Did you know this about the IW Knights of Columbus?
“Henry Hyde was among the most ardent, eloquent and effective defenders of the unborn in U.S. history. So it is no exaggeration to say that the late U.S. Representative from Illinois was the greatest American champion in the most important human rights struggle of our time – namely, the fight for equal justice under law for the unborn child. Though he died in 2007, and the legislative achievement bearing his name – the Hyde Amendment – was enacted by Congress more than 40 years ago, Henry Hyde’s work and witness remain as vital as ever in the continuing effort to build a world in which every child, born and unborn, is protected by law and welcomed into life.
Born and bred a New Deal Democrat, Hyde switched parties in 1952 out of concern about communism and voted for Eisenhower. In 1955, he joined the Knights of Columbus as a member of Father McDonald Council 1911 in Elmhurst, Ill. He won a seat in the state legislature in 1966, and in 1974 he won a race for the Sixth Congressional District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for the next 22 years.
As a state legislator he was once inclined to co-sponsor a bill legalizing abortion, because he had never fully considered the issue. Once he studied the bill, Hyde changed his mind and led the opposition to defeat it. By the time he arrived in Washington, D.C., he was an ardent defender of the unborn. Indeed, in the eyes of pro-life supporters, Hyde was the right man at the right place at the right time.
Just one year earlier, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade declared that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution – enacted in 1868 to reverse America’s shameful failure to respect the inalienable dignity of all human beings – precludes extending the equal protection of the laws to the unborn child. Specifically, Roe fabricated a constitutional right to abortion (nested in a larger “right to privacy”) and simultaneously declared that the unborn child is beyond the reach of the U.S. Constitution’s basic protections.
Read with its lesser-known companion case decided the same day, Doe v. Bolton, Roe in effect held that the Constitution forbids meaningful limits on abortion throughout every stage of pregnancy. The consequences of Roe v. Wade and its jurisprudential successors have brought corrosion and corruption of the rule of law – and a death toll approaching 60 million – to the United States.
The Hyde Amendment entrenched in law the commonsense notion that, at a minimum, taxpayers should not be made to pay for abortions, nor should the federal government incentivize abortion for those in poverty.”
The foregoing piece is part of an article found in the KofC Columbia magazine. You can also find a link to the entire article on our Facebook page. Find us at www.IWKnights.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/IWknights9981
We would like to talk with you about becoming an IW Knight. Please visit us on-line at our web site: www.IWknights.com/AboutUs. Or, call Rob at: (314) 973-2373.
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