Huckabee's Wilberforce Moment

The Constitution already abolished abortion. Mike Huckabee just had the courage to say so.

by Rod D. Martin
August 8, 2015

In case you missed it, the most interesting substantive development of the Republican debate was Mike Huckabee's pronouncement that the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments already prohibit abortion.

In other words, he said that the baby is a person, the Constitution already prohibits the taking of a life, QED.

I'm sure this went unnoticed in many circles: it certainly wasn't as sexy as Trump fighting with this one or that. But this is a dramatically different and better take on the abortion question than any but a handful of people (Newt Gingrich being one of them, four years ago) have ever taken. Let me count but a few of the ways:

1. Merely overturning Roe leaves the states free to restrict abortion (or not), but does nothing more than that. Mike Huckabee's position would define the unborn child as a person and thus attach Constitutional protections from conception. This is the correct answer medically and ethically, but more to the point, l…