Three times in modern history the word “person” has been redefined…
1857 – The U.S. Supreme Court declares that black people are not legal persons; that they are the property of their owners, who can buy, sell, torture and kill them at will.
Blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” (Chief Justice Roger Taney in Dred Scott V. Sandford, 7-2 decision)
1936 – The German Supreme Court, the Reichsgericht, refuses to recognize Jews living in Germany as persons in the legal sense. Genocide is legal. (Ernst Fraenkel, “The Dual State, ” Oxford University Press, 1941, p95)
1973 – U.S. Supreme Court rules that the unborn are not persons in the legal sense; they have no civil or human rights; they are the property of the mother, who can choose to kill them up to the day of delivery. Abortion is legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy. (Doe V. Bolton, 7-2 decision)
“The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” (Justice Harry Blackmun in Roe V. Wade, 7-2 decision)
