Originally Posted by Pete F.
The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect people from discrimination and harm from other people. Racism is not the only thing people need protection from.
You have belittled the notion of intention as the weakest form of argument. Here you quote (without quotes or attribution) an article by Charles I Lugosi promoting intention as highly significant. There is no record I know of by those who crafted the Amendment that the intention was to protect people from harm from other people. I assume that laws to do that were already in place in every state and implicit in various parts of the Constitution.
As a constitutional principle, the Fourteenth Amendment is not confined to its historical origin and purpose, but is available now to protect all human beings, including all unborn human beings.
Again, there were and are various laws in every state to protect "born" human beings. Unborn humans are not so universally protected. Nor are they mentioned in the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court can define "person" to include all human beings, born and unborn. It simply chooses not to do so.
The 14th Amendment protects those who are born in this country or are naturalized citizens and refers to these people as "persons." It does not include any other persons. It does not mention the unborn neither as persons nor citizens. There may be a well grounded reason the SCOTUS has chosen not to define the unborn as persons. In any case, the 14th Amendment does not do so, nor does it mention the unborn, not even as citizens.
Science, history and tradition establish that unborn humans are, from the time of conception, both persons and human beings,
I have not heard of this establishment of personhood.
Human beings? Yes. Persons? Too many connotations and denotations, especially legal to establish that. The unborn are simply not capable of engaging in the activities, legal or otherwise, including the rewards and punishments for "legal person" type activities, to be established as a "person." In law, definitions have to be precise, not vague.
thus strongly supporting an interpretation that the unborn meet the definition of "person" under the Fourteenth Amendment.
It may strongly support Mr. Lugosi's interpretation, but the 14th Amendment, PER ITS TEXT (I am a textualist first) does not support his interpretation. It specifically refers to "All persons born or naturalized"--it doesn't mention the unborn nor say that the unborn are persons. And it says that life is protected by due process of law. It doesn't prescribe a specific federal law, but leaves the law to be defined by the states and the "equal protection" is under the laws of the states.
The legal test used to extend constitutional personhood to corporations, which are artificial "persons" under the law, is more than met by the unborn, demonstrating that the unborn deserve the status of constitutional personhood.
How can the unborn meet the standards that make corporations "persons"? The unborn cannot engage in the activities that make corporations "persons."
There can be no "rule of law" if the Constitution continues to be interpreted to perpetuate a discriminatory legal system of separate and unequal for unborn human beings. Relying on the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court may overrule Roe v. Wade solely on the grounds of equal protection. Such a result would not return the matter of abortion to the states. The Fourteenth Amendment, properly interpreted, would thereafter prohibit abortion in every state.
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