Opinion

Image

December 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Last week, some Tea Party folks (along with the conservative homosexual group GOProud) got a bit anxious that the Republicans would end up legislating on social conservative issues (abortion, same-sex “marriage”, etc.). They say they fear that the GOP will get sidetracked and forget their mandate from the voters to restore the economy, put money back into the pockets of working, taxpaying Americans, and not saddle the next three generations with the burden of paying off $13 trillion (and counting) in national debt, plus interest.

Needless to say, this got the gander of other tea party leaders in the Tea Party Nation, a network of local tea party groups. They told GOP Congressional leaders that they do care about social issues, to legislate away, and that the other guys were anathema.

Well, it truly is a tempest in a tea (party) pot. The fiscal conservative Tea Partiers and the pro-life voters were both crucial in the GOP’s November electoral victories, and that can’t be ignored. The game of “whose mandate is it anyway?” is just an opportunity for needless bloodletting. Both sides should realize there is a very easy way to find common ground, come together, and get down to the business of helping American taxpayers – those born and unborn.

What’s the solution? Get abortion and social issues off the national table by overturning Roe v. Wade – congressional style! If members of the Tea Party movement do not want to see the Congress “run down any social issue rabbit holes,” then let’s finally defuse the issue on a national level by enacting the Sanctity of Life Act. This would invoke Congress’s power to remove the jurisdiction of the courts (Art. III, sec. 2 of the US Constitution), making Roe v. Wade caput, and sending the issue from Washington back to individual states.

It’s thoroughly constitutional; Congress should have acted decades ago with this authority to yank back the federal courts. They could have – and now can – put an immediate end to Roe’s binding force over the states, and give them back their authority to enact laws protecting human life.

A former member of the late Sen. Jesse Helms’ (R-N.C.) staff told me about how Helms had proposed such a measure invoking Art. III, sec. 2 in the early 1980s, and believed he had enough Democrats and Republicans on board to get a simple majority in both houses of Congress for passage. The measure then would have gone to President Ronald Reagan for signing.

However, Helms’ former staffer says the bill ended up scuttled because Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) insisted that Congress had to pass the Human Life Amendment and change the U.S. Constitution. It’s substantially more difficult to change the Constitution: a two-thirds supermajority is needed in both chambers for passage, and then three-quarters (38 out of 50) states have to ratify the proposed constitutional change. Pro-life leaders did not have enough votes to pass the HLA then (or now). My source told me that he believed Hatch had proposed the practically impossible amendment in order to corral pro-life voters into the GOP fold – which may not have happened if Helms had his way.

Waiting for Supreme Court justices to die or retire just protracts the life of Roe, and makes abortion even more ingrained in our national culture. We have at least 50 million dead babies since 1973, and that does not take into account the lives of mothers, fathers, and family members harmed by abortion. Additionally, those who have studied the issue have found that abortion has had a devastating economic impact, which should serve as additional motivation to concerned fiscal conservatives and tea partiers to send the issue back to the states.

And while they’re at it, the GOP can get another issue off the table and fulfill a tea party and pro-family wish: use the power under Art. III, sec. 2 to remove the federal court’s jurisdiction to interfere with state marriage laws. And do it before the U.S. Supreme Court gets involved in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case. They can also stop the court from overturning congressional laws and regulations governing the discipline of the U.S. military, such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” ending this ridiculous business of federal district judges getting into their heads the notion of issuing worldwide court orders to the armed forces.

With these few pro-life, pro-family issues out of the way by a simple majority vote, Congress can get down to the business of digging this country and its future generations out of $13 trillion of insane national debt.