Why Can't Women Be Both Pro-Choice AND Pro-Life? It's Possible With Common-Sense Limitations on Abortions | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I looked up the oath of office that federal judges must take when they are sworn in and this is what it says:

    Each justice or judge of the United States shall take the following oath or affirmation before performing the duties of his office: "I, ___ ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ___ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." [June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 907; Pub. L. 101-650, title IV, § 404, Dec. 1, 1990, 104 Stat. 5124].

    To me, it sounds like each federal judge owes paramount allegiance to the US Constitution from where judicial authority derives.

    Kayla Moore, the President of the Montgomery based Foundation for Moral Law and a party supporting the bill, took issue with the ruling and with Judge Dubina's position:

    "Because the Eleventh Circuit had an amicus brief in front of it explaining why the court's duty was to follow the Constitution instead of the Supreme Court, the court knew it had a duty to disregard Roe and protect the children's right to live." Moore added, "The Eleventh Circuit cannot wash its hands of the blood of the innocent by placing the blame on the Supreme Court. The victims of the Eleventh Circuit's passivity are Alabama's unborn children, who can now be murdered by having their limbs torn from their bodies while their hearts are still beating."

    In the case (West Alabama Women's Center v. Miller), Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and American College of Pediatricians, defending the Alabama law that prohibits dismemberment abortions of live unborn babies based on the medical evidence of their ability to feel intense pain. Liberty Counsel and Alabama's Pro-Life legislators argue that the scientific evidence supports the assertion that unborn babies feel pain as early as eight weeks gestation. [Reference: Brandon Moseley's article "Federal Court Strikes Down an Alabama Abortion Law," in the Alabama Reporter].

    The court used very graphic language to describe the abortion procedure:

    "This case involves a method of abortion that is clinically referred to as Dilation and Evacuation (D & E). Or dismemberment abortion, as the State less clinically calls it. That name is more accurate because the method involves tearing apart and extracting piece-by-piece from the uterus what was until then a living unborn child. This is usually done during the 15- to 18-week stage of development, at which time the unborn child's heart is already beating.

    Under the Act, the one performing the abortion is required to kill the unborn child before ripping apart its body during the extraction. [citation omitted] Killing an unborn child and then dismembering it is permitted; killing an unborn child by dismembering it is not. The parties agree that for these purposes an unborn child is alive while its heart is beating, which usually begins around six weeks." [See "How Your Fetus Grows During Pregnancy," Am. Coll. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (April 2018)] Ibid.


    The Alabama Legislature did not ban abortions in the state; but rather just this particularly type of abortion. "In this method of ending a pregnancy, dismemberment abortion 'requires the abortionist to use instruments to grasp a portion (such as a foot or hand) of a developed and living fetus and drag the grasped portion out of the uterus into the vagina.' [Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 958 (2000)]. The practitioner then "uses the traction created by the opening between the uterus and vagina to dismember the fetus, tearing the grasped portion away from the remainder of the body." [Ibid]

    Luckily, most of the abortions performed at Alabama's abortion facilities were done in the first trimester. Only 4% were performed after 15 weeks. For example, in 2017, 6,603 abortions were performed, of which 183 were D&E procedures. Although authorities like to minimize the reality, the number is still heartbreaking.

    The comments made by Mat Staver, founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, regarding the West Alabama Women's Center v. Miller decision echo my sentiments exactly and probably those of a great many people. He said:

    "Alabama's law is a common-sense solution to a barbaric and gruesome procedure. If the vilest criminal has human dignity that prevents cruel and unusual punishment, then how much more should laws protect an innocent unborn child from the most despicable form of torture and death? There are just seven countries in the world that allow children to endure this barbaric procedure and that disgraceful list includes the United States. We must make the womb a safe place again. This case or one like it cries out to the Supreme Court Justices to reverse the horrible abortion decisions. As the court correctly noted, the Supreme Court abortion decisions are an 'aberration of constitutional law.' This is true, but they also violate higher law and condone the worst kind of infanticide."

    Similar bans in Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas have all been blocked when challenged in court. The ACLU is challenging a similar law in Kentucky.

    The issue (the constitutionality of such "dismemberment" laws) may not be over, however. On December 20, 2018, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court to review the 11th Circuit's ruling. Right to Life activists will be watching carefully to see if our new conservative court (perhaps even a "ruthless" court) will agree to hear the case.

    You can see from the Roe decision, that by giving women an expansive, unfettered right to terminate her pregnancy (under the guise of "controlling her reproduction"), we have ushered in an era of evil. Since the abortion clinics have opened up, a parade of horribles has ensued.

    Because of this parade of horribles and the clear intent on the part of Democrats/progressives/liberals to of protecting this absolute right as against all those horribles, I have to believe that the Roe opinion can be re-visited for a more compassionate, moral, scientific outcome, and yes, constitutional decision.

    For years, I have spoken and written about the Roe v. Wade decision (Supreme Court, January 22, 1973, announcing a fundamental right, or "liberty right" for women in aborting their unborn). I have held the opinion that the decision was perhaps incorrectly decided because its central premise was wrong.. The Supreme Court, including conservative justice Antonin Scalia, made the underlying assumption that a "person" means someone who walks around, who has an independent life outside a woman's womb. And therefore, the Court looked to the "viability" of the fetus in writing its Trimester Approach to when a woman has most control over her reproduction. The "Trimester Test" was the approach the Court used in summarizing the "balancing of competing interests" at stake in a woman's pregnancy - the woman's interest in controlling her reproduction and what happens in her uterus, the state's interest in the life of the unborn, and the unborn's right to the life it was intended to have. Sadly, the Court, in fleshing out the competing interests in its opinion, made it clear that any threat to a woman's health in the third trimester (where typically the interests are greatest for the state and for the unborn) outweighs the interests of the other parties. And it explained that the threat need not be medical in nature. The unborn or the pregnancy itself need not pose any physical harm to her. Other types of harm justifying an abortion up until the moment of birth would include emotional, psychological, and even financial. The mere fact that the pregnancy poses stress on the woman would justify an abortion, according to the high Court. That is why Roe v. Wade stands for the general rule that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion at any time during her pregnancy, for any reason. She has an unfettered right to abort her fetus or her unborn baby..... she has a right to an abortion on demand.


    Anyway, going back to my concern with the Roe v Wade opinion. I believe the Court used the wrong approach in reaching its opinion. Again, it made the general assumption that a "person" means someone who walks around, who has an independent life outside a woman's womb. And therefore, the Court looked to the "viability" of the fetus. Viability means that the fetus has reached such a stage of development as to be capable of living, under normal conditions, outside the uterus. Today, medical experts believe a fetus is viable at around 24 weeks (which is about halfway in the second trimester). The proper assessment should have been when the fetus becomes a "life." We know mere conception doesn't equate to life; it merely sets in motion what would become fetal development resulting in a fully-formed baby that the mother welcomes into the world to continue its growth and development outside the womb. We also know that life does not equate to viability because viability just asks when the baby can likely survive outside the womb. Implicit in that definition is that there is already a "life." It just looks to see how advanced in development that life is. The unborn cannot live without the protection and life-sustenance from its mother. Similarly, a newborn also cannot live on its own, without the protection and life-sustenance from its parents or other caregiver. A life scientifically comes into being when there is a heartbeat, when the baby has its organs, and when it is nearly completely differentiated so that really all that is needed is more growth and fine-tuning of its life support systems for the outside world. Under this definition, the unborn is a "life" much earlier than viability.

    "Life" = "personhood," and it should be that simple. What kind of society are we when we go out of our way, legally, emotionally, and psychologically to strip certain groups of their personhood and therefore their rights? The most brutal of killers gets our full attention regarding his rights and his place as "a fellow human being." But the sweetest, most gentle, the purest, and the most helpless are the ones we minimized and disregard. The 8th Amendment is supposedly a testament to our compassion as a civilized society. If that is so, what is the Roe decision and what is New York's "late-term abortion" law? I would submit that it is a testament to our savagery and to this the most selfish, self-obsessed, and immoral society. We simply can't justify these polar extremes of our so-called "civility."

    The key is using "life" as the key determinative is that when there is a "life," our laws provide protection, including observance of its fundamental rights. I look to the Declaration of Independence which professes:

    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, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness....


    In other words, the minute an individual is created, he or she is endowed with inalienable rights, including the right to Life. Moreover, government is instituted for the primary purpose of secure those rights. It makes no difference whether that individual is 15 years old, 40 years old, 10 years old, 1 month old, or 20 weeks old. The minute it became a living being, it is understood to be entitled to the most essential of all inalienable (those attaching to our very humanity) rights. Technically, according to the words of the Declaration, the minute a new human being is created (joining of reproductive cells at conception; "conception" comes from "conceived" which means a new life, a new human being, has been conceived).

    Therefore, a "person," for purposes of our Rule of Law and our US Constitution (including the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment) includes the unborn. Again, maybe not exactly at conception and for several weeks after that, but certainly, and clearly, towards the end of the first trimester and the beginning of the second trimester. And as such, the unborn "life" has the same fundamental rights as the mother. Once the mother allows the pregnancy to reach the point where life has been created, then she holds no greater interest than the interest the unborn has in continuing its development. In other words, the "competing interests" explanation of a pregnancy shifts greatly. And unlike the Court's opinion in Roe, where the unborn never was considered a legal "person" in order to take advantage of the rights and liberties enshrined in our Declaration, our Constitution, and our laws and therefore the woman held all the power to decide the unborn's fate, the approach I believe should have been taken would recognize that the unborn is absolutely a "person" so that a woman does NOT have the unfettered right to abort her unborn, kill it, or otherwise dispose of it.

    We can explain the failure of the Supreme Court in Roe using additional legal arguments as well.

    The case involved a challenge to a Texas statute that criminalized abortion, which means that Norma McCorvey (aka Roe) filed suit claiming an infringement of an essential (liberty) right protected by the 14th Amendment. Challenges to state law claiming a violation of civil rights or liberty rights recognized by the Bill of Rights are brought under the Due Process Clause of 14th Amendment. Over the years since it was adopted, the Supreme Court has used the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to "incorporate" the liberty rights of the US Bill of Rights as against the states; that is, if the federal government cannot infringe on our religious liberty than neither can the states, if the federal government cannot ban firearms, neither can the states, and so forth and so on.

    The 14th Amendment reads:

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. 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.

    As the Court had noted, it first had to determine if the unborn are considered "persons" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. It concluded that they were not.

    If the Court would have exercised proper interpretation authority and followed its own established 14th Amendment jurisprudence (precedent), it would have taken an originalist approach to the analysis, and the outcome would have been quite different (although not ultimately providing for the right of women to have an abortion; the decision would have been left to the states themselves).