- Right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness declaration of independence license#
- Right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness declaration of independence free#
Right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness declaration of independence license#
Their opinion is that “the natural right of personal autonomy includes the right to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination” overlooking that the unborn baby is a unique person having their own DNA, autonomy and an inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as well. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness isn’t license to do whatever one wants without consequence. … One of the protected rights is ‘personal autonomy,’ which ‘allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life – decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.’” In other words, the unborn baby is “property” that can be treated at the whim of the pregnant woman in any manner she wishes. Today, 243 years after the Declaration of Independence and 160 years after Kansas passed its Constitution repeating the Declaration’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness phrase in its Bill of Rights, the Kansas Supreme Court has thrust Kansans back into the “property” debate. Also prohibiting slavery, in its 1859 Bill of Rights, Kansas sided with the moral view that private property rights didn’t include the ownership of people (slavery). Today’s Kansas Supreme Court, in its pursuit of abortion rights, finds that while the text makes clear that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are among the inalienable natural rights, there may be others. So instead of using Locke’s easily understood word property, Jefferson, at the urging of Adams and Franklin, avoided taking a position either for or against slavery, substituting the less contentious phrase “the Pursuit of Happiness.” Southern colonies saw slaves as property and wouldn’t have supported the revolution if there was a prohibition against owning slaves. Northern colonies didn’t want to sign a document that defended any concept of private property rights which included the “ownership” of people.
Right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness declaration of independence free#
Historians believe that Jefferson based the phrase on the 18th-century British political philosopher John Locke, who wrote that governments are instituted to secure people’s rights to “life, liberty and property.” In his second treatise, Locke writes, “ … Nobody in the natural state has the political power to tell others what to do … men are not free to do whatever they please … no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions … it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.”īut there was a problem with the word property.
“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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – U.S.