The Shadow
Dear Editor,
This week we have two important commemorations. We began the week by honoring the birthday and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
And we end the week remembering two Supreme Court decisions, which asserted that neither he nor any other American had the right to be born.
In the latter case, the court asserted that, although the right to life is specifically guaranteed by the Constitution, the right to privacy includes a secondary “penumbra” right to kill a pre-born child.
This tendency to give greater legal force to implied rights over rights specifically secured in our nation’s Constitution is rather troubling.
For example, the right of freedom of speech is now routinely suppressed due to the fact that someone may take offense at what is said. Thus any speech that challenges a person to think through an issue more thoroughly is now labeled “hate speech,” thus opening the way to penalizing anyone who dares to question, much less oppose, the ever-evolving dictates of political correctness.
All this is reminiscent of the rationale used to justify the oppressive and discriminatory Jim Crow laws passed from the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s.
Since many in federal and state legislatures and courts embraced the “settled science” of evolution, which asserted the inferiority of non-white races, they felt justified in limiting the ability of non-whites to exercise their basic civil rights, which were specifically enumerated in the Constitution. And prejudiced fear that African-Americans would become violent, if their rights were not carefully curtailed, was used as further justification for denying their ability to exercise their rights as citizens of our nation.
Here in Virginia, the same premises used to justify Jim Crow laws are now being used by our governor and his allies to limit the ability of citizens of the commonwealth to exercise rights specifically guaranteed in both the U.S. Constitution and the Virginia Constitution.
In addition to seeking to limit the right to bear arms, based on the false premise that most citizens of Virginia are immature, perverted and prone to violence, the governor and his allies want to pass legislation expanding legal protection for aborticide to include infanticide.
In view of the fact that last year was the tragic 400th anniversary of the first Africans being sold into slavery in Virginia, this infanticide protection bill should more accurately be named the Slavery Restoration Act of 2020. What the law would do is violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment asserts that persons born in the United States and citizens of our nation and of the state, in which they reside.
Going even beyond the spirit of the Democrats’ Jim Crow laws over a century ago, Governor Northam’s bill would, under the cover of law, consign newly born babies in Virginia to the status of being the “property” of their mothers.
And just as slave owners in early America, under the cover of law, were permitted to kill or emancipate their slaves, mothers would be given the legal right to either kill or emancipate their babies.
Only “emancipated” babies would thus be secured the rights of citizens of the commonwealth. The law proposed by Governor Northam and his allies in the legislature would thus again make every African-American baby a slave – until emancipated or terminated at the behest of his/her mother.
Slavery, even if temporary and even if implemented under the cover of law, is evil.
Personally, I believe that anyone promoting or passing this law should be prosecuted under federal civil rights legislation for conspiracy and collusion to violate the civil and human rights of newly born Virginians.
I believe Dr. King would concur with my belief.
Sincerely yours,
Fr. Thomas R. Collins, Hot Springs
