Constitutions are like locks.
Locks keep honest folks out. But a determined thief will simply smash and grab. In the same way, citizen-constitutions are hijacked by doing violence to language.
That’s what Wyoming’s highest court did last Tuesday. In a stunning 4-1 decision, a majority of the Court threw out Wyoming’s “Life is a Human Right Act.” And, with it, four justices tossed out the people’s ability to make common-sense laws.
The Wyoming Supreme Court crowed: “[I]t is the exclusive province of this Court to interpret the Wyoming Constitution.”
Exclusive!
Five un-elected lawyers, who serve solely by the appointment of the governor - and without legislative confirmation - claim that they are the only persons in the universe with the power to tell you what your Constitution says. So much for three equal branches of government under the will of the people
Neither the legislators that you elected to represent your voice, nor the governor who appointed the court’s members to serve the people, nor any elected officer in all the state - not even the people who wrote the Constitution - have any say in the matter.
The majority claimed this exclusive power because it didn’t like what the elected branches of government defined as “health care.”
The Legislature and the governor define health as “freedom from physical disease or pain,” and they define “care” as the maintenance of that condition.
The Court, however, prefers to splice the two words together and assign to the term an Orwellian meaning unrelated to either word.
Only by this newspeak can it redefine “health care” as “medical procedures performed or administered by qualified medical professionals,” especially “Drs. [Rene] Hinkle and [Giovannina] Anthony.”
If one of these high priests of medicine administers a drug that prematurely expels a healthy baby to die on the table, this is called “health care.”
And if a “qualified medical professional” inserts a cannula into the womb that tears apart a patient incapable of consent, this must be “health care,” too.
In fact, there is no clear principle that limits the majority’s definition of “health care” to the annihilation of unborn babies. The novel “constitutional” theory that they propound applies to infants, children, adolescents, and adults, as well.
Last year, the Legislature rightly restricted the insane “medical” practice of cutting off the healthy breasts of prepubescent girls. The Court has now given itself the power to overrule that law.
Assisted suicide, organ harvesting, and lab-grown human experiments are now “exclusively the province” of our illustrious Court.
Thankfully, one voice dissented. Justice Kari Gray spoke sense into the nonsense.
After 40 pages of stifling gobbledygook, her concise dissent was a breath of fresh air.
Most notably, she puts the people’s Constitution at the center of her opinion. Rather than squabbling with the other branches of government over who has the power to define and redefine the people’s words, she recognizes that the people have already defined their own words.
Gray criticizes the majority for talking down to the people as though they were a basket of deplorables. “The Majority analysis proceeds,” she wrote, “as if the voters were incapable of understanding the amendment they ratified.”
At the heart of the Life is a Human Right Act is the second provision of Wyoming’s Constitution. “In their inherent right to life. . . all members of the human race are equal” (Art. 1, Sec. 2).
Gray understands this. And she understands that everything in the Constitution that follows hinges on the radical inclusiveness of this provision.
The people of Wyoming penned these words shortly after fighting a bloody Civil War over the equal rights of fellow members of the human race.
The U.S. Supreme Court had excluded some members of the human race from Constitutional protections in the infamous Dred Scott decision.
That remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the United States Supreme Court. It was eclipsed only by the now-defunct abomination of Roe v. Wade.
The people of Wyoming wanted nothing to do with such sophistry. So, they deliberately wrote in their Constitution, “all members of the human race.”
And they elected legislators to put their Constitution into law. These men and women have understood for 135 years that unborn babies are members of the human race and, by that fact, are intentionally protected by the Wyoming Constitution.
Governor Gordon reads their words the same way. So, he signed the Life is a Human Right Act into law because unborn babies are members of the human race.
Justice Gray can read too. But the four horsemen of the apocalypse apparently can’t.
They never even mentioned that, according to the very Constitution that they are claiming to interpret, “all members of the human race are equal.”
Halfway into their opinion, they promise to address the problem that abortion “ends a fetal life.” Fourteen pages later, they renege on that promise, “[W]e need not decide in this case whether the State has a compelling interest in protecting unborn life…” (paragraph 82)!!
Excuse me. This is the only thing that you were hired to decide!
We already know that you despise the Life is a Human Right Act. Your contempt for it and for the people who wrote it oozes from every page of your opinion.
But we only ask that you read our words, “[A]ll members of the human race are equal.” All means all. It’s really that simple.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at hhttps://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
