“Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march) until we send to our city councils (Yes, sir), state legislatures, (Yes, sir) and the United States Congress, (Yes, sir) men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”

“Natural Law” MEANS that law that man can see without revelation; what is common to Christians, Jews, and Pagans alike. That’s what makes it “natural”. Aristotle doesn’t mention God here; Aquinas cites God only as an explanation, not as evidence or proof in arguing with Pagans.

Another thing to note is that if rights come from the Constitution only, then they are civil, not natural. (A distinction blurred because people associate “civil” with “minority rights.)

Darwin simply has nothing to do with it. Many people before Darwin were believers in materialism. Democritus long before, Hobbes most notably more recently. Arguments that we have a soul are just as valid since Darwin as they were before. They operate on a different plane.

I agree with them that amendments should not be made for transient and modest needs or desires. Plus the constitution is intended to define HOW the government works, rather than what legal positions it should take [BOR aside?]. Many positions should be obtained via normal legislative procedures and consensus, not amendments — something that is all too common in many state constitutional amendments (such as in FL).

And yet I wonder if the Founders did not end up making it too difficult, such that candidate amendments never get put on the table for wider national debate and “official” consideration. This is why I have suggested previously that perhaps we need an amendment that would make it mandatory that a Convention of the States be called every (say) 50 (or 60) years. We may well need something to side step the Congress when they are in fact creating the problem under consideration. It also provides an opportunity at least once per normal lifetime for a citizen to vote for convention delegates and possibly for ratification of proposed amendments as well.

I gather there are several proposals out there for controlling or restricting the COS agenda under consideration, or preselecting the set of candidate amendments to be addressed. The argument about a potential for a runaway convention can be handled, I believe — both in the beginning and at ratification if necessary.

If there really were no viable candidate amendments to be debated, then the COS meets, says things are great, we have checked the constitutional box, and we will see your grandchildren in 50 years.

At conception, a human being begins the process that leads to adulthood. Its entirely arbitrary to decide that prior to birth, human beings have no rights. Labeling a baby a ‘fetus’ is a categorical medical term and it is sheer pretense to claim that one stage in an individual’s life possesses a ‘right’ to life but not at another stage in that person’s life. Note: to assert that personhood begins at birth, is to essentially deny the existence of the spirit/soul. But if they don’t exist, then there’s nothing to take into an afterlife and we all just face obliteration. In which case, make merry while you can and hedonist/nihilism becomes the highest value.

There’s a label for the taking of an innocent life and the Sixth Commandment directly addresses it; “Thou shalt not… murder”.

“a Constitutional amendment. That is the way to establish a national right or to take it away”

If a Constitutional amendment can take away a national right, then we have no ‘rights’ for to be a right it must possess the quality of unalterableness. So If a Constitutional amendment can take away a “national’ right… what we actually have are privileges, ones determined by the current consensus of the mob. Which is what the mob did when it enacted Prohibition.
This is why the founders stated that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. And regardless of the fact that those words are not contained within the Constitution, they are the underlying rationale of the Constitution.

That’s also why the only lasting basis for ‘natural’ rights, i.e. “unalienable” rights is if they are granted to us by a creator. Absent that precept, we’re left with the chaos of disparate individual’s subjective opinions. The ongoing societal dissolution in America is directly attributable to a society that imagines that it can retain societal cohesion absent theological precepts.

John Adams wrote directly of this point when he observed that, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”

Politics is indeed downstream from culture and culture is downstream from a culture’s theological precepts. So ultimately, laws extend down from those precepts.

You mention civil redress as mental anguish and potentially receiving money damages, etc. at 5:59pm. I think that is along the lines of my thinking, but really I brought up the male’s standing as (part of the) justification for making abortion illegal [with selective exceptions]. I am generally in sync and sympathy with Niketas’s remarks, but if your points apply to where it is still legal, then we are not yet discussing quite the same thing.
And I see Niketas has also raised the parallel issue from the male side: “Our laws have required in the past that spouses consent to things like sterilization, so it wouldn’t be some novel legal theory.” Not quite the same thing, but similar “harms” might be claimed, and equally justified demands for redress if that kind of law was violated. I suspect some religions also assert such sterilization to be a sin?

Only the woman/mother is allowed to make the choice of aborting the baby. The man/father is then forced to abide by her decision, e.g, if she keeps the baby the man/father didn’t want, the man/father will be forced to support that child until it reaches adulthood 18-years or so. (am not sure what the law is now on that, but men used to be tossed into jail for missing child support payments).

Maybe the Rule of Law should bring back “the scarlet letter ‘A’ (for “adultery”)”?