By one vote, and with a caveat that its ruling should not be misinterpreted as a decision on the constitutionality of the law, the Supreme Court refused to block Texas' new abortion law, which outlaws all abortions in the Lone Star State once a heartbeat is detectable. The Court went on to add that its decision is not meant to lessen or limit challenges to Texas' new abortion law, including in the state courts of Texas. Both pro-life and prochoice Americans are claiming this Supreme Court decision is the beginning of the end of legalized abortion in America. Whereas pro-life Americans are cheering it, prochoice Americans are condemning it. Yet, I see little hope that this ambiguous action by "the Supremes" will end what I call "the American Holocaust."
In 1936, the German Supreme Court paved the way for the Holocaust and the extermination of 6 million Jews by ruling that Jews were not to be legally recognized as persons. Instead, Jewish people were viewed by the German government as “sub-humans” or, as Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, parasites in the body of other peoples.
Like the Holocaust, many of history's most heinous crimes against humanity have been made possible by court rulings that denied personhood to those to be victimized. For instance, the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott Decision, which justified the institution of slavery in these United States, did so by ruling that slaves were only three-fifths human. Therefore, the court ruled that slaves could be legally classified as property rather than persons, as well as legally bought and sold by their owners.
In its most infamous decision ever, its 1973 Roe v. Wade Decision, the United States Supreme Court justified and made possible the unspeakable inhumanity of abortion on demand by dehumanizing the unborn child. What better way to disguise the inhumanity of its Roe v. Wade decision than for the court to claim that the coming casualties of its ruling should not be recognized as human beings? Writing for the majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackman decreed: “The word ‛person’ as used in the 14th amendment [the amendment that forbids depriving any person of their right to life, liberty and property] does not include the unborn. The unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” Therefore, Blackmum concluded, “a fetus is not a person but only potential [human] life.”
Today's Americans profess to being appalled at the 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis during World War II. However, most Americans appear totally apathetic about the 60 million babies that have been aborted in America since 1973? The mass murder of Jews by Nazis over a period of 8 years actually pales in comparison to the mass extermination of unborn children over the past 48 years in America. Still, the “American Holocaust” continues unabated under a Supreme Court that still refuses to recognize unborn children as human beings with a God-given, inalienable, and constitutional right to life.