The most interesting moments during yesterday’s presidential forum in South Carolina came when the Republican candidates grappled with a thorny question about the United States constitution and human rights. One of the questioners, Professor Robert George of Princeton, wanted to know whether the candidates would, as president, refuse to abide by the Supreme Court’s rulings that have declared a constitutional right to abortion and support federal legislation to protect the right to life of unborn children.

George noted that Congress is authorized to pass legislation enforcing the 14th amendment, which declares that states may not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” And he quoted Abraham Lincoln’s remarks from his first inaugural address rebuking the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling: “If the policy of the government upon vitals 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.”