To the editor:

Here’s something on the subject of abortion that is, well, not from the Pope, not in the Catholic vein, not religious at all. But it is something that every politician ought to be made to face up to.

Shortly after the ink was dry on the Constitution, James Madison recommended to Congress, and procured copies of, Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Common Law of England” as the reference source for the making of law.

Blackstone identified three primary natural rights; life, liberty and property.

He addressed life first:

“Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual, and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb… An infant in ventre sa mere, or in the mother’ womb, is supposed in law to be born for many purposes. It is capable of having a legacy…to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterwards by such limitation, as if it were actually born. And in this point the civil law agrees with ours.”

That’s not religion. But law. And it is just as clear.

The “right to life” begins “in the womb” as if the infant “were born.”

The “right to life” begins “in the womb” — “in the law!”

PETE BRADY

Bainbridge Island