Opportunity...

A Facebook post I made about why I went to Austin to testify...

Last Monday, I took one of the very few vacation days granted me with my new job, drove down to Austin, spent money on a motel room, and waited several hours in a long line inside the Capitol to give testimony to the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. I did this because it was my opportunity to get into the public record that HB2/SB1 is not the pro-life bill that so many people proclaim it to be. If I were intending to just go down to Austin to give praise to the bill like so many "pro-lifers" were doing, I never would have gone.

I cringe whenever someone claiming to be pro-life says that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. It isn't. It is an opinion of the Supreme Court, from the judicial branch of government. The Constitution gives legislative power only to the legislative branch of government, which, on the Federal level is Congress. This supposed right that Roe v. Wade gave to women to kill their babies doesn't exist. Rights don't come from government anyway; they come from God or by the fact of our humanity. They are acknowledged in our country's founding documents in order that our legislative bodies make laws to protect those rights. This so called right to choose abortion was something totally made up by the Supreme Court out of thin air (or, as Justice Blackmun called it in his majority opinion, the "penumbra"). If judges can just make up rights based on "pemumbras," then they can do just about anything. And then we fall under the rule of men, not the rule of law. Thomas Jefferson warned us of such things in 1798, in the Kentucky Resolutions, when he wrote 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."

That being said, the old Texas abortion laws that Roe v. Wade vacated were terribly written and poorly executed in that there was no recognition of the right to life of the unborn child. The abortion procedure was merely outlawed as the State might have outlawed certain cosmetic surgeries. And there were exceptions to this ban for rape and incest cases. I included the text of those old laws in my latest blog post at http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2013/07/ground-zero.html.

In Title IX of the Roe v. Wade majority opinion, Justice Blackmun makes the statement 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 [14th] Amendment." Footnote 54 gives the Court's reasoning for the rejection of Texas's 14th Amendment argument and in so doing gives a blueprint for writing laws completely banning abortion that would be consistent with the Constitution and, presumably, with the Roe v. Wade opinion.

Texas has already laid the groundwork for doing such a thing. Current Texas 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." But Tex. Penal Code §19.06, specifically excludes unborn children from the protection of the statue defining and prohibiting homicide, saying that the murder is permitted as long as the baby is killed by the child's mother or her abortionist.

Getting rid of Tex. Penal Code §19.06 and removing all the abortion regulations from the Health and Safety Code that were put there by supposed "pro-life" bills, including the one that passed this week, would be enough to protect the right to life of these unborn children. Abortion would never be mentioned in the law and since the law already explicitly includes unborn children in its definition of a person, then abortionists could be charged and tried as murderers. This is what I went to Austin to tell the Committee, in two minutes or less...

And what would happen if such a law were passed and challenged in a federal court? There would be no law banning abortions to be overturned. Would it order the State of Texas to reinstate Tex. Penal Code §19.06, which is in clear contradiction to the definition of a person found in Chapter 1 of that same Penal Code? Or would the Court rule that Texas's definition of a person is unconstitutional, and if it did, on what basis could it possibly issue such a ruling? The Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions, so far as I know, never answered that question, saying that only IF the suggestion of personhood was established, the fetus's right to life would be protected. When I look at the Texas Penal Code, I would have to say that the suggestion of personhood HAS been established. So how could the court overrule that? But with a Court that makes up rulings out of thin air (or "penumbra") who could say for certain? That's scary, I admit. But in the case of such an overrule, I would humbly suggest that the State defy the Court via nullification and continue to enforce its laws against murder, even if that led to the beginning of the secession process.

The fight against slavery was not easy, and it involved secession and war. Just look at the fits the pro-abortion crowd threw over this fake pro-life bill. Imagine what they would do if the Legislature tried to pass real pro-life legislation. Abolishing abortion will not be easy...