Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 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.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The fourteenth amendment is another great amendment following the Civil War. It promises citizenship to all born within the jurisdiction of the United States, expelling the Dread Scott ruling that blacks could not be citizens. I can't help but give a little "hell yeah" inside whenever the people come together to write an amendment when the supreme court has failed to make the right decision.
The Amendment also wisely puts a stop to an official caste type system before it began. It would have been all too easy for southerners to just officially label blacks as second class citizens without that. Granted the supreme court still accepted the "separate but equal"doctrine for a time, it was still a very wise step in the right direction.
I picked this cartoon because it brings up an interesting point about the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment does not go into details on the legal status of the parents when the person in question is born. Its another example on how we have taken vague language from an amendment and have been forced to use it out of context. The people who wrote the 14th amendment were not talking about immigration, they were talking about slavery, and they had to pick language accordingly. I personally do not think it is unreasonable to take into account the legal status of the parents when granting the child citizenship.
On the other hand... if we are going to go ahead and apply the 14th Amendment liberally to everything under the sun how the hell does it not apply to the unborn, or at the very least children born alive as the result of a failed abortion? Just this week the Obama administration said they were going to look into a country's LBGT discrimination before handing out foreign aid, but last year when Biden went to China he said he "understood" their one child policy, which leads to millions of abortions and cases of infanticide of girls. Why are some groups so eager to expand the 14th amendment to include open homosexuals, that are not a suspect class and are a group that is arguably better off than average Americans, but deny any rights whatsoever to a child that is unwanted?
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