who worked for liberals. I just can't end today's letter without sharing some of them with you.
These are worth reading, if for no other reason than amazement and shock. So, enjoy!
> “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible." -- Edward Lazarus, (former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).
> "One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” -- Laurence Tribe, (Harvard Law School professor, constitutional law scholar, co-founder of the American Constitution Society.).
> “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” -- William Saletan, Slate magazine writer specializing in abortion and contraception).
> “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose.” -- Edward Lazarus, (former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).
> "[Roe] is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.” -- John Hart Ely, (clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).
> "[Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” -- Benjamin Wittes, (legal journalist and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, Research Director in Public Law).
> "What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed.” -- Edward Lazarus, (former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).
> “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” -- Richard Cohen, (Washington Post syndicated columnist, co-founder of Positive Approaches to Healthy Sexuality (PATH), and the past director of the International Healing Foundation).
> “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” -- Alan Dershowitz, (former Harvard Law School professor in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law since 1993).
> “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” -- Jeffrey Rosen, (George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva, former United States deputy Attorney General, and acting United States Attorney General).
> “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” -- Michael Kinsley, (attorney, political journalist, former editor of "New Republic" and "Harper's", former co-host of CNN's Crossfire, former managing editor of Washington Monthly, editorial editor of New York Times, founder of online magazine Slate).
> “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entitled [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” -- Kermit Roosevelt, (University of Pennsylvania Law School professor, author, public speaker).
> “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” -- Archibald Cox, (JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).
FINALLY:
Did you say "Wow!"? I did. I had to read some of them repeatedly in order for it all to soak in.
Several years ago I met Ron Hale on social media. Ron is a pastor and, even though not yet having seen each other face to face, we have become friends and have a great deal in common, one of which is a passion to save the unborn. In 2016 Ron wrote a piece for The Christian Index magazine entitled, "Our Founding Fathers and the Sanctity of Life." Midway through the article he asked a series of thought provoking and troubling questions: . . .
"Do America’s unborn have any constitutional or human rights? When do these rights begin? When are the unborn legally viable? Can a woman and her doctor decide to abort an eight-month-old unborn weighing seven lbs. in the womb? Must this very mature unborn person suffer more than a convicted serial murderer on death row? When was the last time you heard of the American Justice System being responsible for the dismemberment of a convicted killer’s body before leaving the death chamber (and with specificity in harvesting vital organs)?
Perhaps someday America will cease offering her children to Molech.
To be quite frank, my goal in this series on abortion is not to just inform you or stir you up. It is to make you painfully sick and spiritually repulsed over the idea of killing an unborn human being at its most vulnerable point in life -- where it is securely protected in its mother's womb -- except when it is attacked by a foreign insensitive enemy from another world yet unknown -- the abortionist.
This is one time when I can't really wish that you sleep well. It would be good to contemplate the travesty of Roe v. Wade and its release of a rampant abortion industry.
In His Bond, By His Grace, and for His Kingdom,
Bob Tolliver -- Romans 1:11
Life Unlimited Ministries
LUMglobal
[email protected]
Copyright November, 2021
"A fire kept burning on the hearthstone of my heart, and I took up the burden of the day with fresh courage and hope." -- Charles F. McKoy
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"The time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the Church will have clowns entertaining the goats." -- Charles H. Spurgeon
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