As I reflect on the many issues debated in the 2016 presidential campaign, the one that defines us as an increasingly pagan people hardly received more than a few seconds of commentary. My apologies to historic pagans who at least had the decency to limit abortion to the first trimester – or the time of quickening, as they called it. It should be no wonder that as we move further away from being One Nation Under God, we have reverted to paganism. As we argued about the rights of illegal aliens, how to bring jobs back, or whether or not to repeal ObamaCare, the cries of the unborn remained hardly more than a whisper.

When is a person not a person?

After we had removed God from our school systems in 1962 and 1963, it was a short decade to 1973 when the Court ruled in favor of Roe v. Wade. This anointed women with the right to an abortion under a tortured interpretation of a section of the 14 Amendment, which states:

…No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the 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 law.

In order to justify their twisted interpretation of this Amendment, the Justices argued that the unborn were not “persons,” a position held by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is interesting that the Court came to this conclusion after going through the intellectual calisthenics of citing historical references wherein the unborn were considered to be persons after quickening. Theses pseudo purveyors of justice then decided that women had the right to privacy, and extended that to mean that her private relationship with her doctor applied to whether or not he or she could perform an abortion. This decision was in favor of Jane Roe’s claim that the Texas statues were unconstitutionally vague and prevented her from securing a legal abortion under safe conditions. Yes, the matter before the court was safe abortions while the safety of the child hardly bore mention.

Does privacy really hold up?

Dr. James Hubert Hallford, who had previously been arrested for violations of the Texas abortion statutes, intervened. He argued that as a physician, he was unable to determine whether or not the requests for abortions made by his patients fell within or outside of the Texas laws that permitted abortion when the mother’s life was in danger (which was legal in Texas), and therefore violated his own and his patients’ rights to privacy. In essence, the Court considered Jane Roe’s safety and her right to privacy, but completely disregarded the safety of the child she was carrying. These monsters in black robes played intellectual dodge ball with human life and opened the door for a murderous movement that has saturated the hands of our nation with innocent blood.

As Justice Rehnquist stated in his dissent, the argument based on privacy was difficult to conclude and more importantly, that the Court rendered a legislative judgment rather than a judicial one. Both Justice Rehnquist and Justice Stewart concurred that the decision was not within the scope of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment’s meaning. Further, Rehnquist and Steward believed that the definition of “privacy” at the time the Amendment was written meant that a person was to be free from unwanted state regulation, and that this “liberty” was what they sought to protect.

Abortion, early or late, is still murder

While the Court went on and on about historical views that permitted but limited abortion until the child was quick (moving), they seemed to have been doing so only to hear themselves speak or write. The historical views they cited had little impact on their decision – even though they made a meager attempt to suggest that the states had the right to limit abortion to the first trimester. They also expressed concern for bringing a child into a family that was unable or unwilling to care for it. Apparently, they thought that the child might be better off dead than living in a less than ideal environment, or perhaps being placed for adoption. To be blunt, the Court ruled that the woman’s right to privacy trumped the child’s right to life.

Additionally, the complications of the case required that the Court address the meaning of personhood, since it is part of the 14th Amendment. Once again the Supreme Court was ruling on personhood, just as it had in the Dred Scott case. In this instance they concluded that the word “person” only applied postnatally as opposed to prenatally. So, once again, they got it wrong. And once again they tried to cover their bases by stating that although the state had the responsibility to regulate the terms of abortions, that if at some point a potential human life became involved, the woman’s right to privacy would no longer be the only consideration.

Infanticide

At the time, Frances Schaeffer had predicted that this ruling would soon lead to infanticide, which it now has under the label of partial birth abortion. While the Justices thought that life, once proven to be “potential”, would reopen the discussion, measurable brainwaves, heartbeats and sonograms – all of which are medical indicators of life – have not challenged their draconian ruling.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of abortion that has allowed it to continue in our Banana Republic, is that the unborn do not vote, nor can they advocate for themselves, or file lawsuits. Their very right to life dependents upon those who can advocate on their behalf. We must be their voice. We must overturn this horrific procedure that has turned us into self-absorbed barbarians, excusing the culpability of mothers who deliver their children into the hands of murders while in the process of being born.

I am a mother and I know what they know – that the children I carried were alive and kicking well before I went into labor. Yet we shy away from calling their self-centeredness sinful. Truth be told, they are just as criminal as the abortionist who profits from their self-indulgent attitude of entitlement. America may have resolved the question of who will be our next president, but unless the nation rights this wrong, we will remain sinners in the hands of an angry God – and whatever greatness we may achieve in the future will be marred by the cries of the innocent children laying at the foot of our self-indulgent altars.

Reprint from The Daily Rant, copyright 2016 Mychal Massie, by permission