Frank's Musings

The U.S. Constitutional democratic system was not created by religious faith, nor vice versa. It expressly prohibits its use to enforce religious dogma.

The definition of a political or biological life is not the same as a faith-based definition of life. Therefore, Constitutional regulation of life termination must rely on secular laws or popular consensus. The American custom is, indeed, to rely on sovereign states for the determination of public opinion on most personal issues. Each state may select its own criteria for making that determination, as long as it is not based on religious dogma. But if the popular will in a state is, in fact, shaped, even only in part, by faith, is that not a Constitutional issue?

The Constitutional issue here is not the right to life of a fetus. The issue is the right of a religious group to impose its cultural mores on others. Other citizens have different views on the issue of abortion that do not prevent the achievement of the goals of the Constitution, which can be summarized as the promotion of the general welfare.

Murder of society’s members certainly contradicts that goal. However, the Constitution can only recognize at most a potentially (not hypothetically) autonomous human being as one of society’s members. That makes abortion’s effect on Constitutional life a matter of science, not faith—exactly as specified by Roe vs. Wade.

Codifying the abortion standard in that USSC decision would likely give rise to another legal challenge. With luck a majority of the Court will be harder to find for overturning such a law

Ultimately, the Constitution guarantees that individuals who hold as a matter of faith that life begins at conception cannot be compelled to disregard that belief, e.g. by being forced to abort a fetus, no matter how premature.  On the other hand, the Constitution does guarantee a mother’s right to abort a non-viable fetus, which is not biologically able to exist autonomously, until it is biologically able to live autonomously as a protected member of society, even if only through medical intervention. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion; and that means a religious belief in the beginning of life at conception cannot be imposed on anyone in the country.