SUPPORT THE WISCONSIN PERSONHOOD AMENDMENT: CALL YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS TODAY!
By Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin Legislative Director
The pro-life movement is founded on the bedrock principle that all human beings, at all stages of their development, deserve equal protection under the law. To that end, State Representatives Joe Sanfelippo (R-New Berlin) and Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) and State Senator André Jacque (R-De Pere) have begun circulating for co-sponsorship the Wisconsin Personhood Amendment, legislation that extends the inalienable right to life already found in the Wisconsin Constitution to all preborn children from the beginning of their lives. Please see the amendment language and PLW’s legislative memo.
ACT NOW!
Please CALL or EMAIL your state senator and state representative NOW and urge him/her to “Co-sponsor LRB-4208 & LRB-5218, the Wisconsin Personhood Amendment.”
Tell your legislators that every human being, born or unborn, deserves equal protection under the law. Tell them to extend the inalienable right to life already found in the Wisconsin Constitution to all preborn children at all stages of development.
If your state senator or state representative is already a co-sponsor of LRB-4208 & LRB-5218, please thank him/her!
Don’t know your state senator and state representative? Go to legis.wisconsin.gov and type in your home address under “Who Are My Legislators” or call the Legislative Hotline: 1-800-362-9472.
Background:
Both the Kansas and Iowa supreme courts have recently ruled that the “liberty” right in their respective state constitutions includes a substantive due process right to abortion. Abortion is now a fundamental right in Kansas and Iowa. Both states are now moving to amend their state constitutions.
If the Wisconsin Supreme Court loses its tenuous conservative majority, we can be assured that a new liberal majority will move quickly to find a right to abortion in the Wisconsin Constitution. And they would have an easier time doing so. How so?
From a pro-life perspective, the Wisconsin Constitution contains a glaring error at its outset. In specifying the beneficiaries of its human rights enumerated in Section 1 of the Declaration of Rights, our state constitution leaves out the preborn. It applies the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to only those people who are “born.”
An activist Wisconsin Supreme Court most assuredly would use the word “born” in our current state constitution to deny the right to life of the preborn by interpreting an independent right to abortion in that document. In so doing, the court would nullify any present or future pro-life laws in our state. Let’s not wait for this to happen, like Kansas and Iowa! Rather, let’s be prepared by moving swiftly to amend our state constitution. Only by enshrining the right to life in our state’s highest law will our preborn children be afforded full and lasting legal protection.
The Amendment:
The authors are proposing a minimal but absolutely essential correction, a Wisconsin Personhood Amendment, to make the Wisconsin Constitution cover all people, every person, at any stage of development. An amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution requires passage in two successive legislatures followed by a simple majority vote of the people.
Section 1 of the amendment tracks the original constitutional language as closely as grammatically possible, only substituting the inclusive personhood definition for the word "born." That definition is as follows: As applied to the right to life, the term "persons” shall apply to every human being at any stage of development, born or unborn. Such a definition enshrines in our state constitution the principle of equality of all human beings before the law. It is indispensable to extending the protective cover of Wisconsin’s constitution over our state’s preborn children.
Section 2 of the amendment provides a principled rejection of government by the judiciary, expressly assigning the legislature as the proper authority to implement the equality provision in the amendment. Specifically, the amendment specifies that the legislature may define the scope of protections afforded to unborn persons and requires that any prohibition of conduct relating to unborn persons be prescribed by the legislature alone. This is as it should be. The legislature, not the judiciary, is the proper authority to implement the amendment’s equality definition.
Over the past 50 years, the courts have usurped the role of the legislature in making law, interpreting a so-called “living constitution” and then brazenly and undemocratically imposing their morals and personal values on the public. The legislature, not the judiciary, has the sole authority to make law, and is the institution closest to the people, under the legal framework of our federal and state constitutions.
In sum, the Wisconsin Personhood Amendment by itself will NOT end abortion now, but it offers a return to first principles: 1) equal protection under the law; and 2) rejection of government by the judiciary, by assigning the proper authority to implement equal protection to the group closest to the people - the legislature.