Whereas the Declaration of Independence declares it to be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, beginning with the right to life, and that the primary purpose of all government is to defend that supreme right; Whereas among the stated purposes of the Constitution is to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ; Whereas the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees due process of law and the equal protection of the laws to any person ; Whereas the Fourteenth Amendment situated its equal protection guarantee within a common-law and statutory context that prohibited abortion and treated the unborn human being throughout pregnancy as a person , who under common and civil law was to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born (Hall v. Hancock, 32 Mass. (15 Pick.) 255, 257–58 (1834) (Shaw, C.J.)); Whereas the Fourteenth Amendment, like the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that it was meant to sustain, relied on an understanding of the fundamental rights of persons, including the rights to life and personal security, that had been expounded in Blackstone’s Commentaries, which began its first book ( Of the Rights of Persons ) with a discussion of the unborn child’s rights as a person across many bodies of law; Whereas by the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, a supermajority of States had codified laws to prohibit abortion at all stages, and many of these statutes classified abortion as an offense against the person and nearly all described the unborn victim of abortion as an infant or child ; Whereas the primary Framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, Representative John Bingham, explained that the Amendment was written to ensure that no State in the Union should deny to any human being . . . the equal protection of the laws