We the People

 and our Posterity

 

     2013

 

Is it not true that the word “unalienable” means “inviolable,” and “is not to be taken away”?

 

   Introduction

 

The good news: Abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s thirty-year practice has ended. Children will have the opportunity to be born and breathe and cry and eat and sleep and grow, who otherwise may have been denied their “unalienable” right to life.

 

    The bad news: To what degree is each of us also guilty of the carnage that occurred in his “house of horrors” during those thirty years? And has occurred throughout the United States since 1973? And continues daily, with our full knowledge and tacit consent? With 56 million of America’s posterity aborted since Roe v. Wade?

 

    In this modern day, can anyone really claim not to be aware that life begins at conception?

 

    And is not the federal Life at Conception Act precisely what is needed to protect the most vulnerable among us, and thus reaffirm and safeguard, once and for all, our God-given, premier unalienable right to life?

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   Background*

 

    On Monday, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies delivered alive at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of an abortion patient. He was cleared in the death of a fourth baby.

    Gosnell was also convicted of infanticide, racketeering and more than 200 counts of violating state abortion laws by performing third-term abortions or failing to counsel women 24 hours in advance.

    In addition, his co-defendant, former clinic employee Eileen O’Neill, was convicted of taking part in a corrupt organization and illegally billing for her services as if she were a licensed doctor.

    Also, four former clinic employees pleaded guilty to murder and four more to other charges. They included Gosnell’s wife, Pearl, a cosmetologist who helped perform abortions.

    Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit, that he delivered babies that were moving, breathing, or whimpering, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by “snipping” their spines, as he referred to it.

​   The details came out more than two years ago during an investigation of prescription drug trafficking at Gosnell’s clinic. Investigators said it was a foul-smelling “house of horrors” with bags and bottles of fetuses, including jars of severed feet, along with bloodstained furniture, dirty medical instruments, and roaming cats.

    Pennsylvania authorities had not conducted routine inspections of its abortion clinics for 15 years prior to the raid on Gosnell’s facility. As a result, two top state health officials were fired, and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.

    Gosnell did not testify, and his lawyer, Jack McMahon, called no witnesses in his defense. McMahon said it was “a very difficult case” to defend.

    Gosnell portrayed himself as an advocate for poor and desperate women in an impoverished West Philadelphia neighborhood. He performed thousands of abortions over a thirty-year career, some on patients as young as 13. Authorities said the practice netted him approximately $1.8 million a year. 

 

*By Maryclaire Dale of the Associated Press, in the Washington Post Express and Washington Examiner newspapers, Tuesday, May 14, 2013.

 

 

  Discussion

 

Let us consider our United States Constitution, acknowledged to be and upheld as our supreme law of the land. And let us look at the Preamble to our Constitution:

 

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

    Dictionary.com defines “posterity” as “succeeding or future generations collectively.” 

 

    Let us make what appears to be an obvious observation.

 

    By ordaining and establishing our Constitution and including in the Preamble the phrase “and our Posterity,” did not the Framers clearly intend that the document’s security and protection be extended not only to Americans alive at that time, but to all who would follow as well? All who were yet unborn? You, me, every one of us, of each present and future generation?

 

    Could the intent be any clearer? Do the words not mean exactly what is indicated?

 

    Must we not then ask ourselves: Is not the killing of those in the womb clearly in opposition to that which was intended by our Founders?

 

    Shall we not then also ask ourselves: Is not the entire abortion “debate” irrelevant? That is to say, what is there to debate, or to argue? If we simply and objectively consider the words of the Preamble, with attention to the phrase, “and our Posterity,” is it not entirely evident that our Constitution pertains to all Americans, including the unborn?

 

            The next vignette.  

 

Regarding the following photographs:

 

The image of George Washington, and the photo of the Mount Vernon mansion, the home of our first president, were taken at the Mount Vernon National Historic Landmark, in Fairfax County, Virginia.

 

The image of a seated James Madison holding a book with Dolly Madison standing behind him, and the photo of the Montpelier mansion, the home of the Madisons, were taken at the Montpelier National Historic Landmark, Orange County, Virginia. James Madison, our fourth president, drafted our United States Constitution.

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The image of Thomas Jefferson, and the photo of Jefferson’s Monticello home, were taken at the Monticello National Historic Landmark, Albemarle County, Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia, was our third president.

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