Overturning Roe V Wade - the One Year Anniversary of a Decision That Allows Religious Beliefs to Be Dictated (The Rise of Catholics on the Supreme Court)

One year ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a Supreme Court decision from 1973 that let a woman and her doctor choose whether to continue a pregnancy.

There are up to one billion sperm in a single ejaculation. Nobody - not even the wildest kook in your family - thinks that we should work to protect the lives of all these sperm in spite of the fact that they are human and they are alive. Similar (but less dramatic numbers) with the eggs that many women lose through regular periods. Sperm and eggs. Human. Alive. But not deserving of the respect we pay to human life.

A newborn baby is a little miracle. It is human life and nobody - not even the wildest kook in your family - thinks that it would be okay to end this new life.

Sperm and egg are garbage. Newborns are treasure.

Different people have different opinions about when the human waste of sperm and egg become precious human life. The pope and agreeable Catholics believe that the transformation from waste to treasure is at the moment of conception. Good on them. If the pope ever gets pregnant he will surely carry it to term regardless of what an awkward predicament pregnancy and raising a child in the Vatican would be for him. Others might think that 2 or 4 months into the pregnancy the human life within them is closer to the human life of sperm or egg than newborn. Good on them. They may decide to terminate the pregnancy before then and Roe v Wade quite simply said, "That's her decision."

Roe v Wade did not dictate that we should save all the sperm and eggs. It did not give license to kill newborns. It quite simply gave pregnant women the right to decide for themselves at what instant the miracle of transformation from waste to treasure takes place and act accordingly.

Because the first amendment gives us all the right to opine at length about what pregnant women should do, it is easy to confuse our right to dictate to strangers with their right to choose. Roe v Wade clarified the difference between our right to express our opinions about the most intimate, personal and - arguably - impactful decision a woman can make and the actual right to make that decision for her.

Sex can be one of the most wonderful acts one can engage in. Unless it is forced on you.
Pregnancy - for all its discomfort, stress and worry - can be one of the most wonderful states. Unless it is forced on you.

Galileo understood that the earth was orbiting the sun but given this contradicted the Bible (Joshua 10:13), the Catholic Church put him under house arrest and silenced him. The year he died, Newton was born and was to build on Galileo's insights to create calculus and physics and help to create the modern world. Descendants of the British, we Americans have kept religion a private affair rather than make it the basis for laws and science.

For centuries, the US Supreme Court had zero to one Catholics. In 2020, Amy Coney Barrett became the sixth Catholic to join the Supreme Court and shortly after, the Supreme Court overturned the decision that had made abortion a private choice rather than public law. We are back to the days of the pope's beliefs being the basis for public law.

Italy was the center of the Renaissance and lost that vibrant economic, scientific, artistic and cultural lead about the time the Church silenced Galileo. Northern Europe began the centuries long march to make religion a matter of private conviction rather than public law and leadership shifted from Italy to northern Europe. A year ago, American Catholics on the Supreme Court made a matter of private conviction again a matter of public law. History suggests that this moves us backwards, not forward.