Longtime readers of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News will not be surprised that I fully support the United State Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The original 1973 Supreme Court decision was unconstitutional. The court legislated from the bench and outside its judicial authority.
The 18 enumerated powers of the U.S. Congress are listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Further, the 10th Amendment explicitly says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Progressives love to tout the 10th Amendment when it suits them, like legalizing marijuana, sanctuary cities, gun control, etc. But the issue of abortion is also not among those 18 enumerated powers, and neither Congress nor the Supreme Court have the authority to legislate on abortion.
Last November, I wrote a column titled “Without Shared Values, the States Need to Rise Up.” I argued that the states demand federalism and maintain their 10th Amendment rights. This would allow citizens to move to states that support their shared values and not suffer the federal government enforcing laws that are unconstitutional.
Case in point, Californians are fed up with Governor Newsom’s progressive paradise plans: homelessness, tent cities, decriminalized smash-and-grab crime, tax theft, rampant drug abuse, etc. The last two years have seen Californians vote with their feet. The population of California has now decreased to 2016 levels.
I also find it humorous when progressives claim that overturning Roe is undemocratic. As if sending decisions back to the states to handle democratically for themselves is an act of totalitarianism.
Many states have expanded access to abortion over the last year. Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and also Washington, D.C., have voted to allow a baby to be aborted at any point up until the time his umbilical cord is cut. Let that sink in.
Progressives argue that while a fetus is ontologically a human, it’s not a “person” until the umbilical cord is cut. Colorado recently passed a bill claiming that fetuses do not have human rights before birth.
This sort of lexicographical sleight-of-hand has been used time and time again throughout history to justify other evils. Africans were declared subhuman to justify the slave trade. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution led to scientific racism, social Darwinism and eugenics. The Nuremberg Laws argued that Jews belonged to a different, inferior race. Apartheid sorted South Africans into “Black,” “White,” “Coloured” and “Indian” racial groups. And the only difference between a fetus and an unborn baby is the intent to murder.
How progressive to declare that a baby becomes a person with a change of geography: on the delivery table. If the title of personhood is granted by a capricious majority instead of by God, why can’t the majority also vote when someone becomes a nonperson again, declaring anyone of advanced age to be a unproductive drag on society? Confiscate that nonperson’s wealth and put them to death. That would address the same selfish ‘problems’ that try to justify abortion. Is the only difference that babies can’t speak for themselves?
Democrats in the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 2223 that bars the state from fully investigating “perinatal” deaths. The progressives’ stated intent is that stillbirths would not be investigated by coroners. But that is not the wording of the bill. The term “perinatal” means “from one to four weeks after birth.”
Rather, the bill nullifies a 1995 law mandating that infants born prematurely in the course of an abortion must be treated the same as infants delivered in a live birth. And the bill technically prevents investigating infant deaths up to four weeks after delivery. The previous term was infanticide.
If Roe is overturned, it won’t be the end of abortion. California Gov. Newsom has a stated goal that California be a destination state for abortion.
Get an abortion in the morning and take in Disneyland in the afternoon. What freedom.
Local voters will be able to decide their own laws based upon their values. If blue states want to expand abortion laws, they will be able to. And the rest of the states will watch in horror on their path to enlightened, legal murder.
Courtney served 20 years as a nuclear engineering officer aboard submarines and 15 years as a graduate school instructor. A political independent, he spends his time playing with his 7 grandchildren in Moscow.
