Is heartbeat legislation constitutional?

by Steven Lopez

Many of you may have read that the North Dakota legislature passed new regulations that would protect unborn babies the minute a heartbeat is detected. This is important because almost every surgical abortion (1.2 million annually) is performed on a baby with a beating heart and developing brain.

That’s 3,287 innocent victims dying on American soil every day. It’s a silent 9/11 every 24 hours.

The beating heart legislation in North Dakota reframes the debate for America. It’s a far cry from the “mass of undifferentiated cells” the mainstream media and Planned Parenthood have been regurgitating for decades unchallenged. The truth doesn’t sell well for the abortion industry: a defenseless baby with a beating heart and developing brain being dismembered by a licensed physician at the behest of the mother and father.

It’s not surprising to read liberal journalists reflexively respond to heartbeat legislation as “unconstitutional”. Unfortunately, very few of them have read the Constitution and even fewer of them have read Roe v. Wade and its precursor Griswold v. Connecticut.

So what is the truth? The answer might surprise you.

Abortion is not constitutional.

That’s right. There is no right to abortion contained in the Constitution. I’ve read and re-read the Constitution and it simply doesn’t exist.

So why do liberals keep saying that limiting abortion is unconstitutional? Well, it’s because we’ve allowed a legal charade to stand as law for 40 years.

When we revisit the legal opinions we discover that the United States Supreme Court also couldn’t find anything about abortion in the Constitution, but that didn’t stop them from legislating from the bench (which is unconstitutional). They created from thin air a “right to privacy” to justify unfettered access to birth control and later abortion.

Where did the “right to privacy” come from if not the Constitution?

The answer is the Supreme Court turned its back on the Constitution and became the equivalent of judicial poets. They stated that the “right to privacy” came from the “emanations” and “penumbras” of the Constitution. Constitutional scholars are still scratching their heads attempting to unravel a judicial opinion that would have made Robert Frost proud. Which is a nice way of saying, “We’re just going to make this up and hope nobody complains.”

I mentioned earlier that Roe v. Wade was predicated on another decision entitled Griswold v. Connecticut.  You might be wondering who is Griswold and why it matters? The answer should come as no surprise to those who have been on the front lines of the rescue effort to save our unborn babies, “Appellant Griswold is Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut.”

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZO.html

The Griswold decision laid the foundation for abortion on demand. The sad truth is that many Americans wanted unfettered access to birth control with groups like Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood leading the charge. Liberals demanded “reproductive rights”. They wanted to have sex without consequences. And they weren’t alone … men who previously had to marry women were only too happy to usher in an era of wanton sex.

No more paying for the cow if the milk is free!

But there were consequences. No matter how much we repeated the mantra of “safe sex” the real world kept creeping into the equation. Condoms broke and the pill failed resulting in “unintended pregnancies”. The very idea of sex resulting in an “unintended pregnancy” would have been laughed at if it were not for the success of the liberals creating the myth of “safe sex”.

According to the abortion industry’s own statistics nearly 54% of all abortions occur despite the fact that the couple was using some form of birth control. And for the other 46% abortion is their primary means of birth control.

Source: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Liberals believe sex education is best way to reduce abortion. Many of them argue that groups like Planned Parenthood should be allowed to educate our children on how to safely enjoy sex outside of marriage. They conveniently ignore the fact that 50% of the women who walk through Planned Parenthood’s doors were there before and received their “education” prior to aborting a baby.

If Planned Parenthood had the answer to the abortion epidemic repeat customers would not be 50% of their abortion business. It’s like saying a drug dealer should educate our children on how to responsibly use narcotics.

Source: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf

There is no economic incentive for Planned Parenthood to reduce abortion since that is their business model. However, it is in their best interest to create a series of half truths and blatant lies to increase the number of couples engaging in premarital sex because that leads to pregnancy and eventually abortions.

The results have been horrific for this country. You can chart the rise of sex outside of wedlock in the mid 60s with the meteoric rise in: abortion, divorce, single parent households, STDs, etc. The liberation of sex from marriage was the death knell for the traditional family in the United States.

Herpes Growth Rates

And it was the literal death of over 55 million American babies and counting. That’s more deaths at the hands of licensed physicians than all United States war casualties combined. Today abortion is the #1 cause of death in the United States – double that of heart disease or cancer.

You might be wondering where were all the modern day Abraham Lincoln’s standing up against a rogue court? And where were the governors refusing to obey an unconstitutional law? If any of them existed their stories were lost to history as the media began framing the next debate, after the lie had been swallowed.

Rather than a public and political outcry against judges who had overstepped their legal authority we began to rehash their thoughts on when it was okay for the states to intervene on behalf of the unborn. Liberals rejoiced when the debate focused on “viability” since that debate presumed the Supreme Court had a sound legal footing.  At this point the tyranny of abortion was complete.

Some of you may read the word “tyranny” and think it shouldn’t apply to abortion.  Here is what the word means, “Absolute power, especially when exercised unjustly or cruelly.”

The Supreme Court unjustly, illegally, and without regard to human rights granted an absolute power to mothers in this country who then used that power (usually in concert with the father) to kill their defenseless baby. The tyranny of a king against his subjects is usually the worst example we can imagine, but even the subjects of a king can rebel and overthrow a tyrant.

A baby in the womb has no defense against a rogue Supreme Court and parents who view sex as a form of personal entertainment at any cost. The highest court in the land had once again failed miserably when it came to the question of human rights — as it had failed prior to the Civil War when it sided with the slave owners in the infamous Dred Scott decision.

Source: http://digital.wustl.edu/d/dre/index.html

Yes, the Supreme Court defended the right to own slaves.  In fact, the Supreme Court never came to the rescue of the slaves. It took a Civil War and an amendment to Constitution to end the tyranny of slavery.  “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.”—14^th Amendment (excerpt)

It’s a tragic irony that rogue justices use the 14^th amendment to justify abortion.

If Abraham Lincoln were alive today I doubt he would waste his breath debating the Constitution with liberal judges who ignore basic human rights. In the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858 he simply referenced the Declaration of Independence, “I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not another man say it does not mean another man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get this statute book in which we find it and tear it out.” –Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858.

Sadly it didn’t end with the slaves. The exceptions included our unborn children.

History can be instructive since abolitionists prior to the Civil War faced a similar uphill battle with the Supreme Court, Congress, and the southern legislatures firmly on the side of plantation owners. As we confront the tyranny of abortion we should ask the question, “How were the abolitionists able to overcome such overwhelming odds and change public opinion?”

Interestingly, the answer comes from the mouth of Judge Douglas who was defending the rights of slave owners in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, “Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators, who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created equal, and then asks, how can you deprive a negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards to him?” – Judge Douglas, Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858.

The abolitionists went to the churches and schools and read from the Declaration of Independence and asked the citizenry a question. It’s the same question we should be asking, “How can you deprive unborn babies the right to life that God and the Declaration of Independence award them?”

Every Pastor, every parishioner, and every teacher should be confronted with this question.

The same words that eventually became a rallying cry to free the slaves will one day set our unborn children free, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Declaration of Independence, July 4^th, 1776.

According to the Declaration of Independence we’re not “born” equal… we’re CREATED equal. And the founding fathers were not given to weak kneed appellations. These rights are not mere suggestions or a strong preference, they’re an unalienable right.

The word unalienable means, “Not to be separated, given away, or taken away”. In other words, nobody has the legal authority to take away an unalienable right. Not even a rogue Supreme Court or parents who want to privately abort their child with the aid of a licensed physician.

Every U.S. colony adopted the Declaration of Independence as law. Today we celebrate its signing every 4^th of July, but perhaps we should be having memorials for all the babies whose lives were lost because Americans were unwilling to defend our unborn children’s God given right to life.

But the tide will change when parishioners and politicians become familiar with fundamental rights and the history of abortion. The pro life movement commands the intellectual high ground. Tyranny is never built on a hill – it’s in the sewers and its defenders are the authors of lies and deception.

We’ve been given the gift of freedom because someone died for it. To be born free is a cultural experiment that is still in its infancy. And whether it continues will be determined by the actions of men and women who have the freedom to preserve it by defending it – or by their inaction allow the darkness to prevail and enslave our nation once again.

It’s easy to become cynical and jaded when considering our abject failure to defend our unborn children over the past 40 days, but despite the failure of our political and religious leaders JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL. Consequently, none of us should watch television at night thinking that we will be spared because we called upon the name of God on Sundays while ignoring the human rights tragedy surrounding us during the week.

Abortion is not the first human rights tragedy that our forefathers have confronted. I’ve read about lukewarm churches in Germany that would sing their hymns louder to avoid hearing the cries of the victims as trains delivered human cargo to their eventual death at Nazi concentration camps.  The hymns they sang were not intended for the ears of God, but to silence their own conscience and stop them from serving God.

The God of truth and the author of free will is watching and waiting. Abortion forces men and women of good conscience to choose between their own self interest and the interest of others whom they’ve never met. If this nation continues down the path of silent complicity I worry that the celestial jury box will be filled with 55 million slain Americans and the presiding judge will be their Father in heaven who loved them dearly.