For the first time the other day, I heard publicly discussed that the current abortion debate is really one of religion. It didn’t surprise me as I knew the history that brought about Catholic teaching that life begins at conception. If you know my background, I lost my first wife in childbirth and a baby girl. That pretty firmly puts me in the camp that life doesn’t begin until birth. Before that, it is just a possibility.
Can we make any sense of when life begins? There is one thing that almost all cultures, along with their religions, believe when life begins. There is an animating spirit named various things that makes a person alive. Christians call it the soul. The debate is then about when the animating spirit enters the baby. Some believe it is at conception, and others believe it is a year after birth. There is a wide range of beliefs, all tied to the “religion” of a particular culture. That is simply a statement of fact.
Banning abortions is putting one religion over another. That is unconstitutional. The beginning of the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” If your belief system is that the animating spirit, soul, enter with a baby’s first breath, then not allowing for abortions is “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion for some in our country. Suppose we are going to be faithful to our Constitution. In that case, we should make no laws about abortion other than the establishment of safety concerns. The current debate shows a lack of understanding of where the discussion originates. My favorite term for that is “It’s theology, not biology.”
