When the government fails to protect the most basic right, the right to life, for a baby in the womb, it sets a dangerous precedent, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano wrote this week in a column at Fox News.
Napolitano, a former judge on the Superior Court of New Jersey and senior judicial analyst at Fox News, urged Americans to ask themselves, “Is the baby in the womb a person?” and consider the dangerous implications of a government declaring certain groups of human beings to be non-persons.
Back in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that “because philosophers, theologians, scientists and physicians cannot agree on when personhood attaches” to an unborn baby, then they would not either, Napolitano wrote. That ruling, Roe v. Wade, declared that an unborn baby is not a person, despite the right to life protections outlined in Fifth and 14th amendments, the judge wrote.
Since then, approximately 62.5 million unborn babies have been legally, unnecessarily killed in abortions and their rights destroyed.
The problem began with Roe, but now President Joe Biden and other Democrat leaders are pushing it even further by demanding that the infamous abortion ruling be “codified” into federal law.
“Coming our way is a massive effort by pro-abortion forces at the state and federal levels to shore up Roe — to insulate it from interference by the Supreme Court — and thereby make abortions more available and, in some states, performed at taxpayer expense,” Napolitano wrote.
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If Biden and Democrat leaders succeed in codifying Roe, women would have the right “to kill her unborn child at any time, irrespective of what various states have enacted to preserve the lives of unborn children,” he continued.
The judge noted that some states are trying to push “the killing of more unborn children” as well. This month, New Jersey and New Mexico are considering radical pro-abortion bills that would expand abortions and end conscience protections for pro-life doctors and nurses. New York, Rhode Island and Virginia also passed pro-abortion laws to expand the killing of unborn babies within the past few years.
Yet, it is clearer than ever that an unborn baby is a unique, living human person who deserves a right to life.
Napolitano wrote:
Is the baby in the womb a person? Of course, she is. The baby has human parents, and her body contains all the genomic materials to grow into human childhood and adulthood. The denial of personhood to babies in the womb is akin to the judicial denial of personhood to Blacks before the Civil War. In the very essence of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that our right to life is inalienable.
As the push to deny personhood to unborn babies grows, Napolitano urged Americans to recognize how that precedent could jeopardize the rights of other human persons.
“Negating personhood is the most dangerous thing the government can do,” he concluded. “It is a one-way slippery slope. Whose personhood will the government negate next?”
In some states across America, it no longer is a question but a reality. Assisted suicide now is legal in eight states and Washington, D.C., meaning the killing of adults by their own hands (with the help of a doctor) is no longer discouraged but encouraged when those persons are old or have disabilities. Meanwhile, suicides by young and healthy people still are discouraged and mourned.
