ADL - Abortion and Religious Freedom
The Anti Defamation League has an interesting take on Roe V Wade, and the fight to keep abortion legal in the US. Its a simple, yet compelling pro choice argument.
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its watershed decision forty-three years ago in Roe v. Wade, it staked out a zone of privacy around each woman’s right to determine whether to continue a pregnancy. While assailed repeatedly in the decades since, and at times reviewed and subjected to revision, this essential sphere of personal autonomy has stood the test of time. The Court’s recognition of the right to access an abortion reflects its appreciation of the intimacy of this decision. The choice to continue or terminate a pregnancy encompasses deeply private considerations of physical and mental health, personal circumstance, family planning, and financial and educational conditions and goals.
Photo Credit Debra Sweet Flickr
And for many the decision also includes contemplation of their core religious convictions and personal religious values. This point is frequently lost in the clamor and contention of America’s debate over reproductive freedom. Too often the dispute is framed in binary terms, between persons of religious faith who view abortion as murder and those who regard abortion as a woman’s right to control their own bodies and decide the course of their own lives. The faith and religious principles of those who choose to exercise their reproductive rights are rarely discussed. When they are, it is too often through the eyes of anti-abortion extremists who characterize those who disagree with them as irreligious.
This depiction is as far-removed from reality as the claim these same abortion opponents make to be the guardians of “women’s health” while depriving millions of women access to safe and secure facilities offering the reproductive medical care they seek. The reality is that women who choose to terminate their pregnancies, and those who support their right to do so, are often as religious, faithful, and dedicated to their spiritual and moral principles as those who stand on the other side of the ideological divide.