Come What May

A group of 40 homeschooled students put together an impressive first film through Advent Film Group, entitled Come What May. The movie's plot is centered around a moot court debate in which Caleb Hogan (played by Austin Kearney) contests the landmark Supreme Court Decision, Roe vs. Wade. A portion of the transcript follows:

Your, honor, not only was he viable, but he was in fact alive and you can’t just kill a baby.

Judge: A senior biologist, with thirty years of experience, testified that the fetus wasn’t viable.

He said nothing about the viability of the fetus in the womb. That is the issue. They tear the baby out of its only means of life support and say wow, look at that, our machines can’t sustain its life. And somehow that proves it's not viable?

You know, your honor, that their own reasoning assumes that the child is alive in the mother. The very question of viability assumes that he is alive. Now, can we keep him alive? Biology tells us what things do, it doesn’t tell us what things are. It is not a biological question.

Judge: What about the legal issue, why isn’t that a matter for the courts?

Federal judges can never resolve this. All they can do is based on their own moral preferences and that is no legal standard. That is fiat – raw power.

It avoids the real issue, “Is that thing inside the women’s body alive?” And if it is we cannot simply go in there and kill it. So which laws will govern, the ones made by the people, or the ones made by the judges?

Interpret the law, sure, but replace the people’s definition of life with his own, that’s quite different. The courts never should have gone this route and now that they have they need to recognize it as a terrible mistake.

Judge: Overturn Roe v. Wade? And just let the states deal with it themselves?

The grounds for overruling Roe v. Wade are found in Roe itself. Roe quoted extensively from an American Medical Association report. The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime, they’re speaking of abortion, is found in the great effects of our laws common statute as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth as a living being. Look at the date. That report was issued in 1859. The 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. The scientific consensus at that time was that an unborn child was a person and killing him was a crime.

His protection is already enshrined in the 14th amendment. If you change that, you need to add another amendment. Judges were never meant to have this type of policy making authority. Respectfully, your honor, but it is the courts that have forgotten their function, which is to decide law and not to make policy.

And I must say that it is a threat to our democracy, it is a threat to our freedoms and it is a threat to the stability of our nation when judges make decisions without any fear of the people. The Declaration of Independence, recognized at least forty times as a legally binding document, by this court, tells us that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these is life.