Come right down to it, the argument is simple to the point of being self-evident: a human embryo is either a human person or well along in the process of becoming one. In either case, the embryo enjoys fundamental legal rights of personhood, including the right to life.
That occurred to me again while reflecting on the furor over an Alabama Supreme Court decision asserting the legal personhood of human fetuses in a case involving in vitro fertilization—IVF for short. Pro-lifers were predictably gratified, while pro-choicers predictably threw a fit.
The Alabama case was not directly about abortion. But it undoubtedly has helped set the stage for two new U.S. Supreme Court cases that are. The court will hear oral arguments in one case, from Texas, on March 26 and in the other, from Idaho, on April 24. Decisions in both are expected before the court’s current term ends in late June or early July.
No matter what the Supreme Court does, its decisions will further inflame debate over abortion as an issue in November’s presidential and congressional elections. President Biden and Vice President Harris say they will make abortion central to their reelection campaigns. And in November a dozen or more states will consider ballot measures to add a right to abortion to their state constitutions.
In the Texas case (Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, consolidated with Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine), the court is asked to consider a ruling last August by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 5th Circuit largely upheld a lower court ruling that placed substantial restrictions on the abortion drug Mifepristone.
Mifepristone is used in more than half of all U.S. abortions, especially so-called mail order ones performed by women on themselves. The lower court ruling being considered by the Supreme Court reduces the point in pregnancy after which Mifepristone can’t be used from 10 weeks to seven weeks—the time when the fetus begins to feel pain. It also bars non-physician prescription of the drug and sending it through the mail, and requires three in-person visits by the woman to the prescribing physician.
According to the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—a group of pro-life physicians and others—the Food and Drug Administration, acting under pressure from the administrations of former president Barack Obama and President Biden, weakened restrictions on use of the drug in 2016 and again in 2021.
The Idaho case (Moyle v. United States) involves a challenge to that state’s tough new pro-life law—specifically, whether a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act overrides the state statute and obliges emergency rooms in Idaho hospitals to perform abortions. The Supreme Court has placed a federal district court ruling that says yes to both questions on hold pending its decision.
In asking the Supreme Court to consider the case, Idaho stressed its state’s rights aspect.
To repeat—the Alabama case described above was not directly about abortion but about IVF procedures. But the status of the human fetus in the eyes of the law—whether the fetus enjoys the legal rights of personhood, including the right to life (along with other rights already recognized in law)—is central to the ongoing national debate.
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The Supreme Court basically said in the Dobbs Decision that abortion is an issue for State Legislatures not the Federal Government. I think that the Court will States to ban the drug and other States to allow it. I don’t see a national ban or allowance.
The Supreme Court erroneously ruled that abortion is a State’s Right issue, and not a human’s right issue, by denying the humanity, the personhood of a beloved son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb, just as they denied the humanity, the personhood, of a beloved son or daughter in order to justify slavery.
If you were not you from the moment of conception, a son or daughter of human persons who were you?
And how is it possible for a human person to conceive a son or daughter who is not, in essence, a human person?
That’s the best we can hope for. They will receive pressure from both parties, to say nothing of the press, to make IVF universally allowed. Yeah, that SHOULD not matter, but no one likes to be under that kind of pressure.
More than fifty years ago Justice Blackmun framed the issue of the constitutional right to life of the fetus and the controlling centrality of that issue quite clearly in his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. Justice Blackmun’s words:
“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.”
Justice Alito, in his opinion for the majority in Dobbs, quite clearly announced that he and the four Justices who signed on to his opinion were ignoring that very issue. Justice Alito’s words:
“Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.”
What the United States Supreme Court needs to do is to forthrightly address the issue that it deliberately and expressly ignored and left undecided in the Dobbs case.
But the move to the Federal level was when abortion was outlawed.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, the states widely recognized unborn children as persons. Twenty-three states and six territories referred to the fetus as a “child” in their laws prohibiting abortion. Twenty-eight classified abortion as an “offense against the person,” or a functionally equivalent classification. These statutes were enacted in recognition of unborn human beings’ full and equal membership in the human family.
Of all the many tragic failures of the SCOTUS the most egregious is their abject failure to protect the life of a fully grown baby in the womb. They only punted on the issue when they rescinded the tragic and illegal and illogical decisions which institutionalized murder in the womb throughout the US for 50 years and resulted in the barbaric slaughter of over 60,000,000 innocent children of God. Only two of the ‘Justices’ seem to have a functioning moral compass. The remainder seem to be dilettantes who somehow think their intellectual powers are superior to the God given lives of children. If they conclude that a fully formed baby in the womb at 9 months is a legal human person then they beg the question at what point in the child’s development is it not a legal person. Any sane Christian will humbly acknowledge that ensoulment is likely an act of God at conception. The term pro-choice is a demonic lie of language. One is either pro life or one is not. The Supreme Court has been an abject failure throughout our history. Could it have prevented the Civil War? Could it have stopped the paganistic and brutal holocaust against babies?
Thank you Shawn. Pelosi had her children without abortions. Now she turns around and is in favor of the erroneous “woman’s right to choose”. What about the baby’s rights. Politicians and idiotic supreme court decisions make me sick. They can’t even find a way to keep the hands of our clocks from changing every 6 months.
This article needs to be shared with the Bidens, Pelosis, and all the other Catholics in the government today. Abortion could see a significant drop if these people are representing the church of God.
Law as law is the issue we’re faced with. Law in our day is not always the pursuit of justice, because our concepts of justice, right and wrong are in radical flux. What is just has become what one’s interests are rather than right and wrong as traditionally understood. Consequently, we see evidence of Law, as exercised within the Justice Department managed, in cases effectively weaponized to suit the interests of those in power.
A right to life is the most basic ethical principle that identifies justice for Man. As regards prenatal infancy we’ve had philosophical, rationalized concepts put forward that argue the prenatal infant is not a human being. All comes down to the ethical convictions of the justices. For example, former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Casey argued in dissent that new laws permitting the taking of human life in the womb, abortion, cannot continue to be written. Unfortunately the courts ignored that ethical premise because of the ambiguity, unwillingness of many to acknowledge that the ‘fetus’ is a human being. This Supreme Court does have a majority of justices who hold the rational ethical position that human life does exist in the womb.
The Supreme Court and the man-made government does not define life for me—-the Church defines life for me, a Follower of Christ. What happens in Washington, DC is meaningless and should be ignored.
I think real Science & the Church agree on when life begins, whether or not the govt does.
The Scientific Consensus on When a Human’s Life Begins
experts in biology were surveyed to provide a new perspective to the literature on experts’ views on this matter. Biologists from 1,058 academic institutions around the world assessed survey items on when a human’s life begins and, overall, 96% (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view.
God is the Creator, and Sustainer of life, and yes the Church defines where life starts for a human being: At the moment of conception. No matter what the court decides, God’s law doesn’t change. But for the sake of divine law and millions of future children, the court better cement in the right decision before some of these older conservative justices retire and/or pass away.
A living example of disparity of justice, the term justice used consistently in favor of the administration in power, is the present congressional hearings on culpability between a sitting president and his opponent in the next election for president. We perceive, rather than a singular interpretation of the Law, we have two distinct interpretations of similar charges, one in favor of the president, the other against his opponent.
Law at this moment in US history has become a mechanism for the defense and expansion of power of those in possession of power. We must not depend entirely on religious faith, we must also address unjust usage of the Law because we live under the Law. Civil law to be just must reflect natural law, which is a reflection of the eternal Law.