Sen. Jake Chapman (R-Adel) spoke Monday afternoon at the Iowa Pro-Life Prayer Rally. Chapman, who floor managed the Protect Life Amendment earlier this session in the Senate, spoke at length about rights.
“Nearly 250 years ago the founders of this great nation penned perhaps the most profound words of modern history,” Chapman said. “At the time, many deemed these beliefs and views as radical and in fact decried these men as criminals, their crime: treason! Yet today; these are words we revere.”
Chapman said the founders established that rights are inherent and the source of our rights come from God, not a king, not government, not the legislature or any other man.
“It is for that reason that government was created in the first place, to secure and safeguard those rights,” Chapman said. “The most fundamental and essential right, one we hold to be self-evident is that of life. The right to live. The right to self-preservation, using all necessary force if necessary to maintain our lives.”
Nearly 1.5 million Americans have lost their lives in the last 250 years in war.
“These grave men and women gave their lives in defending and preserving freedom, liberty and life itself,” Chapman said. “Yet, these numbers are dwarfed in comparison to another war that exists. A war that is being raged against the defenseless, against the voiceless. A war against the unborn.”
The count of those lost to abortion is over 60 million and counting. Because of that, Chapman said, his colleagues in the Senate and the House have worked to recognize the sanctity of life, only to see five unelected judges exercise judicial activism in creating a fundamental right to abortion.
“Now is our time to send a decisive and clear message to the courts that ‘We the People’ will not allow unelected judges to use the power of the gavel to rewrite our constitution,” he said. “Now is our opportunity to have our voices heard. Now is the time to be a voice for the voiceless.”
Chapman quoted William Wilberforce, who at times was the lone voice fighting for the abolition of the slave trade.
“When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am to bring before the House—a subject, in which the interests, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world, and of posterity, are involved: and when I think, at the same time, on the weakness of the advocate who has undertaken this great cause—when these reflections press upon my mind, it is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacy to such a task. But when I reflect, however, on the encouragement which I have had, through the whole course of a long and laborious examination of this question, and how much candor I have experienced, and how conviction has increased within my own mind, in proportion as I have advanced in my labors;—when I reflect, especially, that however averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one opinion in the end;—when I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage—I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade.
As soon as ever I had arrived thus far in my investigation of the slave trade, I confess to you sir, so enormous so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition. A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might,—let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition.”
Chapman closed, imploring pro-life supporters to continue the fight.
“So too, let us not rest, let us make with a firm commitment the determination that we will stand firmly in our place and advocate for what we know to be right and to which history will kindly look back on,” he said. “Let each of us be a part of writing the concluding chapter of this war on the voiceless and then let us write the next volume of history which reveres life! God bless each of you and our righteous cause!”
