Below is testimony I planned to give in person on February 1st, 2023, but was unable to do so due to illnesses in my family. I was able to give this virtually through written testimony.

I’d like to open my brief comments with a couple verses from Psalm 139….

“For you formed my inward parts, you wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made… “This is only one of the myriads of passages from the Bible that proclaim that life is the first gift of God.

From even before the founding of the United States of America, western law recognized, as we see in the writings of William Blackstone, “Life is the immediate gift of God – – a right inherited by nature in every individual.”

After the founding of our country Justice James Wilson, one of the original justices of the supreme Court, wrote down, “with consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law.

The Founding Fathers believed that the right to life is evident from our founding documents, such as The Declaration of Independence. President John Quincy Adams later in his life would write, “ask the declaration of Independence and that will tell you that its authors held for self-evident truth that the right to life is the first of the inalienable rights of man, and to secure and not to destroy that right governments are instituted among men.

What person who learns first aid, when they are presented with someone who needs medical attention and is unconscious and not able to speak for themselves, doesn’t immediately think to check for a pulse. This is what it means to be human, fellow children of God, to look after one another in whatever state we are in. If you, as is only decent, would go to check for a pulse on an unconscious person to determine that they are alive, what difference is there in checking for a heartbeat and when we are sure that there is a heartbeat to know that person, a fellow human being, is alive.

So, my final thought for all of you senators and fellow citizens is to check your own pulse, see if you are alive, if you find that you are, and you of course value your life, I plead with you, don’t take life away from another. Please advance LB 626 and protect life.  

Thank you,

Joshua Ramsey