HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 58
(By Delegate Coop-Gonzalez)
[February 20, 2025; Referred
To the committee on the Judiciary then Rules]
Expressing the position of the West Virginia Legislature that unborn children are legal and constitutional persons entitled to the equal protection of the laws.
Whereas, The Declaration of Independence declares it to be a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," beginning with the right to life, and that the primary purpose of all government is to defend that supreme right;
Whereas, Among the stated purposes of the United States Constitution is to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"; and
Whereas, The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees "due process of law" and "the equal protection of the laws" to "any person"; and
Whereas, The Fourteenth’ Amendment situated its equal protection guarantee within a long common-law and statutory history that prohibited abortion and treated the unborn human being throughout pregnancy as a "person," who under "common and civil law" was "to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born";
Whereas, The Fourteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that it was meant to sustain, relied on an understanding of the fundamental rights of’ persons—including the rights to life and personal security—that had been expounded in Blackstone’s Commentaries, which began its first book ("Of the Rights of Persons") with a discussion of the unborn child’s rights as "persons" across many bodies of law; and
Whereas, By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, a super-majority of states had codified laws to prohibit abortion at all stages, and many of these statutes classified abortion as an "offense against the person" and nearly all described the unborn victim of abortion as an "infant" or "child"; and
Whereas, The primary framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, Representative John Bingham, explained that the Amendment was written to ensure that "no state in the Union should deny to any human being . . . the equal protection of the laws"; and
Whereas, Senator Jacob Howard, who sponsored the Amendment in the Senate, declared that the Amendment’s purpose was to "disable a state from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of liberty and life, property without due process" and to ensure that even the lowest and "most despised of the [human] race were guaranteed equal protection"; and
Whereas, Representative Thaddeus Stevens called the Amendment "a superstructure of perfect equality of every human being before the law; of impartial protection to everyone in whose breast God had placed an immortal soul"; and
Whereas, The drafters and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment expected the Amendment to apply not only to freedmen and Black Americans, but to every member of the human species within the jurisdictional reach of the Constitution, they intentionally selected the expansive language of "any person," to ensure that no state would ever again subject any class of persons to inferior and invidiously discriminatory treatment; and
Whereas, Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’; and
Whereas, A medical and scientific consensus exists establishing that each human being begins his or her life cycle at fertilization; and
Whereas, Unborn children have morally and legally protectable interests in life, health, personal security, and well-being; and
Whereas, At least thirty-eight states, including the State of West Virginia, have fetal homicide laws that provide for prosecution of criminals who kill an unborn children during the commission of a crime; and
Whereas, In recognition of the unborn child's right to life, the common law, state law, and federal law (18 U.S.C. § 3596(b)), all prohibit imposition of the death penalty on a pregnant woman who has been convicted of a capital crime; and
Whereas, State laws and federal judicial decisions allowing abortion in the United States denied constitutional rights to unborn children, causing the tragic and unspeakable loss of sixty million children before birth, increasing the pressure and anguish of countless women and girls who are driven to abortion, and cheapening our respect for the human person and the sanctity of human life; and
Whereas, Nothing in the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization prevents the State of West Virginia from recognizing the legal and constitutional personhood of unborn children, and indeed, central to the Dobbs holding was the fact that abortion terminates the life of an unborn human being; and
Whereas, President Ronald Reagan declared in his 1988 Proclamation of a National Sanctity of Human Life Day that "our nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice," and that "the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land"; and therefore; be it
Resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That the State of West Virginia finds and declares based on sound historical, medical, and scientific evidence that:
(1) The life of each human person begins at fertilization (or the functional equivalent thereof, such as cloning);
(2) Human persons at every stage of development before birth have moral and legally protectable interests in life, health, and well-being;
(3) The word "person" as used in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution had a settled public meaning that included any child living in the womb, and the drafters and ratifiers of the Amendment intended to include unborn children within the scope of the Amendment’s protective embrace;
(4) Abortion deprives an unborn human person of the right to life and the enjoyment of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment; and, be it
Further Resolved, That the intentional destruction of human life prior to birth through abortion is inimical to our national values, history, and sense of justice; and, be it
Further Resolved, That, it being necessary to ensure the liberty and natural rights of all persons within the State of West Virginia, we acknowledge our constitutional duty and solemn obligation to guarantee the equal protection of the laws to unborn children within the jurisdiction of the State of West Virginia; and, be it
Further Resolved, That we call upon the United States Congress to enact appropriate legislation to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection for unborn children nationwide. We likewise call upon the United States Supreme Court to acknowledge and vindicate the right of unborn children to the enjoyment of the equal protection of the laws in every state and federal territory; and, be it
Further Resolved, That, as used in this Resolution, the term "unborn person" or "unborn child" shall mean "the unborn offspring of human beings of the species homo sapiens from the beginning of the biological development of that human being, including from fertilization or cloning, throughout pregnancy until live birth, including the human conceptus, zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo, and fetus; and, be it
Further Resolved, That the Clerk of the House forward a copy of this resolution to West Virginia's Congressional delegation.