Personhood Rising

Personhood Rising

Gualberto Garcia Jones, J.D., Legal Analyst, Personhood USA

September has been a seminal month for the Personhood movement in America and the world.

On September 8th, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled - by a wide 7-2 margin - that Amendment 26 should remain on the November 2011 ballot.

That ruling came after the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights had sued to try to undo what over 130,000 registered voters had requested through the initiative process.

Aside from the obvious joy at defeating the world’s greatest proponents of abortion and remaining on the ballot with a great chance of victory in November, there is a hidden gold nugget in the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision.

It is well known that within the pro-life movement there is a public division as to strategy. Some very notable pro-life attorneys have publicly and privately tried to convince anyone who will listen that personhood is the wrong strategy.

In one of the most ascorbic attacks on personhood, Paul Linton, an attorney associated with various pro-life organizations, described the personhood movement as a “fool’s errand.”

Among the specific examples of why Personhood is “intellectually incoherent” and “lacking thought” is Mr. Linton’s assertion that the Mississippi Personhood Amendment “if challenged, will be struck from the ballot.” (Human Life Review Fall 2009) Mr. Linton went even further on the pages of LifeNews.com when he stated that it “would be exceptionally embarrassing to the pro-life movement in Mississippi to continue with the signature gathering process. What is the point in collecting signatures for an initiative that cannot ever appear on the ballot?” LifeNews.com 2/2/2010

First the grassroots, and then the Mississippi Supreme Court proved Mr. Linton’s predictions wrong. The people did overcome the burdensome initiative process, and the Supreme Court upheld their efforts by allowing the ballot to stand. Still, those in the anti-personhood camp came back with the argument that the court had not ruled in favor of the Mississippi Personhood Amendment, but had instead only postponed the inevitable legal fate of the amendment. Yet again, Mr. Linton in the pages of LifeNews.com:

“If the measure (the Mississippi Personhood Amendment) is approved, it can still be challenged on state constitutional grounds, i.e., that it’s an improper use of the initiative process, and I would still expect the court to strike it down on that ground.” LifeNews.com 9/9/11

However, this revised prediction is likely also wrong. The court, in fact, did issue substantive dicta in its majority opinion. At the very beginning of the analysis of the case, Justice Pierce writes:

“To be clear, it is the province of this Court to interpret the meaning of the Mississippi Constitution, and no opinion issued by this Court has interpreted the meaning of the word person as it is used throughout the Constitution. The dissent worries that Measure 26 'seeks to modify the definition' of 'person or persons' as they appear in the Mississippi Constitution. But those terms have never been defined. Therefore, Measure 26 cannot modify a definition that does not now exist.”

Clearly, the Mississippi Supreme Court believes that the amendment is not unconstitutional, as is being asserted by Mr. Linton, the ACLU, PP, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

I don’t mention these faulty predictions to embarrass Mr. Linton. After all, he and all other pro-lifers agree that the end goal of the pro-life movement is universal human personhood. No, I mention his faulty predictions to point out the grave danger that comes when we allow our strategy to be shaped by predictions of what this court or that might do. It seems perfectly obvious that judges - who usually are some of the most skillful of lawyers - can twist words to meet their ends. Because judges are competent enough to create new theories to justify their desired end (see: the trimester framework shift to the undue burden) it only makes sense to base our pro-life legal strategy on legal and moral principles and not an opinion poll of the inclination of particular judges.

There is another reason for emphasizing the erroneous assertions of Mr. Linton. You see, we have all experienced the depressing and horrific fact that during every one of the 13,870 days that abortion has been legal we have lost, and continue to lose, over 3000 precious lives. Pro-lifers don’t need any more discouragement. I call upon Mr. Linton and other anti-personhood pro-lifers, and also upon those supporting Personhood who privately and publicly attack other strategies, to STOP IT. Only God knows the day, the hour, and the way that abortion will end.

That being said, Personhood is making huge strides, not only in Mississippi, but also around the world!

Just recently, Hungary passed a pro-life constitution that extended constitutional protection to all human beings. They did this in direct contravention of the EU court’s interpretation of international law.

More recently, on Sept. 28 and Sept. 29, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that two of the 18 state personhood amendments in Mexico should be upheld as valid.

Although Mexico does not yet have a Roe v. Wade to overturn, these two cases are important to the United States because they show that a principled approach to fighting abortion can also stand legal muster.

It is interesting to note that the Mexican State Personhood Amendments brought up the same issues as will be brought out when Mississippian’s pass their Personhood Amendment this November, namely the fundamental right to life, whether state legal protections that are more expansive than those granted by the Federal government are constitutional, and most importantly issues of federalism and states' rights.

Take the statement from pro-life justice Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia: “Legal protection in Mexico is the same for the born as the pre-born.” Or take the statement of another Justice who supported the amendments, Justice Margarita Luna Ramos, who stated that “the Mexican Constitution does not define when life begins or who possesses personhood (so the states are at liberty to do so).” Or take the statements of pro-abortion Justice Fernando Franco Gonzalez: “The state personhood amendments violate the right to reproductive freedom of women.” And yet another pro-abortion Justice, Luis Maria Aguilar stated, “States cannot define the fundamental ‘rights’ set out in the Mexican constitution.”

By listing the judges’ opinions, I aim to highlight the fact that Roe or no Roe, in the United States or in Mexico, the fight between pro-lifers and pro-aborts is the same. It is the fight to defend the vulnerable against those who will invent, twist, and corrupt the law of God and the law of man to meet their dark ends. It simply does no good for the pro-life movement to back away in fear from their dark lies, no matter how deeply those lies are entrenched in faux-constitutional theory. But Mexico shows us that there is a theory, alive and well, that would uphold state personhood amendments right now.

In Mexico, the crux of the legal argument revolved around the state’s right to govern itself. During the debate on September 29th, Mexican Supreme Court Justice Margarita Luna Ramos summarized the issue at hand thus:

“I continue to believe that the federal constitution does not define when life begins, and in the use of their state’s rights, which is established in the federal constitution in articles 40 and 124, local legislatures have the necessary power to define when life begins.” Transcript of Court Proceedings for September 29, 2011 Mexican Supreme Court, Page 27.

Justice Margarita Luna Ramos’ statement bears an uncanny resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia’s federalist dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000).

“If only for the sake of its own preservation, the Court should return this matter to the people–where the Constitution, by its silence on the subject, left it–and let them decide, State by State, whether this practice should be allowed. Casey must be overruled.”

Justice Scalia in 2000 was saying exactly what Justice Margarita Luna Ramos stated in 2011. In other words, the strategy that worked in Mexico is already ascribed to by one of the most important Justices in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Mexican cases confirm that it is very likely that when the Personhood Amendment passes in Mississippi the argument will be one of states’ rights. Of course, protecting all human beings in one state is not our end goal, but it is a type of incrementalism that every pro-lifer would be happy to achieve in the short term as we work towards our ultimate goal of a federal constitutional amendment to recognize all human beings as legal persons.

More fundamentally, what Mexico shows us is that we need a courageous and principled approach to confronting evil, one that does not try to navigate the maze of lies which Roe and its progeny represent, but one that boldly and intelligently holds up the banner of truth marching forward with its own, true, moral compass.

September of 2011 may very well be remembered as the point in time when the culture of death began to crumble. In Mexico and in Mississippi, back-to-back Supreme Court victories are giving hope to a whole new generation of pro-lifers.

During September of 2011 Personhood has truly grown up to become the new pro-life paradigm for the 21st century. We welcome all pro-lifers to buy into personhood right now, and we ask those pro-lifers who still do not believe in it to at least give us a chance by putting a stop to this internecine war so that the best pro-life strategy may win.