When the forefathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were explicitly assured. They referred to these rights as inalienable: neither person nor government can deny another of them, because they come from a natural law that’s ingrained in all human souls.
The forefathers even explicitly mention “the Laws of Nature” and “Nature’s God;” our country’s very foundation acknowledges and is built upon the belief in a natural law that pervades every aspect of life. There’s that word again – life: the first right promised to us as citizens of the United States of America. But unfortunately, that’s where definitions become subjective, because who is considered a citizen, and if you don’t fall under the requirements, does that mean you deserve to die?
Even after the Declaration was signed, and the Americans defeated the British, slavery was still in existence in the South. It wasn’t until after Abraham Lincoln and the Union won the Civil War that the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery. Up until that point, African-Americans weren’t considered citizens based solely on the color of their skin. They were considered less than human – 3/5 human, to be exact – marginalized not because any natural law stated such a thing, and in fact the Declaration itself even stated that all men are created equal.
They were marginalized because of man and his power over language, who decided to interpret the forefather’s declaration that all men are created equal as only all white men were created equal, and as such, only white men were endowed with inalienable rights by their Creator. We look back on that time period now and are appalled by the atrocities and injustice inflicted upon the African-American people, and we wonder how the law could have ever protected such behavior. Yet, we fail to see how oppression is still alive today, maybe in a different form, but being perpetuated in altogether the same way.
In college so far, I have been learning about the power of language and the language behind power: that language is power, and power is language. While this might be true, truth is also truth, and no clever rhetoric can invalidate or eradicate natural law, although it may succeed in disguising it.
The pro-choice camp, much like the slave-owners of the past, have decided they have the power to designate who qualifies as a human. They’ve used language to build a powerful industry that disguises murder in the name of feminism and women’s reproductive rights. They’ve reconstructed the youngest stage of human development to be considered less than human.
Babies are now referred to as fetuses and clumps of tissue, as if these terms could possibly alter the intrinsic fact that a human life is a human life, as if they could detract value from something that is already priceless. Language cannot erode truth.
The mindset America has adopted towards abortion undermines the pure joy that should come with parenthood because it tells parents, and especially women, that they have the power to determine whether or not their child lives or dies – that they have the right. What are rights again? I know we all have three unalienable rights which are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but correct me if I’m wrong, nowhere in the Declaration, or Constitution, or any additional amendments does it state that we have the right to assign value to a human life and then kill that life if we see fit.
Under Roe v. Wade, the pro-choice camp again used clever rhetoric to argue that abortion falls under a woman’s right to privacy, a right that isn’t stated explicitly anywhere in the Constitution. This “right to privacy” details that women should be able to decide what to do with their own bodies. What this rhetoric deceptively leaves out is it isn’t just a woman’s body, but another human life is involved, and our rights end the minute they infringe on another’s rights.
Abortion undermines the natural law instituted by our Creator and invoked by our forefathers in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Abortion undermines the liberties America supposedly offers to all of its citizens. Abortion undermines what it means to be human.
