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WHY PERSONHOOD?
• Americans have been given a clear direction for advancing the civil rights of all people, especially preborn babies, that forgotten class of citizens. Personhood was called for in the hearings of Roe v. Wade. Roe’s attorneys admitted that if personhood were to be established for the preborn, they would not have a case. Click here to listen to the oral argument from Roe v. Wade.
• Legal precedent and the Constitution’s original intent support the argument for personhood. The authors of the Constitution clearly intended to protect each human being from his or her biological beginning. Since 1973, this protection has been denied to a whole class of human beings. The time has come to restore protection to all human beings.
• Modern medical science supports personhood. Any opposition to personhood initiatives will not be based upon legitimate scientific evidence. Personhood removes the politically charged rhetoric of the debate and replaces it with the commonsense principle that life begins at each human being's biological beginning.
Federal Personhood Amendment
The American Life League is also working on a Federal Personhood Amendment for the US Constitution. The information below is taken directly from their "Why Personhood" document which can be found on their website at http://www.all.org, or you can view that document by clicking here.
This Amendment seeks to restore the Federal Constitution's original intent. It defines every human being as a "person" from his or her biological beginning.
In 1965, the US Supreme Court, in it's Griswold v. Connecticut decision, suddenly found the "right to privacy" in sexual matters in the "emanations of the penumbra" (shadows) of the Constitution.
In Griswold, the Supreme Court reverted to treating human beings as property rather than persons. Human beings can now be owned as property in test tubes and wombs and stripped of their dignity and their lives. Tests of all kinds can be performed on them, and they can be destroyed for their stem cells, genetically modified, cloned and dissected.
In 1973, the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, used this same so-called right to privacy to decriminalize abortion in the US .
The authors of the Constitution clearly intended to protect all human beings from their very beginning. This right has been infringed over time. As history has so painfully taught us, the time has come to restore those rights.
Why a Personhood Amendment as opposed to a Personhood Act?
The amendment makes clear the original intent of the Constitution and therefore restores protection for all human beings. An act or bill would grant protection, but would not change the Constitution. By means of a simple majority vote and the president's signature, a future Congress could repeal any act passed by a previous Congress. Thus an act or a bill would give protection to all human beings at every stage of life, but that protection could be easily removed.
Why personhood (as opposed to other pro-life legislation already sponsored)?
Science supports personhood. Any opposition to the amendment will not be based upon legitimate scientific evidence. Personhood removes the debate's politically charged rhetoric and replaces it with the common-sense principle that life begins at its biological beginning.
The Personhood Amendment brings the debate back to the people and takes it out of the hands of the unelected Supreme Court.
Personhood was called for in the hearings of Roe v. Wade. Roe's attorney admitted that if personhood were to be established for the preborn, she would not have a case. If personhood were legally defined, many of the ethical issues we face today concerning human rights would have a common-sense starting point.
Personhood is unlike all other pro-life legislation in that it guarantees the right to life of ALL people from the movement of creation until natural death. It addresses all of the problems stemming from the culture of death by striking at the root of the culture of death instead of merely trying to treat the symptoms. Abortion, in vitro fertilization, cloning, euthanasia, and other end-of-life issues are all addressed by the Personhood Amendment.
The Personhood Amendment is the final chapter of the civil rights movement. It proposes a common-sense values to otherwise convoluted jurisprudence.
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