When Life and Death Clash in Virginia’s Constitution
All around the nation, states are coming face to face with a deadly measure to enshrine a created “right” to abortion into state constitutions. Tragically, with the public opinion so deeply warped by Roe, this method is being met with success. This year, our own Commonwealth became a target with an introduced measure to add a “fundamental right” to abortion into our state constitution. If this measure becomes successful, this amendment will stand in direct contradiction to the first sentence in the Virginia Constitution.
Article 1 § 1 of Virginia’s Constitution states, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” (emphasis mine).
Our founders recognized that we have an inherent right to life and that there is no law and no measure which can take that away. Yet to inscribe a right to abortion would create a right for someone to kill another. The proposed constitutional amendment, riddled with dangerous flaws, coats this “right” under the inscription of “reproductive freedom”, which is a rather ambiguous term. It would swing the door wide open for a variety of exploitations just from the mere deceptive colloquialism.
How can the law recognize the right for a person to live as fundamental and above all else, and yet simultaneously create a right to legalized murder? Simple, the dehumanization of the unborn child. Zealous abortion advocates refuse to recognize an unborn child as a living human being. Meanwhile, they are on a public campaign to gaslight the entire public into believing their outlandish lie so they vote for these measures when they reach the ballot box. Despite the kicks and hiccups the mother feels throughout the nine months of pregnancy or the numerous technological advances that make life in the womb as obvious as the sun in the sky, abortion advocates simply choose to outright lie. This is not the first time in our history we have seen such a powerful and dark move. We only have to think back to the Holocaust when Jews were dehumanized and executed in mass because of it.
Today, this fight is in courtrooms across the nation. Without Roe, the battle looks different. Now judges may be faced with taking up the question of when life begins. When does man’s fundamental, natural, and God-given right to life begin? From the moment he’s conceived? When his heart beats? Or when he takes his first cry in the open air? We know when life begins, and ultimately it’s not within the courts’ authority to make that decision. Rather, the court needs to recognize when it begins and ensure the law protects it. Judges need to reconcile with life in the womb and the question of when the law should protect it.
As these constitutional amendments continue to find momentum and victory in states, the courts will need to reckon with the clash of life and death in the state constitutions. Who is going to speak up for these unborn children and see that the right to their death is struck down? Thankfully, Virginia’s path to this contradiction is a longer, more nuanced one with multiple opportunities to stop this atrocity before legalized bloodshed becomes a “fundamental right” in the eyes of our Commonwealth and its courts. We must continue being a voice for the unborn in every sphere and tear down the lies.
