Legal recognition of personhood
Paramount Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Every preborn child, from fertilization on, is a human being who is entitled to both social and legal protection.
Roe v. Wade effectively decriminalized abortion throughout the United States. However, the right to abortion is not the law of the land. Abortion is not legal. Because of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton, federal and state attorneys have refused to prosecute based on existing abortion laws.
Therefore, the most effective way to secure long-term legal protection for preborn children throughout the nation would be to amend the U.S. Constitution with a Paramount Human Life Amendment. The Paramount Human Life Amendment states:
The paramount right to life is vested in each human being from the moment of fertilization.
To discriminate against an individual child, or a selected class of children, on the basis of parentage or any other arbitrary classification (i.e., rape, incest, fetal deformity) violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Joint resolution
Proposing a constitutional amendment to protect human life.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
Article–
SECTION 1. The right to life is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.
SECTION 2. With respect to the right to life guaranteed to persons by the fifth and fourteenth articles of amendment to the Constitution, the word `person’ applies to all human beings, commencing with fertilization.
SECTION 3. The Congress and the several States shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.’
Model pro-life legislation on a state level
The Human Life Resolution was introduced in the Kansas legislature this year. This resolution should be help up as a model for crafting legislation on a state level that adheres to the “no exceptions, no compromise” principles.
The following is the exact wording from The Human Life Resolution.
A RESOLUTION requiring the attorney general to bring action to determine the constitutionality of Kansas statutes, administrative orders and executive orders that allow the termination, or the use of state funds or facilities in the termination, of the lives of innocent human beings including the unborn.
WHEREAS, The constitution of Kansas provides for the basic organization of state government, defines and limits the powers of the state and guarantees certain fundamental rights to all men; and
WHEREAS, The Bill of Rights of the Constitution is a declaration of the basic rights of all men that may not be denied or infringed upon by the state or any local government; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court holds that the very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from political debate, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. (see West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638(1943); and
WHEREAS, Section one of the bill of rights of the constitution of Kansas states that “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to life, logically enumerated first, is the basic, most fundamental right without which all others are meaningless; and
WHEREAS, The term “men” is accepted to include adult males, women, and children, in other words, all human beings; and
WHEREAS, All medical and scientific evidence acknowledges and affirms that children before birth share all the basic attributes of human personality-that they in fact are identifiable individual human beings; the unborn child is considered a person for purposes of qualifying for medical care under the federal medicaid program; modern medicine treats unborn children as patients; through ultrasound imaging and other techniques we can see the child’s amazing development; by using DNA profiling, before birth, indeed, even before the new being is implanted in her mother’s womb, we can be absolutely sure we are monitoring the same individual from conception/fertilization through the various stages of growth; and
WHEREAS, The legislature of the state of Kansas has acknowledged, even as recently as 1994, that a human being exists before birth by requiring the postponement of the execution of a pregnant convict “until the child is born” [K.S.A. 22-4009 (b)]; and
WHEREAS, The Kansas supreme court acknowledged in Smith v. Deppish, 248 Kan. 217, 231(1991) that “we humans create human offspring by transferring our DNA to our children” and that this is done “during reproduction…,” also known biologically as fertilization or conception, or both. The Court further acknowledged in Smith v. Deppish, 248 Kan. 217, 232 (1991) that “each person’s” DNA can be “individualized”; and
WHEREAS, A controversy now exists when the pregnancy of a woman constitutes the presence of a second person in order to qualify for medicaid while at the same time allowing such funds to be expended for the purpose of terminating the life of that “second person” as well as the lives of other preborn human beings. Through the use of matching funds in, and the administration of, the Medicaid program and the use of state facilities in the termination of the lives of innocent human beings, the state has become a direct party in violating section 1 of the bill of rights of the constitution of Kansas; and
WHEREAS, This matter involves issues of law which have never been resolved by the courts of the state of Kansas except to the extent questions have been raised in the Kansas Supreme Court by City of Wichita v. Elizabeth A. Tilson, 253 Kan. 285 (1991): Now, therefore,
Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Kansas: That, based on undeniable medical, biological and scientific facts, we do hereby acknowledge and affirm that the unborn children in the state of Kansas have an equal and inalienable right to life from conception/fertilization and that allowing the termination of the lives of innocent human beings even before birth violates section 1 of the bill of rights of the Kansas constitution; and
Be it further resolved: That in accordance with K.S.A. 75-702, the attorney general of the state of Kansas is hereby required to seek final solution of this issue in the supreme court of the State of Kansas and such other courts as may be warranted; the attorney general is further directed to bring action in mandamus and quo warranto against the governor as chief executive officer of the state and the secretary of social and rehabilitation services as administrative officer of the medicaid program in Kansas for the granting of a prospective permanent injunction barring the defendants from expending state funds for the purpose of paying for the termination of the lives of innocent human beings, whether in utero or ex utero; and the attorney general is further directed and ordered to plead to the court that upon conception/fertilization there is life, that this life is that of a human being and to further plead to the court to acknowledge and affirm that this human being is an “individual,” a “man” under the constitution of the state of Kansas.
The most recent medical, biological, and scientific facts and developments, especially those concerning the beginning of life and the incontestable reliance on DNA profiling as a positive means of identification, must be presented to the court in support of the above mentioned plea.
- Statement of Agreement
- Glossary
- Endorsements
- Appendix 1: Principle of double effect
- Appendix 2: Explanation of complicity with the action
- Appendix 3: Life of the mother exception
- Appendix 4: Legal recognition of personhood
- Appendix 5: Ensoulment
- Appendix 6: The zygote and personhood
- Appendix 7: Natural Law Ethical Theory