Equal Protection: The pro-life movement’s New North Star

On Thursday, Live Action and a coalition of 26 pro-life groups and individuals published The New North Star Coalition Letter, posing a clear goal for the pro-life movement, post-Roe: ending abortion by ensuring the equal protection of preborn children.

Signatories range from presidents of pro-life and conservative non-profits to professors, doctors, and journalists. Among the groups are Students for Life of America, 40 Days for Life, Concerned Women for America, Human Coalition, and more.

Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, commented:

This letter, demanding equal protection for preborn children, which they are guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, will act as the New North Star of the pro-life movement. It’s been one year since Roe v. Wade was overturned. While this was an important pro-life victory, our fight to make abortion illegal and unthinkable while ensuring families have the support they need is far from over. This document is an uncompromising and robust description of guiding principles that lawmakers can look to as they craft policies that will save children from the brutal violence of abortion. At this moment, the pro-life movement is speaking with clarity and unity: we will completely end abortion and ensure that equal justice is achieved for every human being. 

The letter expressly states that “to be pro-life is to affirm that the lives of innocent human beings deserve legal protection from violence, both before and after birth.”

It continues, “There can be no distinction between someone’s biological humanity and his or her legal personhood. All human beings are persons. There are no classes of sub-personal human beings. The very idea of a human being who is relegated to the status of a non-person is a moral atrocity. From the earliest embryonic stage to the very end of life, each and every human being is a person and a bearer of fundamental dignity and an unalienable right to life.”

While it is true that the Constitution does not explicitly mention the word ‘abortion,’ the letter notes that the “text of the Constitution, and particularly its principle of  “equal protection,” has undeniable implications for the question of elective abortion.” 

The letter states, “The Fourteenth Amendment expressly forbids the states from denying ‘to any person within [their] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws’…Crucially, the Amendment then goes on to provide that ‘no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’”

Thus, the personal protection afforded to every member of the human race under the Fourteenth Amendment should be extended equally to the preborn.  

The letter calls upon every branch and level of government to adopt policies consistent with this framework of equal protection. 

These policies include enforcing fetal homicide, wrongful death, and child endangerment laws to ensure justice is obtained for families and their preborn babies; extending state and federal child tax credits to include preborn children; clarifying that embryos in cryopreservation are not legal property or quasi-property under state law; and passing robust prenatal child support laws to compel men to take responsibility for the children they father.

The letter acknowledges that Americans are divided on the issue of abortion, but ends on a note of perseverant hope: “It is true that Americans are divided on abortion after Dobbs. But life will triumph. The same constitutional principles that ensured equal protection for black Americans also protect defenseless children in the womb—from New York to California and everywhere in between. It falls to us to ensure that this guarantee is enforced.”

It adds, “That is our unified paradigm for victory, and nothing less will be acceptable.”

Signatories include: 

• Lila Rose, Founder & President, Live Action

• Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life Action/Students for Life of America

• Shawn D. Carney, President & CEO, 40 Days for Life

• Penny Nance, President & CEO, Concerned Women for America

• Jeff Bradford, President, Human Coalition

• Ryan T. Anderson, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center

• Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

• Albert Mohler, Jr., President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

• Hadley Arkes, Founder & Director, James Wilson Institute

• Steven H. Aden, Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel, Americans United for Life

• Peter Breen, Executive Vice President & Head of Litigation, Thomas More Society

• Mary Szoch, Director of the Center for Human Dignity, Family Research Council

• Ramesh Ponnuru, Editor, National Review

• Ryan Bomberger, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Radiance Foundation

• C.C. Pecknold, Professor of Theology, The Catholic University of America

• Michael O. Kenney, President, Pro-Life Partners Foundation

• Terrisa Bukovinac, Founder & Executive Director, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising

• Gerard Bradley, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

• Charles Camosy, Professor of Bioethics, Creighton University School of Medicine

• Andrew T. Walker, Associate Professor of Ethics, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

• Josh Craddock,  Legal Scholar, James Wilson Institute

• Lauren Muzyka, President & CEO, Sidewalk Advocates for Life

• Adeline A. Allen, Associate Professor, Trinity Law School

• Ron Robinson, President Emeritus, Young America’s Foundation

• Patrina Palmer Mosley, Founder & Principal, PPM Consulting

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