A Herald Editorial on the State Department’s New “Rights” Doctrine
A Reversal of Meaning
The State Department’s newly issued directive—classifying abortion access and DEI efforts as potential violations of human rights—marks a profound and disorienting departure from the foundations of modern rights doctrine. According to reporting by Forbes and others, U.S. officials have instructed diplomatic posts to scrutinize nations that provide state-funded abortion or implement group-based equity measures, naming these policies as possible infringements on “God-given” rights.
This is not a mere shift in emphasis.
It is a reversal of meaning.
For decades, both U.S. and international human-rights frameworks have held that bodily autonomy, equal protection, and freedom from discrimination are core rights. The new directive reframes those protections as harms, and reimagines long-recognized avenues of justice as threats to liberty.
The Emergence of a Theocratic Lens
The memo’s invocation of “rights given to us by God” is not a benign flourish. It signals a reorientation of U.S. foreign-policy language toward sectarian grounding—an approach incompatible with the pluralistic, Enlightenment-based architecture of the American constitutional system.
The United States did not adopt a Bill of Rights to enshrine religious doctrine.
It adopted one to prevent it from dominating public life.
The Enlightenment philosophy underlying the Constitution insisted that rights arise from human dignity, empirical understanding, and the social contract—not from particular interpretations of divine mandate. To replace universal principles with sectarian ones is to exchange a framework meant for all people for one limited to a specific religious worldview.
This is not constitutional fidelity.
It is constitutional abandonment.
Redefining the Victim and the Violator
By classifying reproductive care and equity initiatives as human-rights concerns, the directive performs a dangerous inversion: it positions historically marginalized communities as potential perpetrators of injustice, and policies designed to protect them as possible instruments of harm.
In this revised worldview:
• A woman exercising bodily autonomy becomes a threat.
• A program seeking to close long-documented racial and gender gaps becomes discriminatory.
• A government expanding access to care becomes a violator.
Such inversions serve an unmistakable purpose: to erode the legitimacy of rights that are not explicitly enumerated, and to cast suspicion on any effort to advance social, gender, or racial equity.
The Ninth Amendment Stands in Opposition
Only hours ago, The Humane Herald published an exploration of the Ninth Amendment—an explicit constitutional warning against the exact logic now being deployed.
“The enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The State Department’s directive, however, construes the absence of textual enumeration as permission to deny rights altogether. The Ninth Amendment insists that liberty is broader than the page; this memo attempts to shrink liberty to fit the narrow boundaries of a particular ideology.
Where the Ninth Amendment protects unwritten rights, the directive seeks to extinguish them.
A Global Consequence
Human-rights reporting is not an internal academic exercise. It shapes international diplomacy, foreign aid, trade relationships, and the moral standing of nations.
If the U.S. now evaluates progressive democracies—those that protect reproductive autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights, racial equity, and gender inclusion—as rights violators, it not only distorts global human-rights assessment but risks aligning the United States with authoritarian regimes whose record on genuine rights abuses remains unaddressed or minimized.
This is not a matter of political preference.
It is a matter of global ethical responsibility.
A Warning, Not a Footnote
Some may treat this directive as symbolic. They should not.
Human-rights language does not only describe reality; it shapes it. When definitions change, policies follow. When rights are narrowed, protections erode. When the U.S. redefines justice for the world, it simultaneously redefines it at home.
If DEI becomes discrimination in the diplomatic lexicon, it becomes discrimination everywhere.
If reproductive care becomes a “rights violation” abroad, it becomes one domestically.
If “God-given rights” supersede constitutional ones in one office, they can supersede them in all.
The blueprint is clear, and ignoring it is not an option.
The Humane Imperative
The Humane Party has long insisted that rights must be grounded in reason, evidence, and the inherent dignity of every individual, human or animal. These principles hold no allegiance to creed or hierarchy; they exist because we do.
The State Department’s directive represents a step away from universal rights and toward a narrowing of moral vision—one that celebrates hierarchy, denies bodily autonomy, and erases equity by renaming it injustice.
The role of a humane movement is not to accept such redefinitions, but to challenge them with clarity.
A Final Word
Human rights can evolve, expand, and deepen—but they can also be constricted. When government agencies begin redefining rights to mean their opposites, vigilance is not optional; it is required.
Rights do not vanish because they are unwritten.
They vanish because we stop defending them.
The Humane Herald will not stop.
The Humane Herald 