The Other Birthright Citizenship Problem

By John M. Grondelski. As the Pro-Life March takes place in Washington D.C. today, it's good to remember that January 22, 2025 was the 52ndanniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision imposing abortion-on-demand through birth on all the states. Roe was the 20th century's equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. In 1857, the Supreme Court said Dred Scott - a black man taken by his owner to Illinois - could not be free because he was not a "person" and was thus subject to whatever choice his master made. In 1973, the Supreme Court said unborn children were not "persons" and thus subject to whatever choice their mothers made. Both judicial abominations have now found their way into the ashcan of history: Roe by reversal in Dobbs, Dred Scott through enactment of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The 14th Amendment put to rest the question of whether slaves were persons and citizens by stipulating that being born in the United States made you a citizen - and entitled to be protected against deprivation of life without due process of law. That provision is the center of controversy today because President Donald Trump has signed an executive order challenging its scope. Those who play fast and loose with the law claim the Amendment is clear: be born in America and you're a citizen. Well, the Amendment actually says being born in the United States "and subject to [its] jurisdiction." What that means is where the debate now lies. I, however, want to address a neglected side of the "born-in-America-gives-you-rights" question, one the heralds of human rights in the ACLU and the Democratic Party studiously avoid. Being born alive should give you rights. Does it? Former Democratic Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam (a medical doctor), let the cat out of the bag in an infamous 2019 radio interview in which he defended post-natal infanticide. Responding to the outcry over a Virginia Democrat's bill that would have legalized third trimester (i.e., months 6-9 of pregnancy) abortion, he had to answer what happens if the baby happens to be born alive: If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. The 14th Amendment does not say the right to live of a person born in the United States is subject to a "discussion. . .between the physicians and the mother." It says there is an obligation to protect that person's life. Abortionists say one thing and do another. They have always opposed any restrictions on abortion, even in the third trimester, using bogus claims of "health" (undefined and including psychological discomfort) to justify such abortions. Of course, they claim such abortions are "rare," but they rarely use that adjective now since Bill Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" criteria for abortion have been retired. That, too, was never true. Late-term abortions always "risk" a live birth. The question is what to do with that child because the 14thAmendment is pretty clear. But every effort in Congress (and there have been more than six dozen) to enact a "Born Alive Protection" Act (requiring that child be kept alive and that a second physician to care for a potentially born alive child be present at a late-term abortion) were always killed by Democrat opposition. Just Monday, as Virginia Senate Democrats rammed through a state Constitutional amendment to legalize abortion-on-demand-through-pregnancy in the Commonwealth, they defeated (21-19, on a straight party vote) an additional amendment that would have explicitly required protection of such born-alive babies. They allowed no responsibility to protect a baby born alive in Virginia as a result of an abortion. This is not abortion. This is infanticide and a deliberate blurring of the 14th Amendment's "born in the United States" line. It'...