First, let me say that HF 138 is righteous, lawful legislation. It is in perfect accord with the laws of nature and of nature's God.
It lines up perfectly with the stated self-evident natural law moral principles of our national charter, the Declaration of Independence.
It fulfills all of the clauses of the stated purposes of the document you swore before God to support and defend, the U.S. Constitution, and its explicit, imperative requirement in the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments that no innocent person be deprived of life, and that all persons, in every jurisdiction, in every State, be provided with the equal protection of the laws.
It fulfills every word of Article One, Section 1 of the Iowa Constitution which you also swore to God and the people of our great State to uphold.
Contrarily, HF 171 is utterly immoral, completely unconstitutional, and quite obviously unlawful. While defining children in the womb as persons, it fails to provide equal protection to all of those little persons, as the supreme law of the land absolutely requires, without exception.
In fact, it brazenly, explicitly, spells out which disfavored classes of innocent persons can be killed under the color of a lawless "law."
In Roe vs. Wade, abortion-supporting Justice Blackmun and his colleagues in the majority, while openly acknowledging the obvious fact that the Constitution "of course" absolutely, explicitly, requires equal protection for all persons, knew that they needed the fig leaf of the dehumanization of the child, the denial of the obvious, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face fact that the child in the womb is in fact a human person.
Conversely, the writers of regulatory legislation like HF 171 go far beyond the gross injustice of Roe by admitting to the obvious personhood of the child, and then allowing disfavored classes of those persons to be slaughtered anyway.
Frankly, unlike Judge Blackmun, they don't even have a poor fig leaf. They're standing buck naked and helpless, morally, constitutionally, legally, and politically.
Every one of you who has a conscience that remains in any part un-seared, and a mind that still maintains some connection to logic, moral reason, and basic American morality, I beg you, just start doing the right thing. Keep your oath. Let God strategize the outcome for once. Please.
Adopt the decent, moral, statesmanlike attitude of our wise first President, George Washington:
"If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God."
Tom Hoefling
Lohrville, Iowa