Life At Conception Act Introduced By Senator Rand Paul

Senator and CPAC straw poll winner Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the “Life at Conception Act” on Thursday afternoon. He then went to Twitter and tweeted the following:

According to Senator Paul, S 583 “does not amend or interpret the Constitution, but simply relies on the 14th Amendment, which specifically authorizes Congress to enforce its provisions.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most Americans believe and what science has long known- that human life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore is entitled to legal protection from that point forward,” Sen. Paul said. “The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all Members of Congress.”

“To implement equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person, and pursuant to the duty and authority of the Congress, including Congress’ power under article I, section 8, to make necessary and proper laws, and Congress’ power under section 5 of the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Congress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.”

All his bill does is define when life begins.

While I appreciate what Senator Paul is trying to do, although Section 1 of 14A defined general citizenship, it did not introduce new rights for all citizens, so no rights for the unborn imo. What Section 1 did was to extend the scope of enumerated personal rights protected by the Constitution to the states and insured equal applicaton of laws. Section 1 also gave Congress the power to legislatively force the states to comply with constitutionally enumerated rights.

And although I'm dissapointed with the wording of Sec. 1 where unborn children are concerned in the context of today's issues, I've noted a likely reason why Bingham didn't foresee the need to protect unborn children as follows.

Consider that the reason that citizens, mostly rural pioneering families in the 19th century, had many children is this. It was commonly expected that some children would not survive to adulthood. So prohibiting abortion was probably Bingham's least concern when he led the drafting of Section 1 of 14A.

As a side note concerning activist justices wrongly finding so-called abortion rights in the 9th Amendment in Roe ve Wade imo, then applying such rights to the states via 14A, please consider this. Not only does Bingham's wording of Section 1 of 14A, along with his clarification in the congressional record concerning this issue, clearly indicate that 14A applies only enumerated constitutional rights to the states, but also note the following.

Bingham had read only the first eight amendments to the Constitution to the HoR, ignoring the 9th Amendment, as examples of constitutional statutes containing constitutional priviledges and immunities which 14A applied to the states.

"Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Those first eight amendments are as follows: …" --John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1871. (See top half of second column.)

Bingham's ommission of the 9th Amendment is further evidence, imo, that Bingham had intended for 14A to apply only enumerated personal rights to the states, as opposed to activist justices putting on their "magic glasses" to subjectively read abortion rights into 9A and then applying this so-called right to the states via 14A.

Again, i think that the reason that the first sentence was edited out of the excerpt from Section 1 of 14A in the referenced article is the following. Sen. Paul is essentially inadvertently(?) pretending that his proposed Life at Conception Act is simultaneously a constitutionally enumerated right and also its own 14A-based congressional remedy to the infringement of this "enumerated" right.

Persons who are not citizens do have constitutional rights.

Good point!

However, it remains that Section 1 of 14A, because of its inclusion of the word "born," indirectly defines people as those who have already been born. This minimally gives activist justices a license to strike down the Life at Conception Act if they choose to do so.

This is also why I've been arguing that activist justices wrongly ignored that abortion is not constitutionally enumerated right when they subjectivel found abortion rights in 9A and applied it to states via 14A.

Sen. Paul actually needs a constitutional amendment to do what he's trying to do with his Life at Conception Act imo.

‘Pro-Choice’ Slave Masters Losing War
The pro-aborts are losing. They know it,and they hate it.
As LifeNews.com reported in January,“CNN released the results of a new poll showing a majority of Americans want all or most abortions prohibited – a clear pro-life majority.”
Indeed,the winds of life are blowing free the foul stench of a pro-abortion culture of death.
This is why President Obama and his fellow pro-abort zealot,HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,have unilaterally,arbitrarily,and unconstitutionally forced, through Obamacare,every taxpaying American citizen to fund “free” abortion-on-demand.
This draconian overreach is in perfect keeping with the 2012 DNC platform,which,for the first time,admits without shame:“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to … abortion,regardless of ability to pay.”
Psalm 8:28 commands:“Defend the weak and the fatherless;uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.”
To be sure,there can be none more oppressed than the tens of millions who,over four short decades,have been – and will continue to be – slaughtered within the safe haven of their own mothers’ wombs.
With its 1973 Roe decision,the U.S. Supreme Court put the government’s official stamp of approval on mass murder. Since then,the battle lines have been drawn. This is war. They,“pro-choicers,” are the bad guys,while pro-lifers are the good guys. It really is that simple – that black and white. It’s good versus evil.
History will reflect as much.

To the unenthusiastic mother,politically motivated abortion violence is deviously portrayed as an acceptable escape from what may seem a desperate situation. To the innocent child,it is – without fail and without due process – execution by torture.
Consider the horrific practice of Partial-Birth Abortion,innocuously tagged “Intact Dilation and Extraction.” This is a practice so brutal and so needless that even the liberal American Medical Association (AMA) admitted that it is never necessary under any circumstances.
During a partial-birth abortion,the abortionist pulls a fully “viable” child – often kicking and thrashing – feet first from her mother’s womb,leaving only the top of her head in the birth canal. This is so the abortionist can technically claim to be performing an abortion,rather than committing murder.
He then stabs the child through the base of her skull with scissors,piercing her brain until her kicking and moving about suddenly and violently jerks to a halt. Next,he opens the scissors to enlarge the wound,inserts a vacuum tube,and sucks out her brains,thereby collapsing her skull.
Her now-limp and lifeless body is then cast away like so much garbage.

Appalling,isn’t it? Infanticide by any objective measure.

So,naturally,Mr. Obama,reasonable fellow that he is,agrees with the AMA,correct? He and other “pro-choicers” were the first to applaud the high court when it upheld a ban on this Hitlerian practice,right?
Wrong.
Barack Obama unbelievably called the Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart part of a concerted effort “to steadily roll back the hard-won rights of American women.” In so doing,he revealed to the world that leftist support for abortion “rights” has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with science or “health care.”
Moreover,consider Mr. Obama’s opposition to the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” It passed both houses of Congress in 2002 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Born Alive very simply requires that when a baby survives an attempted abortion – when she is “born alive” – further attempts to kill her must immediately cease,and steps must be taken to save her life.
Yet,incredibly,this president,while serving in the Illinois Senate,vehemently opposed the bill’s Illinois twin. He complained that requiring efforts to save the live victim of a botched abortion is “really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.”
Barack Obama’s solution? Finish off the little pest.

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