Tom Hoefling
What does Dobbs v. Jackson, the recent Supreme Court opinion that supposedly “overturns Roe v. Wade” actually do? Not much. The decision is deeply un-American, and it allows the abortion holocaust to continue.
“The Court’s decision today does not outlaw abortion throughout the United States,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion to Dobbs.
Just as in Roe, the court failed to do its primary duty, which is to acknowledge the self-evident humanity of the unborn child, and the child’s protection by the Fourteenth Amendment’s explicit requirement that the right to life of every innocent person be protected within every state.
The Fourteenth Amendment states, “No State shall…deprive any person of life…without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Contrary to those crystal-clear words, Dobbs leaves the legal disposition of our supreme God-given, individual right – the right to live – up to the arbitrary whims of a democratic majority, either in the Congress, or in the state legislatures.
“It is time to…return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…. That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand,” Justice Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
What could be more un-American or unconstitutional? What could stand more in opposition to the clear words of our Declaration of Independence than to make our supreme right subject to a vote?
“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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
Our God-given rights, starting with the right to life, precede and supersede all mere man-made laws and constitutions. Therefore, those rights are unalienable. This is the cornerstone principle of the American republic, the main principle we celebrate every July Fourth, for goodness’ sake.
But, contrary to those principles, if Dobbs is to be heeded, every single child conceived in this country is still in danger of being slaughtered, by the abortionists or the pharmacists, if his or her murder-minded mother is willing to order up some pills, or to simply change locations.
“[A]s I see it, some of the other abortion-related legal questions raised by today’s decision are not especially difficult as a constitutional matter,” Kavanaugh said in his concurring opinion. “For example, may a state bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no [sic] based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.”
You don’t need a law degree to understand that, in America, our most sacred, essential rights are supposed to be protected by our laws, not merely by travel inconvenience.
You may ask me, as others already have, “Aren’t you happy that Roe has been overturned?” To which I reply that I can’t be happy about a dangerous, destructive myth. According to the principles upon which our republic was founded, Roe v. Wade was a legal nullity from the moment the court promulgated it in 1973. It should have been ignored from the beginning. It was nothing but a vile vapor, an illicit court opinion, not a law, and certainly not in accord with the laws of nature and nature’s God, or our Constitution.
In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton said, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void.”
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court…in ordinary litigation between parties…the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having…resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
So, forget about Roe and Dobbs. They are, in legal reality, as irrelevant to the question of abortion as Dred Scott v. Sandford is to the question of slavery.
I’m submitting this article for publication on July 5th, 170 years to the day since the great Frederick Douglass, former slave, delivered his historic address in Rochester, NY, on July 5th, 1852, entitled “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” Hence the title of this piece.
Douglass had freed himself some years before – voting with his feet – and had trained himself to become, almost certainly, the most eloquent spokesman for his brothers and sisters who were still being held fast in slavery.
You may notice that Douglass, by use of the word, “your,” didn’t at that time refer to America’s Independence Day as his own, being a black man in America, more than a decade before the end of slavery in the United States.
He said, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
In this great speech, Douglass expresses his admiration for the founders of this American Republic. He eloquently speaks of his love for the principles they expressed in our great national charter, the Declaration of Independence: “The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history – the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism… prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. …[T]he Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny… The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”
He declares the Constitution to be a fundamentally anti-slavery document, in part because of the fact that slavery (like abortion) violates all of its stated purposes.
And then, he righteously lambastes his generation, especially the Christians, for their gross hypocrisy: “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me…This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Do you not see, my fellow American, my point? Blacks were not being protected, as they should have been, and today, our generation is guilty in just the same way when it comes to the protection of innocent unborn children. Except, perhaps, our guilt is even greater in scope, with more than seventy million innocents dead.
“What have I, or those I represent (the enslaved), to do with your national independence?” Douglass asked. “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”
Ask yourself, in our day, are the great principles of natural justice embodied in the Declaration of Independence being extended to our posterity? The obvious answer, even in the wake of Dobbs, is NO. Absolutely not. Again, any child conceived in America today can still be murdered under the color of “law.”
This Independence Day, millions of “pro-life” Americans celebrated what they thought was a great victory for life, when, in fact, they should be mourning continued abject defeat.
They think they have “overturned Roe” with little or no understanding of what that means or doesn’t mean.
By far the greatest threat to the existence of our republic has always come from those who would dehumanize some portion of humanity, and thereby strip them of their rights. The ultimate destruction of many great nations throughout history can be traced to the injustices brought about by their abject failure to recognize and respect the God-given rights of all. If all are not equal before the law, no one’s rights are secure.
No matter what the Supreme Court says, there can be no moral or constitutional neutrality when it comes to genocide.
What does Dobbs v. Jackson, the recent Supreme Court opinion that supposedly “overturns Roe v. Wade” actually do? Not much. The decision is deeply un-American, and it allows the abortion holocaust to continue.
“The Court’s decision today does not outlaw abortion throughout the United States,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion to Dobbs.
Just as in Roe, the court failed to do its primary duty, which is to acknowledge the self-evident humanity of the unborn child, and the child’s protection by the Fourteenth Amendment’s explicit requirement that the right to life of every innocent person be protected within every state.
The Fourteenth Amendment states, “No State shall…deprive any person of life…without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Contrary to those crystal-clear words, Dobbs leaves the legal disposition of our supreme God-given, individual right – the right to live – up to the arbitrary whims of a democratic majority, either in the Congress, or in the state legislatures.
“It is time to…return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…. That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand,” Justice Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
What could be more un-American or unconstitutional? What could stand more in opposition to the clear words of our Declaration of Independence than to make our supreme right subject to a vote?
“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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
Our God-given rights, starting with the right to life, precede and supersede all mere man-made laws and constitutions. Therefore, those rights are unalienable. This is the cornerstone principle of the American republic, the main principle we celebrate every July Fourth, for goodness’ sake.
But, contrary to those principles, if Dobbs is to be heeded, every single child conceived in this country is still in danger of being slaughtered, by the abortionists or the pharmacists, if his or her murder-minded mother is willing to order up some pills, or to simply change locations.
“[A]s I see it, some of the other abortion-related legal questions raised by today’s decision are not especially difficult as a constitutional matter,” Kavanaugh said in his concurring opinion. “For example, may a state bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no [sic] based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.”
You don’t need a law degree to understand that, in America, our most sacred, essential rights are supposed to be protected by our laws, not merely by travel inconvenience.
You may ask me, as others already have, “Aren’t you happy that Roe has been overturned?” To which I reply that I can’t be happy about a dangerous, destructive myth. According to the principles upon which our republic was founded, Roe v. Wade was a legal nullity from the moment the court promulgated it in 1973. It should have been ignored from the beginning. It was nothing but a vile vapor, an illicit court opinion, not a law, and certainly not in accord with the laws of nature and nature’s God, or our Constitution.
In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton said, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void.”
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court…in ordinary litigation between parties…the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having…resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
So, forget about Roe and Dobbs. They are, in legal reality, as irrelevant to the question of abortion as Dred Scott v. Sandford is to the question of slavery.
I’m submitting this article for publication on July 5th, 170 years to the day since the great Frederick Douglass, former slave, delivered his historic address in Rochester, NY, on July 5th, 1852, entitled “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” Hence the title of this piece.
Douglass had freed himself some years before – voting with his feet – and had trained himself to become, almost certainly, the most eloquent spokesman for his brothers and sisters who were still being held fast in slavery.
You may notice that Douglass, by use of the word, “your,” didn’t at that time refer to America’s Independence Day as his own, being a black man in America, more than a decade before the end of slavery in the United States.
He said, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
In this great speech, Douglass expresses his admiration for the founders of this American Republic. He eloquently speaks of his love for the principles they expressed in our great national charter, the Declaration of Independence: “The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history – the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism… prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. …[T]he Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny… The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”
He declares the Constitution to be a fundamentally anti-slavery document, in part because of the fact that slavery (like abortion) violates all of its stated purposes.
And then, he righteously lambastes his generation, especially the Christians, for their gross hypocrisy: “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me…This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Do you not see, my fellow American, my point? Blacks were not being protected, as they should have been, and today, our generation is guilty in just the same way when it comes to the protection of innocent unborn children. Except, perhaps, our guilt is even greater in scope, with more than seventy million innocents dead.
“What have I, or those I represent (the enslaved), to do with your national independence?” Douglass asked. “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”
Ask yourself, in our day, are the great principles of natural justice embodied in the Declaration of Independence being extended to our posterity? The obvious answer, even in the wake of Dobbs, is NO. Absolutely not. Again, any child conceived in America today can still be murdered under the color of “law.”
This Independence Day, millions of “pro-life” Americans celebrated what they thought was a great victory for life, when, in fact, they should be mourning continued abject defeat.
They think they have “overturned Roe” with little or no understanding of what that means or doesn’t mean.
By far the greatest threat to the existence of our republic has always come from those who would dehumanize some portion of humanity, and thereby strip them of their rights. The ultimate destruction of many great nations throughout history can be traced to the injustices brought about by their abject failure to recognize and respect the God-given rights of all. If all are not equal before the law, no one’s rights are secure.
No matter what the Supreme Court says, there can be no moral or constitutional neutrality when it comes to genocide.
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