Source: https://teainpolicics.wordpress.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:42:33+00:00

Document:
I wrote the following Model Resolution in support of the various grassroots organizations I volunteer with, in support of the Tenth Amendment Center and its work, and in support of the doctrines of Nullification and Interposition which are the true rightful remedies to push back against over-reach and abuse of power by the federal government.
I shared this Resolution with my state representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly, several of whom know their history and support Nullification, and I know they will continue to introduce bills that reject federal intrusion on the state’s Tenth Amendment reserved powers. In submitting this Resolution to them, I explained: “As the 7th most populous state in the country, we don’t need to, and should not, ignore any action of the government that exceeds the powers delegated under the Constitution. If we intend to set our country right, the focus must be on challenging its constant and historical abuse of power, divesting it of power that it has usurped over the years from the states and the people, pushing it back within the confines of the US Constitution, and re-establishing the essential balance of power between the States and federal government that is so critical for the preservation of liberty.
This Resolution is introduced out of respect and in deep affection to the state of North Carolina, which holds a distinguished place in American history for being a leading force for freedom and liberty and the ideals upon which the independent united States were established.
This Resolution is intended to put checks in place, in the rightful depository, which is the State government, in order to make sure the federal government doesn’t abridge the rights of the individual and to help prevent it from “becoming destructive” of its ends so that the People will not feel the need to alter or abolish it. North Carolina, and indeed every other state, should always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the State governments.
Finally, this Resolution intends to re-affirm North Carolina’s commitment to freedom and liberty, as envisioned at our Founding.
Whereas, the federal government, through its consolidation of power, instrumentalities, and monopoly over the federal courts, has increasingly entrenched upon the essential balance of sovereign power among itself, the States, and the People, to the great disservice of the latter two. The balance of power has tilted too far and for too long in the direction of the federal government and it is time to restore that balance. The result has been the usurpation of sovereign power from the States and the People, including the People of North Carolina, and that usurpation has become palpable.
And it FURTHER be RESOLVED that the North Carolina Legislature will enact Nullification bills as needed to address federal over-reach and to protect its people from being subjected to them.
States are allowed to regulate a wide variety of actions in the interest of protecting the people within its borders. These are the laws that are pursuant to its vast “police powers” – the power to regulate for the health, safety, welfare,, and morality of its citizens. These are the powers reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment, and the powers intended to remain with each state. Aside from these police powers (the 10th Amendment), the Constitution puts certain limits the states’ authority to regulate. One of those limits is when there is an individual liberty right at stake. (And not just any “liberty right” at that; the right at stake must have been a recognized liberty right at the time the 14th Amendment was adopted, which was 1868. For any other asserted liberty right, the Constitution would need to be amended per Article V’s amendment process. See the Appendix at the end of the article). In Roe v. Wade, Norma McCorvey (aka, petitioner Roe) argued that the Constitution protected her liberty to choose to have an abortion, and that that right was paramount to the state’s right to regulate abortion.
Disregarding the Court’s established jurisprudence regarding the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court agreed with McCorvey.
It is my view, therefore, that the Texas statute is not constitutionally infirm because it denies abortions to those who seek to serve only their convenience, rather than to protect their life or health. Nor is this plaintiff, who claims no threat to her mental or physical health, entitled to assert the possible rights of those women whose pregnancy assertedly implicates their health. This, together with United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62 (1971), dictates reversal of the judgment of the District Court.
To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857 and “has remained substantially unchanged to the present time.
The Roe v. Wade decision has resulted in the deaths of over 60 million children since that infamous January date.
Liberals and progressives, fearing that a right-leaning Supreme Court may try to limit a woman’s right to an abortion, have taken to their state legislatures to protect that right. And in many cases, as we are witnessing, they are doing so that would probably even offend the Roe court. States like New York and Virginia and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia are pursuing “late-term” abortion bills that essentially remove any meaningful state interest in the life of the unborn such that a woman can terminate her pregnancy at any point, even killing her living unborn. New York has already passed its law – the mis-named Reproductive Health Act, and the others no doubt will soon follow.
As horrible, as horrific, as heinous, as unconscionable as these laws sound, they are perfectly compliant with the Roe v. Wade opinion. That is the sad reality.
These “late-term abortion” laws show just how broad, and how cruel and insidious the Roe decision was (is).
The truth is that 31 states have relaxed abortion laws. At one time North Carolina had a fairly relaxed abortion law, but over the years, the state has exercised its interest in the life of the unborn. Currently, it is seeking to prevent any abortion after 13 weeks, except when the woman’s attending physician is able to explain why an abortion is needed to prevent risk of death to the mother or other medical emergency. 23 states permit a later-term abortion “for the life and health of the mother,” which essentially means that a woman can terminate her pregnancy at any time for any reason, since the Supreme Court has interpreted “health” to mean any number of things – physical, emotional, psychological, financial, familial, because of stigma, and for age or for stress. These 23 states are: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Compare this relaxed standard to the more strict one, which permits a woman to have a later-term abortion only if is necessary “for life and physical health of the mother.” Sixteen (16) states have this more strict standard – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. There are 3 states that allow a full-term baby to be directly killed, but only if the pregnancy poses a direct risk to the mother’s life. Those states are Idaho, Michigan, and Rhode Island.
Now, to be fair, most abortions are performed prior to 21 weeks of pregnancy. Agencies like the Center for Disease Control and abortion doctors themselves like to point out that the overwhelming percentage of abortions are performed up to 21 weeks. But, as I’ll make clear later, 21 weeks (which is very close to medical “viability”) does not mark the start of “life.” The fetus became a new living human being before that – being fully formed (just still very tiny) and exhibiting the functions of life (although some are still weak). Heck, a fetus has a heartbeat at around 6 weeks (although it isn’t heard well on an ultrasound until week 8). The point is that although most abortions are performed during the first half of pregnancy, a good portion of abortions are on the living; they are killing unborn babies.
The New York Reproductive Health Act has ignited a new debate on the abortion rights – specifically on the scope of the right and the fact that the Supreme Court never once considered the growing fetus/baby to be a “life,” let alone a unique life (not a clone of the mother).
You can see from the Roe decision, that by giving women an expansive, unfettered right to terminate her pregnancy (under the guise of “controlling her reproduction”), we have ushered in an era of evil. Since the abortion clinics have opened their doors, a parade of horribles has ensued. It appears that dissenting Justice Byron White summarized the majority’s opinion pretty well when he wrote: “At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons — convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that, for any one of such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her request if she is able to find a medical advisor willing to undertake the procedure. And the Court, for the most part, sustains this position: During the period prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus…” But he shouldn’t have been so kind to the majority. That last sentence should have read: “During the entire length of a pregnancy, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus.” That is exactly what the Roe decision stands for.
For years, I have spoken and written about the Roe v. Wade decision (Supreme Court, January 22, 1973, announcing a fundamental right, or “liberty right” for women in aborting their unborn). I have held the opinion that the decision was perhaps incorrectly decided because its central premise was wrong. The Supreme Court, including conservative justice Antonin Scalia, made the underlying assumption that a “person” means someone who walks around, who has an independent life outside a woman’s womb. And therefore, the Court looked to the “viability” of the fetus in writing its Trimester Approach to when a woman has most control over her reproduction. The “Trimester Test” was the approach the Court used in summarizing the “balancing of competing interests” at stake in a woman’s pregnancy – the woman’s interest in controlling her reproduction and what happens in her uterus, the state’s interest in the life of the unborn, and the unborn’s right to the life it was intended to have. Sadly, the Court, in fleshing out the competing interests in its opinion, made it clear that any threat to a woman’s health in the third trimester (where typically the interests are greatest for the state and for the unborn) outweighs the interests of the other parties. And it explained that the threat need not be medical in nature. The unborn or the pregnancy itself need not pose any physical harm to her. Other types of harm justifying an abortion up until the moment of birth would include emotional, psychological, and even financial. The mere fact that the pregnancy poses stress on the woman would justify an abortion, according to the high Court. That is why Roe v. Wade stands for the general rule that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion at any time during her pregnancy, for any reason. She has an unfettered right to abort her fetus or her unborn baby….. she has a right to an abortion on demand.
If the asserted right was not recognized at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, that means society was not ready to recognize it as such. To add a new right, one that is clearly defined only by the relaxed moral and sexual societal standards in this progressive/liberal age, the Constitution would need to be amended. And that would require the amendment process outlined in Article V. We update our Constitution, not by the individual wisdom or opinion of a handful of judges but by the collective will of the people.
Germany wanted a racially-pure German race. It felt it had that right as a sovereign country. After all, the Nazi movement was about nationalism. Germany would never be treated and punished, plundered and broken up like it was after the defeat of the Triple Alliance nations in World War I. For Germany to have the ability to engineer a pure German race (a “master-race”), it needed to accept the genocide of the undesirables.
We have to be careful what ambition causes us to sacrifice or condone.
Abortion has become all-too-often synonymous with “convenience.” It’s a “choice” – a choice to be pregnant or not to be pregnant. Again, most times, a woman or girl has an abortion very early on, before there is life inside her. But many times it’s not a “choice”; it’s a baby.
We need to have conversations. We need to find common ground between pro-life supporters and pro-choice advocates. We can’t continue to offend so greatly our national conscience. Roe v. Wade needs to be re-addressed. A woman may very well be entitled to a right to abort her pregnancy, but at least that issue needs to decided by a court that is willing to do a correct and honest analysis – recognizing that the unborn becomes a life well before it is born and therefore it has the same rights that every other human being has. A woman may very well have the right to have an abortion if she chooses, but that right can not be so broad or expansive as to include the taking of another life.
We need to get this issue back into court and in front of reasonable-minded justices.
We need to stop the killing fields.
• Harris vs. McRae [A 1980 case in which the Court acknowledged that federal funding could be limited for abortions. The Court held that states participating in the Medicaid program (established under Title XIX of the Social Security Act) were not obligated to fund medically necessary abortions. Title XIX of the Social Security Act was enacted to provide federal financial assistance to states that chose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons. Beginning in 1976, Congress passed a number of versions of what was known as the “Hyde Amendment” which severely limited the use of federal funds to reimburse the cost of abortions under the Medicaid program. Cora McRae, a pregnant Medicaid recipient, challenged the Hyde Amendment, filing suit against Patricia R. Harris, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court found that a woman’s freedom of choice did not carry with it “a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices”].
• Planned Parenthood vs. Casey [A 1992 case in which the Supreme Court upheld various restrictions to an immediate abortion (an “abortion on demand”). The Pennsylvania state legislature amended its abortion control law in 1988 and 1989, to required informed consent and a 24 hour waiting period prior to the procedure. A minor seeking an abortion required the consent of one parent (the law allows for a judicial bypass procedure). A married woman seeking an abortion had to indicate that she notified her husband of her intention to abort the fetus. These provisions were challenged by several abortion clinics and physicians. In a bitter, 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court again re-affirmed Roe, but it upheld most of the Pennsylvania provisions. For the first time, the Court imposed an articulable standard to determine the validity of laws restricting abortions. The standard asks whether a state abortion regulation has the purpose or effect of imposing an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to an abortion, which is defined as a “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” Under this standard, the only provision to fail the undue-burden test was the husband notification requirement]. Other similar cases involving restrictions on immediate access to an abortion reached the same conclusion.
• Whole Woman’s Health versus Hellerstedt [In 2016, the Supreme Court flipped. In this case, the Supreme Court was asked to rule on the constitutionality of a Texas law that put limits on physicians performing abortions and on the abortion facilities themselves. A group of abortion providers sued the state. In a 5-3 opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer (remember, Justice Scalia had passed in February or 2016 and so it was only an 8-member Court at the time) the Supreme Court noted that the provisions that were challenged did not actually offer the medical benefits that they claimed to offer. Hence, as a matter of constitutionality, they were insufficient to justify the burdens on access that each of those provisions imposed.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 V. 
 v.