2010

As I write this, the sun is setting for the final time on 2010. Personhood moved slowly forward this year. The ballot initiative in Colorado, Proposition 62, failed, but the number of yes votes increased significantly over the number of yes votes on a similar referendum in the 2008 election.

2011 will see another personhood amendment on the ballot in Mississippi, a state which has much more of a pro-life reputation than Colorado. Unfortunately, there is not a citizen ballot-initiative process here in Texas. Any constitutional amendment proposal must first come from the state legislature before appearing on our ballots.

The proper role of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of each individual person. It is not up to the government to exclude any group of human beings from that protection, no matter that group's stage of development, age, race, ethnicity, religion, or disability. It is the mission of this blog to convince voters and officials that ALL human beings possess the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Happy 2011!

Christmas and Personhood

Looking back on this Christmas Eve morning, I realized that I started this blog exactly one year ago today. Throughout the past year, the frequency of blog posts varied, and that variation seemed to have a correlation to my level of disillusionment with the status quo in the pro-life movement.

From hearing the Christmas story this season, I am reminded that the first person on earth to recognize Jesus for who He was occurred when Jesus was still in the womb. And the person who recognized him was also still in the womb.

[39 ] In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, [40 ] and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. [41 ] And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, [42 ] and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! [43 ] And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? [44 ] For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. [45 ] And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
(Luke 1:39-45 ESV)

It's a beautiful story, and it is one of the most cited among those in the Christian pro-life movement. The personhood of children in the womb is illustrated with great clarity. Why so many people in this movement compromise with those on the other side and advocate allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest still escapes me. If a child in the womb is a person, then it is murder to kill that person, regardless of the manner in which that person was conceived. There seems to be a tremendous lack of reasoning in the general pro-life movement, and I believe that it is one of the reasons why the "legal" abortion industry is flourishing today.

Another problem in the pro-life movement is this perception among the general public that it is strictly a Christian movement. Even though I am a Christian, I recognize that the pro-life position and the Christian faith need not be so intertwined. The purpose of this blog is not to win people over to Christ. I'll let more qualified ministers and theologians write blogs for that. My main purpose here is to convince visitors to this page that neither the "pro-choice" nor the "pro-life with exceptions for rape and incest" positions have any logical, legal, or moral foundation.

We are fast approaching the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade court decision. The perceived pro-life party, the Republican Party, has seemed impotent to eliminate legal abortions. Instead, they push through bills which further codify abortion into law. Abortionists can now, by statute in many states (and soon in Texas), kill babies after showing the mothers of those babies an ultrasound.

I no longer consider myself a Republican. Lately, I have chosen to affiliate myself with the local Libertarian Party, not because they have a strong pro-life platform (they don't), but because a fundamental change in the philosophy of government is needed. I have become convinced that the Republican Party will never part with their old conventional ways, and that such change is more likely from a third party. And it just so happens that my views on economic issues and on the intervention of government into the lives of individuals fits quite nicely with the positions of the Libertarian Party.

I'll have future blog posts on libertarianism and personhood and why libertarians should embrace personhood coming soon in the new year. Until then, Merry Christmas!

Post-election Report, Christianity, and Libertarians for Life

It has been way too long since my last entry in this blog. Life has been busy; October seemed to go by in a blur.

Since I am the Republican Party Precinct Chair for my voting precinct, I spent all day on Election Day at the polling place serving as Election Judge. I arrived at 5:45 AM to begin setting up voting booths and equipment (and I did this the morning after attending Game 5 of the World Series). The polls opened at 7:00 AM and closed at 7:00 PM. As Election Judge, I was required to stay at the polling place the entire day. Of course, we still had a line of about fifty people at 7:00 PM, so we didn't actually shut everything down until about 7:45. I delivered the ballots, equipment, and paperwork to the county election station at 9:30 PM. The whole day left me exhausted, and I didn't watch a single minute of TV election coverage that night.

But we all know what happened. Rick Perry was re-elected governor, and Republicans won a majority in the United States House of Representatives and greatly increased their majority in the Texas House. I have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, the defeat of pro-abortion Democrats is always a good thing. On the other, Republicans haven't done much except give lip-service to real pro-life issues for many years. The resistance of the Republican Party establishment and of supposedly pro-life organizations like Texas Alliance for Life to the personhood issue is still substantial.

Some of the "pro-life" bills that newly-elected legislators have been filing are disappointing. The most common are bills which prohibit taxpayer funded abortion, a move toward nullifying parts of Obamacare. What these bills tell the abortionists is that it's OK to go on murdering babies just as long as they don't take public money for doing it. Why can't we elect legislators with the guts to really take a stand against unconstitutional federal action, especially action perpetrated by the US Supreme Court over the past several decades?

Since the election, the race for Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives has taken center stage. Joe Straus, Speaker for the last session of the Legislature, was elected to that post by eleven liberal Republicans and all of the House Democrats. Supposedly, the deal that Straus and his cohorts made with the Democrats included a stipulation that no "pro-life" bills would make it to the floor of the House.

I was listening to the Wells Report on the radio the other day, and Representative Leo Berman was on talking about the race for Speaker. I can't quote him verbatim, but he said something to the effect that he only votes for pro-life people because being pro-life indicates that the person believes in God. That statement got me thinking. Why is the pro-life movement perceived as an exclusively Christian one?

I am a Christian, and I love the Personhood USA organization. Personhood USA's message is that all human beings are persons, regardless of the stage of biological development, and should be recognized as persons by law. About the only criticism I have of Personhood USA is that they present personhood so closely tied to Christianity. According to the website, their mission is "to serve Jesus by being an Advocate for those who can not speak for themselves, the pre-born child." With a mission statement like that, those who are hostile to the Christian faith, for whatever reason, may not ever hear the philosophical and logical arguments in favor of personhood.

I've considered myself somewhat libertarian for a good many years now. In fact, I openly supported Kathie Glass, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor, over Rick Perry. The photo is of me and Ms. Glass.



I have never actually joined the Libertarian Party because of their horrible platform position on abortion. But it has been my view that government's only legitmate purpose was to protect each individual's right to life, liberty, and property. Beyond that, each individual should be free to live his or her life, provided that he or she does not infringe on others' rights to life, liberty, and property.


My libertarian leanings led me to the Libertarians for Life website. This organization makes purely philosophical and scientific arguments in favor of the recognition of preborn children as persons under the law.

To explain and defend our case, LFL argues that:

1. Human offspring are human beings, persons from conception, whether that takes place as natural or artificial fertilization, by cloning, or by any other means.

2. Abortion is homicide -- the killing of one person by another.

3. One's right to control one's own body does not allow violating the obligation not to aggress. There is never a right to kill an innocent person. Prenatally, we are all innocent persons.

4. A prenatal child has the right to be in the mother's body. Parents have no right to evict their children from the crib or from the womb and let them die. Instead both parents, the father as well as the mother, owe them support and protection from harm.

5. No government, nor any individual, has a just power to legally "de-person" any one of us, born or preborn.

6. The proper purpose of the law is to side with the innocent, not against them.

Conference Report

The Midwest Personhood Conference was a wonderful opportunity to meet with Personhood advocates from other states and to talk about strategy. Personally, I enjoyed meeting prolife leaders like Cal Zastrow, Rebecca Kiessling, Flip Benham, Gualberto Garcia-Jones, and Walter Hoye. Here is PersonhoodUSA co-founder Keith Mason's press release:

Pro-life advocates from ten states including Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin gathered in Wichita, Kansas last Saturday, September 11th for the Midwest Personhood Pro-life Conference.

The event sponsored by Personhood Kansas and Right to Life of Kansas featured representatives Keith Mason and Cal Zastrow from Personhood USA and Johanna Dasteel from the American Life League. Other participants included Gualberto Garcia Jones, Attorney and President of Personhood Colorado; Rev. Walter Hoye, leader of the California Human Rights Amendment Initiative Drive; Rebecca Kiessling, Attorney and International Pro-life Speaker; and the Rev. Flip Benham, National Director of Operation Save America.

The theme of the conference was answering the distortions and legal objections to personhood measures and focusing on the strategic significance of the movement in ending abortion.

Attendees from Colorado were pleased to report on their successful efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the November, 2010 ballot. Amendment 62 would define the word "person" to include all human beings from their biological beginnings.

More than a dozen in attendance traveled from the great state of Oklahoma. They utilized the opportunity to network with national personhood leaders and are excited to report that they will be launching a personhood initiative drive soon.

"We're grateful for the wonderful personhood leaders in attendance who were able to share both their legal expertise and their experience in working on successful personhood campaigns. The conference bore much fruit, and we go forth with a renewed spirit to pursue personhood measures, protect the preborn, and end the institution of abortion throughout the nation," said Keith Ashley of Personhood Kansas.

Mid-west Personhood Conference

The Midwest Personhood Conference is this Saturday, September 11 in Wichita, KS. I'll be attending, and I would love to hear from any other Texans making the trip. Just drop me a note at danielh41@yahoo.com.

Liberal "Rights"

I usually try to keep this blog limited to issues dealing with abortion and personhood, but most people who support prolife issues are also in opposition to same sex marriage. Some of the arguments made against the ruling in Federal District Court striking down Proposition 8, California's constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, might conflict with those made on behalf of the right to life of unborn children. Because of this, I am posting this, although I do so with some hesitation.

I agree that the ruling in this case is terrible. However, many of the arguments that I have heard in opposition to this ruling are not very well thought out. It is a fact that a majority of California voters approved this amendment, and it is also a fact that one solitary judge has overruled this majority. But these facts cannot be turned into the sole argument used against the ruling, that it was wrong for one judge to overrule a majority of voters like this. In fact, I would discard this argument altogether.

In a Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences survey from May 2010 (http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm), only 15% of respondents answered that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. 44% stated that abortion should be legal only in certain circumstances, such as in cases of rape or incest. 37% said that abortions should be legal and available in any circumstance. According to the Declaration of Independence, the right to life of all human beings comes from our Creator and is inalienable. It is not granted by the government and cannot be taken by the government. And, as the Declaration of Independence describes, government has been instituted among men to ensure that right. The fact that only 15% answered the survey in support of this ideal in no way means that the government should continue to allow abortions. Our country is not a pure democracy. If it were, fifty-one percent of the people could vote to enslave the other forty-nine percent. This is why opinion polls on abortion matter little to me. Legalized abortion is wrong. It is the denial of one of the most basic of rights, the right to life, to an entire class of human beings, and I will continue to fight for the protection of this right, no matter what polls say.

I realize that proponents of gay marriage are making a similar argument to the one I just made, that a majority of people cannot and should not vote to deny the rights of the minority. The flaw in their argument centers around their idea of "rights," a word that has been thrown around a lot lately. Everyone wants “equal rights” or “civil rights” or a “right to marry whomever.” But what constitutes a right in this country?

I return to that founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence. It says that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. These rights include the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are pretty self explanatory. Now that I have come into being, I have the right to continue being, the right to remain alive. That requires no obligation from anyone else. I have the right to liberty. I can go where I want, think what I want, say what I want. That also requires no obligation on the part of anyone else. And I have the right to pursue happiness. I don’t have a right to be happy, only to pursue being happy. Once again, this places no obligation on anyone else.

Our country’s other great document, the Constitution, contains the Bill of Rights. I’ve always viewed these as restrictions on government in support of those basic rights described in the Declaration. The government can’t limit what I write or what I say; it can’t prevent me from holding whatever religious beliefs I happen to hold; it can’t prevent me from bearing arms; it can’t search my home without warrant or probable cause to believe I have committed some crime, etc.

Liberals in government today are trying to inflict a whole bevy of “rights” on the people. They say everyone has a “right to healthcare,” a “right to own a home,” a “right to marry whomever they chose,” etc., etc. These are not rights. I do not have a “right to healthcare.” Is there someone obligated by the government to give me healthcare? What about that person’s right to liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.? People do not have a right to own a home. The recent failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be indicators that some people should not be given mortgages. And yet, the government tried to obligate banks and mortgage companies into giving these bad loans. I saw a picture on Drudge Report yesterday of a young woman sitting dejectedly on a curb holding a sign which read, “A job is a right.”


I want to say to her, “No, a job is not a right. No one is obligated to give you a job. If you want a job, go out and make yourself marketable.”

And now liberals want to make marriage a right. No one has a “right” to get married. We do all have a right to pursue happiness, and this would include the choice of a life partner (if, of course, that life partner is willing). I found a woman who wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. The feeling was mutual. The two of us hold the same religious beliefs. We formed a union based on those beliefs (i.e., we were married by a Southern Baptist preacher). We did get a marriage license, and we did go register it with the county clerk, according to the law at that time, more because it is expected of us by those around us than because of anything else. Legally, we didn’t have to register with the State, and only because of current law does the State recognize the marriage. The marriage agreement was between my wife and me in accordance with our beliefs. Our marriage is recognized by the State and by other public entities, like our employers, our church, our doctors, etc. They are under no obligation to recognize the marriage other than their own policies and practices.

Throughout the history of this country, marriage has generally been defined as the union of one man and one woman. For this reason, marriages between men and women are recognized by all kinds of entities, both public and private. What proponents of same sex marriage want is to obligate those same entities to recognize “marriages” between persons of the same sex. The issue isn’t about allowing homosexuals to “marry.” They can already do that. This is about forcing local governments, private companies, and public institutions to recognize these marriages when, in reality, these entities were never forced to recognize heterosexual marriage.

The Bible is one of the oldest written documents in the history of the human species. I happen to believe that it is a gift from God and that it is His Word to us. Millions of other people believe the same thing. According to the Bible, acts of homosexuality are sins (Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27). Thanks to the relentless public relations campaign of those who tout this same sex marriage agenda, those of us who hold this belief are increasingly viewed as intolerant or hateful. This judge’s ruling, that we all have to recognize “marriages” of people of the same sex, will almost criminalize a belief in the Bible.

For example, the State of Massachusetts is one of the few that now recognizes same sex marriage. They also have a plethora of “anti-discrimination” laws on the books. The Catholic Church had been running an adoption service in the State, and, to comply with these anti-discrimination laws, Massachusetts ordered them to place adoptive children in homes with parents of the same sex. This, of course, goes against the beliefs of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, but, since these “marriages” were now recognized by the State, they were forced to treat them the same as heterosexual couples. Rather than fight a long and costly court battle, the Church decided to cease adoptions in Massachusetts (http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=42906).

The main reason for this post is not simply to argue about how wrong same sex marriage is but to demonstrate the need for care in making those arguments. We cannot contradict what we have said on behalf of our unborn children.

A Personal Story

I spend a lot of time on this blog criticizing our elected officials for inaction on right to life issues and for giving the Roe v. Wade court decision the effective force of a Constitutional amendment (which it does not have) as well as railing against the abortion providers who have become expert at deceiving so many scared and confused young women.

For the past three months, it has been my honor to serve in the nursery every Sunday morning at my church. I'm the director for a room caring for babies who are roughly 6 to 12 months old (although some of them have passed the 12-month mark in the past couple of weeks--they grow so fast!). The mom of one of these precious babies posted the story of her own abortion experience, and she has graciously given me permission to pass it on. I hope all who read it are blessed by it: http://theadventuresofbabyboymartin.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-story.html?spref=fb

Rape and Incest

I was listening to Bill Bennett's "Morning in America" radio show on my way to work this morning. Georgia gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel was the guest, and Bill asked her about her pro-life stance. She gave a pretty standard "pro-life" answer, stating that abortions should generally be prohibited but that exceptions should be allowed for cases of rape or incest. I also found a blog post on her campaign website, where she says, "And while I will not seek to prohibit abortions in the extremely rare cases of rape, incest, or where there is a real threat to the life of the mother, I will do everything in my power to encourage and promote alternatives to abortion in these tragic situations."

This kind of thinking (or lack of thinking) is what is wrong in the pro-life movement today. If someone takes the position that human life begins at conception, then that someone must regard each and every abortion as the murder of a human person. If any single preborn child is to be considered a living human being, then ALL preborn children must be considered living human beings, without regard to the circumstances of that child's conception. Allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest is tantamount to saying that children in the womb are not living persons and can be killed at will, that we merely want to outlaw abortions in general in order to punish women for their sexual practices and enforce our moral views but that women who get pregnant through no fault of their own, as in cases of rape or incest, should be able to end their pregancies if they want to. On a purely logical basis, that position is indefensible. If unborn children are human beings and if each abortion kills an unborn child, then each and every abortion must be regarded as the murder of a human being and should be treated accordingly by our legal system. Those on the pro-abortion side know that the whole "exceptions for rape and incest" position does grave harm to the pro-life position; this is why they keep bringing up the rape and incest issue in public discourse.

I have to return to Footnote 54 of the Roe v. Wade decision:

When Texas urges that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person, it faces a dilemma. Neither in Texas nor in any other State are all abortions prohibited. Despite broad proscription, an exception always exists. The exception contained [410 U.S. 113, 158] in Art. 1196, for an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother, is typical. But if the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother's condition is the sole determinant, does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the Amendment's command?

There are other inconsistencies between Fourteenth Amendment status and the typical abortion statute. It has already been pointed out, n. 49, supra, that in Texas the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice? Further, the penalty for criminal abortion specified by Art. 1195 is significantly less than the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by Art. 1257 of the Texas Penal Code. If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different?

As much as I hate to agree with anything in such a horrible and disastrous court opinion, the court's logic in this section is sound. If we are pro-life because we believe that unborn children are living human beings with the God-given right to life, then we must demand that our government protect that right to life for ALL unborn children just as we demand that it protect the right to life of all persons already born. This is the goal of Texas Personhood and other advocates of personhood legislation.

Debate on Personhood

The executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, Joe Pojman, and I got into another debate as the result of a Facebook post. Here is the entire thread (to this point)...

Joe Pojman "Once again the legal personhood of the unborn child has been upheld in Texas so that our legislature can protect mothers and unborn babies from violent crimes," says Joe Pojman, Ph.D., executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. "Although the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade opinion forbids Texas from protecting unborn children from abortion, we believe the Prenatal Protection Act creates a foothold for someday overturning Roe."
http://www.lifenews.com/state5220.html


Lauro Antonio Garza Well Done! God bless you!


Dan Hawkins The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade opinion forbids Texas from protecting unborn children from abortion only because we the people let it. When are we going to start insisting that our leaders stand against tyranny and injustice and for the inalienable right to life of ALL human beings? http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2010/06/footnote-54.html


Joe Pojman Dan, much as we want the Texas Legislature to provide legal protection for innocent unborn babies from the tragedy of abortion, the Legislature cannot because the US Supreme Court ties the hands of the Legislature and the Governor.

Check out pp. 2-3 of the article by noted pro-life legal scholar Paul Linton:

"More than 50 years ago, the Supreme Court, in a case involving the enforcement of the school-desegregation cases, stated that the Court’s interpretation of the United States Constitution is 'the supreme law of the land,' which is of binding effect on the states by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, art. VI, cl. 2."

http://www.humanlifereview.com/2009_fall/Linton.pdf


Dan Hawkins So what you and Linton are saying is that we should just accept that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution is the supreme law of the land because the Supreme Court says it is? I reject that, and our state leaders need to reject that as well. Thomas Jefferson, who I think carries much more intellectual weight than Paul Linton, once said that the Constitution is a compact between the states and that, "the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1798.htm


Joe Pojman With all due respect to Mr. Jefferson, here's an interesting historical perspective: http://www.statesman.com/opinion/insight/commentary-states-cant-nullify-federal-law-217250.html. States may not unilaterally reject Supreme Court rulings. Like it or not, that's just not the way our United States are set up under the Constitution.


Dan Hawkins Well, I don't know who this Sanford Levinson is (the author of the American Statesman article), but given some of the opinions he expresses in the article, I just can't put much stock in what he says. For instance, he states, "I am quite bitterly critical of a number of defects in the Constitution and support a constitutional convention to correct them, but that does not change the fact, for example, that Wyoming has the same number of votes in the Senate as does California, or Vermont the same number of votes as does Texas." He completely misses the point about why Congress was split into two Houses in the Great Compromise. One House is supposed to represent the people, and that representation is based on population, etc. The other house (the Senate) is supposed to give equal representation to the States. The only constitutional defect in this arrangement is the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which mandated direct election of the Senators by the people of the states (thus removing any say the State governments had in the federal government, and thus making the issue of nullification and the 10th Amendment even more important).

And not only that, but the article is about nullification of Federal law, and Roe v. Wade is not a law. It is a court opinion. The judicial branch, by definition, cannot make law. If you read my blog post at http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2010/06/footnote-54.html, you will see that what I am proposing is legislation based on arguments made in Roe V. Wade that will both protect the right to life of all human beings and adhere to the Constitution of the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court has seized far too much power for itself, by declaring itself and its interpretation of the Constitution as the "supreme law of the land," and the other branches of government, both federal and state, have just stood by and allowed it. When you actually look at the Constitution, the Supreme Court doesn't even have authority over its own jurisdiction (Article III, Section 2 states that "In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the CONGRESS SHALL MAKE."). Unfortunately, I haven't seen Congress making any exceptions or regulations on the Supreme Court lately because they have abdicated so much power to them.

This attitude that decisions of the Supreme Corut have the effective force of a Constitutional amendment is what is wrong with so many things in our country and especially the pro-life movement. It is past time for someone in government, be it Congress, a state legislature, a governor, someone, to step up and take a stand against the Court for what is right and just. There is nothing more right and just than the abolition of legalized abortion and the protection of the right to life of preborn children.


Cathy Fountain Kerr "The Court noted that Roe v. Wade permits states to criminalize the homicide of an unborn child SO LONG AS THE LAW DOES NOT RESTRICT THE MOTHER'S RIGHT TO TERMINATE HER PREGNANCY."
Let me get this straight: a person can be prosecuted if he commits murder on an unborn child, BUT the mother can do the same thing with no penalty at all. This is such bad law that it defies credibility! You cannot have it both ways (and I fully understand what I am saying here).

When, oh when, will this finallly be brought back into the light of day and exposed for the evil that it is?


Rick Ellis This is a farce, and no prolife law at all. Any law that ends with "then you can kill the baby" is not prolife.

This issue ends or fails at personhood.

to demand anything less than full personhood for the womb child is doomed.


Joe Pojman The Texas Prenatal Protection Act recognizes the personhood of the unborn child and allows the conviction and punishment of violent crimes against unborn children. That is a very good law. Texas has a moral obligation to protect as many unborn babies as we can while educating the public about the humanity of the unborn child, and we have done so. Many criminals are now behind bars for killing unborn babies, and the public learns about the personhood of unborn babies when they read about the convictions in the press.

The obstacle to protecting unborn from abortion is that Roe v. Wade -- among the very worst decisions by the US Supreme Court -- interprets the US Constitution in a way that prevents the Prenatal Protect Act from being applied in cases of abortion. That is the terrible inconsistancy of Roe. The majority of the Supreme Court does not care about the personhood of the unborn child. The majority only cares about garanteeing a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, even though that means terminating an unborn child who is a clearly a legal person.

People need to know about the ruthless extremism of Roe.

How do we fix it? Simple. Replace pro-abortion justices wtih pro-life nominees. How do we do that? Replace Obama with a pro-life president in two years and vote in enough US Senators to approve the nominees.


Rick Ellis You are dead wrong Mr. Pojman, as pro-life has been for far to long. A simple act of congress over turns Roe, and puts the court back between the 4 corners of the constitution. Any law that says you get to kill babies, is not Prolife. Duncan Hunter has introduced it several times, but it was not allowed out of comity.

You are spreading mis information that is deadly to womb children.

for some one who brags about their education, you sure don't seem to know much.


Dan Hawkins Dr. Pojman, with all due respect, the status quo has been in effect for 37 years, and it isn't working. You say that fixing Roe v. Wade is easy: we just have to elect a pro-life President who would then nominate pro-life Supreme Court justices. But it isn't that simple. We've already had 8 years of Ronald Reagan and another 8 years of George W. Bush. Before Obama took office, 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices had been nominated by Republican Presidents. And yet Roe v. Wade is still firmly entrenched in the minds of government officials and inteligentsia as having the force of a constitutional amendment.

It can take years for a case to reach the Supreme Court, and meanwhile, the make up of the Court is always changing. We cannot simply wait for a more favorable Court to come into being and then try challenging Roe v. Wade with another court case. Said court case may not even make it to the Court. And in the meantime, how many more babies will be slaughtered while we take this wait and see approach?

Abolitionists in the 1850s did not sit around saying, "Well, we need to get the Dred Scot decision overturned." No, they were very pro-active. They advocated the use of state nullification against federal fugitive slave laws; they pushed for legislation that would free the slaves. And after the southern states seceeded from the Union, the top abolitionist of his day issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

What I am proposing is that our state legislature enact laws which fully recognize that life -- HUMAN life -- begins at the moment that sperm merges with that egg. This new legislation should recognize that the term "person" applies to all human beings from fertilization to natural death. The Prenatal Protection Act of 2003 was a good start, but it left a glaring uncontitutionality in the Texas Penal Code. It said that preborn babies are persons but that expectant mothers and their abortionists could murder these persons at will. The bill I am suggesting would both correct this unconstitutionality and provide full protection of the right to life of all human beings. It would shut down every abortuary in the state. And when NARAL and Planned Parenthood challenge the new law in court, our state should vigorously defend it to the bitter end.

You are for maintaining the status quo even though the status quo has resulted in the slaughter of 50 million children over the past 37 years. That's wrong. Those of us who advocate personhood laws cannot and will not accept this. How many more children will be slaughtered while pro-life organizations cringe in fear of this massive federal government and its seemingly all-powerful Supreme Court?

You say that this abdication of power to the Supreme Court is just the way it is (and you link me to articles written by people with silly ideas like calling for a new constitutional convention when what we really need is a federal government that only operates within the constraints of our present Constitution). I am glad that people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and others did not simply say, "Well, that's just the way it is..."

Zarsky Case

I got an e-mail from Cliff Zarsky today. He had been charged with criminal trespass at an abortion clinic in Corpus Christi. His arrest was a purposeful act with the ultimate goal of challenging and overturning Roe v. Wade. A pre-trial hearing had been scheduled for June 23rd, during which, Mr. Zarsky's Motion for Unborn Personhood by Judicial Knowledge would be considered.

Mr. Zarsky reports that: "The criminal trespass case in Nueces County against Cliff Zarsky was dismissed on 23 June 2010, by motion of the District Attorney's Office for prosecutorial discretion. I am trying to get an appointment with the DA to find out what was the basis of the decision and if the DA's office would consider refilling the complaint."

It seems strange that a defendant would ask that charges be refiled against him after they had been dismissed, but I certainly support Mr Zarsky's efforts.

This case illustrates the challenges of trying to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Just getting a case to the Supreme Court is an unbelievably difficult task, never mind convincing the Court to reverse a previous Court's decision. The best and most direct way to challenge Roe v. Wade is through legislation that circumvents Roe v. Wade by granting full personhood status to all human beings from conception through natural death, and ensuring all the protections that personhood entails. No state is in a better postion to do this than Texas. The Roe v. Wade case overturned a past Texas law, and current Texas law already defines a person as an individual and an individual as "a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." All our legislators need is the will and the moral courage to enact such a law, and we urge them to do so.

Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade

I found a video on Youtube today in which Dr. Johnny Hunter compares the slavery, civil rights, and abortion debates. I'd argue that they are all the same because they involve HUMAN rights. But in the video, he confronts head on those in the pro-life movement who are not in favor of personhood laws and amendments...



My favorite quote from the video: "I'm so glad that the abolitionists didn't say, 'Well, you know what, we need to overturn the Dred Scott decision...'"

Footnote 54

I was re-visiting the Roe v. Wade decision again today, and I had to stop at Footnote 54, which says:

When Texas urges that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person, it faces a dilemma. Neither in Texas nor in any other State are all abortions prohibited. Despite broad proscription, an exception always exists. The exception contained [410 U.S. 113, 158] in Art. 1196, for an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother, is typical. But if the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother's condition is the sole determinant, does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the Amendment's command?

There are other inconsistencies between Fourteenth Amendment status and the typical abortion statute. It has already been pointed out, n. 49, supra, that in Texas the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice? Further, the penalty for criminal abortion specified by Art. 1195 is significantly less than the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by Art. 1257 of the Texas Penal Code. If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different?

While I disagree vehemently with the ultimate findings of Roe v. Wade, this reasoning of the Court makes perfect sense. If, during argument, the State of Texas did assert that preborn children were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, why did the Texas Penal Code treat the killing of unborn children differently than it treated the killing of other human beings? For review, here is the wording of the sections of the Texas Penal Code that were struck down by Roe v. Wade:

"Article 1191. Abortion

"If any person shall designedly administer to a pregnant woman or knowingly procure to be administered with her consent any drug or medicine, or shall use towards her any violence or means whatever externally or internally applied, and thereby procure an abortion, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than two nor more than five years; if it be done without her consent, the punishment shall be doubled. By `abortion' is meant that the life of the fetus or embryo shall be destroyed in the woman's womb or that a premature birth thereof be caused.

"Art. 1192. Furnishing the means

"Whoever furnishes the means for procuring an abortion knowing the purpose intended is guilty as an accomplice.

"Art. 1193. Attempt at abortion

"If the means used shall fail to produce an abortion, the offender is nevertheless guilty of an attempt to produce abortion, provided [410 U.S. 113, 118] it be shown that such means were calculated to produce that result, and shall be fined not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars.

"Art. 1194. Murder in producing abortion

"If the death of the mother is occasioned by an abortion so produced or by an attempt to effect the same it is murder."

"Art. 1196. By medical advice

"Nothing in this chapter applies to an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother."

I fail to see anything in that language that indicated that Texas lawmakers had given even an inkling of thought to the idea that preborn children possessed the inalienable right to life or that they fell under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, as the Roe v. Wade opinion pointed out, why weren't the women seeking abortions guilty of any crime under that statute? As much as I hate to admit it, the Court was right in striking down that law. Of course, what they should have done as a remedy was to determine that the word "person" in the Fourteenth Amendment meant "a human being" and to order the States to fully protect the right to life, and guarantee the equal protection of, all human beings, regardless of age or stage of development. Instead, the Court ruled, as it did in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), that certain human beings could be treated as property and could be either bought and sold or disposed of at will.

What the State of Texas should do and must do is enact laws that actually do recognize that preborn children are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has already indicated that this would be consistent with the Constitution, both in Footnote 54 and in the statement in Part IX of the Roe v. Wade majority opinion that "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."

The position that our Governor Rick Perry and so many other supposedly "prolife" leaders hold, that "abortion should be legal only in cases involving rape or incest or when carrying a pregnancy to term would threaten the woman’s life," has no logical or constitutional basis, as a careful reading of the Roe v. Wade decision will show. It is unfortunate that many of the "prolife" organizations which normally support such candidates, like Texas Alliance for Life, have refused to support personhood laws which would actually protect preborn children. Are they complacent, afraid, or acting out of self-preservation (i.e., if abortion became illegal, would there even be a need for Texas Alliance for Life?)?

Texas has already laid the framework for future laws which would fully protect preborn children from the murder that is going on throughout the state. Current law, specifically Tex. Penal Code §1.07 (26), says that an individual "means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." Tex. Penal Code §19.02 plainly states that a person commits the offense of murder if he "intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual." We will be urging Texas lawmakers to repeal Tex. Penal Code §19.06, which excludes unborn children from the protection of this statue defining and prohibiting murder if the killing was committed by the child's mother or her abortionist. All other abortion regulations should also be repealed so that abortion becomes simply another form of murder, punishable like any other form of murder. I have drafted a blueprint of how such legislation might look, found here: Page 1, page 2, and page 3.


The question is, will there be a representative or a state senator with the courage and the will to propose such legislation and the ability to persuade enough of the other lawmakers to support it? We will be contacting all of them between the November elections and the beginning of the Texas Legislative Session in January. It is way past time for the State of Texas to stand up against the over-reaches of the federal government (and this includes all three branches of government), especially when such over-reaches deny the most basic of rights, life, to an entire class of human beings.

Sex and Consequences

I have been thinking about the video of Obama saying that if his daughters make a mistake, he doesn't want them punished with a baby.



This attitude is so wrong on so many different levels, the most obvious of which is this view that a child should ever be viewed as a "punishment." Children are always to be viewed as a blessing from God. Psalm 127:3-4: "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!" And if they aren't a blessing to the biological parents, they are most certainly a blessing to the adoptive ones.

And I can't help but sneer at this idea that Obama plans on teaching his daughters about "values and morals" when those values and morals say that women can kill their preborn children for any reason whatsoever. Those aren't values and morals. Obama is actually teaching them how to rationalize any behavior. If they tell themselves that babies don't have any rights unless and until their umbilical cords are cut, or that they aren't ready to be parents, or that having children would just be a major inconvenience, then they can justify murdering them by abortion. If a store charges prices that are too high, then I should be able to just take a few things extra without paying for them. Certain people will think less of me and maybe even shun me if I tell the truth about it, so it'll be OK if I lie to them. This is not moral; it is moral relativism. Real values and morals teach us that it is always wrong to kill innocent life, it is always wrong to steal, it is always wrong to lie.

One of the first rules of life is that actions have consequences. Obama seems to have missed that lesson, and his daughters are apparently going to miss it as well. How does Obama plan to teach his daughters about sexual morality while telling them that they can circumvent the known consequences of their sexual behavior? The primary purpose of sexual intercourse has always been reproduction. God also made it a sacred union between a man and wife. The world tells us that sex is merely a recreational activity, and to reinforce that, the world has given us birth control, abortion, and fast cures to most venereal diseases. One can't help but notice the massive and continual push to find a cure for HIV/AIDS. Modern society has no respect for the act that creates life; therefore, it has no respect for life.

The consequences of sexual intercourse have always included the possibility of conceiving a child. Abortion is the attempt to escape these consequences. Of course, neither Obama nor this society will tell these girls the consequences of abortion itself. A Planned Parenthood ad from 1964 gives a fairly accurate definition of abortion: "An abortion kills the life of the baby after it has begun." Of course, now that Planned Parenthood is in the business of selling abortion, they steer far from words like "baby," "kills," and "life." They also listed on that 1964 ad one of the possible consequences of abortion, sterility.



Today, the Planned Parenthood website minimizes or just neglects to mention many of the risks. Their current website says: "In-clinic abortion procedures are very safe. But there are risks with any medical procedure." (I'm assuming that they mean that abortions are safe for the women since it has been proven that they aren't at all safe for the babies.) The site then lists a few minor complications that might occur and then makes this statement: "Most often, these complications are simple to treat with medicine or other treatments." Planned Parenthood makes some mention of "extremely rare" more serious complications and then uses distortions to compare those risks with the risks involved in childbirth. Planned Parenthood's entire method for promoting and selling abortions involves lies and deception designed to hide and/or downplay the possible physical consequences of abortion. And they don't even mention the emotional or spiritual consequences.

Scandals, investigations, cover-ups, and perjuries in the news today all demonstrate that escaping and hiding the consequences of one's actions are simply the way of the world. What is most heinous is when those actions include the killing of innocent human beings. We must demand that our government protect ALL innocent human beings. I was reading the 94th Psalm yesterday, and I couldn't help but think of the United States Supreme Court and its Roe v. Wade ruling as I went through verses 20-23:

"Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
But the LORD has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the LORD our God will wipe them out." (ESV)

On a lighter note, I will be attending the Midwest Personhood Prolife Conference in Wichita, Kansas on September 11th of this year. I would encourage everyone reading this to come and network with fellow advocates of personhood laws and amendments and to get updated on the efforts in the various states.

New Hero

After my debates with Texas Alliance for Life regarding their opposition to Personhood and their generally complacent attitude about taking action that would actually halt the killing of children, I was feeling pretty down about the Texas prolife movement. Then I met an 81-year-old attorney from Corpus Christi named Cliff Zarsky. Ok, we didn't really meet, but we did have a very enlightening phone conversation.

Mr. Zarsky has done extensive research into both statuory and case law regarding the issues of individual personhood and the inalienable right to life. He has built a very strong case for destroying Roe v. Wade. Of course, to present such a case to a court, one needs to have some kind of standing, something like a criminal indictment. So in January, Mr. Zarsky purposely went out to get arrested for criminal trespess at an abortion clinic in Corpus Christi. An account of his arrest can be found here: http://www.all.org/newsroom_judieblog.php?id=2911.

Mr Zarsky has written a legal brief in conjunction with his criminal trespass case which details several points on which Roe v. Wade should be discarded. The entire brief can be found here: http://personhoodeducation.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/cliff-zarsky-personhood-brief.pdf , but the section I would like to highlight here in the blog is one in which the hypocrisy and basic dishonesty of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is detailed:



F. THE “PERSONHOOD” OF THE HUMAN FETUS IS ESTABLISHED BY COURT DECISIONS THAT UNBORN FETUSES ARE “PERSONS” FOR INCLUSION IN THE FIFTH AND FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
In the U.S. Supreme Court’s case of Roe v. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmum claimed, “The word person, as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” He came to this conclusion by asserting that “no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, but conceded that if the “personhood” of the fetus “is established [the case for abortion], of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed by the ‘Fourteenth Amendment. Roe, 410 U.S. at 156-157.

A 1885 Supreme Court case clearly establishes the “personhood” of the fetus. The Supreme Court upheld the right to due process for preborn persons in the womb in McArthur v. Scott 113 US 340,440 (1885), holding that any court case is “null and void” unless all of the parties to the controversy are represented in court, because a person must have the opportunity to present their side of the story in court. Id.387,391.

Preborn children in the womb were cut out of a probated will without proper representation in court. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor, since their right to due process was violated: “A decree annulling the probate of a will is not merely irregular and erroneous but absolutely void, as against persons interested in the will and not parties to the decree, and as the parties these plaintiffs were neither actually nor constructively parties to the decree setting aside the will of their grandfather, it follows that that decree is no bar to the assertion of their rights under the will.” Id.404. Where a court fails to grant the fundamental right of representation to any party whose rights are being decided upon, that case is void for lack of due process. The Court also held that preborn persons in the womb can hold vested rights, not just rights “contingent upon live birth,”id.384, and therefore the class of preborn in the womb “Posterity” are included in the standard legal definition of a person “one (as a human being, a partnership, or a corporation) that is recognized by law as the subject of rights and duties” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. The applicable Latin maxim is coram no judice, and this was the basis for the Court’s decision in McArthur v. Scott, 404. Since the Court denied a motion for a guardian ad litem to join in the arguments in Roe, Doe v. Scott, 321 F. Supp. 1385 (N.D. III. 1971), cert denied 409 U.S. 817 (1972), so too should Roe v. Wade be considered null and void by this rule of law per McArthur v. Scott.

Neither abortion “survivor” children nor unborn children threatened and endangered by abortion were represented before the U.S. District Court or the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe. Abortion “survivor” children born in this country are U.S. citizens (with extremely minor exceptions), yet they are doomed to die and die primarily due to prematurity, abortion death or lack of care. Unborn children, with well recognized legal postures under the laws of the United States of America, Texas and other States, are killed outright by abortion. Abortion “survivors” and unborn children are persons or entities with legal personalities under the due process clause of the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Judgment’s of the U.S. District Court and the Supreme Court in Roe, rendered without any representation of such victims by guardian or next friend (or by counsel for such guardian or next friend), constituted naked deprivation of life, liberty and property without due process of law, in violation of the 5th Amendment. Accordingly, such Judgments are unconstitutional and void as to them. McArthur v. Scott, 113 U.S, 340, 391-392, 404 (1885) (unborn children); Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S.714,733-734 (1878) (U.S. citizens).

Neither the U.S. District Court, nor the Supreme Court had personal jurisdiction over such abortion “survivor” or unborn children in Roe. Yet each such category of children was affected vitally by those proceedings, and had a right to be before the Courts, therefore, were unconstitutional and void as to them. Ibid.

Moreover, this deficiency operated to divest the U.S. District Court and the Supreme Court of authority to pronounce judgment affecting them personally. Accordingly, the Judgment of such Courts, rendered without personal jurisdiction over the Infant Victims of abortion, are void as violative of fundamental principles of personal jurisdiction. The unborn children who were conceived and killed by abortion after Roe could not be affected jurisdictionally by Roe in their rights posture, yet they die from Roe. Id at 391,392, 404.

In McArthur v. Scott, the Supreme Court recognized the due process rights of preborn persons in the womb which is the essence of personhood, and is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s own historic understanding of the word “person.” In United States v. Palme, 14-17 U.S. 607, (1818), Chief Justice John Marshall stated, “The words ‘any person or persons,’ are broad enough to comprehend every human being.” Justice Stephen Field stated in Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S.228, 242 (1896), “The term ‘person’ is broad enough to include any and every human being within the jurisdiction of the republic…This has been decided so often that the point does not require argument.”

The hypocrisy in Roe is finally recognized in this: It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.

The Roe decision asserted “no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” But there are several cases cited herein and more that clearly hold unborn humans are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that any decision denying due process and equal protection to the unborn is null and void. Is it not the duty of the trial and appellate courts to accept the stare decisis of the highest court protecting the right to life guaranteed in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment? That would be more relevant in this case, because the cases relied upon herein by the Defendant were unknown and not considered by the Supreme Court in Roe, and seven of the Justices agreed that if “personhood of the fetus is established, the case for abortion] of course collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” How could any court hold that the “personhood” of the unborn human has not been established by the multitude of cited cases? Justice Stephen Field stated in Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 242 (1896), “The term ‘person’ is broad enough to include any and every human being within the jurisdiction of the republic…This has been decided so often that the point does not require argument.”

In Steinberg v. Brown 321 F. Supp. 741 (N.D. Ohio, 1970) the court rejected a challenge to Ohio’s abortion laws, holding that the implied right to privacy must inevitably fall in conflict with the express provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. The difference between this case and Griswold (overturned a ban on the use of contraceptives) is clearly apparent, for here there is an embryo of a fetus incapable of protecting itself.” Id. 745-46.

As the court in Steinberg explained, “a new life comes into being with the union of human egg and sperm cells,” Id at 746, and “[o]nce human life has commenced, the constitutional protections found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments impose upon the state a duty of safeguarding it,” Id 746-47. As a legal matter, an absence of case support is irrelevant and there may well not be cases holding new-born infants or other classes of humans are persons which would not mean they are beyond the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nelson v. Galveston, 14 S.W. 1021, Supreme Court of Texas 1890 held in agreement with Lord Hardwicke, “that a child in the mother’s womb is a person in rerum natura, and that by rules of the civil and common law “she [the child] was to all intents and purposes a child. . . and is to be considered as living for all purposes.” The court ruled that a posthumous child may recover damages for the father’s death.

Gray v. State, 77 Tex Cr. R. 221 (1915), involves the review of Gray’s indictment for producing the abortion of Sadie Moore’s child. Though the indictment was tested to see if it complied with state statutes, the court examined the common law before doing so (and affirming the conviction) said most states held abortion can be criminally prosecuted any time after conception.

Leal v. C.C. Pitts Sand and Gravel, Inc., 419 S.W.2d 820, Supreme Court of Texas, 1967 upheld Nelson v. Galveston above, that a viable infant born alive would have had a cause of action for prenatal injuries sustained in an automobile accident had the infant survived.

Wagner v. Finch, 413 F3d 267 Fifth Circuit (1969) held that a child of deceased father, born after the father’s death is sufficiently in being to be capable of living with it’s father at the time of his death, and the fact that the worker died before birth of the child already “in being” is no legal or equitable reason to prohibit child from social security benefits.

Raleigh Fitkin-Paul Morgan Memorial Hospital v Anderson 201 A.2d 537,538 (N.J. 1964) held that the unborn child is entitled to the law’s protection and that an appropriate order should be made to insure blood transfusions to the mother in the event that they are necessary in the opinion of the physician in charge.

McArthur v. Scott’s holding, and other cases following that holding of the procedural right to due process, is a right that is the fundamental law of the land, and a right without which all other rights would be unenforceable. If the rule of law means anything, any court would be justified under our Constitution in disregarding Roe and following McArthur v. Scott, and with the super abundance of other evidence of personhood of the unborn there is a legal and moral mandate to uphold the preborn human in the womb as a “person” under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution.



Cliff Zarsky deserves our unwavering support and our prayers in his efforts to support the right to life of all human beings. The progress of the criminal trespess case can be followed at Corpus Christi Right to Life, and I will be posting updates to it here on the blog as well.

Random Thoughts on States' Rights and Other Topics

This past Saturday, I made a hasty post suggesting that if the Texas Legislature were to pass a personhood law effectively banning all abortions in Texas and if the United States Supreme Court were to eventually strike down such a law that Texas should secede from the United States. I call it a hasty post because I was rushing out the door with my wife and kids to go to my mother's house while composing it. We wound up being an hour late to Mom's house...

Since writing that post, I have been reflecting on the Constitution, the idea of States' rights currently being touted by many in the Tea Party movements, and the role of the federal government in general. I do not make any claims to being any kind of a constitutional expert. I am simply someone who loves the Constitution and the principles upon which my country was founded, and it grieves me greatly to see the direction this nation is now taking. Barack Obama, on the other hand, does claim to be an expert on the Constitution, having been a constitutional law professor, and yet, everything he has done in his public life indicates a disdain for that Constitution. He seems to view it as an obstacle to his plans for the country. In fact, it just seems like the entire study of "constitutional law" is a study in diluting, circumventing, and otherwise undermining what the Constitution actually says. Frankly, I would take one person like me who loves and respects the Constitution over a thousand so-called constitutional experts like Barack Obama.

I mentioned in that previous post the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, written by Thomas Jefferson, and found here: http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1798.htm. This resolution provides a framework of how Jefferson thought the Constitution should be intepreted. It would also seem to be a starting point for the States to nullify both the Roe v. Wade decision and Obamacare. Resolution One of these Kentucky Resolutions provides quite a bit of food for thought...

1. Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Before reading the Kentucky Resolutions, I had never given that much thought to the idea that the Constitution was a compact between the States. The federal government did not create the Constitution, but rather, the Constitution created the federal government. What a novel concept! Taking that into account, Jefferson is right when he says, "...the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers." Why is it then that the common perception, even among our elected officials, is that the United States Supreme Court is the "final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself?" Why do so many consider Roe v. Wade the "law of the land," and that it can only be superceded by another Supreme Court decision or a Constitutional amendment?

I thought quite a bit this weekend about this idea that the created (the Federal government) can manipulate and dilute the creator (the Constitution). I drew a parallel between that and today's Christian church. For example, many denominations have softened their stance on the issue of homosexuality. Some of them have even begun admitting openly gay individuals into the clergy. Is not the Bible the Word of God? And does not the Word of God say that homosexuality is an abomination, a perversion (Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-32)? Does the Bible not mean what it says right there in black and white? How is it that the created can attempt to change and/or ignore the decrees of the Creator? Perhaps it is this willful nature of the Christian church today that keeps it from fighting against the wholesale slaughter of millions of preborn children. The church needs to be obedient to God and His decrees in all areas. The pastor of my church, Dr. Tommy Teague said something in a sermon several months ago: "God didn't say something because it was true; something is true because God says it." I don't know if that originated with him, but it has always stuck with me, and it is an attitude that all Christian churches need to take.

The United States Supreme Court was created by the Constitution, but it is now widely regarded as the sole and final interpreter of that Constitution. This was not the intention of the Founding Fathers, and it needs to change. Thomas Jefferson said, in those Kentucky Resolutions, that "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." The Constitution is a compact among the States (the aforementioned powers) without a common judge (the United States Supreme Court was a creation of the compact, so it cannot be a common judge), so each State has an equal right to question the constitutionality of anything coming from the federal government, including decisions by the Supreme Court.

Perhaps I should use the Kentucky Resolutions as a model and add the following preamble to the sample Texas Personhood bill I wrote...

Resolved, That children still in the womb are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," the acts of the Supreme Court of the United States, decreed on the 22nd day of January, 1973, intituled Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which assume powers over children in the womb, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force.

Except that, if the federal government actually followed the Constitution, this statement wouldn't be necessary. The protection of the right to life of unborn children should not be left up the States. The Preamble to the Constitution says that the Constitution was established to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." What is our "Posterity?" The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines posterity as: "1 : the offspring of one progenitor to the furthest generation" and "2 : all future generations." It is the ultimate denial of the "Blessings of liberty" to allow the murder of our offspring in the womb. The rest of the Constitution, including the amendments (especially the Fifth and Fourteenth), affirms this basic right to life. The government created by this Constitution should be the one to protect that right to life. It truly is up to the United States Congress to supercede the Supreme Court and put it in its place in regards to Roe v. Wade. Article III, Section II of the Constitution says, in part, "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." In other words, Congress has been charged by the Constitution with regulating the jurisdiction of the Court. So why has it not taken action to nullify the Court's immoral and unjust acts?

I titled this entry "Random Thoughts..." for a reason. I really don't have a strong thesis other than to demonstrate how broken our government is. And my debates with Texas Alliance for Life demonstrate how broken the prolife movement is. To use the vernacular of the movie "The Godfather," we need to be going to the mattresses for our unborn children. Why are so many prolife organizations so complacent in standing by and allowing a broken government to enable the child murderers working among us? We need good men and women of conscience to have the will to do what is right and oppose both what is evil and that which enables evil.

Supreme Court power

Comments from the Molech Today entry of this blog, first from Dr. Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life and then from me...

Joe Pojman, Ph.D. said...
Dan,

We very much appreciate your passionate opposition to the destruction of innocent human lives through abortion. All of us at Texas Alliance for Life share that passion. That passion is what drives us each and every day. We believe that everyone has a moral obligation to oppose abortion, through legislation and through compassionate alternatives to abortion.

The simple reality is that the US Supreme Court prevents states and the Congress from banning abortion. That is the tragic reality. You may be unaware that Louisiana banned abortion in 1992. The federal courts ruled that the ban is unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. The ban has never been enforced and cannot be enforced unless Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Any kind of ban on abortion, including a ban stemming from a "personhood" law, will suffer the same result. That's not what we want, but that is the legal reality.

To ignore the legal reality of Roe v. Wade is a bit like ignoring the reality of gravity. To pass a law that bans abortion while ignoring the reality of the US Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade is like driving a bus full of children off a cliff while pretending that gravity does not exist. Both actions will predictably result in tragedy. That is not our preference, but it is the undeniable reality.

Anytime a pro-life law is struck down under Roe v. Wade, Roe is further strengthened, and that makes Roe harder to overturn. That is a huge price to pay.

Here is an excellent article in Human Life Review that outlines the problems with the type of personhood law that you seem to advocate. I strongly recommend a thorough reading of this article:

http://www.humanlifereview.com/2009_fall/Linton.pdf

The author, Mr. Paul Linton, is a highly respected pro-life constitutional expert. I would very much like to continue this dialogue, but I would like to direct the discussion to Mr. Linton's article.

Finally, to answer the very important question about how to overturn Roe v. Wade, I point out that we need at least five of the nine justices. We need to elect a pro-life president who will appoint at least one more justice who recognizes that Roe v. Wade is a very bad decision and is willing to overrule it. It takes at least five votes, and it appears that we have four.

Joe Pojman, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Texas Alliance for Life


May 29, 2010 8:04 AM
Dan Hawkins said...
Dr. Pojman, thank you for your response. Mr. Linton makes some good points, but there are things in his article with which I strongly disagree. Linton, like so many other people over the last 37 years, abdicates so much power over to the United States Supreme Court, power that was never given to it by the Consitution, the "supreme law of the land." Linton correctly asserts "that the legislature makes the laws, the judiciary interprets them, and the executive enforces them." But what of the Constitution itself? It gives no authority to the judiciary for intepreting the document that created that judiciary. Indeed, all of Linton's citations of the Supreme Court's power to interpret the Constitution come from statements made by the Supreme Court itself. The Court took this power and just made it its own.

Thomas Jefferson once said that the States were not united by a submission to some powerful central government, but "by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States." He went on to say that "The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution the measure of its powers…" (Kentucky Resolutions of 1798).

The tragedy of Roe v. Wade is that it has been given the same weight as a Constitutional Amendment when it shouldn't be. The Founding Fathers made amending the Constitution very difficult, and with good reason. The Court has given to itself the power to basically rewrite the Constitution faster than the States can legally amend it, and we are seeing the result of this now with rapidly expanding federal power and record spending and entitlements.

The Supreme Court is a body that has repeatedly ruled that certain living human beings can be treated as property (Dred Scot, Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, etc.) and can either be bought and sold or killed at will by certain parties. It is time to stand up to the Supreme Court and put a check and balance on this power that it has siezed for itself.

Personhood is a movement to recognize that unborn children are living human beings with the God-given, unalienable right to life and liberty. It is also a challenge to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Abortion is today what slavery was in the early nineteenth century. It took States' secession and a Civil War to end slavery, and, while those States that did secede did so for the wrong reasons in the 1800s, it make take state secession to end abortion. But the battle right now is for full personhood in Texas. Once we get that realized, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide on whatever challenges are made to it (challenges, by the way, that will be made based on the Supreme Court's own horrendous and illegal decisions of the past). If it rules as it has previously, then I will devote all my energy to the secession of Texas from the United States of America.

The movie "The Untouchables" presents a fictionalized account of the war between government officials and the Al Capone gang. There is a scene in which Sean Connery's character, dying from multiple gunshot wounds, gives a very important piece of information to Elliot Ness (played by Kevin Costner). Connery's character, with his last bit of strength, grabs Ness's collars and says, "What are you prepared to do!?" Dr. Pojman, we are in a war against forces that, every day, commit the most atrocious acts of violence against the most defenseless of human beings. What are we prepared to do?


And an addendum by yours truly....

And just to clarify for the record, I am not in favor of Texas secession for the sake of secession. It should be used only as a last resort to bring the federal government back to what the Constitution first envisioned. We need to make this fight about the children who are being murdered. To do that, we need to take on the ones who are enabling this murder. This includes the Supreme Court and the other branches of government who have abdicated so much authority to it.

This is the most serious issue of our time, and we cannot continue to sit back and continue doing the same things we have been doing for the past 37 years. You say that we "need to elect a pro-life president who will appoint at least one more justice who recognizes that Roe v. Wade is a very bad decision and is willing to overrule it." Well, we have had two years of Ford; eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush I, and eight years of Bush II. When Obama's term began, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices had been nominated by supposedly pro-life Republican presidents. If we really care about the genocide that we have been allowing for the past 37 years, we simply cannot be passive any more.

Texas Alliance for Life

I posted a link to the May 24th entry of this blog on the Texas Alliance for Life Facebook page, and they responded via a comment to that post:

We are proud that Texas has one of the strongest "personhood" laws in the nation, the Prenatal Protection Act. Our personhood law recognizes the unborn child as a person "at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth."

The law protects unborn babies from homicide, assault, and intoxication manslaughter. Because of our law, killing an unborn child in Texas is capital murder because the person murdered (the unborn child) is less than six years of age. Numerous criminals have been convicted in Texas under the Prenatal Protection Act, and several are servicing life sentences.

In addition to protecting unborn children and their mothers, this law reinforces the principle that unborn children are babies. It is a significant foothold in scaling the wall to someday overturn Roe v. Wade. And when that wonderful day comes, the Texas Prenatal Protection Act may well protect unborn babies from abortion as well.

I posted the following comment in response this morning:

But what is the plan for overturning Roe v. Wade? It has been around for 37 years, and it is no more closer to being overturned than it was in 1973. Meanwhile, fifty million babies have been murdered. Just to help illustrate how many that is, I will spell it out: 50,000,000. How many more will die while we are waiting to start "scaling the wall to someday overturn Roe v. Wade?" We need to start scaling now. We cannot and should not worry about the makeup of the Supreme Court since it usually takes years to get a case that high anyway.

The law that Roe v. Wade overturned was a Texas law that made procuring an abortion a crime. That law said nothing about any rights that preborn children might or might not have. The Roe v. Wade court opinion even stated that "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 [Fourteenth] Amendment." It went on to say that, "no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." The Prenatal Protection Act established this personhood of the unborn child, so, according to the both the Fourteenth Amendment AND Roe v. Wade, Texas MUST protect the right to life of preborn children. The combination of Tex. Penal Code §19.06 (which unfortunately was created by the Prenatal Protection Act) and the regulations on abortion in the Heath & Safety and Family Codes serve to keep abortion legal when doing so is clearly unconstitutional when the Penal Code definition of individual is taken into account.

Take a moment to really think about the current state of Texas law: The Texas Penal Code has a specific definition for an individual. If the State can exclude a certain group that clearly falls under that definition from the protection against certain forms of homicide (the preborn and abortion), what is keeping the State from excluding other groups from the protection against any form of homicide?

This November, the voters of Colorado will vote on an amendment to their state constitution that would give full personhood status to preborn children. The voters of Mississippi will vote on a similar amendment to their constitution in 2011. It is my prayer that these referendums will be passed by the voters, but they face very well-funded opposition by pro-abortion activists. Roe v. Wade was a case that originated in Texas. I think that the end of Roe v. Wade should also originate in Texas. But to do that, the pro-life movement cannot be passive. We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We must do what we know is right and what will really protect the right to life of all human beings, even if that means calling for the repeal of all of the so-called pro-life regulations that we have worked so hard for in the past. What these pro-life regulations do now is help keep abortion legal since they all end with some form of "...and then you can kill the baby."

Your Facebook comment of March 1 (specified in my blog at http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2010/05/pro-life-and-personhood.html) indicated that you are operating out of the fear of what some future United States Supreme Court might rule in some future case regarding personhood. When I saw that post, I was reminded of the story of Biblical story Joshua and Caleb. Moses sent spies into the promised land. When the spies came back, all but Joshua and Caleb said that the land was occupied by giants and large, fortified cities and that the Israelites would not be able to defeat them. Joshua and Caleb reported that, with God, the Israelites could defeat whoever occupied the land. Texas Alliance for Life is acting like the other spies when you should be acting as Joshua and Caleb. In fact, the Bible is full of admonitions to "FEAR NOT." Let me just remind you that, in this fight for the right to life of preborn children, we are most definitely on God's side. And since we are on God's side, we should not operate under fear, but we should loudly and boldly proclaim that the God-given right to life applies to all human beings!

I am thankful that Texas Alliance for Life has responded and that a dialogue has begun.

Rick Perry

I wrote Rick Perry a letter in December 2008 in which I pointed out the Texas Penal Code's definition of "individual" and asked him why abortion can still be considered legal in Texas. I never got a response. I wrote him again in December 2009 and detailed to him how the current Texas laws which keep abortion legal are not in compliance with the 14th Amendment and are therefore unconstitutional. I never got a response. So I am writing him again, a much longer letter this time, and I will enclose my suggestions for legislation (Click here and scroll down to the images). This (or something like it since I may make a few more edits) will be going out tomorrow. I'll also carry one to the Texas Republican Convention (where I'll be a delegate) just in case I get close enough to him to hand deliver it... We are never going to get anywhere unless we make a loud noise and rock the boat...

May 27, 2010



Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
PO Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711-2428

RE: Texas law and abortion



Dear Governor Perry:

When future generations of Texans look back at your tenure as Governor of Texas, what will they see as your legacy? Will they see someone who only gave lip service to standing up to Obama’s socialist agenda but, in the end, failed to stop the massive encroachment of the federal government? Or will they see someone who stood firm against the forces of tyranny and fought for the inalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of ALL Texans?

Planned Parenthood recently opened what can only be described as an abortion “supercenter” in the Houston area, a project begun with the anticipation of abortion coverage under Obama’s proposed socialized medicine. The idea that our tax dollars will be going to pay for the murder of the unborn, the most innocent and vulnerable of human beings, is abhorrent to millions of Texans. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once said, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

My question to you, Governor Perry, is: what are you prepared to do to stop Obama’s socialist agenda, an agenda that completely devalues individual human life? Are you prepared to take drastic and decisive steps to put a stop to the legalized murder of innocent human beings in Texas? On January 14, 2010, I sat in the balcony of the Murchison Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of North Texas, and I heard you say, in your debate with Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra Medina, that you “always come down on the side of life.” Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?

The State of Texas already has in place the foundation for ending legalized abortion. According to Tex. Penal Code §1.07, a “Person” “means an individual, corporation, or association." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.38) An "individual" (the term used in the definition of "Person") "means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.26)

Chapter 19 of the Texas Penal Code deals with the crimes of criminal homicide. Tex. Penal Code §19.02 plainly states that a person commits the offense of murder if he "intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual" (emphasis added).

The definition of individual was put into the Code by the 2003 Prenatal Protection Act, designed to protect pregnant women from violent acts that might result in the harm of their unborn children. Governor Perry, you signed this act into law which was an important step in protecting the rights of infants in the womb. Unfortunately, that same act also created Tex. Penal Code §19.06, which states, in part, that:

This chapter [the chapter defining criminal homicide] does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:
(1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child;
(2) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure;

Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution says, in part, that "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The current Texas code, specifically §19.06, is in clear violation of the last two clauses of Amendment Fourteen as it allows for the deprivation of life without due process of law, and it denies these certain persons "within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Even the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision claimed that: “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 [Fourteenth] Amendment." As of 2003, Texas law now establishes this suggestion of personhood, so, according to the Roe v. Wade decision, the right to life of unborn children MUST be guaranteed in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment.

Over the past 37 years, Texas has passed all kinds of regulations on abortion in an attempt to limit the number of abortions. What these regulations have done, because they all basically end with some form of …and then you can kill the baby, is to keep abortion legal. Now that Texas has defined womb children as persons, the State needs to eliminate the supposedly pro-life regulations which protect abortion as a legal medical procedure. Tex. Penal Code §19.06, in its current form, must be removed. All statutes which regulate abortion (i.e. keep abortion legal) must also be removed. Since unborn children are now defined, by law, as persons, and since abortion, by definition, kills unborn children, abortion must then be considered homicide, subject to prosecution just like any other homicide.

Unfortunately, there are those in the “pro-life” community who operate under fear. Texas Alliance for Life, an organization which strongly endorsed your candidacy for governor, is one of those. They have, thus far, declined to promote any legislation which would grant unborn children full personhood status and all the rights associated with being a person (the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). An examination of their Facebook page demonstrates how they are operating out of fear. On March 1, 2010, a Facebook user named Aeron Mills posted the following comment:

Debra Medina "Texas law defines life as
beginning at fertilization - taking of life as murder (except where
we are double minded and allow mothers and doctors to abort) Fix
that and you've addressed the problem in the law - requiring an
ultrasound doesn't stop the abortion. It's just more incrementalism.
Texas should revisit our own law - not allow exceptions, ban
abortion and let the court battles begin. The government has a duty
to protect innocent life - our state law says that begins at
fertilization"

Texas Alliance for Life posted the following response via the comments field:

This is the bill that Gov. Perry signed into law in 2003, the Prenatal Protection Act. Unfortunately, changing it as suggested above would render it unconstitutional in the eyes of the US Supreme Court. The problem is that the majority of the Court supports Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand. We do not have the votes to overturn Roe to allow Texas to fully protect unborn babies and their mothers from abortion.

I would point out to Texas Alliance for Life that because the Texas Penal Code now defines unborn children as persons, the current laws which allow abortion are already unconstitutional (as demonstrated in the paragraphs above).

The Pro-life movement has spent the past 37 years trying to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Before Obama’s term as president began, seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices had been appointed by supposedly pro-life Republican presidents, and yet, Roe v. Wade has remained firmly entrenched in the minds of lawmakers everywhere. The magnitude of the genocide going on around us calls for immediate and decisive action. The number of abortions in Texas is about to skyrocket thanks to the new federal healthcare law and the aggressive marketing push by Planned Parenthood and organizations like it. We at Texas Personhood demand that our state officials act without fear in putting a stop to government sanctioned murder. We demand justice for the children whose only “crime” is that they haven’t yet passed through a birth canal. We demand that you call a special session of the Texas Legislature for the expressed purpose of creating criminal penalties for those who continue to murder babies in Texas. I have enclosed a framework of what such legislation might look like.

Governor Perry, you swore in your oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State. Your taking of this oath demands that you take immediate and decisive steps to bring Texas law into compliance with what the Constitution of the United States actually says and not with what certain members of the judicial branch of government make up out of thin air and say is "constitutional." We at Texas Personhood implore you to take drastic and immediate steps to end the murder of innocent children that is occurring in Texas.


Sincerely,



Dan Hawkins
Texas Personhood
http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com

Enclosure


Cc: Texas Alliance for Life
2026 Guadalupe Street
Austin, TX 78705