In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Jewish abortion activist Shira M. Zemel argues that abortion opponents are “seeking to impose their religious views on all of us” and “to encode their theology into the laws of our nation.”
Even as she derides pro-lifers for praying outside of an abortion business in Falls Church, Va., Zemel notes that the First Amendment protects their right to demonstrate and her religious freedom to practice Judaism. This much is certainly true.
Where Zemel goes wrong is when she insinuates that access to abortion is protected by the First Amendment’s religion clauses, suggesting that because her religious worldview licenses abortion, it is therefore a matter of religious freedom that she be permitted to access it. She doesn’t bother to explain or defend this argument in detail, but merely hints at it in passing.
More troubling is how Zemel indulges in a favorite lazy slander of abortion supporters, claiming throughout that the Christianity of some pro-lifers means that opposing abortion is an effort to “impose religious views” on the nation. (This is a topic with which Ryan Anderson and I grapple at length in the first chapter of our book out in June.)
For one thing, the pro-life movement is hardly a Christian monolith — there are agnostic pro-lifers, atheist pro-lifers, Muslim pro-lifers, and, for that matter, Jewish pro-lifers. If the pro-life movement is attempting to impose religion on the nation, it remains unclear what religion that might be.
Meanwhile, Zemel conveniently ignores that every law imposes some view of morality. Surely most of the laws that Zemel supports manage to impose a view of morality that coincides with Christian teaching. Laws against theft comport with Catholic doctrine as much as laws against abortion do, yet I’ve never managed to find an abortion supporter who opposes anti-theft laws on the basis that the Bible forbids stealing and therefore that such laws are impositions of religion. Even laws against tax evasion or running a stop sign comport with some vision of morality. All laws do. The proper question isn’t whether laws “impose morality” or whether that morality comports with one religious tradition or another; the question is whether our laws enforce a good moral vision or a bad one.
Arguments such as this one from Zemel aren’t much of an argument at all, rather a convenient way to sidestep defending their belief that it should be legal to kill unborn human beings.