Lincoln Proposal

Since 1973, more than 60 million American children have been killed by the violence of abortion. The horror of approximately 2,000 daily killings stems from the United States Supreme Court’s constitutional errors in Roe v. Wade. The Court promulgated two fundamental errors in Roe. The Lincoln Proposal offers a bold vision to repair our constitutional order by turning the executive’s attention to the task of correcting Roe’s first and foundational error.

Americans need not accept an interminable status quo of indifference toward the rights of the child, due either to the timidity of our political elite or to the presumption of our judiciary class. 

Presidents have questioned the Supreme Court’s abortion regime, but until Roe’s first and foundational error in its misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment is addressed directly, America’s abortion culture can never be fully uprooted. The Lincoln Proposal focuses presidential energy not merely on abortion’s regulation, but rather on the ultimate goal of the abolition of abortion.

The Lincoln Proposal represents the next step toward an American culture capable of overcoming the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of violence and doubt, and moving boldly into an American future uplifting, empowering, and protecting every member of our common family.

As a Senate candidate, Lincoln acknowledged the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott as binding upon the parties, but denied the opinion possessed precedential effect. Once elected President, Lincoln reaffirmed his commitment to resisting Dred Scott in his First Inaugural Address, warning that “if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” 

—Catherine Glenn Foster, Dr. Chad Pecknold, and Josh Craddock