(LifeSiteNews) — More than two dozen prominent pro-life voices have signed onto a declaration that nationwide equal protection of the preborn must be the “north star” of the pro-life movement, throwing down a bold gauntlet at a time when Republicans are divided on how to navigate a post-Roe v. Wade legal landscape.
Organized by Live Action and published Thursday in National Review, the statement declares that, “[n]ow that Roe is gone, the pro-life movement must direct its efforts to achieving our ultimate goal: ending abortion by ensuring equal protection for children in the womb,” arguing that “[t]here can be no distinction between someone’s biological humanity and his or her legal personhood.”
“Some claim that our Constitution is ‘silent’ on abortion. While it is true that the word ‘abortion’ does not appear in the text, just as words like ‘infanticide’ and ‘homicide’ do not appear, the text of the Constitution, and particularly its principle of ‘equal protection,’ has undeniable implications for the question of elective abortion,” it argues. “The 14th Amendment expressly forbids the states from denying ‘to any person within [their] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ No exceptions to the equal-protection principle are stated, implied, or even contemplated. The principle, on its very face, extends to everyone without distinction of race, ethnicity, sex, age, size, location, stage of development, or condition of dependency. State permission of elective abortion, no less than the permission of infanticide or the killing of the cognitively disabled, the elderly, or members of any other class of persons, is incompatible with the principle.”
Accordingly, the group calls for “constitutional provisions and legislation” to recognize the personhood of the preborn and “preven[t] states and localities from denying such protection”; vigorous enforcement of “fetal-homicide, wrongful-death, and child-endangerment laws, including the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act”; including preborn children in child tax credits; “[c]larifying that embryos in cryopreservation are not legal property or quasi-property under state law and cannot simply be discarded and destroyed”; a preborn equal-protection litmus test for all candidates for political and judicial office”; “due process and legal representation in judicial proceedings” for preborn children “through the appointment of guardians ad litem in appropriate circumstances”; and “passing robust and enforcing existing prenatal child-support laws from conception to ensure that all men take responsibility for the children they father.”
Signatories include Live Action president Lila Rose, Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins, 40 Days for Life president Shawn Carney, Concerned Women for America president Penny Nance, Human Coalition president Jeff Bradford, Ethics & Public Policy Center president Ryan Anderson, Princeton professor Robert George, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler Jr., James Wilson Institute founder Hadley Arkes, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru, Radiance Foundation co-founder Ryan Bomberger, Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley, James Wilson Institute legal scholar Josh Craddock, and more.
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, in response to which abortion allies are aggressively pursuing a variety of strategies to preserve abortion “access,” such as easing distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, attempting to enshrine “rights” to the practice in state constitutions, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors.
President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand the Roe status quo by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws.
The pro-life movement has generally argued that the long-term goal was full, nationwide legal protection for the preborn. Since President Ronald Reagan, the official position of the Republican Party Platform has been to “support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” But the GOP is currently divided on the question, between those who favor a more aggressive approach and those who blame abortion for the party’s underperformance in last year’s congressional midterm elections.
Those who oppose abortion yet also oppose a federal resolution claim that the Constitution does not give Congress jurisdiction over the issue, and therefore it should be left to individual states. Pro-lifers who favor a federal resolution argue that the Fourteenth Amendment expressly tasks Congress with “enforc[ing], by appropriate legislation,” the “equal protection of the laws,” and that federalism (individual states reaching different conclusions on contentious issues) only works for people able to evade harmful laws by moving to another state, which preborn babies cannot.
Former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination, has repeatedly refused to commit to backing a federal abortion ban if reelected, after alarming pro-lifers by suggesting that state-level heartbeat laws may be “too harsh,” his campaign stating that abortion now “should be decided at the State level,” and blaming pro-lifers for the GOP’s underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump’s top rival for the nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, chastised Trump for not answering whether he would have signed the same heartbeat law that DeSantis did this year, and said last month that “there is a role for both the federal and the state” in prohibiting abortion, while acknowledging “just a practical reality that the country’s just divided on the issue” that makes it harder for Congress to amass support for the same kinds of laws currently progressing through state legislatures.