On the eve of a potential breakthrough regarding the overturning of Roe v Wade, there is an unfortunate dust up amongst conservatives in Louisiana over a pro-life bill in the Louisiana House, HB 813 sponsored by Rep. Danny McCormick, which would classify an unborn child from the moment of conception as a human being and thus make any abortion a murder.
The Louisiana Family Forum has weighed in, questioning some aspects of the bill – its imprecise language, its violation of the separation of powers. Those are issues worth debating. However, there is one section in the statement made by Pres. Gene Mills that should not be debated but rejected straight away:
It violates the supremacy of U.S. statutes and U.S. federal court decisions under the U.S. Constitution. We believe in the rule of law, the Louisiana Constitution, and the Constitution of the United States, both of which legislators took an oath to uphold. HB 813 directs Louisiana to defy rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. While we wholeheartedly disagree with the ruling in Roe, HB 813 is not a workable solution.
The upshot here is that Louisiana must obey ALL federal court rulings, no matter their congruity with State and federal constitutions, common law, ancient customs, Christian teachings, etc. And furthermore, that disobeying unconstitutional federal court rulings is somehow an offense against the rule of law.
Such claims are not consistent with the view of the law that our forefathers handed down to us. To begin with, the Supremacy Clause of the federal constitution makes it clear that only laws made in accordance with its provisions are to be accounted as having authority. Which means that there can be laws/orders/ruling/etc. that are not made in accordance with them. And when that happens the States are not to sit idle, as though they were helpless bystanders.
Our forefathers taught us another way, a better way. First, any federal edict that steps over the ancient legal boundaries is to be considered a non-entity. Second, the States have not only the ability but the duty to stop the enforcement of such unlawful edicts. The history of this tradition is recounted in J. J. Kilpatrick’s helpful book The Sovereign States. Dr. Tom Woods is also a helpful guide.
Even so ardent a centralizer as Alexander Hamilton said of illegitimate federal acts, ‘These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.’ But is that how Louisiana and other deeply conservative States treated Engel v Vitale (banning Christian prayer in public schools), or Roe, or Obergefell, or Bostock? Did we treat them as ‘merely acts of usurpation’ and ignore them and fight their implementation in our respective States? No. We capitulated.
And what will be our answer at the final Dread Judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ when we must answer for the millions of murdered children; for the millions of those who were born but were then poisoned by demonic ideologies that led them to destroy their bodies and souls through sexual perversions and false religions?
That we were bound to uphold the rule of law and were therefore prevented from acting in any significant way to prevent those great tragedies?
For such a flimsy and foolish answer, we will be swept like chaff into the fire.
Thomas Jefferson, who rejected key tenets of Christianity like the divinity of Christ and miracles, nonetheless puts Christians to shame when it comes to dealing with a rogue federal judiciary:
But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.
Ultimately, it is the States who are to decide the question of constitutionality, as he made clear in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, since the States created the federal government.
Those who fight against federal usurpations of power, who fight against unjust federal actions, of whichever branch, who nullify rulings like Roe, Engel, and the rest – they are the ones who uphold the rule of law. Those who capitulate to lawless acts of the federal government, knowing them to be blatantly unconstitutional – they are the ones who defy and weaken it.
If HB 813 must be set aside, let us rally around HB 344 instead, which would nullify Roe in Louisiana and trigger the 2006 Human Life Protection Act (see Pres. Mills’s letter above for a little on the 2006 Act).
And then let us move on to the rest of the Washington rubbish, things like Pres. Biden’s new disinformation board, vaxx and mask mandates, etc.
Yet the sorrowful thought lingers: Does our State government, which is willing to jab school kids with a covid injection that has been proven beyond any doubt to do much more harm than good to them for the sake of pleasing their Big Pharma donors, have the moral strength to take up this necessary work?
Walt Garlington Louisiana State Sovereignty Committee