{"id":2210654,"date":"2024-04-01T13:59:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-pro-abortion-crowd-wants-to-pretend-that-infanticide-is-a-constitutional-right\/"},"modified":"2024-04-01T13:59:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:59:50","slug":"the-pro-abortion-crowd-wants-to-pretend-that-infanticide-is-a-constitutional-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-pro-abortion-crowd-wants-to-pretend-that-infanticide-is-a-constitutional-right\/","title":{"rendered":"The supporters of abortion advocate for treating infanticide as a constitutional right"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-pro-abortion-crowd-wants-to-pretend-that-infanticide-is-a-constitutional-right%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2210654&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Michael Knowles delivered a\u200c speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discussing the historical context of abortion laws in \u200bAmerica. From\u200b colonial \u200btimes to the mid-19th century, abortion was\u2064 illegal \u200cdue to limited scientific knowledge. The speech covers the evolution of abortion laws, including \u200bthe controversial Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and \u2063subsequent legal changes. Michael Knowles presented a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, delving\u2062 into the historical landscape of abortion \u200dlegislation in the United States. During the colonial\u2062 era \u200duntil the mid-1800s, \u2063abortion \u2064was outlawed mainly because \u200bof the lack of scientific advancement. The talk \u200bexplored \u2064the progression of abortion laws, highlighting the pivotal \u2062Roe v. Wade\u200c ruling in 1973 and \u200bits aftermath.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the first part of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/michael-knowles-offers-the-case-against-murder-an-anti-abortion-speech-at-university-of-wisconsin-madison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">speech<\/a> delivered by <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/the-michael-knowles-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michael Knowles<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday, March 13, 2024.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For most of American history, the intentional killing of unborn babies was illegal. From the colonial period through the middle of the nineteenth century, when abortion was surgically impossible and chemically dubious, it was not a major public issue. In that era \u2014 obviously long before ultrasounds \u2014 people did not know exactly when or how conception occurred, outside of the basics. Inasmuch as they did know, and in so far as it was addressed by the law, abortion was outlawed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the turn of the twentieth century, abortion was a felony in every state. The legal distinction between early abortions and later-term abortions also began to disappear as scientists came to understand that the first movement of the unborn baby \u2014 known as quickening \u2014 did not represent a particularly significant moment in the development of the baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One can understand why earlier generations might have thought that \u201cquickening\u201d would be morally and legally significant. But scientific advancements revealed details about human physical development that thinkers such as Aristotle simply would not have been able to know. And as our understanding of when and how conception occurs changed, our laws changed to reflect it. Simple enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A couple of decades into the twentieth century, with the rise of the eugenics movement that sought to exterminate disfavored populations such as the mentally handicapped and certain racial minorities, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which became Planned Parenthood a couple decades later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the late 1960s, after decades of activism, the pro-abortion movement successfully decriminalized abortion in certain limited cases \u2014 rape, incest, threat to the health of the mother \u2014 in one state: Colorado. Several states soon followed. By the early 1970s, some states, such as New York, had gone further, legalizing abortion all the way up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Then in 1973, the Supreme Court discovered a previously unidentified constitutional \u201cright\u201d to murder babies. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That supposed \u201cright\u201d seems to have eluded the men who wrote the Constitution, as well as the nine generations of Americans that lived between ratification and Roe v. Wade. Perhaps the abortion clause of the Constitution was written in some secret code known only to twentieth-century liberals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whatever the case, in 1973, the Court pretended that the Constitution granted a right to kill babies through abortion. 19 years later, as the pro-life movement picked up steam and Roe began to crumble under its own incoherence, the Court revisited the question in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/the-michael-knowles-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Casey, the Court made an even stranger ruling than it had in Roe, deciding that the practical outcome of Roe \u2014 the license to kill unborn babies in the first trimester, sometimes in the second, and usually not in the third \u2014 was sound, but that the reasoning around the decision was not sound. So the Court threw out Roe\u2019s trimester system and changed the reasoning to argue that women had a right to kill their kids until the baby was \u201cviable,\u201d after which point they might still kill their kids, but it depended on state law. Maybe. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Casey decision changed some of the other constitutional reasoning \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 from Roe as well. But the practical implications \u2014 now even more legally and constitutionally preposterous \u2014 remained unchanged until the Dobbs decision a couple years ago, which happily overturned Roe <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  Casey and returned our law and jurisprudence to what had been the norm for most of American history, when abortion was not considered a right and usually was simply outlawed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is about three centuries of American abortion law in under ten paragraphs, all of which I mention because the pro-abortion crowd wants to pretend that infanticide is a constitutional right deeply embedded in the American political tradition. And it just simply isn\u2019t. In fact, the license to abortion is an aberration that even its most significant defenders have admitted is legally dubious. Very sus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Justice Harry Blackmun, the most liberal justice on the Court who wrote the majority decision in Roe v. Wade, admitted in writing that the Court\u2019s logic was more or less gobbledegook. While some justices favored the viability standard that came to be adopted in Casey, Justice Blackmun pointed out the pointlessness of quibbling over the precise moment at which infanticide would be acceptable. \u201cYou will observe,\u201d Blackmun <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.justfacts.com\/abortion.blackmun.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">wrote<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u201cthat I have concluded that the end of the first trimester is critical. This is arbitrary, but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability, is equally arbitrary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course it\u2019s arbitrary, as must be any selected point other than conception, which <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">by definition<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  marks the beginning of the individual human life. Some of the sillier abortion advocates today will sometimes claim that a baby in the womb does not constitute a \u201chuman life.\u201d They will say, \u201cIt isn\u2019t a baby; it\u2019s a fetus\u201d \u2014 unaware that the word fetus is just the Latin word for \u201coffspring\u201d \u2014 in this case, the offspring of two human beings, also known as a baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or they\u2019ll say that the baby, at an early stage of development, isn\u2019t a baby but rather a \u201czygote\u201d or a \u201cblastula.\u201d They make the baby sound like a Pokemon or something. But of course, we have all sorts of different terms to denote different stages of human development: zygote, blastula, embryo, fetus, baby, infant, toddler, kid, teen, adult, old man, geezer. All the stages are distinct. Teens can do some things that babies can\u2019t \u2014 like speak. Adults can do some things that teens can\u2019t \u2014 like control themselves. Sometimes. Geezers, oddly enough, start to act like toddlers again. (At the extremes, human development starts to look a bit more circular.) But in any case, no particular stage between the beginning and the end either confers or negates our humanity. We\u2019re human the whole time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know that babies in the womb are human because they have human parents. If a woman gave birth to a platypus, that would be a cause for great concern. <\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If I were the husband, I would have questions. But it wouldn\u2019t happen because that\u2019s not how reproduction works. We know that babies in the womb are human, and we also know they\u2019re alive. We know they\u2019re alive because they exhibit the characteristics of life: cellular organization, growth, the potential to reproduce, adaptation, etc. All the characteristics you learned in middle school science class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The baby in the womb is obviously human, just as the baby in the womb is obviously alive. If the baby were not alive, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">there would be no cause for an abortion<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. There would be nothing to terminate. Liberals sometimes try to deny these facts or at least to soften them with euphemisms. They do so because, even as they advocate for abortion, they recognize its moral repugnance. They don\u2019t want to admit what everyone with even a modicum of sense and honesty knows, which is that abortion is a type of homicide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The feminist writer Naomi Wolf discussed this fact bluntly in the mid-\u201890s. She <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lib.tcu.edu\/staff\/bellinger\/abortion\/wolf-our-bodies.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">wrote<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u201cAbortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die.\u201d Wolf was wrong, obviously, in her conclusion, but at least she was honest. Abortion, by definition, ends a human life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Knowles delivered the first part of a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on March 13, 2024. Historically, intentionally killing unborn babies in America was prohibited from colonial times to the mid-19th century. During this period, abortion was surgically unfeasible and scientifically uncertain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":2210655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2023\/09\/5Knowles_2020_headshot-1-copy-scaled.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2210654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2023\/09\/5Knowles_2020_headshot-1-copy-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2210654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2210655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}