I see some Indiana judges have decided to accept some important and apparently correct “sauce for the goose” logic when it comes to abortion:
A second Indiana judge on Friday blocked the state from enforcing its law banning most abortions after Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian women challenged it in a lawsuit.
Marion County Superior Court Judge Heather Welch issued a preliminary injunction against the Republican-backed law, which prohibits abortions with limited exceptions for rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormalities or a serious health risk to the mother. The plaintiffs have argued that the measure infringes on religious freedom protected by another state law. …
Welch issued her injunction after a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice and five individual women challenged the abortion law under Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU said the plaintiffs represented religions including Judaism and Islam as well as “independent spiritual belief systems.”
“The Court finds that S.E.A. 1 substantially burdens the religious exercise of the Plaintiffs,” Welch wrote, using the formal name of the law, in granting the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction while the challenge to its legality proceeds. [Reuters via WABX 107.5]
Both goose and gander have used the same substantive reason for their opposition and advocacy for abortion: the polyphony, if you will, of religion.
I’m not a lawyer and I haven’t read either of the decisions in this case, but it seems clear to me that this is a firm rejection of the notion, in the secular context, that the fetus is simply another human being. I’ve discussed this notion a bit in the negative, and I won’t reiterate it.
But it’s worth noting that we are a secular nation; the dangers of proclaiming we’re a nation of pick-your-sect has been noted, and condemned, here. That the Founding Fathers consigned the religious precept approach to law-making to the dustbin was a supremely practical and intellectual reaction to the madness of theologically oriented monarchs, and the violence that seemed inherent in their reigns; the notion that a peaceful society, undisturbed by the unsubstantiated religious tenets of various sects seems far preferable to the English example of burning at the stake, quite literally, those citizens whose religious practices were at variance with that of the monarch.
Ideally, that leaves rational, objective analysis, as difficult as that is, as the basis of real legislative actions. We’re not, being humans, particularly rational, and we’re not born with the tools of objective analysis ready to go, and our ability to teach it varies with teacher, local society, and opinions of both. This all means making laws is a messy business, of infinite frustration to those who believe there’s virtue in dispatch, regardless of their position on political spectrum. For some, it takes time to learn the error of the emotional response.
Skipping some thoughts and interlocutions, as my shoulder is giving me problems today, this leaves us with the classic approach of promulgate, evaluate, revise, repeat, also known, at least to my mind, as the approach of the humble. Our metrics during the revise step are key, and my proffered list is, naturally, incomplete:
- Does the law have a rational basis?
- Does the law infringe on the Bill of Rights?
- Does the law promote or obstruct a peaceful society?
- …
In any case, and to wrap things up, the anti-abortion forces have, in my opinion, failed on at least points 1 and 3; in their attempt to enforce their religious opinions on the population of Indiana, they have brought into play opposing religious forces, which have just as much right to their religious practices as do the anti-abortionists.
In an ideal country, these practices should cancel out, and, because abortion is never imposed, but merely available, I can see no need for anti-abortion laws.
Go, Indiana judges! They remind me of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled that gay marriage was legal, shocking the conservatives of Iowa and beyond. They, in turn, organized a drive to vote those justices out of their seats, in a move that proves my contention that judges should never be subject to votes of the electorate, but only of the relevant legislative body.
I have to wonder how long these judges will remain in their positions.
