By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board
The issue: President Donald Trump this week announced his abortion policy, favoring states independently deciding how to regulate abortion.
We say: Regardless of your position on abortion, this view respects the concept of state’s rights written into the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by the Founding Fathers, and is a respectful position for freedom and liberty.
The Founding Fathers of a young nation they called the United States of America never had the intention for an over-intrusive federal government to create a nanny state, where our every action is regulated and legislated. We were to be an independent, free people; a republic, if we could keep it.
In the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the final entry into the Bill of Rights, the Founders wrote: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In other words, in limited federal government, this far you may go, but no further.
It is known as the state’s rights clause and establishes that the federal government only has those powers which explicitly have been granted to it by the people, through the U.S. Constitution. It preserves both the concept of federalism and of a republic.
In a laying out of his policy toward abortion, President Donald Trump has correctly pointed to the importance of state’s rights in the matter, a policy of federalism by which only those basic responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution are those of the federal government.
The 10th Amendment, as much or even more than any other, ensures a free people. It has long been ignored by a federal government which intrudes into every aspect of our daily lives, and because of it we are a less free people than we have ever been.
“The states will determine [abortion policy] by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state,” Trump announced this week in a campaign position statement video on Truth Social.
He correctly notes that there will be differences in policy between states, with perhaps some banning abortion after conception, some at 15 weeks and maybe some later in the pregnancy. That’s precisely the point of the 10th Amendment. It was the intent of the Founders that the states would have policy independence from one another and that a free people could decide what is best. A free people can also decide to vote with their feet and leave one state for another which better meets their values.
“Some will be more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Trump said. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
It is refreshing to hear a federal politician and potential holder of the highest office in the land endorse state’s rights, a concept explicitly and intentionally written into the U.S. Constitution that today feels long gone. It is not simply a case for abortion, but one for all powers not delegated to the federal government.
With his declaration this one policy should be reserved to the states, Trump has positioned himself as the candidate of freedom and liberty for the people and of the states. We hope he carries this policy forward to other issues.