Abortion is a civil rights issue, though not in the way pro-abortionists want to spin it. We should not forget that, after Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, there were liberal Democrats who opposed the ruling as a civil rights violation. Senators William Proxmire of Wisconsin and Harold Hughes of Iowa spring to mind, as do congressmen like Jim Oberstar of Minnesota.

The fundamental duty of any society is to protect the lives of its members. There is no more basic function of a society than to keep its members alive. That means protecting them from foreign assault by providing for national defense. That means protecting them from domestic violence by making and enforcing criminal accountability.

This is the bottom-line purpose of any society. English philosophers as different as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke agreed on this point. When Thomas Jefferson opines about “unalienable rights” of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, he was not just putting in some “nice words” before he got to his point: declare American independence. Go back and reread his argument (which, while changing “property” to “pursuit of happiness” basically comes straight out of Locke).

That’s where Jefferson’s independence argument comes in: King George III and the British Parliament had so systematically violated the rights of people in these colonies that any claims of allegiance were dissolved.

Now, the list of rights Jefferson........

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