A resolution offered by Representatives Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday urges the House to enact legislation to protect the life of an unborn child from conception.
Lamborn called the resolution the “new north star” in the fight against abortion:
While we are grateful that Roe has been overturned, there is still much work to be done to advance and strengthen the protection of human life, beginning in the womb.
The Recognizing Life Resolution is the new north star that will guide future legislation and set the precedent for our nation to secure equal protection for unborn children and preserve the sanctity of life.
I am pleased to introduce this resolution and look forward to continuing the pro-life momentum already making waves around the nation.
With 21 supporters in the House so far, the resolution relies heavily on the 14th Amendment to make its case. That amendment, adopted in 1868, guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” to “any person.” The resolution takes great pains to show that “any person” includes the unborn from the moment of fertilization:
Whereas by the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, a supermajority of States had codified laws to prohibit abortion at all stages, and many of these statutes classified abortion as an “offense against the person” and nearly all described the unborn victim of abortion as an “infant” or “child”….
Whereas the drafters and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment expected the Amendment to apply not only to freedmen and Black Americans, but to every member of the human species within the jurisdictional reach of the Constitution, they intentionally selected the expansive language of “any person”, to ensure that no State would ever again subject any class of persons to inferior and invidiously discriminatory treatment.
The resolution also claimed that a consensus exists among medical practitioners and scientists that life begins at conception:
Whereas a medical and scientific consensus exists establishing that each human being begins his or her life cycle at fertilization.
And that therefore abortion is murder:
Whereas abortion, the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance or device, to intentionally kill the unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant, is destructive to the life, health, personal security, and well-being of the unborn child.
It defines the term “unborn person” or “unborn child” to mean “the unborn offspring of human beings … from fertilization [and that] human persons at every stage of development before birth have moral and legally protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.”
It declares that such unborn humans are therefore entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment and Congress should enact “legislation to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection for unborn children.”
Co-sponsor Representative Lesko joined Lamborn in supporting the resolution:
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law and ensures that no one is unjustly deprived of their fundamental rights to life and liberty.
As we look to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade [June 24, 2022], I am pleased to join Congressman Lamborn in introducing this important legislation to secure preborn babies’ constitutional right to life across our nation.
Not everyone is so pleased. A troubling paragraph near the end of the resolution is this: “the House of Representatives … acknowledges our constitutional duty … to guarantee the equal protection of the laws to every unborn child … [but] shall not be construed to permit the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.”
Bradley Pierce, head of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, couldn’t support the resolution as a result:
This is neither an equal protection bill nor a personhood bill. It says the Constitution shall not be construed to permit any woman to be prosecuted for murdering her own preborn child, which declares self-managed abortions as a constitutional right. This would be Roe 2.0.
Put another way, under this resolution, only abortionists could be punished for killing unborn babies, but not the mothers who ingest so-called abortion pills to end an unwanted pregnancy.
The Recognizing Life Resolution has little chance of passage in the House, and none at all in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Lamborn is right: Much work remains to be done in the culture to bring about the results desired by the 21 signers of the resolution offered on Tuesday.
