8 But now, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand. – Isaiah 64:8
15 Did not he who made me in the womb make him?
And did not one fashion us in the womb? – Job 31:15
Dred & Harriet
In April 1846 a married couple filed separate lawsuits in the St Louis Circuit Court. Although Dred & Harriet were illiterate, they were not suing a system that denied them an education. Likewise, although they had no monetary wealth, they were not looking to make an easy dollar off of those more financially well off than they were. What brought them to the Circuit Court in St. Louis was a battle for their most precious asset. One they were wrongfully denied. Dred & Harriet Scott were suing for their freedom. As black slaves they wanted what every man wants and our Constitution proclaims as a God given right: Liberty.
When our Founding Father’s adopted the Declaration of Independence, the final drafting included these famous words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Our first “Congress” humbly recognized that there were certain unalienable rights, rights God has endowed on His Creation, that they can not deny. To the contrary, our Framers recognized that Governments are created to protect these unalienable rights. It was with this hope that Dred & Harriet went before the St. Louis Circuit Court.
Mere Chattel
Any one looking at Dred & Harriet with unbiased eyes could see that they were human beings. Other than the color of their skin, there would have been little difference between them and their “owner” or between them and those that sat in the Court where they brought their suit. The melanin level wouldn’t have betrayed the common physical traits. Any child could have identified their arms, legs, fingers, toes, etc. But these are just the external features.
Certainly the Court could recognize the intellect and the emotions of the Scott’s as they presented their case for freedom. Didn’t their intellect reveal the divine “spark” within? But bias has a way of blinding our ability to see truth. What began as a suit filed in the Circuit Court of St. Louis in April 1846, would end with one of the most infamous Supreme Court Decisions on March 6th, 1857 as the Dred Scott decision denied Dred & Harriet their God given freedom.
In the end, according to the Supreme Court, the Scott’s were deemed to be the property of other men. Mere chattel. And as such they had no right to freedom, or even to appeal to the Highest Court in the United States.
The home of the “Free”?
Taney & Lincoln
When Chief Justice Taney wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, he did so as a man with a skewed view of his fellow man. Instead of applying natural law to them as God’s image bearers, he looked at them as the property of others and interpreted the codified laws accordingly. To Justice Taney, Dred & Harriet Scott were no different than a horse or a cow. Instead of using the Constitution to protect humans from humanity, he used it to justify one man the right to deny a fellow man his inalienable right to liberty.
But the story was far from over. There would be further chapters to write and more battles to be fought. The Civil War was on the horizon and a champion of freedom was rising to power. By the providence of God Dred Scott would be granted his freedom before he closed his eyes in death. This same providence would see to it that as Abraham Lincoln took the oath as the sixteenth President of the United States, it would be none other than Chief Justice Taney who would swear him into office.
Jane Roe
In 1970, a suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of Norma McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe). Like Dred & Harriet Scott so many years before, Jane Roe also wanted “freedom”. Jane Roe, or more specifically her attorneys, did not want to live under the restrictive abortion laws of the day. After becoming pregnant with her third child at the age of 21, Norma McCorvey attempted to obtain an illegal abortion but found the clinic of her choice had been closed down.
Uncertain what to do next, Norma was referred to the two attorneys who would subsequently file the suit on her behalf in the United States District Court. Originally, Norma had lied about being raped, thinking that would aid her attempt at obtaining an abortion, but would later drop this claim. Ironically, before her case would be decided, Norma gave birth and put her child up for adoption. A hope millions of other children would sadly be denied. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court would issue another infamous decision, as they would make abortions legal by a vote of 7-2.
The highest Court in our land determined, “that women in the United States have a fundamental right to choose whether or not to have abortions without excessive government restriction”.
How could this happen in the United States?
More Property
What is the common denominator between these two infamous Supreme Court decisions? Something called substantive due process in the legal realm. In constitutional law, substantive due process is defined as: “a principle allowing courts to protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if procedural protections are present or the rights are not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the US Constitution.”
Substantive due process was first used in the 1856 Dred Scott decision which determined a slave owner’s right to own a slave was protected by the Due Process Clause, even though no such right is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Likewise, substantive due process would be used in Roe vs. Wade, protecting a woman’s right to abortion, even though the Constitution mentions no such right.
Like the Dred’s standing before their fellow man, the child in the womb was now reduced to property. As such, their fate is now in the hands of others. Once again, instead of using the Constitution to protect humans from humanity, it was used to allow a woman the right to deny a child it’s unalienable right to life. One person’s explicit rights became subordinate to another person’s “implied” rights.
Hopelessly Subjective
In his criticism of substantive due process, Robert Bork had this to say:
“there are no right or wrong substantive interpretations, because substantive interpretations take us into the realm of hopelessly subjective values and personal predilections-in which case all interpretations would be equally valid, or, perhaps more accurately, equally invalid.” (emphasis mine)
What may have sounded good in theory has become dangerous in practice. By using substantive due process, our Courts entered the realm of the subjective. This enables judges to become creators of law as opposed to interpreters. History has shown that progressive judges have used substantive due process to impose their “will” on society (i.e. gay marriage). But in order to make their will more palatable, they often have to re-write history and ignore the obvious. Including our unalienable rights.
In his dissent to the Dred Scott decision, Benjamin Curtis argued that it:
“is necessary, first, to have a clear view of the nature and incidents of that peculiar species of property which is now in question. It is not only plain in itself, and agreed by all writers on the subject, but is inferable from the Constitution that [slavery] is contrary to natural right.”
In his dissent, John McLean wrote:
” (the) slave is not mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man; and he is destined to an endless existence.” (emphasis mine)
Evil Ideology
What was the strategy of Jane Roe’s legal team? According to a memo of David Tundermann, an intern working on the case it was such:
“Where the important thing to do is to win the case no matter how, however, I suppose I agree with Mean’s technique: begin with a scholarly attempt at historical research; if it doesn’t work out, fudge it as necessary; write a piece so long that others will read only your introduction and conclusion; then keep citing it until the courts begin picking it up. This preserves the guise of impartial scholarship while advancing the proper ideological goals.” (emphasis mine)
Willful ignorance (2 Peter 3:5) or pure evil?
Old Ethics
This is what was written in the journal California Medicine in 1970, the same year Roe filed her suit in the United States District Court:
“(Yet because the old ethic had) not yet been fully displaced [in society] it had been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing….The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.” (emphasis mine)
When slavery was a scourge in our country, those that abused it accused those that opposed it of forcing their morality on them. Today, we hear the same argument regarding abortion. But we must be diligent. We must stay focused and not allow the progressives to frame all of the debates. We have the Truth of God and we know the intrinsic value of all human life. Remember, we are not promoting “our morality” but rather fighting for the unalienable rights of God’s highest creation.
No semantic gymnastics!! It is up to us to defend the “old” ethics.
- It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being
- Elective abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being
- Therefore, elective abortion is wrong
As former Justice McLean reminds us: ” (the) slave is not mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man; and he is destined to an endless existence.”
The same is true of the child in the womb. Our Constitution is no longer used to justify the scourge of slavery, by the Grace of God perhaps soon we can say the same about abortion!!
