An increasing number of states are adopting radically permissive abortion laws – such as New York, Virginia, and Vermont – that eliminate any restriction of the slaughter of the unborn. No waiting periods, no parental notice when a minor seeks abortion, no required counseling, no assurance that the mother is fully informed of the child’s development or ability to feel pain or other biological markers that may be highly significant in assessing the authenticity of informed consent – such as an ultrasound examination by which the mother may see what the abortionists and their enablers so desperately want to conceal. It has something to do with character.

On the other end of the social divide several states – eight to date – have adopted what some call “trigger laws” designed to challenge and hopefully erase the monstrous rulings of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Others have laws on books with various limitations on abortion that pre-date Roe and would presumably come into force once again if Roe and Planned Parenthood were overruled. 

There is much heat in the debates raging across social media. In order to provide some balance and clarity L.I.F.E. is offering this excellent discussion from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on just what abortion is and what Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton imposed on the Nation. It avoids hyperbole, addresses the core questions, and does not shy away from the “hard cases.” 

What is getting little attention in the latest developments are legislative findings of fact that accompany the new laws in Georgia (restricting abortions after fetal heartbeat – with exception to protect the life of the mother) and Alabama (restricting abortion throughout pregnancy except to protect the life of the mother). Because those findings of fact are critical to a solid understanding of the issues, L.I.F.E. is presenting several of them for your consideration. 

The findings make the case that the Supreme Court should hold that modern scientific data demonstrates that the the unborn child is a “person” within the meaning to the constitutional use of that word in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. How might it do so? It has to do with a doctrine called originalism that is gaining traction with constitutional scholars and justices on the Supreme Court. A recent article appearing Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy sets up the essential outline of the argument.

Want to learn more about it? Take L.I.F.E.’s free online college level course Bioethics & Law 101. Just follow the link. 

The Legislative Findings

The General Assembly of Georgia found that “[m]odern medical science, not available decades ago, demonstrates that unborn children are a class of living, distinct persons and more expansive state recognition of unborn children as persons did not exist when Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade (1973) established abortion related precedents.” 

Alabama made a similar finding but also invoked obvious parallels between abortion extremism, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the Nazi holocaust. And it didn’t stop there. It recalled as well the other massive genocides of the 20th century – Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and more. And yet they have all been eclipsed by the numbing scope of the genocidal abortion savagery wrought by Roe. Here are some of the Alabama findings: 

  • In the United States Declaration of Independence, the principle of natural law that “all men are created equal” was articulated. The self-evident truth found in natural law, that all human beings are equal from creation, was at least one of the bases for the anti-slavery movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the American civil rights movement. If those movements had not been able to appeal to the truth of universal human equality, they could not have been successful.
  • Abortion advocates speak to women’s rights, but they ignore the unborn child, while medical science has increasingly recognized the humanity of the unborn child.
  • Recent medical advances prove a baby’s heart starts to beat at around six weeks. At about eight weeks, the heartbeat can be heard through an ultrasound examination. A fetal Doppler can detect a fetal heartbeat as early as 10 weeks.
  • Ultrasound imaging shows the developing child in utero.
  • As early as six weeks after fertilization, fetal photography shows the clear development of a human being.
  • It is estimated that 6,000,000 Jewish people were murdered in German concentration camps during World War II; 3,000,000 people were executed by Joseph Stalin’s regime in Soviet gulags; 2,500,000 people were murdered during the Chinese “Great Leap Forward” in 1958; 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s; and approximately 1,000,000 people were murdered during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. All of these are widely acknowledged to have been crimes against humanity. By comparison, more than 50,000,000 babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.

Fifty million. And that’s just in the United States. The world wide numbers are staggering and exceed 1.5 billion since 1980.