The YouTube video above shows Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) making the following statement about the SCOTUS decision in Roe v Wade:
My daughters — twenty-something — I talk[ed] to them about Roe v. Wade, and they said, “We understand.” I said, You understand? Do you understand what it means if its overturned? [They said], “That’s bad for women.” I said, Where do women get the right to choose? Where do women get the right to have an abortion if they believe they need it? My daughters, relatively informed, relatively close to government — one of them said, “Oh, it must be in the Constitution.” [I said], “It’s not in the Constitution. And it’s not in the Bible, and it’s not by Divine decree — it was a court decision in Roe v. Wade, 1973. They roll back Roe v. Wade, that means a woman loses her right to choose. It’s not a game. It’s not theoretical. It’s not academic. That’s what they intend to do and that’s the consequence.
In some form or another, this is the argument Democrats will be using to oppose the confirmation of President Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. It’s the argument they will use in the fall to oppose every candidate who professes to be pro-life and has the record to prove it. They will use it to drive Democrat voters to the polls, including many black Americans who think they have to vote the Democrat Party live.
I wish I could get every one of them to do the following thought experiment with Andrew Cuomo’s words: Substitute the word “slavery” or “racist segregation” everywhere Mr. Cuomo uses the word “abortion.”
And instead of the reference to Roe v. Wade, substitute the case designations “Dred Scott v Sanford” and “Plessy v. Ferguson” (popularly accepted names given to two SCOTUS decisions, overturned because of America’s creed.) The first approved the notion that people in free states were legally obliged by the Fugitive Slave Act to return fugitive slaves to their enslavers. The second invented the infamous “separate but equal” doctrine used to excuse State laws that established anti-black racist segregation in public education.
With these substitutions accounted for, Mr. Cuomo’s words would read as follows:
My daughters — twenty-something — I talk to them about [Dred Scott v. Sanford of Plessy v. Ferguson] and they said, “We understand.” I said, You understand? Do you understand what it means if its overturned? [They said], “That’s bad for whites.” I said, Where do whites get the right to [own slaves, segregate public schools]? Where do [whites] get the right to [buy and sell blacks into slavery, keep blacks out of public schools in their community] if they believe they need [to]? My daughters, relatively informed, relatively close to government — one of them said, “Oh, it must be in the Constitution.” [I said], “It’s not in the Constitution. And it’s not in the Bible, and it’s not by Divine decree —it was a court decision in [Dred Scott v Sanford, 1857 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896]. They roll back [those cases] and that means [we whites lose our right to choose slavery and racist discrimination]. It’s not a game. It’s not theoretical. It’s not academic. That’s what they intend to do and that’s the consequence.
When Americans died on the dreadful, blood-drenched battlefields of the Civil War, it was definitely not a game. When others risked and gave their lives to march against Jim Crow Segregation laws in States like Alabama and Mississippi, it was not a game. But the enslavers of the 19th century asserted that it wasn’t necessarily a matter of death-dealing wickedness, either.
Blacks were held captive for labor and procreation (selling slave being a lucrative source of income). These purposes meant keeping them in fit condition, like horses used for hauling or riding, or cattle valued for the money they fetched at auction.
The whole point of the fictitious “separate but equal” SCOTUS jurisprudence was to assert that blacks lost nothing by segregation but the opportunity to consort with whites.
These days, black proponents of racial segregation on college campuses obviously have no idea why ending segregation mattered that much. What’s more tragically ironic is that many blacks support the pro-abortion movement, even though it involves a heinous act that aims to murder humans, in general — and that ends up murdering disproportionately large cohorts of black posterity.
They also ignore the fact that the culling of “defectives” was among the key purposes of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger.
Many people purposely risked and gave their physical lives on purpose, fighting for the specious right to own slaves or the just imperative of ending their enslavement. And even if the “peculiar institution” exist to murder the enslaved slavery had enormous moral and spiritual costs for all concerned.
“Jim Crow” segregation certainly oppressed the heart and spirit of blacks demeaned by its invidious effects and implications. Both hardened America’s heart against itself, in ways that made wholesale conflict more and more inevitable.
What if everyone had simply acquiesced because the Supreme Court said they had to do so? Why didn’t they accept the Supreme Court’s word on racist slavery and segregation as “the law,” and leave it at that?
They refused to do so because, unlike Andrew Cuomo, those who sought to abolish slavery could say, with righteous truth, that the Constitution is framed on premises that condemn depriving people of their unalienable right to liberty as human persons — which the Constitution explicitly acknowledged them to be.
As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the principles of America’s revolution in government hold such violations of rights to be against the law and will of God. Indeed, Divine edicts, evident in “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” impel all humanity to fight against them.
As a black American, I thank God that previous generations of Americans did not accept the theoretical swill used since the late 19th/early 20th centuries to justify the notion that God is dead and gone, making Divinely rooted law irrelevant. I thank God that they did not continue to withhold from blacks the equal protection and due process of law the Constitution requires, as the SCOTUS now withholds it from nascent human offspring in the womb. They do so even in the face of DNA tests that scientifically prove our children, from the moment of conception, to be as recognizably human as any other human beings on earth.
Governor Andrew Cuomo admits — indeed, he insists — that the so-called “right” to abortion is a judicial fabrication, without any foundation in America’s God-dependent premises of right and justice.
This admission is the frankest and accurate public statement of the pro-abortion position I have ever heard from someone who purports to be an American politician.
The assertion of the “right” to murder nascent human beings in the womb or the petri dish has no basis in the Constitution; no basis in the law and will of God; no basis in any tenets of human conscience except the deeply reprehensible assertion that human will and power have the right to triumph over all.
The challenge on which the self-government of America now utterly depends is to remember the heritage Cuomo defames. For the authority of God — which Governor Cuomo contemptuously discards — is precisely the authority from which the American people derive our claim to equal justice, in the teeth of superior power.
It is the basis for our claim to God-endowed unalienable rights, justified even when at the mercy of victorious wrong-doers. Those rights include the right to govern ourselves free of the oppressive pretense of superior will and power which sustained oppressive oligarchies (rule by the rich and powerful few) throughout the violence-ridden experience of humankind.
If we accept the view that the pronouncements of the SCOTUS, with no warrant rooted in the premises and grounds of our democratic, republican self-government, can justify the casual, wholesale murder of helpless human beings in the womb, what of all other helpless, powerless people throughout our nation and the world?
When the SCOTUS declares that such as they have no right to equal protection of the laws, will the Court’s word make it so? When some majority of its Justices say that these innocents have no claim of right against being murdered for the convenience of their superiors in strength, intelligence or some other power-mongering asset, will the Court’s mere word make it so?
Governor Cuomo and his ilk are counting on the fact that we can be induced to abandon the rightful principles of our freedom in exchange for the specious “right” to murder our posterity for the sake of lust, convenience or ambition.
Once they succeed, what basis will we have for moral appeals against injustice when the powerful few — already bidding to control and repress our livelihood; our speech; our reverence for God; our reasons of conscience; and our means of making a living — come to take our lives withal?
On some excuse of interference with their power, Justices they put in power will disregard our rights as persons, just as others like them disregarded the rights of our ancestors; and just as they are encouraging women to disregard the God-endowed right-to-life of the child in their womb.
It is not a coincidence that the so-called “right” to abortion represents itself in the image of human self-extinction.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s report of his talk with his daughters reveals the dagger he and his pro-abortion colleagues are inducing us to plunge into our own heart, as a people. The issue is not just abortion, or even the right-to-life of our posterity — the issue is the survival of the way of life, in God-blessed liberty, that we are supposed to pass on to them.
Dr. Alan Keyes is a political activist, prolific writer, former diplomat, and the founder of LoyaltoLiberty.com
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
