Local Opinion: Roe v. Wade was overturned by religious extremists

Make no mistake: Roe v. Wade was overturned because Samuel Alito and five other Christian-conservative Supreme Court justices decided to advance their religion’s dogma on our nation. Their decision was devoid of logic, science, history, experience, compassion and common sense.

This judicial malpractice also happened in 1857 when Chief Justice Roger Taney, the first Roman Catholic on the Supreme Court, wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision. Agreed to by six other justices, it held that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state/territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not entitled to his freedom because African Americans were “an inferior order” (ie: property). Therefore, they could never be citizens of the United States. It also held as unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise (1820), which declared as free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′.

Was that racist ruling also, at its core, religiously based? We’ll never know for sure. But, what we do know is that in 19th century America, both before and after the Civil War, the Bible was frequently cited to argue that the slavery and subjugation of Blacks were justified.

Historians said Taney’s opinion “… ignored precedent, distorted history, imposed a rigid rather than a flexible construction on the Constitution, ignored specific grants of power in the Constitution, and tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Sound familiar? This is also the criticism Alito’s opinion is receiving from legal scholars.

The Supreme Court religionists undid Roe v. Wade because their faith demands it. They offered legal theories as pretexts and smokescreens to disguise inappropriate faith-based motivations.

Their fundamentalist Christian beliefs tell them that:

Ensoulment occurs at conception. Accordingly, this sperm-egg union deserves immediate personhood protections and rights.

Women’s lives must be controlled because their status is one-dimensional and subordinate in nature.

The Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20) was a firm directive from Jesus to his disciples to Christianize the world. It was a command, not a suggestion. Passing biblically based laws fulfills this obligation.

These justices are totally comfortable punting abortion back to the states where they know their religious intentions will be “faithfully” carried out. Conservative Christian-packed state legislatures and conservative Christian governors will now control what should be women’s private health-care decisions.

As if reversing Roe v. Wade was not radical enough, Justice Clarence Thomas pushed his personal theocratic intentions even further when he said, in a concurring opinion, that prior rulings on same-sex marriage, private sexual preferences and contraception should all be reconsidered. So much for precedent!

These six justices were either lying to or misleading senators when asked whether they would consider overturning Roe v. Wade at their confirmation hearings. They should have also been asked these questions: Is your primary loyalty to the U.S. Constitution — to which you swore an oath of allegiance — or to the dogma and directives of your religion? Will your decision-making be grounded only in secular reasoning? If not, why not? Will you be able to make judicial decisions that directly violate your God’s perceived desires and your personal deeply held Christian beliefs? If yes, please explain.

Americans who respect our God-free federal Constitution are fearful that self-serving Christian fundamentalists, a minority of our nation’s population, are imposing their religious dogma on an otherwise secularly based pluralistic nation. Their overrepresentation on the Supreme Court and in state legislatures encourages and allows them to bully the rest of us. They disregard the constitutional obligations they owe constituents who do not share their faith. It’s unfortunate that democracy is not a word or concept found in their Bible.

By embracing and privileging one particular religion’s ideology in its decision-making, a majority of justices of the Supreme Court have betrayed our nation’s trust and respect. This has caused the entire court to lose much of its credibility.