Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, according to the Declaration of Independence, are some of your inalienable rights.
So here’s an easy question for you: Do you agree?
If you do, then you also agree with the early Americans who declared that some rights are given to people by an authority higher than the local, state, or federal governments. Inalienable rights are endowed to people by God and are not legally subject to infringement by a government. The Declaration insists that people have the right to alter or abolish a government that attempts to do such things. Such insistence was proven by the blood of patriots. So now it is a fact and not just a belief.
Thus some arguments since then have not been whether people have inalienable rights. Rather it has been about who is really a person. Sounds ludicrous at the surface, but when you dig deeper selfish motives can be uncovered.
In 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision on the Dred Scott case that Africans residing in America, whether free or slave, could not become citizens. In other words, they were not people. From a 21st century viewpoint, the decision is not only wrong it is criminal. Just a few years after that landmark law-of-the-land ruling, America was thrust into the most violent and costly war of its history.
Following the Civil War, a series of Constitutional Amendments and legislative action worked together to culminate with the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, which was a 5-4 decision that is generally recognized as the over-turning of Dred Scott.
Five to four? After sixteen years of blood shed, destruction of property, violence, debate, rebuilding and three Amendments–it was still that close! It is apparent that the folks who get on the Supreme Court can influence the nation for a long time. We need to be careful who we hire to select our future judges. As important as freedom is, we still want to be considered a human by our nation’s highest court.
Take another landmark case, Roe v Wade, when the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in 1973 that an unborn human is not a person. Thus the right to life, liberty, and property and due process of law does not apply to the unborn.
Since then, 35 years later, somewhere around 50 million unborn Americans have had their births aborted. That’s a lot of people. If they really were people. If they really were human. How can we know? Is it a faith question or fact question?
Bible believers know that life begins at conception. (see Psalm 139:13, 16) Not everyone believes the Bible. Some people think it is just something that simple people cling to when they’re confused or threaten. Those people might believe in science.
So what does science tell us?
In 2003, science actually mapped the genome of the human species. While mannequins, statues, wax figures, cartoon characters, and even some animals might look something like a human, science knows that it is our DNA that makes us human. Certain chromosomes and genes and chemical pairs all work together to make a human. That combination is in all of our cells. Even the one made at the moment of conception.
Wow. Science proves Psalm 139:13. What goes around comes around. It’s not just a belief, it’s a scientific fact.
That means 50 million humans have been killed in America because they were too weak to defend themselves from a cultural bias against them. Just because it has been legal doesn’t make it right. Just like the Dred Scott Decision, it seems more than wrong, it seems criminal.
What have we done to ourselves? What are we still doing?
Who is so gifted with clairvoyance to declare with certainty that most of those aborted 50 million humans would be in our prisons or on our welfare roles if they had lived? Such a statement is the most vile form of stereotyping.
Not everyone who starts with meager means or limited parents are doomed to a parasitic existence. Nearly half of those people would now be adults in the workforce. They’d be buying houses, cars, and investing in the stock market. They’d have children of their own. They’d be paying taxes. They’d be good Americans making the best of their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
So what do we do now? What can we do?
We can’t start where we were, only where we are. If we can’t stop killing unborn Americans now, how about if we just set a limit on it? How do we do that? To start with, it takes a combination of audacity and luck.
If fate should offer you a Joe-the-Plumber moment, here’s a simple but tough question for your candidate of opportunity:
Since science has already proven that the genome is what determines if someone is a human and since 1973 we’ve already prematurely ended about 50 million American lives with our abortion industry, how many more human lives should be ended before we stop? Is it 75 million? Would 100 million be enough or too many? We really need a number.
If you can’t get a number from them, maybe they think we’ve already exceeded our quota. Ask them that too, if you haven’t been shouted down by the culture that doesn’t believe everyone is created equal. This problem isn’t just going to go away by itself.
It just makes sense.