The Charles Carroll Society writes about the pro-life movement, where it should go, and how it is changing in Idaho in  the article The Pro-Life Movement has failed – Now What?

Last week in Nampa, Idaho Republicans met to elect new officers and pass new platform changes, rule changes, and resolutions. Making platform changes, rule changes, and resolutions now means a bit more than it used to. In the past, this “internal” party debate had a limited impact on actual political priorities here in Idaho. It now has slightly more impact.

Last week, the Republican Party of Idaho changed its platform from the “pro-life” approach to an abortion abolitionist approach.  Each Republican candidate in Idaho must state they agree and will governor per the Idaho Republican platform, or they must clearly say what they disagree with.  Voters then get to make an informed decision.

I also am sharing this speech given by Scott Herndon of Abolish Abortion Idaho so that other anti-abortion Republicans, in other States, may use this excellent work to perhaps change their local party from the failed “pro-life” approach to an abortion abolitionist platform. I think this is very important, as we have witnessed Republican nominated SCOTUS judges, in this case, John Roberts, betray the pro-life movement.  Yet again.  We must improvise and adapt if we are going to succeed.

This speech was so well documented, and so moving, that I believe it changed many Republicans perspective on how the pro-life movement has utterly failed to end child-murder. In many places, like in Idaho with the organization, Idaho Chooses Life, it has merely become another part of the money-making establishment.

Many Republicans can understand that several race-baiters do not want things to improve in the Black and Hispanic communities, because then their organizations may not be as important. They want racial division to continue. Republicans must now wake up to the fact that many pro-life organizations do not want abortion to end. After all, it is how they have influence and make money.

 

One issue that divides so-called RINO Republicans from so-called radical Republicans is ending the murder of preborn children. More moderate Republicans may say they are pro-life but seem to accept the current situation. The more liberty-minded conservatives want to end all abortions as soon as possible. Effectively, we are demanding that the State of Idaho approach abortion like more liberal states have approached the legalization of cannabis or illegal immigration. Ignore the federal law. By changing the Idaho Republican Platform, Republican voters want to encourage our elected Republicans to make Idaho an unborn sanctuary state.  Every Republican across the State may now ask any Republican candidate if they agree with abolishing abortion in Idaho.

Scott Herndon of Abolish Abortion Idaho gave a moving speech in front of the Republican Platform Committee, and then this information was shared with all Republicans who attended the annual meeting. This is some of the legal and logical underpinnings of the abortion abolitionist movement.  I thought to share what was said with a larger audience.  Scott Herndon’s speech has been lightly edited. 

The Pro-Life Movement has failed

by Scott Herndon

We believe the State of Idaho should strongly assert its sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. The accumulated usurpations by the Federal Government of Idaho’s state sovereignty has reached a point of complete intolerance. The Idaho Republican Party hereby recommends that the Idaho Legislature and Governor nullify all existing and future unconstitutional federal mandates, federal court opinions, and laws, funded or unfunded, that infringe on Idaho’s 10th Amendment sovereignty.

We also recommend that the State of Idaho continue to request funding and assistance from the Federal Government which complies with the Constitutional provision of the 10th Amendment, and suggest that the State of Idaho resist the withholding of federal funds as a means of forced compliance with the unconstitutional federal mandates and laws.

Article VI, US Constitution: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this Constitution. Still, no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Nowhere does it say all opinions of the federal judiciary shall bind the states or their officers. Instead, Article VI asserts that each state officer has the right and duty of independent judgment of what is constitutional.

We seem to find ourselves in a pattern of usurpations by federal courts. For example: In 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges, the SCOTUS asserted supreme authority over the administration of marriage, even though it has long been an exercise of state authority and is nowhere an enumerated or expressed power of the federal government. [Bard Note:  In truth, in a Christian society the civil State has no control whatsoever over defining a Christian marriage.]

In 2012, The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld by a vote of 5 to 4 the individual mandate to buy health insurance as a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power.

August 2019, the 9th circuit declares Idaho must pay for transgender inmate gender “confirmation” surgery. May 2020, Idaho goes back to federal court to defend its laws banning transgender sex changes on birth certificates. Idaho must protect our ban on transgenders in women’s sports in federal court.

Our founders did not declare the judiciary supreme, and the revolutionary war was not fought to throw off a monarchy in favor of a judicial oligarchy. We know this because, in June of 1788, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 81: “A legislature (after a judicial decision) may prescribe a new rule for future cases.”

He further wrote in the same Federalist that “Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the will of the legislature may…happen, but they can never affect the order of the political system. (The judiciary has) comparative weakness, and…total incapacity to support its usurpations by force.”

The SCOTUS almost immediately attempted to define its power when in 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” He asserted the right of the judiciary to hold acts of the other branches null and void.

In a 1958 desegregation case, all nine justices of the Earl Warren Court signed an opinion saying “The case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803 had declared the basic principle that the Federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by this Court and the Country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.”

We know Presidents have challenged the supremacy of the federal courts. Andrew Jackson allegedly defied the Supreme Court over Worcester v. Georgia (1832), announcing, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” He likewise ignored the court’s McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) when the court opined that the Bank of the United States was, in fact, constitutional. Jackson later vetoed the bank’s re-charter and fired a secretary of the treasury to ensure United States deposit removals from the bank.

There will be some cases where we should tolerate usurpations that we disagree with, but there are others where we should not. And Idaho has the legal authority based on the supremacy clause of Article VI, the enumerated powers of Article I section 8 of the US constitution, and the 10th Amendment and the 9th Amendment.

Roe v. Wade and 37 other opinions of the SCOTUS asserted federal court authority over the protection of preborn life, in contravention of the State’s right and duty to protect the inalienable right to life for all humans…(continues)