WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Twenty-one Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have signed onto a resolution recognizing preborn human beings as entitled to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution, a non-binding statement of where they stand in the ongoing debate over whether abortion should be left to the states or requires a national solution.
House Resolution 464, introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), affirms that a “medical and scientific consensus exists establishing that each human being begins his or her life cycle at fertilization,” that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution expressly forbids any state from “deny[ing] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and that the amendment arose “within a common-law and statutory context that prohibited abortion and treated the unborn human being throughout pregnancy as a ‘person’, who under ‘common and civil law’ was ‘to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born.’”
Therefore, the resolution would declare that the House recognizes “the life of each human person begins at fertilization (or the functional equivalent thereof)” with “moral and legally protectable interests in life, health, and well-being” that fall “within the scope of the [14th] Amendment’s protective embrace.”
The resolution “acknowledges our constitutional duty and solemn obligation to guarantee the equal protection of the laws to every unborn child within the jurisdictional and geographic reach of the Constitution,” and “calls upon the Congress to enact congruent and proportional legislation to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection for unborn children nationwide, and upon the Supreme Court to acknowledge and vindicate the right of unborn children to the enjoyment of the equal protection of the laws in every State and Federal territory.”
A standard House resolution does not have the force of law and is simply a statement of the views of the House majority at the time it is passed, and as such does not have to be submitted to Congress or the president. Its most immediate significance appears to be as a test for how many of the chamber’s 222 Republican members are willing to go on the record in support of national abortion action, a question currently dividing some in the GOP.
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, thanks to last year’s overturn of Roe v. Wade putting abortion back in the hands of the democratic process. In response, abortion allies are aggressively pursuing a variety of strategies to preserve abortion “access.”
Those efforts include easing distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, attempting to enshrine “rights” to the practice in state constitutions, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors. President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand the Roe status quo by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws.
By contrast, the official position of the Republican Party is to “support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” But former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, has repeatedly refused to commit to backing a federal abortion ban if reelected, after alarming pro-lifers by suggesting that state-level heartbeat laws may be “too harsh,” his campaign stating that abortion now “should be decided at the State level,” and blaming pro-lifers for the GOP’s underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump’s top rival for the nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who voted for every federal pro-life measure to reach the floor during his time in the House, chastised Trump for not answering whether he would have signed the same heartbeat law that DeSantis did this year, and recently said “there is a role for both the federal and the state” in prohibiting abortion, while acknowledging “just a practical reality that the country’s just divided on the issue” that makes it harder for Congress to amass support for the same kinds of laws currently progressing through state legislatures.