…The Ancient Church, and The Anti-Constitutional State
An Analysis of Executive Abortion Legislation, Constitutional Personhood, Historical Common Law Maxims, and Sacred Scripture
By standardizing the elimination of statutory limits on late-term abortions through the passage of the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has overseen an assertion of state power that sits in direct opposition to the fundamental constitutional and moral premises of the American Republic.
To evaluate this measure through the combined lens of foundational American statesmanship—from the constitutional insights of the Framers and President Abraham Lincoln to the witness of Scripture and the Ancient Church—is to recognize a complete departure from the doctrine of Natural Rights upon which the United States was established.
Scriptural Imperatives: Unborn Humanity in the Eyes of God
The premise of personhood is neither a policy construct nor a secular concession; it is an inescapable truth established by God in Holy Scripture:
- Jeremiah 1:5 — “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…”
- Psalm 139:13–16 — “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb… Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
- Luke 1:41 — “And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb…”
- Exodus 21:22–23 — Under the Mosaic Law, causing physical harm to an unborn child carried strict judicial penalties, establishing the child as a distinct human victim deserving legal protection.
From Genesis to the Gospels, Scripture views the child in the womb not as disposable tissue or a potential person, but as an existing human soul under God’s direct sovereignty.
The Witness of the Ancient Church Fathers
From its earliest days, the Christian Church rejected the pagan Roman practice of infanticide and abortion (abortivum), identifying the destruction of unborn life as a direct violation of God’s commandment against murder:
- The Didache (c. 80–120 AD) — The earliest post-apostolic manual of Christian doctrine and practice declared flatly:
“Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor kill them when born.” — (Didache 2:2)
- Tertullian (c. 160–220 AD) — Writing in his Apology, Tertullian framed the Christian understanding of unborn life under natural law:
“To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is to be such; the fruit is always present in the seed.” — (Apology, Chapter 9)
- Basil the Great (c. 330–379 AD) — In his canonical epistles, Basil refuted legal distinctions based on the stage of gestation:
“She who purposely destroys the fetus incurs the penalty of murder. There is no nice inquiry among us as to whether the fetus was formed or unformed.” — (Letter 188, Canon 2)
- John Chrysostom (c. 347–407 AD) — Preaching against late-term abortion, Chrysostom warned that those who eliminate unborn life “do not merely strip the living, but prevent the living from being born,” calling it an assault on the Author of life Himself.
The Constitutional Mandate: Equal Protection and Personhood
The American constitutional system is built upon a self-evident truth articulated in the Declaration of Independence: that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, foremost among them being Life.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution explicitly command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor denied the equal protection of the laws. Modern biological science confirms that at the moment of conception, a distinct, living human organism comes into existence, possessing its own unique DNA.
If the unborn child is biologically human, then under the law of nature and the text of our Constitution, that child is a person. To deny that personhood by legislative decree is to erect an arbitrary hierarchy where the strong decide who is permitted to live and who may be destroyed. As President Abraham Lincoln observed in his 1854 Peoria speech regarding the attempt to legalize the subjugation of human beings:
“Little by little, but steadily as man’s march to the grave, we have been giving up the OLD for the NEW faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave others is ‘a sacred right of self-government.’ … These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other.”
Just as Lincoln argued that no human being possesses a “right” to deny the fundamental humanity and liberty of another, no legislature possesses the legitimate authority to declare an entire class of living human beings outside the protection of the law.
Natural Law and the Moral Law Above Human Enactments
Natural Law—the objective moral order written into creation and accessible via human reason—asserts that human statutes do not create rights; they only recognize and protect them.
[ THE CREATOR ]
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Gives Life & Natural Rights
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[ NATURAL LAW ]
(Higher Moral & Rational Standard)
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[ CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION ]
(14th Amendment: Equal Protection / Life)
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[ POSITIVE LEGISLATIVE LAW ]
Must conform to Natural Law to be Valid
This recognition of unborn personhood was not merely a modern revelation or a theological claim, but a foundational maxim woven into Anglo-American legal heritage. As recorded in Black’s Law Dictionary (1891), quoting long-standing common law doctrine:
Qui in utero est pro jam nato habetur, quoties de ejus commodo quaeritur:
“He who is in the womb is held as already born, whenever a question arises for his benefit.”
The constitutional philosophy championed by early American statesmen—both Federalist and Anti-Federalist—held that human law is strictly subordinate to Natural Law. Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Farmer Refuted (1775), articulated this understanding of rights grounded in Divine creation rather than state permission:
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
Similarly, the Anti-Federalist tradition warned against the centralization of state power when detached from moral restraint. Writing under the pseudonym Brutus, Anti-Federalist essays routinely emphasized that the sole legitimate purpose of government is to preserve natural rights:
“To preserve liberties, it is essential that the whole body of the people should always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them… Government was instituted to protect the weak against the oppression of the strong.” — (Brutus)
Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England formed the bedrock of American jurisprudence, summarized this supremacy of Natural Law over human enactment:
“This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this.”
The Crisis of Moral and Legal Legitimacy
When Massachusetts signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, it placed human statute above both the Law of Nature and the plain text of the United States Constitution. When human rights are treated as privileges granted by the state—subject to removal at the discretion of lawmakers or medical boards—the foundation of Constitutional rule collapses.
A nation cannot long preserve its own liberties while sanctioning the destruction of its most vulnerable citizens. A civil magistrate who uses the power of the state to remove legal protections from unborn human beings abandons the sole justification for civil power: the administration of justice and the defense of the innocent.
True constitutional government requires a return to first principles: acknowledging that rights originate from the Creator, that the law of nature is supreme, and that the duty of civil government is to extend equal protection under the law to every living human person from conception until natural death.
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Travis is a Berean student of Bible prophecy.