re: #237 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

They want to go beyond Roe v Wade and ban abortion entirely in all states.

Uhm, Amy Coney Barrett could be one of those anti-abortion Catholics who believe that hormone-based contraception is an abortifacient (it’s not) and want to get rid of the birth control pill as well.

You know, 37 years ago I remember sitting in an undergrad classroom with a bunch of sullen classmates, all of us who just *refused* to move on from a discussion of Griswold v. Connecticut without discussing Roe v. Wade. The professor (who was ancient and had clerked for Felix Frankfurter) completely hated the reasoning of Griswold and believed the case was wrongly decided. He thought after totally beating Griswold to death, we’d just skip over Roe. Nope.

I would say that Roe was the case for our generation, but nearly four decades on, I’d almost agree with him that Roe was wrongly decided, but not on the reason why. Today, I’d make an argument that anti-abortion laws should be struck down as a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. And no, I’m not talking about The Satanic Temple. Other religious groups do not share the beliefs of the Catholic church and Protestant Evangelicals regarding life starting at conception, to say nothing of the millions of Americans who are not religious at all. I do think the case could be made that anti-abortion laws are fundamentally religious at the core and need striking down for that reason alone.

That said, given the extreme deference religion is given in this country, it would be a tough case to make. But it has to be out there for discussion. It has to be brought up. We have to stop being afraid and stop letting a religious minority bulldoze us.