Does the Constitution Permit Abortion to be Codified? Or, Can Women be Issued a License to Kill?

by Leonard Daneman, paraleaglenm.com, ©2024 

(Nov. 6, 2024) — Answer: No. Why? The constitution bans, twice, Bills of Attainder.¹

What is a Bill of Attainder?

“Bills of attainder . . . are such special acts of the legislature, as inflict capital punishments upon persons supposed to be guilty of high offences . . . without any conviction in the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. If an act inflicts a milder degree of punishment than death, it is called a bill of pains and penalties. . . . In such cases, [Examples: The January 6 Committee jailing Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.] the legislature assumes judicial magistracy, pronouncing upon the guilt of the party without any of the common forms and guards of trial, and satisfying itself with proofs, when such proofs are within its reach, whether they are conformable to the rules of evidence, or not. In short, in all such cases, the legislature exercises the highest power of sovereignty, and what may be properly deemed an irresponsible despotic discretion, being governed solely by what it deems political necessity or expediency, and too often under the influence of unreasonable fears, or unfounded suspicions.”J. Story, ‘Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States’ 1338 (1833) Note: Joseph Story is a unique and most reliable source on the constituton. https://www.oyez.org/justices/joseph_story

The attainder ‘attaints’ the person or class of persons, denying them civil rights. Lynching a runaway slave? Could fit; but an open, discretionary death penalty for any unborn person? Isn’t that what Roe v Wade accomplished? Can’t one say then that Roe v Wade relegates an unborn child to the status of a slave?

While Roe is a legislative Art II holding, the Judiciary is barred from ‘legislating from the bench.’ (See linked blog, ‘The Fetus as an Individual’ for Rhenquist’s Roe dissent against legislating from the bench.) They got around that in Roe by declaring abortion was a constitutional right! Essentially, pro-abortion activists are refusing to relinquish their ‘License to Kill.’

However, if the Democrats once again try to ‘codify’ Roe vs Wade, this time in state legislatures, then they will bring back up the question the judges in Roe rejected; whether an unborn child is a person. In fact, Roe argued both proofs the child had protections as a person (prenatal care) and a future person (laws of succession), but flipped that coin until the ‘not a person’ side won the toss. So, if a state tries to codify abortion, it will have to re-address this issue or risk being in direct violation of the constitution. (For the Roe argument of ‘personhood,’ see my original 2009 blog at https://paraleaglenm.com/2009/11/03/the-fetus-as-an-individual-invalidating-roe-vs-wade/ )

The ‘conspiracy’ between a doctor and a mother to execute an unwanted child, a distinct though unborn person, is banned from being legalized by any special law. To save the life of a mother? Life threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies are rare. Plus, when a fetus is so developed as to be a risk to the mother in childbirth, the child is highly likely viable.

A distinct and viable person? If following the laws of nature, left unmolested the unborn person is predestined to be a ‘person born,’ with full civil rights.

Summary Judgment and Denial of Due Process for the most innocent of all persons is unthinkable!

Arguing abortion rights because of incest and rape is without merit as almost all abortions, in all terms of pregnancy, are from babies conceived out-of-wedlock, unmarried couples engaging in consensual sex, recreative rather than ‘creative.’

90%-99% of abortions are from out-of-wedlock relations. Three major ‘reason’s for terminating an unplanned pregnancy are financial, timing vis a’ vis too young, too old, and finally an unstable relationship or undependable ‘partner.’

This is from ‘Medical News:’ 

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 620,327Trusted Source reported abortions took place in the United States in 2020, and 93.1% occurred in the first trimester — at 13 weeks’ gestation or earlier.”

In other words, first trimester abortions are, essentially, post-coital contraception which is NOT covered in the Griswold case legalizing contraception.

Any law permitting the abortion and death of a fetus conceived through incest and rape is the visiting of the criminal act upon the child. ‘Corruption of Blood’ implies that the violation of God’s Law, i.e., fornication, was visited upon the fetus. This is essentially unjust because the only ‘crime’ is negligence and the abuse of abortion as contraception. And while the parents’ sin was not a crime per se, it nonetheless exposed the unwanted fetus to a death sentence, its capital crime merely that of being inconveniently conceived.

Incest and rape are, however, crimes so heinous that Corruption of Blood visiting on the unborn child will likely be constitutional. The only law that came close to Corruption of Blood was the denial of ‘bastard’ children to rights of succession, but those laws have been repealed and ‘bastard’ as a term of art removed from legal lexicons.

I compared abortion of an unborn child to the lynching of a slave; both denied civil rights. President Lincoln declared in his Second Inaugural Address, that there would be a blood reckoning for slavery which he described as a ‘slash of the sword for every lash of the whip.’ The legalizing of abortion is as much a crime against nature as slavery, and the national error and sin will not go unpunished.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-9/clause-3/bills-of-attainder?fbclid=IwAR0vtMgXy233JYnIIjc1ymA1B1TZaMlIlsEUnF86pidlFp2scLIQlDDPXs4