Flipping through the channels, I came upon an episode of “Law & Order,” in which the main characters “witness an execution and try to come to terms with their roles in the killing of another human being.” The program features a typical liberal prosecutor having second thoughts about seeking the death penalty against a convicted murderer. It reminds us of the “progressive” prosecutors in today’s America.

On the other hand, in today’s America, innocent unborn human life is considered the property of others, subject to the whims of a woman and her abortionist. Substitute unborn human beings for slaves as property and you have the ingredients for another American Civil War.

Will the party of Lincoln do what is right? According to the 2024 Republican platform, the answer is no.

Representatives of the Republican Party, on the eve of its national convention, are embracing abortion as a “state’s rights” issue and explicitly declaring support for deadly and dangerous abortion pills, euphemistically labeled as “medication” by the fake news media.

Let’s understand the morality of the moment, as captured by that “Law & Order” show: a convicted killer takes a human life and forfeits his right to life as a result of due process. By contrast, an innocent unborn human being is being denied the right to life without due process and faces torture and death.

The national Right to Life Committee notes that the 2016 Republican Platform cited the Constitution’s guarantee that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property” and deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all” are “endowed by their creator” with the inalienable right to life.

“Accordingly,” the platform declared, “we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”

As Republicans focus on the crisis in the Democratic Party, watching with dismay as Joe Biden struggles with his physical and mental health, the Republicans have a crisis of their own making. They are adopting a “moderate” pro-abortion position they think will win them votes this November.

Consider Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 7, in which he endorsed dangerous abortion drugs, labeled as “human pesticides” by pro-lifers.

Vance was asked about Trump saying he supports access to “abortion medication” and Vance replied that “the Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.”

The FDA has approved chemical abortion drugs that are dangerous to women and children, and the Supreme Court subsequently in a case ruled 9-0 that opponents of these deadly pills have no standing to sue.

Just the News reported, “The 9-0 decision did not address the group's underlying legal argument about whether the FDA acted lawfully in lifting various restrictions, including one making the drug obtainable via mail. As a result, the issues could return to the court in another case.”

Millions of lives have already been lost and millions more could be lost before “standing” is granted to the unborn and their rights reaffirmed under the U.S. Constitution.

Erin Morrow Hawley, a former law clerk of Chief Justice John Roberts and wife of Republican senator Josh Hawley, had argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of pro-life doctors defending unborn human rights.

In the case that went before the Supreme Court, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a U.S. District Court Judge, wrote in clear and direct language that the drugs result in the killing of a human baby and the extinction of a human life. There is simply no dispute over this.

He wrote, “Mifepristone – also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex – is a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death. Because mifepristone alone will not always complete the abortion, FDA mandates a two-step drug regimen: mifepristone to kill the unborn human, followed by misoprostol to induce cramping and contractions to expel the unborn human from the mother’s womb.”

The judge’s ruling was notable not only for his clear language about the stakes but the history of the abortion movement, detailed in very significant footnotes. He traces demand for the abortion drugs to the Population Council, founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1952 after he convened a conference with “population activists” such as Planned Parenthood’s director and “several well-known eugenicists.”

Eugenics is associated with the Nazis and other totalitarian movements and is an effort to “improve” the human condition through “science” and genetic manipulation.

In practice, this has meant separating those deemed “superior” in quality versus “the inferior.” In fact, the judge adds that the conference attendees discussed “the problem of ‘quality’” and that they concluded that “[m]odern civilization had reduced the operation of natural selection by saving more ‘weak’ lives and enabling them to reproduce,” thereby resulting in “a downward trend in . . . genetic quality.”

The Nazis called these people “life unworthy of life.”

In a March 14 op-ed for Crisis Magazine, clinical pharmacist Anthony Campagna declared that mifepristone “isn’t a medication at all,” noting that “[T]he right to be called a medication is forfeited the second a drug is used . . . with the intent to actively take life.”

“[M]ifepristone has been responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children,” Campagna wrote. “[T]he drug is responsible for close to a half million murdered children per year, and the number is growing.”

Deferring to the Supreme Court, as Senator Vance advocated, is a form of judicial supremacy or even tyranny.

That power grab can be seen in how the original Supreme Court decision in 1973 legalized abortion on demand, leading to the loss of 60 million innocent unborn American lives in the years to follow. Worldwide – as noted by the Global Life Campaign – one billion babies have been destroyed, with most of the loss of life in Russia, the first communist state to legalize abortion, and Communist China.

After the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in the U.S. in June 2022, sending abortion back to the states, restoring the right to life for all innocent human persons from conception to natural death remains the most important issue of our time.

Without the right to life, there are no other rights.

Clearly, America needs an Emancipation Proclamation for the Unborn. Then, as the 2016 GOP platform recommends, there is a need for “a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

Yet, the Republican Party is politically afraid to take a principled stand in favor of human rights.

Its 2024 platform is weak, declaring that while the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States “guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process,” the States are “free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.”

By the same token, they are also “free” to deny those rights. That’s not a Lincolnesque approach to making sure we have a nation that is fully free.