Our anonymous reader “Democracy” summarizes the legal and religious disputes over abortion, which center on the question, “When does life begin?” And a second question: “Should believers be allowed to impose their views on others?”
Democracy writes:
In Roe v. Wade (1973), Justice Harry Blackmun researched – and struggled with – the question, when does human life begin?
The majority decision in Roe noted this:
“The Constitution does not define ‘person’ in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to ‘person.’ The first, in defining ‘citizens,’ speaks of ‘persons born or naturalized in the United States’” The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. ‘Person’ is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, in the Emolument Clause, in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only POSTNATALLY. None indicates that it has any possible pre-natal application. [Emphasis mine]
In that case, the state of Texas made claim that human life begins at conception.
The Texas Court said this:
“Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
The Supreme Court decision went on:
“There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth. This was the belief of the Stoics. It appears to be the predominant, though not the unanimous, attitude of the Jewish faith. It may be taken to represent also the position of a large segment of the Protestant community, insofar as that can be ascertained; organized groups that have taken a formal position on the abortion issue have generally regarded abortion as a matter for the conscience of the individual and her family. As we have noted, the common law found greater significance in quickening. Physicians and their scientific colleagues have regarded that event with less interest and have tended to focus either upon conception, upon live birth, or upon the interim point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.”
This was where abortion rights and “the right to life” stood, until Samuel Alito and his Republican Taliban colleagues imposed their narrow religious beliefs on the rest of American in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022).
When Alito’s Dobbs draft leaked in the media, political analyst Ron Brownstein wrote thisi n May, 2022, in describing what the Supreme Court religious zealots were about to do:
“Alito’s draft, if finalized, would place the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority firmly on a collision course with the priorities and preferences of the racially and culturally diverse younger generations born since 1980, who now constitute a majority of all Americans and who overwhelmingly support abortion rights…That shift, which Trump hastened with his overt appeals to the racial and social grievances of the most culturally conservative white Americans, has fueled the increasing volatility and belligerence of modern politics—and it only stands to intensify…For decades, a majority of Americans have supported legalized abortion in at least some circumstances. Opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade hit 69 percent in a CNN survey earlier this year, and 61 percent in a poll released by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute on Tuesday. In the PRRI poll, 64 percent of respondents said abortion should remain legal in all (28 percent) or most (36 percent) circumstances…The biggest exception to this trend: A large majority of white evangelical Americans, a cornerstone GOP constituency, oppose legal abortion.”
NPR reported this in early May, 2022:
“6 in 10 U.S. adults (61%) say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases…While the rate of abortions increased significantly in the decade after Roe v. Wade, it has since decreased to below the 1973 level…Pregnancy and childbirth are far more dangerous than getting an abortion, according to data from the CDC…Over 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester (by 13 weeks)…Medical researchers agree a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until the third trimester, somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks…More than 60% of abortion patients have a religious affiliation.”
The Guttmacher Institute, “a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States,” reports these data related to abortion:
“About 61% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children…The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner…Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant.”
It would appear — from the data — that the conservative Supreme Court members AND the Republican Party are at war with women, and especially POOR women.
More Guttmacher data:
“About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy, and nearly one-third will have an abortion, by age 45.
• The overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate remained stagnant between 1994 and 2006, but unintended pregnancy increased 50% among poor women, while decreasing 29% among higher-income women.
• Overall, the abortion rate decreased 8% between 2000 and 2008, but abortion increased 18% among poor women, while decreasing 28% among higher-income women.
• Nine in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
• A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:
- 58% are in their 20s;
- 61% have one or more children;
- 56% are unmarried and not cohabiting;
- 69% are economically disadvantaged; and
- 73% report a religious affiliation.”
Republicans are finding out that the dystopian world they have created is not popular, and represents a clear and present danger to ALL civil liberties in the American republic.
Here’s how Margaret Atwood explained it in The Atlantic (May 13, 2022):
“When does a fertilized human egg become a full human being or person?…The hard line of today’s anti-abortion activists is at ‘conception,’ the moment at which a cluster of cells becomes ‘ensouled.”
“But any such judgment depends on a religious belief—namely, the belief in souls. Not everyone shares such a belief. But all, it appears, now risk being subjected to laws formulated by those who do. That which is a sin within a certain set of religious beliefs is to be made a crime for all.”
“It ought to be simple: If you believe in ‘ensoulment’ at conception, you should not get an abortion, because to do so is a sin within your religion. If you do not so believe, you should not—under the Constitution—be bound by the religious beliefs of others. But should the Alito opinion become the newly settled law, the United States looks to be well on the way to establishing a state religion…Massachusetts had an official religion in the 17th century. In adherence to it, the Puritans hanged Quakers.”
“The Alito opinion purports to be based on America’s Constitution. But it relies on English jurisprudence from the 17th century, a time when a belief in witchcraft caused the death of many innocent people. The Salem witchcraft trials were trials—they had judges and juries—but they accepted “spectral evidence,” in the belief that a witch could send her double, or specter, out into the world to do mischief. Thus, if you were sound asleep in bed, with many witnesses, but someone reported you supposedly doing sinister things to a cow several miles away, you were guilty of witchcraft. You had no way of proving otherwise.”
As Ben Franklin was to have said when asked what kind of government the Founders had created,
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 