Ending abortion in the United States

I had previously argued--in the first note in this post--that we do not need to appoint judges to bring about a legal end to abortion in the United States. Rather, we would only need the Congress to strip all Federal courts of their jurisdiction over the issue. Then the battle could be fought on a state by state basis without worrying about any Federal courts overturning laws that eliminate abortion. But, on having rethought the issue, believe that there is an easier way to end abortion in the United States.

Amendment XIV, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States makes it the law of the land that no state shall "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." Now, the problem with this is that the term "person" is never defined within the amendment itself. Thus, we have the many and varied arguments over what constitutes a person, especially over what the legal definition of person should be with regard to Amendment XIV.

But Amendment XIV, section 5 states that "Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." It is obvious that if we are going to attempt to enforce the quoted part of Amendment XIV, section 1, we need a legal definition of "person" so we know who the quoted text in section 1 is referring to. But since it is Congress who has the authority to enforce Amendment XIV via legislation, it falls to Congress to so define the term necessary for said enforcement. Thus, Congress can simply pass a law defining all pre-born human beings as persons from the moment of conception and then outlaw abortion insofar as abortion deprives persons of life without due process.

If a Federal court were to strike down such a law, then the judges who rule as such should be impeached. This would be just because any judge who ruled the law unconstitutional would be setting themselves above the Constitution, since the manifest truth is that Congress has the authority to pass this law based upon Amendment XIV, section 5.

There is no need to fight out the abortion issue in the Federal courts, in the individual states, or with a constitutional amendment. The legislature has the authority to end abortion at any time they wish. All the people need to do is elect pro-life Congressmen and Senators who have the moral courage and strength of conviction to act on this authority.

See also: George W. Carey, In Defense of the Constitution and the review of the same by Edward B. McLean in the fall 1995 issue of the Intercollegiate Review.