The pro-life movement has been working for nearly 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited states from protecting unborn children from abortion. Millions of people have prayed, marched, petitioned, voted, and made their voices heard to correct what they saw as a grievous constitutional error. In 2022, their efforts achieved success with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was seen as a generational win, an answer to prayer, and a monumental political and legal achievement. Now that Roe is gone, the pro-life movement must focus on achieving its ultimate goal: ending abortion by ensuring equal protection for children in the womb.
Being pro-life means affirming that the lives of innocent human beings deserve legal protection from violence, both before and after birth. There can be no distinction between someone’s biological humanity and their legal personhood. All human beings are persons, and there are no classes of sub-personal human beings. The idea of relegating a human being to the status of a non-person is a moral atrocity. From the earliest embryonic stage to the very end of life, each and every human being is a person and a bearer of fundamental dignity and an unalienable right to life.
Some claim that the Constitution is “silent” on abortion, but the text of the Constitution, particularly its principle of “equal protection,” has undeniable implications for the question of elective abortion. The 14th Amendment expressly forbids the states from denying “to any person within jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” No exceptions to the equal-protection principle are stated, implied, or even contemplated. The principle, on its very face, extends to everyone without distinction of race, ethnicity, sex, age, size, location, stage of development, or condition of dependency. State permission of elective abortion, no less than the permission of infanticide or the killing of the cognitively disabled, the elderly, or members of any other class of persons, is incompatible with the principle.
Adopted in 1868 to ensure that no group or category of human beings would be denied basic rights, the 14th Amendment first defines United States citizenship by declaring that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States,” and provides that all citizens are entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship. But this Citizenship Clause simply defines which persons are citizens; it does not define “person” or say that only citizens are persons. Crucially, the amendment then goes on to provide that “no state shall 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.” These due-process and equal-protection guarantees apply to and protect everyone, regardless of citizenship.
Every branch and level of government must take steps to secure equal protection for the child in the womb. The pro-life movement and elected officials should embrace policies consistent with that framework, including acknowledging through constitutional provisions and legislation that children from the earliest embryonic stage forward are legal and constitutional persons entitled to the equal protection of state and local laws, and preventing states and localities from denying such protection. They should also ensure that fetal-homicide, wrongful-death, and child-endangerment laws, including the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, are vigorously enforced to protect all preborn children, so that preborn babies and their families can obtain justice against the criminals who harm them. They should extend state and federal child tax credits to include preborn children as “qualifying children” on tax returns, ensuring that American families are able to receive deductions for all of their dependent children. They should clarify that embryos in cryopreservation are not legal property or quasi-property under state law and cannot simply be discarded and destroyed. They should make support for equal protection a litmus test for elected officials and judicial nominees at every level of government. They should ensure that children in the womb are afforded due process and legal representation in judicial proceedings through the appointment of guardians ad litem in appropriate circumstances. Finally, they should pass robust and enforce existing prenatal child-support laws from conception to ensure that all men take responsibility for the children they father.
In his “House Divided” speech, Abraham Lincoln predicted that the United States could not endure “half slave and half free…. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Echoing those words more than a century later, Ronald Reagan declared that “our nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice.” For that reason, he invoked the 14th Amendment, saying, “the well-being and the future of our country demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land.”
It is true that Americans are divided on abortion after Dobbs. But life will triumph. The same constitutional principles that ensured equal protection for black Americans also protect defenseless children in the
