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[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]
Does it matter how long theft has been prohibited? What about murder?
Do laws prohibiting these acts deserve less respect because they have stood for so long?
Of course not.
So, why did President Joe Biden — in promoting his view that killing an unborn child should be legal — insist on pointing out that an Arizona law that prohibits abortion was “first enacted” 160 years ago?
Biden was responding to an Arizona Supreme Court decision, which held that Arizona’s abortion law would be enforceable now that the Supreme Court has overruled Roe v. Wade, which had claimed a “right” to abortion.
“This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864 — more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote,” Biden said in a written statement.
“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” he said.
Like Biden, establishment media organizations also claimed Arizona’s law was enacted in 1864.
NBC News posted a story with this headline: “Arizona Supreme Court rules a near-total abortion ban from 1864 is enforceable.”
The online New York Times published this headline: “Arizona Reinstates 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban.”
“The state’s highest court said the law, moribund for decades under Roe v. Wade, was now enforceable, but it put its decision on hold for a lower court to hear other challenges to the law,” said the Times.
“Arizona Supreme Court rules abortion ban from 1864 can be enforced,” said the headline on a story posted by CBS News.
But was this Arizona law reviewed by the court enacted in 1864?
While its predecessor was enacted then, as the court made clear in its opinion, the law it was reinstating had been enacted in 1977 — after Roe v. Wade.
“In 1864, the First Legislative Assembly published a code of laws governing the territory of Arizona,” said the Arizona Supreme Court. It “established Arizona’s first criminal code, which included constraints on abortion.”
So, what happened to that 1864 law?
“In 1901,” said the court, “the Twenty-First Legislative Assembly enacted a penal code reiterating the abortion law, dividing criminality between people who facilitate abortions and women who solicit assistance to procure an abortion.”
In 1912, Arizona became a state. What did it do about abortion then?
“This language was adopted in whole in 1913, after Arizona statehood,” the court said, referencing the 1901 law.
“In 1928,” said the court, “the Arizona Legislature codified abortion criminality.”
“In 1971, Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson, Inc. sued the Attorney General challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s abortion statutes under both the state and federal constitutions,” said the court. In the case of Nelson v. Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson, a “trial court ruled Arizona’s abortion statutes unconstitutional,” but “the court of appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling, upholding the constitutionality of the abortion statutes.”
But, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Roe, and the Arizona Court of Appeals held the state’s abortion ban “unconstitutional because of Roe.”
Did the Arizona state legislature back down in the face of these court decisions? No.
“To the contrary,” the Arizona Supreme Court said in its recent decision, “four years after Roe and Nelson, the legislature recodified [the abortion ban], maintaining the operative language of the statute.”
This 1977 recodification of Arizona’s abortion ban, as cited by the state’s Supreme Court, stated the following: “A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”
Why did Arizona lawmakers in 1977 take the same stance on abortion their predecessors had in 1864? Because their position was based on an unchanging principle — that is as old as mankind.
The Ten Commandments say: “You shall not kill.”
As this column has noted before, Thomas Jefferson — who in the Declaration of Independence cited the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and said all men “are endowed by their Creator” with a right to life — would later write that Cicero was one of the inspirations for this declaration.
“[I]t was intended to be an expression of the American mind,” Jefferson said.
“All its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”
What did Cicero — a Roman senator who lived in the first century B.C. — say that was relevant to Americans in 1776?
“True law,” Cicero said, “is right reason conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil.”
“This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation,” he said. “Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing today, and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings.
“God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer,” said Cicero. “And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man.”
A law that prohibits the killing of innocent human beings is as legitimate today as it would have been thousands of years ago — because it is rooted in the natural law that never has and never will change.
Biden cuts off our Fossil Fuels to appease the Granola Bar Munchers Tree Hugging mobs on Unwashed masses of idiots who meditate in the middle of the Forest Communing with the Loons and Wolves and they(Loons & Wolves)commune back to them GET A LIFE
Just tell the TRUTH! The explosion of abortions was brought about by LAZINESS and the DEMOcrats! There’s MONEY to be made from an abortion! First it’s the abortion itself and then there are the “byproducts”! As SICKENING as that reads, it’s MILD compared to what really happens. AND, after the totally IRRESPONSIBLE activities that LEAD to abortions, the DEMOcrats reap FUNDING!! It may not be a DIRECT “biden 10%” cut, but the funds flow back via CONTRIBUTIONS! Is there any wonder WHY “Planned” Parenthood sets up shop in highly DEMOcrat areas? We KNOW WHY!!! I’ve always believed in PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY – the DEMOcrats have DESTROYED that in so many ways that so many people think NOTHING they do is THEIR RESPONSIBILITY!
I’ve said all along that no one should be given a FREE RIDE ! I know there are people who are Mentally or Physically Disabled and need help, but that’s it! If you are capable of working then have a job. If you are capable of having a baby and DON’T want one then you KNOW what to do! Any young man who doesn’t want to PROVIDE CHILD SUPPORT for 18 YEARS should know WHAT TO DO! THAT is PLANNED Parenthood!
In 1864, Arizona, without the actual knowledge but with the intuition that a fetus is a developing human passed a bill to outlaw abortion.
We now have the sonogram. I believe this scientific invention was developed in the 1970’s. We can see that the fetus is a developing human being. We can see it is a helpless child in the making.
But many abortion rights advocates still advocate for abortions. And many-believe it or not-are woman who advocate the genocide of their own race, sex, and humanity.
So tell me, by our still committing abortions: Is that really progress?
The problem with abortion purism is that it will backfire.
I think the vast majority agree that abortion is justified to save the life of the mother. As for rape and incest, one could logically argue that the child is innocent, so abortion should be illegal in those cases. The problem is that, the mother is innocent as well, and forcing her to have the baby is unjust. If any state tried to prohibit abortion even in cases of rape and incest, they would be routed at the ballot box, and the Democrats would take over and make abortion legal right up to birth.
The same could happen if abortion restrictions are tighter than what the public is currently willing to accept. If Republicans push abortion restrictions too far, they will lose, and the Democrats will push further in the opposite direction. In other words, abortion purism will backfire, costing even more lives to be lost. That is what Trump understands, and that is what the absolutists need to understand as well instead of criticizing him as impure.
I think the vast majority agree that abortion is justified to save the life of the mother.
G as Ron Paul about htat.He was a practicing gynecologist for decdes, and HE declared he has never heard of a legitimate case where the live of he Mother was in certain dnager, AND that killing her baby would save HER life.
This “exception” is bogus because in reality it would never be used.
In the past it was not uncommon for women to die in childbirth. It may be very uncommon now, but I’ll bet it still happens. But even if never happens, allowing for the exception does no harm.
The thing that is problematic here is that, in cases of rape and incest, it is assumed that abortion itself will be an emotionally neutral process, but that delivering a live child would not. And yet there are women who have borne children conceived in rape, who do not regret having done so. And one woman I knew aborted a child conceived in rape, and mourned for her (she was sure the infant would have been a girl) for the rest of her life.
In essence, the issue is the same as with euthanasia – do we prostitute medicine to avoid devising and giving the sort of care that would make the alternative possible and even worthwhile?
If a woman decides to go ahead and give birth to a child that was conceived in rape, then I have the utmost respect and admiration for her.
But that certainly does not mean that all women who have been pregnated in rape should be forced to have the baby. Go ahead and try to push that law through and watch your party get absolutely routed — and rightly so.
I love the Cicero citation – I had not come across that before. It so happens that I am in debate with a Muslim gentleman who is hostile to Christianity, and we had got into the issue of taqiyya and Allah being “the best of deceivers”, so a quotation about law underpinned by bedrock truth is most welcome.