When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
Nothing about the anti-choice movement is religious; it’s tribalism. Same way as gun rights have nothing to do with the sky god either.
If we’re being honest, the only strictly biblical argument on the topic of abortion leans heavily pro-choice and sometimes even pro-abortion-as-punishment. Throughout most of history most Christian branches have been neutral or passively negative on abortion, usually considering it a minor sin that it wasn’t their job to prosecute (yes, occasionally either banning or encouraging it as well). The idea that life begins with conception is distinctly non-traditional (Judaism or firstgen Christianity) and was picked up from the Pythagorians.
It’s important to differentiate cultural mores from religion. Organized Religion can make you convince yourself something is wrong when you are otherwise strongly predisposed to find it right (or vice versa). Cultural mores is more like “omg, you can’t see my ankles how dare you!”. They’re like behavioral “dialects”, much like happens in language. Technically, when I say something is wicked pissah, I “inhereted” that from the Mainers despite my not being from Maine. That doesn’t mean it came from my religious ties with them. My parents and peers taught it to me. Same as all my fucked up knee-jerk morals I grew up with.