Florida Personhood: Justice for All Human Beings Cannot Wait
“I have come to give you Life and that more abundantly.” ~Jesus
Why Personhood, Florida? from Mrs. Brenda MacMenamin on Vimeo.
God is the author of human rights – mine, yours – every human being from their very beginning. First among these on which all others stand is our right to be recognized as persons – as children of God, made in His image and likeness.
As the hands and feet of Christ it is up to us to safeguard this most fundamental of these rights – human personhood.
The nation’s founding fathers recognized this all-important responsibility. “We hold these truths to be self-evident …”
Yes, even during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Thomas Jefferson and many of our founding fathers desired to right what was even then viewed as an a grave hypocrisy and injustice in our newborn American country. They struggled to recognize the personhood of Africans – both slave and free.
Now was not the time said some. The economic burden on the plantation owners would be too great. The public sentiment was not great enough some offered.
The fervent acquiesced. Laws were proposed during the Constitutional Convention to be enacted in 1808 that would outlaw slavery and set slaves free. But between the Constitutional Convention and 1808, the cotton gin was invented. Greed set in, hearts grew cold and we compromised again.
As Lincoln taught us, when our liberty curtails the liberty of another, we seek not liberty but tyranny.
Quoting from our Florida state Constitution:
“We, the people of the State of Florida, being grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, in order to secure its benefits….. do ordain and establish this constitution ……All natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life ….”
Some may be concerned that now is not the time for a human personhood amendment. Some may say there is a better way. To this we say, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his passionate epistle from the Birmingham jail, “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”
Our Floridian Founding Fathers laid upon our shoulders the right, better yet the responsibility, to defend life – of every human being.
As we learn the price they paid to recognize our rights, can we do less to recognize the personhood of every human being on which all other rights stand?
In 1808 the window of grace slammed shut and it took bloodshed and hundreds of thousands of lives before America finally birthed the Emancipation Proclamation and recognized the personhood of African Americans.
A window of grace is before us again. If we do not whole-heartedly work to establish personhood with all our hearts, our minds, our souls and our strength, our compromise, like the compromise at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will result not in the possibility of a wider door in the future, but a slamming shut on God’s grace yet again.
Wait means never.
Justice for all human beings cannot wait.
What is the price of keeping our liberty? Very small compared to the price of losing it.
Our cause is just and our God is able!
Amendment language:
(a) The rights of every person shall be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every
innocent human being to life. The right to life is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.
(b) With respect to the fundamental and inalienable rights of all persons guaranteed in this Constitution, the
word ‘person’ applies to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, sex, health, function, or condition of dependency, including unborn children at every stage of their biological development regardless of the method of creation.
For the generation yet to be born,
Mrs. Brenda MacMenamin PersonhoodFL
PersonhoodFL@gmail.com
“…..we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord,….so the next generation might know them even the children not yet born— and they in turn will teach their own children. So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.” Psalm 78: 4, 6-7
