In defense of the Constitution

By Rep. Trent Franks

In late February, the South Dakota Legislature passed and Gov. Mike Rounds has signed a bill into law to protect unborn children from abortion in the state of South Dakota, unless it is necessary to save the life of the mother. These courageous people have met the greatest test anyone in any station of human government can achieve: protecting the innocent. This bill could now create the first direct constitutional challenge of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in over 14 years.

Many judges, lawyers and legal scholars across the political spectrum, including the decidedly liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, have recognized that Roe was bad law created out of thin air and imposed without constitutional basis by seven justices on the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, if Roe v. Wade were overturned today, it would not end abortion in America. It would leave protecting unborn children up to the states through our elected representatives. Even so, South Dakota and every other state in the union would finally be free of the unconstitutional federal mandate of abortion on demand imposed by a liberal activist Supreme Court determined to force its will on the American people.

Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution specifically to protect our most basic civil rights. The right to live is the first and most basic civil right of all. In the closing phrase of the Preamble, which sums up the entirety of their reasons for establishing our Constitution, it declares that we, the People, in order to, "... secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Therein our founders expressly stated in plain language that one of the primary reasons for the Constitution's existence is to secure the blessings of liberty to our future children.

Moreover, that foundational phrase in the Constitution that most effectively sums up the entire document says: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The Constitution could not be any clearer on the issue of life and equal justice. Protecting the lives of the innocent and our constitutional rights is why our government exists.

The Founding Fathers would be enraged to learn that the Constitution they wrote has been twisted to disgracefully assert that it guarantees a right to kill innocent unborn children at will. Those on the left who advocate such atrocity desecrate life and the Constitution, and ignore the original intent of our Founding Fathers who sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to structure and sustain a foundation for self-governance to safeguard innocent human life and human dignity.

When our Founders proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ..." the course of human history was forever changed. The principle of human equality became the foundation of a new nation conceived in liberty.

Our true heritage as Americans is breathtaking in its simplicity. We are not born equal. We do not become equal when we reach a certain stage of development or age or status. All human beings are created equal. This is America's creed – our bedrock foundation. If we cannot, in this 21st century, regain the will and the courage to protect the innocent among us, at the end of the day we will forever lose the courage to protect any kind of liberty for anyone.

A defining moment is upon us in the wake of 45 million children lost to abortion since the diktat that is Roe v. Wade. It is now up to this generation to protect innocent human life, so that future generations of Americans will say of us that we justified our brief moment here.

Gov. Rounds and South Dakota have done their part. Posterity will forever owe them a profound debt of gratitude and some their very lives should they win the day. As the subsequent court challenges wend their way through our nation's judiciary, let us all remind ourselves that we are Americans. We walk on the freest soil and breathe the freest air of any people in human history, and there is nothing more American than defending innocent human life.