We often get into arguments where we really don’t understand the basics of the question. We recently had legal arguments in the Supreme Court about a woman’s right to have an abortion. According to the legal people, the court can only decide what the law covers. Most of our laws came about because of our British heritage. I don’t believe the court was asked the pertinent question to decide in this case. There was a more fundamental question to be answered. It is “When does life begin?” For many centuries that question was answered by the phrase “when the baby is born.” More specifically, most societies believe that the soul, spirit, or other animating factors, occurred when the baby took its first breath. In some cultures, the higher death rate among babies in their first year meant that society considered a person to be born on their first birthday.
When and where did the idea of “at the moment of conception” come about? You might also ask, “why?” It came about with the ruling by the Catholic Church. Why would they bother? It came about when the nuns in Catholic hospitals asked when they should baptize a miscarriage. That question makes no sense unless you understand something about Catholic beliefs. An unbaptized person is consigned to purgatory forever and can never reach heaven or hell.
The church hierarchy pondered the problem of when to baptize a miscarriage and decided every miscarriage should be baptized because the soul entered at the moment of conception. In the period in which the question was asked, there were few, if any, abortions. This had much broader implications for Catholic thinking. For example, birth control other than the rhythm method could be considered a sin because it prevented a soul from being born. I have some sympathy with the church because anytime you make hard and fast rules, you will inevitably cause unforeseen problems.
Back to the Supreme Court, whether the judges realized not they were making the ruling based on a minority religious group’s laws. It is also a slippery slope. If your religious beliefs prohibit you from eating pork, should you have the right to remove pork from grocery stores? Should you have to circumcise your male babies to conform to a religious belief? The arguments go on endlessly.
The court should be answering whether a religious group can enforce its beliefs on the country? I think a religious minority has cleverly cast its faith in a way that does not seem religious. Is that okay? Do you want religious groups with beliefs alien to your religion running your life?
