Ending Murder In Idaho

The Caller’s Background and Concern for Abortion in Idaho

Alright, so what is your name and what do you do?

My name is Scott Herndon, and I do a lot of things, Jeff. For example, I'm a home builder in North Idaho, I'm a citizen, but one of the things that I care a lot about is murder by abortion in the state of Idaho.

I care about a lot of things, I'm involved in legislative bills right now in the state of Idaho related to child protective services, related to marriage, we're doing something with marriage right now.

And partly the reason I'm doing that is because I'm a born again Christian who knows that as a Christian I have to apply my faith to every aspect of my life, home building, ministry at the jail, and the civil governmental realm.

So I ran for office a couple of years ago for the Senate up in my district because I cared about the murders by abortion that happen in the state of Idaho, there are 28 every single week, and I've cared about it enough years that if about five, it's been so many years I lose track of time, but it was 2015 we had a conference where I think I got the idea for how government should actually be approaching this problem.

So we had a conference in Coeur d 'Alene, Rusty Thomas came, Matt Trella came, and my eyes were open to how we need to address the problem legislatively. So I always say in the assistance realm, so when you're out at the mill, I'm out at the mill, and we're trying to turn mothers away from abortion, there's a lot of acceptable ways to do that biblically, and we can try ultrasounds, and we can try preaching, and we can try signs, and we can try all kinds of methods, and we can try to reach them before they ever get there, but legislatively there's only option A.

The State’s Duty to Punish Evildoers and the Need for Abortion Abolition

The legislature and the government by God only has one delegated responsibility, and that's to punish evildoers, and for all the years preceding this, they've attempted to appease evil, and so when I had this revelation in 2015 that there's only one approach, I said I have to get involved, and I have to try to change what's happening in Idaho, so that's what brings me here with you today.

So how many people are in Idaho?

1 .7 million.

So not a very large population.

No, in fact, I can't remember his position here at the college, but he said in England where he's from, it's the same size as Idaho, and they have 70 million people in the United Kingdom. We have 1 .7 million people in this space, and in my opinion, and we're known as a red Republican conservative state, which I can tell you like every other state, that's not quite the case in practical politics, but I think being a small state with actually some very good legislators and a lot of conservatives who have fled here from other states, a lot of people who love the Lord have fled here from other states, I think that this is a place where we can make an impact and have the real possibility of training our government and making them enact righteousness and justice when it comes to murder by abortion.

So you're calling it murder by abortion.

I do.

And that's what we call it as well, and it's a biblical definition, and it's also a biological scientific definition in terms of what's in the womb, human being, we're talking about taking an innocent human life in an unjustified manner, right?

So murder, and when we talk about what we're facing in all of the states now with the assumption of Roe v. Wade is the law, right? So it's a faulty assumption, it's a fallacious assumption to begin with, but we've accepted this in our state.

So in Arizona right now, we have a statute that criminalizes abortion. I think it needs a much stronger language and better definitions in it, but right now as of, in Arizona as of right now, abortion is in the state illegal, but it's happening because Roe v. Wade is the law.

Idaho’s Abortion Statutes, Homicide Law, and the Prosecution Ban

Now in Idaho, what's the status?

Okay, so the statute in Idaho is greatly in our favor. If I ignore the 40 years plus of pro-life efforts they have put, and I don't say that negatively about them, I don't honestly think they knew to do any better, but they put two chapters on our books that are unhelpful because those are the chapters that basically say if you meet this condition or you meet that condition, then you can kill your baby.

One of those entirely is a law from 2011, it was the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection.

Act.

Those, and all those statutes that the pro-life movement has created, the pro-life lobbyists are in two chapters in our Title 18, which is crimes and punishments. But if we go elsewhere in Chapter 18, crimes and punishments, 18 -4001 defines unlawful homicide, murder.

And there we have rightly defined, so I look back in our recent history and I thank the legislature for rightfully defining the killing a pre-born child in the womb, embryo or fetus, is an unlawful homicide.

So that is correctly defined in Chapter 40, which is our homicide chapter of Title 18, crimes and punishments. However, in 18 -4016, 4016, we have a prohibition on the prosecution of mothers and abortionists when the mother authorizes the killing of her pre-born child.

So I always use the example that up in our district, which I'm up in North Idaho, in Priest River, when I was a jail chaplain, and this was maybe five years ago, there was a guy in a holding cell that the jail guards wanted me to talk to, he had just been arrested and brought in, he's wearing a green turtle suit, and his name was Jeremy Swanson.

And he had a glazed look on his eye, and I'm in there, and there's spiritual darkness in.

There.

And two days previous to my being in that room with him, he had ice-picked his pregnant wife, Jennifer, in Priest River, Idaho. Well, today, at this minute, Jeremy Swanson, is his name, is doing two life sentences in the Idaho Department of Corrections, one for murdering Jennifer, his wife, and one for murdering their pre-born child, which was before viability at that date.

He was charged with two first-degree homicides. He pled to one first-degree homicide and one second-degree homicide. So the law is right in the state of Idaho. However, had Jennifer that same day gone to an abortion mill, which in our area, she'd actually have to go to Spokane, which Idaho has no jurisdiction over.

But had there been an abortion mill in the state of Idaho that she went to, she would have had a prohibition of prosecution, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a you-can-kill-your-baby-free card.

Why Roe v. Wade and Judicial Supremacy Are Treated as Fictions

Right.

So this is the challenge, though, right? You have states that criminalize abortion but accept abortion because of a faulty understanding of Roe v. Wade means, what it does, what it's capable of doing.

But you also have the issue of the pro-life lobbyists, who have actually strengthened Roe by adding things to statutes in states that prohibit abortion that actually give them room now, because the pro-life lobbyists, to actually commit abortions, to kill their children, to murder their children through abortion.

So when we talk about what needs to be done from this point forward and what you're involved in right now, you said there is no plan B, right? This is a life-and-death issue. This is about righteousness.

This is about justice. This is about protecting the innocent. So there isn't compromise available on this issue, because we're talking about life and.

Death.

That's what we're facing here. There's no wiggle room, and there ought not be any wiggle room. So what is the path forward, and what are you doing right now?

Okay. So we were blessed that for years I was lobbying legislators as a private citizen to first remedy the Idaho Code. So a lot of people say, well, if the Supreme Court just overturns Roe v. Wade, then we'll be in the clear.

That's not the problem. It is that the state of Idaho has put this statute on its books that allows murder by abortion.

Right.

So remedy number one, first step, is I had to get some legislators on board to run a bill that would basically change Idaho Code to make it just. And our Constitution in Idaho is actually a very good document.

I just looked at Alaska's, because I'm about to go up there. Theirs is not nearly as good as ours. And in Article 1, Section 1, are the rights of man in the state of Idaho. It says that we have an inalienable right to life and to secure safety.

Inalienable, of course, we know means that the right comes from God and cannot be alienated from us. So that's the core essence of the Idaho Constitution. It also says that everybody must have equal access to justice.

That's in our Idaho Constitution, Article 1, Section 18, and that we cannot have preferential treatment for different groups, meaning like allowing mothers to get away with murder. That's in Section 2 of the same article.

So it's a great Constitution. So now we have to change the statutes that permit murder, because that's what they do, to not permit murder. That's number one. But a component to that bill. So we have a bill.

It's called the Idaho Abortion Human Rights Act. The legislature just convened two days ago, and that bill is in draft form. And my lead author just sent it to legislative services and gave them the okay to RS it, which turns it into what's called a routing slip, which is the first step in the bill process.

So we have this bill that removes the prohibition on prosecution, says that all abortions are unlawful under our homicides chapter, and thus they'll be treated like any other homicide. So that's equity in law.

The other big piece, though, is the education component to make judicial supremacy a four letter profanity. That's my goal.

Exposing the Fiction of Judicial Supremacy

What do you mean by that? I like that. But what's that mean?

Yeah.

So what that means is yesterday, I looked at a document that Right to Life of Idaho, which is a pro-life lobby organization in the capital. The lady who's their legislative liaison has been there for over 30 years in that position and a juror's doctorate, so an attorney on their board issued a four page document about how our bill is not the right way.

This document said that because of judicial supremacy, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. And so I've been framing this argument to my legislators. And then he made these constitutional, what he thought were constitutional arguments.

And he's an attorney. But if you read the actual Constitution, nowhere does it say that the judiciary is supreme. And in fact, Alexander Hamilton wrote and Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers. If you look at number 45 and you look at Federalist number 81, they talked about how the judiciary was going to be the least strongest of the branches and that it has no ability to enforce its usurpations by force.

In other words, when they step out of line and they do things that are against the legislative will and legislatures write law, not the judicial branch. And when they violate the legislative will, they have no power to enforce it.

Yet we act as if they do, but it's all a fiction. And so the fiction is this idea of judicial supremacy. And if you've ever read Hans Christian Andersen's book about how the emperor has no clothes, but he convinces everybody, convinces the people that he is wearing clothes until boy calls it out and says the emperor has no clothes.

That's what we're doing with our bill. That's what you're doing with the apologia. We're basically telling you the Supreme Court has no clothes. They have no power to enforce their opinions as if they are law.

And that's the judicial fallacy. That's the fiction of judicial supremacy. And so we have to get people, our legislators to understand that judicial supremacy is a.

Lie.

It's not true. And we should only obey the judiciary where they in fact correctly interpreted law and the constitution. And all of our legislators and our governor have taken an oath to uphold the constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof as the Supreme law of the land, which means they have the right of independent judgment, which means they themselves are by oath put in a position where they have to independently judge whether the judiciary got it right.

And in Roe v. Wade, it clearly didn't. It's complete legal fiction that there's a right to kill in the 14th amendment, complete legal fiction.

That's right.

And so we just need to call it out.

Right.

Now what will happen, and I always say the judiciary, the reason it's got no power is because it doesn't run police. It doesn't have a military and it doesn't run the prisons. Who does that for them? It's the states primarily that do that.

And so the state has all the control. So all the state has to do is say, we're not going to treat this opinion as if it's law. In fact, we're going to go the other direction.

And it's something that I don't want to cut you off, but it's something that's understood and appealed to today. In many other cases, you'll have states like Colorado, Washington, Arizona, whatever, California, whatever the case may be saying, no, we're going to legalize marijuana.

And we'll be brave enough to legalize marijuana to go against any other opinions and inflect state rights.

I point that particular aspect out, marijuana, unlike abortion, murder by abortion, there is no actual federal law. Laws federally would be made by the Congress. And by the way, they do not have the enumerated power in the constitution.

The document of the constitution never gave the federal government the authority to regulate murder, to criminalize it or do anything. That's a state power. So that's what we talk about when we talk about enumerated powers.

So the federal government could pass a law that seems to be constitutional, but if it's not one of their enumerated powers, it is not actually constitutional. But they don't have any law about murder by abortion at all at the federal level.

Well, they do about marijuana. It's called the Controlled Substances Act, which was passed in 1970 by the Congress, signed into law by Richard Nixon. And in that law, marijuana is an illegal drug, a schedule one drug that's illegal to possess and distribute.

Not only that, but in 2005, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Gonzales versus Raich. And in that decision, they said the federal government has the right to go in to any state under the Interstate Commerce Clause.

And if we had a private transaction regarding marijuana, the federal government can come into this state of Idaho where, let's say, you and I are privately transacting this business and arrest us and prosecute us.

And the Supreme Court said that's absolutely constitutional under the Interstate Commerce Clause, which, by the way, I would tell you is also judicial fiction. But the point is, clearly 44 states have completely disregarded both an actual law by the Congress, the Controlled Substances Act, and a United States Supreme Court decision in 2005, Gonzales versus Raich.

Except Idaho, interestingly enough, Idaho is one of six states that hasn't. But the point is, they know that judicial supremacy is a fiction when they want to know.

The Legislative Strategy: Educating Lawmakers and Mobilizing Citizens

It. And in this case, well, let's simplify this. Give me the bullet points. So in this case, you talk about educating legislators on the sovereignty of the state, the powers of the Constitution, enumerated powers, who has power, what's this court opinion, what does it actually do for us, do we have to obey it, is it law?

So you're educating legislators, you're pointing people to justice, protecting the pre-born human beings in the womb. And so what's the bullet point? What are you doing now? What do we need to do now to help you?

And then how can we adopt what you're doing where we're at? Because you're being quite effective, and you're not a senator.

I'm not.

You're not the governor.

I'm not a governor.

I'm an individual citizen in the state of Idaho.

And you're having a massive impact, by God's grace, in the area of justice for the pre-born. So what are the bullet points? How do we help you?

Okay, so here's the bullet point. The main one is, there's a lot of people in the state of Idaho who agree with us, a lot of people. And the reason I got excited about this is, years ago I ran a ballot initiative, so this was 2016, that was a bill similar to the bill we're running right now in the legislature.

And what I would do, I only did it up here in north Idaho, because I didn't really know anybody else in the state at that time, I do now. But I would go out to the farmer's market, and I would hold up this petition, this ballot initiative, and we had a sign that told people what it was, and they would beeline straight at me, and they'd say, finally, someone is calling abortion what it is, and they're gonna do something about it based on what it actually is.

This is what I've always thought should happen. So the point is, they're all over this state, those people. So step number one, and this is what we've been doing, we had an event at Candlelight Christian Fellowship two weeks ago, where 450 people showed up.

We told them in less than two weeks notice, we said we're gonna have a rally for this bill, come and show up. We had tables with letters to their legislators, and we actually personally addressed every letter to every senator and representative that was in their district, and they all signed it and hundreds of letters went out to these senators and representatives.

We did an event where a group down in Twin Falls, led by three pastors, August 1st, did the same thing, and 450 people showed up for this one bill, and they were as excited as the people of the North.

So we got an anchor in the South, we got an anchor in the North, and here's the main point. Our government in the state of Idaho, I always envision it like the Capitol building in Boise, and you got the House and the Senate and the governor's offices in that building.

And then there's the people in Idaho that want a righteous law, and the way that government is gonna enact a righteous law is when the people put pressure on that building. When the weight of the people presses in on them, the legislators will act when they think that's what the people demand.

I've always said abortion will be ended in this state when the people want it to be ended in this state and know what the answer is. So my two major points with the people of Idaho is they need to know there is a way to end abortion in this legislative session.

It's the Abortion and Human Rights Act, which is R .S .ed right now. In about two weeks, when they start having committee hearings on bills, it's gonna be sitting in front of House of Representatives member Steve Harris from Meridian, he's the chairman of the State Affairs Committee, and he's gonna make a decision whether that bill gets printed and gets a bill number and whether it gets a hearing.

And the people of Idaho, in the next two weeks, need to make sure they're letting their representatives know that they want that bill to get a hearing and that they want that bill passed.

What's it called again?

It's the Abortion and Human Rights Act, and the main sponsors are Heather Scott of District 1, John Green of District 2, and we have four legislative co-sponsors. Tony Vishniewski is one of our co-sponsors, Priscilla Giddings, Christy Zitto, and Chad Christensen.

So we already have six legislators on board in the House, but we need other legislators to be told by their constituents that they want the Abortion and Human Rights Act to have a hearing in the House basically in a month, like within the next six weeks, we need that hearing to happen.

So you need people of Idaho to contact their local legislators and to tell them, let this bill get a hearing, and we need to stand for justice, and we're just talking about proper definitions here.

Human Rights, Natural Law, and the Role of a Righteous Civil Law

Yeah.

I mean, in terms of, when we talk about this issue as Christians, we're saying it's a gospel.

Issue.

It's an issue of the heart. It's an issue of fallen men, fallen men and women want, those who hate me love death. That's a consequence of our broken relationship with our Creator. It's a consequence, and it's all through human history, that's what we do as fallen people.

But even in a case like this, where you have a state like Idaho that's a red state, conservative state, even in a state where you may not have somebody that's evangelical or reformed or something like that, you might have someone who's Roman Catholic or Mormon that still has a high respect and a worldview that sees this for what it truly is.

This is something made in the image of God. This is to be protected. This is valuable. You have a case here where people see this for what it actually is, and you have a bill that is actually a righteous bill.

It's just. It's the right definition. It's true. No compromise. Just call it what it is. This is something that we can, even though we have a particular perspective as to why this is the case and what the ultimate solution is, we can say to people in Idaho, across the board, look, if you're an atheist who's consistent, and you recognize that this is human life and we ought to protect it, then let's put a proper definition in here and let's protect human life.

Let's criminalize this the way it ought to be criminalized. This is something that could be done in Idaho. It can.

Well, I'll give you an example. You mentioned all those different faith backgrounds of my six house co-sponsors right now. Two of them are Mormons, two of them are Catholics, and two of them are evangelicals.

So it doesn't really matter what their background is. I say there are three things in our favor. Number one, the bill represents an absolute truth and three things back us up. And we're fortunate if the constitution didn't back us up, then I'd say, let's burn the constitution and start over.

But actually the reality is our constitution, like I say, in Idaho and the federal constitution both support no deprivation of life without due process of law and an inalienable right to life, to justice, to secure safety.

So I say number one argument is our constitution, if a sixth grader reads it, will never find a right to murder in this constitution, federal or state. There's two constitutions. Number two, God's law is an immutable truth.

And so that is always...

It's unchangeable.

Yeah, it's unchangeable and it's absolute. There's no question. So when you talk about this as a human rights movement, it appeals to people because there is a natural law, God's law, that they know is in the universe.

Even if they don't quite recognize its author, they just know intuitively when you tell them the right thing that this is true. And number three, we have a witness with them wherever they go and it's called their conscience, which means with knowledge.

They're built with knowledge that this fact that we're putting forth is true. And then they're going to... I always tell my legislators, there's no compromise with life or death and we need to be consistent when we say the absolute truth, we know eventually we're going to prevail because absolute truth has this ability to prevail upon people.

And enacting a righteous law, when you talk about heart change, Ecclesiastes 8 .11 says that when there is no just law, the feet of men and the hearts of men are swift to run.

And do evil.

And so the value of a righteous law is it actually helps precipitate a heart change. And we also know that the law is a schoolmaster. Now we know God's law is a schoolmaster, but also a good civil law is a schoolmaster that teaches people the difference between right and wrong, which can only benefit Idaho.

That's right.

Very good. So how can I get people behind you? How can I get people to support you? Where do they get in contact with you?

Contacting the Campaign and Supporting the PAC

Yes. There are two places. One, we have a Facebook page that's building up in popularity right now. We've got a lot of good information on that page. We put our updates, our legislative updates on that page.

It's called the Abortion Human Rights Act Idaho. So they'll find that on Facebook and they need to click follow and they need to click see first. So they make sure that especially over these next six weeks, they get our updates.

Number two, we have a pretty good website, AbolishAbortionID .com. And on that website, what I really want them to do is there's going to be a slide in that comes in and there's a page called petition.

So they either do the slide in or they go to the petition and contact page and they sign the petition. And we're going to give that list of people that sign that to Steve Harris, the chairman of the committee that needs to hear this bill.

And number two, they're going to get on our email distribution list, which means yesterday I just sent out an update to the hundreds and hundreds of people that are on that list so that they know when we need to call them to action.

Because there's going to be a point here in this legislative session that I guarantee we're going to issue a call to action. So first step right now is they got to get signed up so they get that call to action.

Like the page, sign up for our email, and then they'll get that call to action.

People hate giving their email away because of all the junk they're going to get and getting on email lists. But this is an email list they have to be on because if they want to actually have righteousness and justice prevail for pre-born neighbors in Idaho, they need to be a part of this means, this movement to make all that possible.

So they need to make sure they get connected to you so they can know where to be. They can know what to say. They can know what to get behind and make sure that they're announcing to what we have in Arizona.

I forget the number. What at Phoenix is what's six million people. I think in the Phoenix East Valley, it's a lot of people. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but maybe it's Arizona. I don't know. We have many more people to convince in Arizona than you have here in Idaho.

You guys can do it.

Yeah.

We're small.

We're red. We're conservative.

Right.

Now, like I tell you, there's blue intrusion. In other words, there's leftist ideology, wrong ideology. But the point is there are a lot of people who hold our truth, and they're all over Idaho. We can do this in Idaho.

Yes, you can.

I'm truly convinced that we can.

I'm absolutely convinced you can.

Yes.

The email list is mine. In other words, I'm the guy who gets that email, and I'm the only one that's sending out emails right now to that email address. I'm not selling that list to anybody.

No, but you need people with their hands in yours. You need to be able to work together. This is an invitation to people in Idaho who believe the gospel, people in Idaho who believe in justice, people in Idaho who want to see children saved from death.

This is an invitation for them to join you to work towards that end of justice once and.

For all.

I'll give them one more thing they can do. We just opened up an account yesterday. It's called Abolish Abortion PAC, P-A-C, which stands for Political Action Committee. It's an account that me and a couple of other people who are totally on board with this bill are in control of, and the whole purpose of this account.

So it's registered with the Idaho Secretary of State, and what it is for is to support our legislators. So the legislators that are running this bill are already, everybody who runs Pro-Life here in Idaho gets money either from Right to Life of Idaho or Idaho Chooses Life, which is the other big pro-life lobby organization, mostly from Idaho Chooses Life, and both of those groups oppose our bill.

They've come out against it. They were against it last year. Last year they talked the chairman of the committee into not hearing the bill. Pro-life lobbies.

Yep.

In fact, one of our bill sponsors, Idaho Chooses Life in particular, took our bill sponsor Chad Christensen, won the Republican primary, defeating a guy named Lurcher, who had been there for like 30 years, and this was only in the last election cycle, and the Republican primary winner is going to win the general election, and Idaho Chooses Life took $6 ,500 of good-hearted pro-life people, and in the general election, gave it to Lurcher as a writing candidate who could never win against our bill sponsor, and wasted their pro-life.

Money.

But I want to, giving money is speech. It's saying I'm willing to back up my conviction with not only my time, not only my talent, but my treasure, and we're going to give that part of that treasure and make sure that we keep our legislative champions in office, okay, and that is going to also, these campaign finance reports are going to show, Abolish Abortion PAC, giving these legislators this money, and hopefully, I pray that the Lord will increase the people that support our cause so that we are, the money is backing the Abortion Human Rights Act, and the legislature now knows that we might even get powerful enough to get rid of people who are roadblocks in our way should that become necessary.

That's what's really going to speak volumes to them, but in the meantime, I always hope through patient persistence to persuade them, our pro-life legislators, to embrace this bill and to annihilate judicial supremacy.

We're looking for criminalization, abolition, justice.

That's it.

Without compromise.

Without compromise.

No exceptions. Equal treatment. People will ask me all kinds of in-the-weeds questions, well, how should we punish murder by abortion versus other murders? I say the bill doesn't have that in it because all it says is treat it just like any other homicide and the rest of the homicide chapter already talks about all of that.

What degree it would be, that's up to prosecutors. This is about equal treatment, justice, and protection for all human beings from the moment of fertilization to natural death.

Simple.

Exactly.

True.

Just.

Exactly.

All right.

Thank you. God bless you. Let's do this.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

All right.

Okay.