Extremist PA Politicians Abandon Right to Life
The week before Christmas, a bare majority of Pennsylvania’s state house of representatives voted for an amendment to Pennsylvania’s state constitution that seeks to make alienable a right that our nation’s Declaration of Independence declares unalienable. It is no coincidence this vote occurred as we neared the holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace. Now, more than ever, we need Christmas’s message: that God has not abandoned a fallen humanity, that He entered the world not to condemn but to save, and that He came to heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free.
How did we reach a point where a majority of Pennsylvania’s state representatives could abandon an express mandate of our Declaration? How could they reject what martyred statesmen like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us about it? Such abandonment may stem from hearts and minds deeply wounded and pained by a past experience when they, or someone they knew, felt all alone and believed they only had one real choice. Yet Christmas offers hope. If our legislators embraced it, they might newly appreciate the Declaration, Lincoln and King.
What exactly did the Pennsylvania house do? On December 18, 2025, 100 Democrats and two Republicans voted to amend the state constitution to deny all unborn children, from conception to birth, their right to live. 99 Republicans and two Democrats opposed the effort.
The proposal is extreme. It effectively bars any restrictions on abortion at all, including ones based on the mother’s age. This would end parental notification requirements and leave vulnerable teenagers in the hands of the abortion industry. And it is so poorly worded that abortionists would not be required to have a medical degree. Should the amendment become law, Pennsylvania would be a destination for the most extreme late-term procedures.
The practices that would ensue from this amendment are not only barbaric, but they contradict our Declaration—whose 250th anniversary we celebrate next July 4.
The Declaration states that all human beings are “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” foremost the right to life. Government exists, the Founders wrote, “to secure these rights.” These words affirm life is a gift from God, not a state-granted privilege, and deny governments authority to revoke what is unalienable. Yet the Pennsylvania house seeks to do just that.
Unlike these legislators, Abraham Lincoln was able to grasp the Declaration’s transcendence. In 1859, he praised Thomas Jefferson for embedding in the Declaration “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times” that would serve as “a rebuke and stumbling block” to tyranny and oppression. Lincoln viewed the Declaration as a moral standard for judging laws and political actions. He warned his contemporaries – men like Stephen Douglas, John Calhoun and Jefferson Davis – against abandoning its principles. To those tempted to deny the equal dignity of any human being, Lincoln pleaded with those who had been “taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration,” inviting them to return “to the truths that are in the Declaration” and to not “destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity.”
Supporters of the Pennsylvania abortion amendment are following such conflicting doctrines and are aligning themselves with southern Civil War-era politicians who rejected the Declaration’s plain meaning. They also diverge from the twentieth century’s greatest civil rights icon, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King rooted his moral vision in the Declaration and in the natural law tradition. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, King described the Declaration and Constitution as a “promissory note” guaranteeing every American the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote that “[a] just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” Moreover, King added that “[a]ny law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” By these standards, Pennsylvania’s proposed amendment—which is out of step with the moral law and degrades the humanity and dignity of the unborn—cannot be considered just.
The recent Pennsylvania house vote is not the last word, and more votes in the house and Pennsylvania senate on this subject may lie ahead. Supporters should reconsider their position in light of our Declaration and the legacy of Lincoln and King, as well as the hope that Christmas offers. If they do not, the outlook for our Commonwealth’s future is grim.
(Congressman Keith Rothfus served 3 terms in the U.S. House. He is a Notre Dame Law School graduate living near Pittsburgh where he and his wife raised their family.)
