OPINION: Abortion and one's views on life - Anchorage Daily News

By Harold Johnston

Updated: 43 minutes ago Published: 1 hour ago

FILE - Police barriers are visible in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, July 1, 2022. The Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court has asked Maryland officials to step up the enforcement of laws she says prohibit picketing outside the homes of the justices who live in the state. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

I have two friends whose differing views on life have helped me understand the abortion debate a little differently from the usual view: that it is a conflict of irreconcilable rights. One is an evangelical Christian whose religion tells her that life begins when fertilization occurs, as that is when God instills a soul into the new being, and therefore even that little microscopic speck is morally the same as an adult human. The other is a deeply spiritual Alaska Native, who tells me that life begins when a newborn infant inhales its first breath, and with it willingly imbibes a portion of the Great Spirit, thereby becoming a full member of creation and achieving moral equivalence with all other living humans. Abortion, to the evangelical Christian, is a form of murder and should be opposed in all forms. Abortion, to the Alaska Native, is permissible from a strictly religious viewpoint (although subject to lots of other considerations), because a fetus does not have the same moral standing as a living person.

They cannot both be right.

Unfortunately, there is no way science or objective analysis can settle this argument. Science cannot count souls or weigh the Great Spirit. Whether the evangelical Christian, the Native American or, indeed, any other of the myriad religious and philosophical traditions’ views on abortion should be followed is a decision each person must make for themself. A pregnant evangelical can decide not to have an abortion; a pregnant Alaska Native can decide to do so; both are consistent with their individual spiritual traditions.

But it is the government that makes laws about this issue. The longstanding tradition in the U.S., enshrined in the establishment clause of the First Amendment, is that the government has no religion, and has to allow all religions to be practiced. This is a wise provision, because religions are intolerant of each others’ beliefs and have a millennia-long history of irreconcilable conflict. The government needs to avoid picking winners and losers of religious disagreements.

And here is how I see my friends’ differing views helping me understand the abortion debate: From a nonreligious viewpoint, there is no way to settle the question of the moral value of a fetus. So the government, in Roe v. Wade, came to a Solomonic decision that abortion is permissible up to the point that the government has an interest in the outcome — that is, there is an actual potential new citizen once the fetus becomes viable. This looks like a compromise — all abortion is not banned, but neither is all abortion permitted — but it is really more than that. The decision about the moral value of the fertilized ovum is left up to the moral compass of the individual woman, because only she can apply religious or moral values to her circumstances; but all of society has an interest in the fetus once it has achieved the possibility of living among us.

I want to pause for a moment to focus on the difference between actual human life and potential human life. A fertilized ovum is potential human life. It is not an actual living person at present. The evangelical may believe that it has the same moral value as a human life, but it cannot exist independently in the world. This is a fact. A fetus, once it reaches viability, can exist independently (with a lot of medical support) and can reasonably be viewed as an actual human life at present. This difference is the foundation of the government’s interest in preserving viable fetuses, and of the bar against it having an interest in pre-viable ones. It is a distinction that is not based in religion, and that members of all religions should be able to recognize and at least honor, if not support.

Roe v. Wade allowed all women to practice their religions equally; kept the government from meddling in private moral matters; and respected the individual woman’s ability to make important decisions for herself and her fetus. The overturning of Roe v. Wade opens the door for the government to step far beyond its proper bounds and, in states with evangelical Christian majorities, to start picking winners and losers among religions. No religion, including evangelical Christianity, should want that to begin.

Harold Johnston, M.D., is a lifelong Alaskan who practiced family medicine in Anchorage for 29 years, and led programs at the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, the Alaska Family Medicine Residency and Providence Medical Group, before retiring in 2018. He has a degree in philosophy from Whitman College and an M.D. from the University of Washington WWAMI program, where he is currently a Professor of Family Medicine, Emeritus.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.

Adblock test (Why?)

"Opinion" - Google News
July 07, 2022 at 04:51AM
https://ift.tt/ksqRMho

OPINION: Abortion and one's views on life - Anchorage Daily News
"Opinion" - Google News
https://ift.tt/0tl5bIu
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update