The Sanctity of Life and the Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is much in the news this month following President Trump’s executive order on ending birthright citizenship. Section 1 of the 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.

The present legal debate concerns the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” All agree that the phrase excludes the children of diplomats from other countries who reside in the US. But does it include the children of tourists? Those tourists, after all, must obey US criminal law. Or does it only include those citizens and legal permanent residents who have a commitment to this country?

The language of the amendment and the historical setting raise an even more fundamental question, however: As Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas write, “Were unborn children among the ‘persons’ the Amendment protected? Or, should the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of the laws’ … include freedom for women to abort?” (All quotations are from chapter 18 in The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History 1652-2022, Crossway, 2023).

Scripture describes instances in which unborn children are filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15), leap for joy (Luke 1:41-44), are in sin (Psalm 51:5), and struggle with one another (Genesis 25:22). These are characteristics of persons. We at DGCC have argued time and again that the biblical evidence is thus clear (see these links: first, second, third, fourth).

But does that biblical understanding underlie the fourteenth amendment? Olasky and Savas present evidence that its contemporaries thought it did.

The Congressional debate over the amendment in May of 1866 rightly focused on providing equal protection for African Americans recently freed from slavery. Earlier that same month in Memphis, police and other state officials – even the Tennessee attorney general – did nothing to stop and even encouraged mobs to slaughter dozens of African Americans. With such government-inflicted horrors in the news, no congressman made an explicit statement concerning abortion during the debate.

But the history of the amendment’s ratification displays the widespread understanding that unborn children are persons. In January of 1867 the Ohio legislature ratified the amendment while also passing an anti-abortion law, with a committee stating that doctors all agree “that the foetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception…. The willful killing of a human being, at any stage of its existence, is murder” (Olasky and Savas). This legislature clearly believed that in ratifying the amendment they were protecting the rights not only of African Americans, but also of the unborn.

State legislatures also passed pro-life laws shortly before or after ratifying the fourteenth amendment in Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont. By 1868 more than 80 percent of the 37 states had pro-life laws. As Olasky and Savas write, these laws

referred to the fetus as a “child” and/or “person.” Twenty of them punished equally killing an unborn child at six weeks [of gestational age] or six months. Laws in 17 of the states called abortion manslaughter, murder, or assault with intent to murder, and classified abortion as a crime against a person.

In the next several months, many will argue based on evidence from the 1800s about the implications of the fourteenth amendment for birthright citizenship. I encourage you, when you hear such arguments, bring out this even more important issue from the same century.

And pray:

  • Pray that the horror of hundreds of thousands of unborn children killed annually might end
  • Pray that we God’s church might work more and more effectively to love and care for women with unplanned pregnancies
  • Pray, yes, for better laws protecting unborn children in our own state
  • And pray against idolatry, in your own heart and in the hearts of others. For the decision to kill a child in the womb always results from idolatry.

[The Olasky and Savas volume tells numerous stories that illustrate the link between idolatry and abortion over the past several hundred years.]

 

Scripture, President Obama, and Roe v Wade

Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which declared unconstitutional virtually all state laws protecting the lives of children still in their mothers’ wombs. Since then, well over 50 million such children have been put to death in the United States.  We rightly are horrified at the murder of 20 children in Newtown CT; on average there are more than 160 Newtown killings per day of unborn children in this country.  In light of this anniversary and these facts, please take time to reflect on the following Scriptures; read their contexts; consider them in their relation to the overall storyline of the Bible. Then, in light of these Scriptures, reflect on the words below of President Obama in Newtown. Do not his arguments hold all the more strongly for our unborn children – who, in their mothers’ wombs, are in much greater danger than children in school classrooms or in shopping malls?

Psalm 127:3-5  Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.  4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.  5 Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

Jeremiah 1:5  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Psalm 139:13  You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

Isaiah 44:2  Thus says the LORD who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you.

Isaiah 46:3  Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb.

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. [King David is not saying that his mother was particularly sinful. He is saying that from the moment of conception, he was in sin. A subhuman being cannot be in sin.]

Luke 1:15  [John the Baptist] will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.

Luke 1:44   For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb [John the Baptist] leaped for joy.

Proverbs 24:10-12   If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.  11 Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.  12 If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?

Psalm 82:3-4   3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.  4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

From James 3:14-4:7 If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.  15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. . . . 4:2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.  3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.  4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? . . . 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”  7 Submit yourselves therefore to God.

Luke 9:23-24   And [Jesus] said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

From President Obama in Newtown:

This is our first task — caring for our children.  It’s our first job.  If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.  That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?  Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? . . . Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose? . . .

If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no.  We’re not doing enough.  And we will have to change. . . .

These tragedies must end.  And to end them, we must change.  We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. . . . But that can’t be an excuse for inaction.  Surely, we can do better than this.  If there is even one step we can take to save another child . . . then surely we have an obligation to try. . . .

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?  Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

For more information see abort73.com. We encourage you to support and to volunteer at the Pregnancy Resource Center of Charlotte.