The oldest and most venerated of all settled laws is the prohibition against the shedding of innocent blood. It is a law older than the Code of Hammurabi, which was written on columns of granite, and older than the Ten Commandments, written on tablets of stone. So old is the law that it is written on the heart of man in the form of instinct. Man by nature abhors homicide.

In the case of abortion, the victims are the most defenseless among us, and the violence is done by those who are entrusted with their care. The act of aborting a child remains evil in itself in all times, in all places, under all circumstances, and is prohibited by the most settled law of all mankind. For any legislator or jurist to deny this obvious and simply understood truth is deception, whether he or she is a United States senator, as is Susan Collins, who is, in my view, in favor of abortion, or a nominee to be a justice of the Supreme Court, as is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who is against abortion.

In the case of Judge Kavanaugh, his disavowal of this concept (by telling Sen. Collins that Roe v. Wade is “settled law”) causes incalculable damage to the pro-life movement and to the law, and to the existing social order, all of which must at all times be based on reason and truth. And it may well be that Judge Kavanaugh is telling a lie to secure a personal advantage.

This is a good time to heed the admonition of the late Sen. John McCain, who once said, “I was raised to know that I should never sacrifice principle for personal ambition.” By doing so, Kavanaugh is automatically disqualified from holding a seat on the Supreme Court.

Fritz Spencer

Old Town