Rick Perry: Twisting the Constitution to Fit His Religious Views Not Our Founding Fathers
COMMENTARY | Rick Perry must have an ego the size of his house. In his twisted way of thinking, he would like to alter our Constitution. With as much as he'd like to change, he might as well rewrite the entire document. Perry says an amendment needs to be added to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion, because it was "so important ... to the soul of this country and to the traditional values (of) our Founding Fathers."
Either Perry is lying through his teeth, or he is completely ignorant of what our Founding Fathers were all about. Does he think abortion was something that didn't happen until recent modern times? If the founders of our country were so firmly against abortion, they would have made that a part of the original Constitution.
Abortion was not illegal until the mid-19th century, and the procedure goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times. In the era of our Founding Fathers, colonial home medical guides provided recipes using garden grow herbs that would induce abortion.
It wasn't the Church that lead the road to making it a crime. In that era, men were staunchly fighting against women's rights, and this was another way to control them, to hold them back in their traditional roles as child-bearer.
Did making abortion a crime stop the practice? It did not. Two million abortions a year took place, compared to the 1 1/2 million abortions performed per year today. Instead of stopping abortions, many women lost their lives or became permanently sterile because of infections from a botched procedure.
After abortion was legalized in New York, the maternal-mortality rate dropped 45 percent. When abortion was illegal, an estimated 5,000 women died per year.
Do we really want to go back to the days when women's bodies were controlled by men who allowed them to die? Perry does.
Perry and other right wingers love to talk about our Founding Fathers traditional values, claiming they were all Christian men and that our country was founded on the Christian religion, but this is just another lie in a distorted version of our nation's history. There were some Christian men among the Founders, but most were Deists.
The Texas governor wants to take away women's right to a safe and legal abortion, he is against equal rights for gays including same sex marriage, and the man even goes as far as attacking President Barack Obama for his support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Republicans love to talk about how they want to get rid of "big government" and allow citizens more freedom. If this is true, why do so many seem bent on taking away so many people's rights?
I wholly believe our Founding Fathers did not have these intentions for America, and unless Perry is more than 235 years old, he has no right to infuse his beliefs into those who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Either Perry is lying through his teeth, or he is completely ignorant of what our Founding Fathers were all about. Does he think abortion was something that didn't happen until recent modern times? If the founders of our country were so firmly against abortion, they would have made that a part of the original Constitution.
Abortion was not illegal until the mid-19th century, and the procedure goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times. In the era of our Founding Fathers, colonial home medical guides provided recipes using garden grow herbs that would induce abortion.
It wasn't the Church that lead the road to making it a crime. In that era, men were staunchly fighting against women's rights, and this was another way to control them, to hold them back in their traditional roles as child-bearer.
Did making abortion a crime stop the practice? It did not. Two million abortions a year took place, compared to the 1 1/2 million abortions performed per year today. Instead of stopping abortions, many women lost their lives or became permanently sterile because of infections from a botched procedure.
After abortion was legalized in New York, the maternal-mortality rate dropped 45 percent. When abortion was illegal, an estimated 5,000 women died per year.
Do we really want to go back to the days when women's bodies were controlled by men who allowed them to die? Perry does.
Perry and other right wingers love to talk about our Founding Fathers traditional values, claiming they were all Christian men and that our country was founded on the Christian religion, but this is just another lie in a distorted version of our nation's history. There were some Christian men among the Founders, but most were Deists.
The Texas governor wants to take away women's right to a safe and legal abortion, he is against equal rights for gays including same sex marriage, and the man even goes as far as attacking President Barack Obama for his support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Republicans love to talk about how they want to get rid of "big government" and allow citizens more freedom. If this is true, why do so many seem bent on taking away so many people's rights?
I wholly believe our Founding Fathers did not have these intentions for America, and unless Perry is more than 235 years old, he has no right to infuse his beliefs into those who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Published by K.C. Dermody - Featured Contributor in Travel
K.C. Dermody is a freelance writer, writing for YCN, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, and OMG! Yahoo as well as other web content projects, and working on a historical fiction novel based in ancient Ireland. She... View profile
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7 Comments
Post a CommentTesting. Does this section work? I have posted several comments that have not appeared.
No disrespect to Smith, but most of the information you posted is totally incorrect. It is similar to the falsified version of history that some in the Christian religion would have you believe. Ben Franklin was most definitely not an orthodox Christian man by any means.
Benjamin Franklin
Even Franklin the deist is equivocal. He was raised in a Puritan family and later adopted then abandoned deism. Though not an orthodox Christian, it was 81-year-old Franklin's emotional call to humble prayer on June 28, 1787, that was the turning point for a hopelessly stalled Convention. James Madison recorded the event in his collection of notes and debates from the Federal Convention. Franklin's appeal contained no less than four direct references to Scripture.
And have we forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.[2]
Three of the four cornerstones of the Constitution--Franklin, Washington, and Madison--were firmly rooted in Christianity. But what about Thomas Jefferson? His signature cannot be found at the end of the Constitution, but his voice permeates the entire document.
The Constitutional Convention
It's not necessary to dig through the diaries, however, to determine which faith was the Founder's guiding light. There's an easier way to settle the issue.
The phrase "Founding Fathers" is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group of men, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, like Jefferson, whose thinking deeply influenced the shaping of our nation. These 55 Founding Fathers, though, made up the core.
The denominational affiliations of these men were a matter of public record. Among the delegates were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown, and only 3 deists--Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin--this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith.[1]
This is a revealing tally. It shows that the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were almost all Christians, 51 of 55--a full 93%. Indeed, 70% were Calvinists (the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and the Dutch Reformed), considered by some to be the most extreme and dogmatic form of Christianity.
I'd never thought of the current political debate on abortion from a historical perspective, nice work. I agree that Perry's take on the Constitution is extremely chilling.
Your opinion helped me on my report, thanks.
Strong opinions here! Great job on speaking your views!