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Personhood Amendments
An Introduction
What IS
and IS NOT
a Personhood Amendment?
( aka Human Life Amendment )
While some think it is any type of
constitutional amendment dealing with abortion that is not the case.
A
Personhood Amendment IS a constitutional
amendment that establishes a legal definition of a
person that includes unborn children, thus making
killing an unborn child a crime punishable under
existing murder laws.
A
Personhood Amendment IS NOT a 'ban' on
abortion (a 'medical procedure' as the courts view it).
How a Personhood Amendment Works.
To understand the
U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Courts better, let's take a look at this question:
Does a person have the right to make medical decisions for themself?
The common sense answer is obviously YES. This
is a fundamental right.
At present, all courts consider abortion a medical decision,
so any legislative or constitutional approach that is worded to heavily
restrict or outlaw abortion will fail because the courts
view it as ‘taking away’
from a woman's rights, a legal
'negative'.
The only way to end abortion is through a
constitutional amendment that legally recognizes unborn
children as persons, a legal
'positive'. This
grants or recognizes the human rights of unborn children and would
automatically legally maneuver Federal courts into doing the
same.
This approach frames the question properly:
Should we
protect unborn children from being killed since they are
human beings?
The common sense answer is obviously YES.
When
both the unborn child and mother are recognized as persons, a
baby's Right to Life outweighs the mother's fundamental
right to make her own medical decisions, except when saving
her own life.
Any attempt to establish personhood
for the unborn will have to meet and overcome Federal
Court challenges to become enforceable. Either Roe
v. Wade will prevail or the Personhood Amendment will.
Only ONE can survive!
Only a properly worded state
Personhood Amendment has the pure raw power to
end abortion.
Quick History
Personhood - The Original Pro-Life
Strategy
Federal Personhood Amendments (aka Human Life Amendments) were first introduced in the early 1970s
and continued to be heavily promoted into the late 1980s.
During this time, the adoption of a Federal Personhood Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had become the Pro-Life
Movement's top goal -- knowing it would easily overturn Roe
v. Wade and end abortion. Roe v. Wade is the 1973 U.S.
Supreme Court decision that had the effect of legalizing
abortion throughout the United States. In the last 35 years over
300 were introduced into divisive Congress all of them
getting nowhere. Since the 1990s, the Pro-Life
Movement had mostly given up on a Federal Personhood Amendment and in any direct confrontation of Roe.
The first ever State Personhood Amendment was introduced in 2005. The goal of both
state and federal amendments were to establish a legal
definition of a person that includes unborn children, thus
making killing an unborn child a crime punishable under
existing murder laws. Establishing the Right to
Life of unborn children through a State Personhood Amendment
has now become the explosive answer to ending abortion and
is taking the Pro-Life Movement by storm.
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"Many pro-life
groups and lawmakers in the past 40 years have
bobbed, weaved and swerved around the abortion
crisis instead of confronting it head-on. Now
overcoming the Roe decision by legally
declaring that human beings are persons from the
moment of fertilization is a real possibility." |
John E. Archibold, Esq.
Founder of
Colorado Right to Life
A Founding Board Member of both:
Americans United for Life
and also
National Right to Life |
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