“Let everything you do be done in love.”
Corinthians 16:14
This quote from the Bible may seem odd in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling. After all, the cause to strike down Roe came not from the legal community. It came from the religious community. It started with the Catholic Church and spread to conservative churches, Evangelicals. Few seem to recognize the fundamental question, which is not when life begins but rather when does the soul enter a baby? Going back to the Catholic Church, that question became important to nuns working in hospitals because the church believes in Purgatory. Anyone not baptized is condemned to spend eternity in Purgatory with no chance of ever seeing heaven. The nuns in hospitals were seeing miscarriages and wanted to know if they should baptize the miscarriage. The Pope devised an efficient solution by saying the soul enters the baby at the time of conception, so baptize all miscarriages.
From the first polling, there has been a consistent 60/40 split on whether abortion should be legal. Catholics make up approximately 20% of our population. The 2020 Census reported that approximately 25% of the population is evangelical. There tends to be a concentration of evangelicals in the South. Those two religious groups more than account for the 60/40 split in the reaction to Roe. Religious beliefs are strong. Sometimes both sides of the issue were a little less than loving towards the other side. However, the question is should a religious belief drive our Supreme Court in their rulings?
I believe the original ruling based on freedom of choice was the wrong way to go. The argument should’ve been made that religion shouldn’t be codified in law to favor one group or another. The First Amendment to the Constitution says that government can’t interfere with religion in any way. In particular, it cannot favor one religion over another, and that is what is wrong with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
