After almost 50 years of tireless work, the pro-life movement has achieved a monumental political and legal victory with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which overturned the 1973 Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade. The pro-life movement must now focus on their ultimate goal of ending abortion by ensuring equal protection for children in the womb.
To be pro-life is to believe that innocent human beings deserve legal protection from violence, both before and after birth. All human beings are persons, and there should be no distinction between someone’s biological humanity and legal personhood. The 14th Amendment, which was adopted in 1868 to ensure that no group or category of human beings would be denied basic rights, has undeniable implications for the question of elective abortion. The principle of equal protection extends to everyone without distinction of race, ethnicity, sex, age, size, location, stage of development, or condition of dependency. State permission of elective abortion is incompatible with the principle of equal protection.
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. 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. State and federal child tax credits should be extended to include preborn children as “qualifying children” on tax returns, and embryos in cryopreservation should not be legal property or quasi-property under state law and cannot simply be discarded and destroyed. Support for equal protection should be a litmus test for elected officials and judicial nominees at every level of government, and children in the womb should be afforded due process and legal representation in judicial proceedings through the appointment of guardians ad litem in appropriate circumstances. Robust and existing prenatal child-support laws from conception should be passed and enforced to ensure that all men take responsibility for the children they father.
The pro-life movement’s North Star remains the same as ever: the end of abortion through ensuring the equal protection of the laws. The same constitutional principles that ensured equal protection for black Americans also protect defenseless children in the womb. It falls to us to ensure that this guarantee is enforced. That is our unified paradigm for victory, and nothing less will be acceptable.
This statement was organized by Live Action and signed by a group of pro-life leaders and advocates.
