Recently the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – otherwise known as the “Mississippi abortion case”. If you haven’t listened to the oral arguments: you probably ought to, since they are available online and this is potentially the most important case before the high court in 50 years – perhaps longer!
This, of course, has the pro-baby-murder folks in society in a furor! This will overthrow Casey! This will undermine Roe! If the State of Mississippi wins in Dobbs v Jackson, that will mean that we will, essentially, return to a pre-Roe status where the several states, themselves, will determine who can murder a baby, dismember it, and dispose of his or her remains and under what circumstances it can be done. And, of course, this is unacceptable to the Progressives in our society. Laws like this are an invasion of a woman’s privacy, her autonomy, her economic future.
Baby-murder advocates from all over this country – and others – were castigating the patriarchal misogynists who wrote and voted for this law and anyone who would defend it! And during oral arguments Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how the Mississippi State Law wasn’t simply an imposition of religion?
And this is evidence of a few things, but two warrant comment. First, Justice Sotomayor is not the finest legal mind this country has ever produced. Second, she has a catastrophically flawed vision of law. Granted, she shares that flawed vision with multitudes, but it doesn’t make it any less flawed. Justice Sotomayor believes that law can be separated from “religion”. But that’s simply not true. Everyone has beliefs that they accept on faith – beliefs that cannot be proven. And everyone has ethical beliefs – they have unprovable notions about what right and wrong behavior are. And everyone living in a society has a vested interest in having good ethical beliefs codified and enforced through law.
You see, those who say that you can’t “legislate morality” are tragically, and almost comically, mistaken. The ONLY thing you legislate is morality. Governments prescribe and proscribe; they preference and prohibit; and they do all this based upon “morality”. Things are illegal because they are believed to be wrong and things are legal (and even promoted and subsidized by government) because they are perceived to be moral goods. The ONLY thing we legislate is morality – and morality is just a subset of religion.
But some think that you can’t “legislate morality” in the sense that laws don’t change behavior. That’s dumb. If laws don’t affect behavior then why do we have laws!? What a society prohibits (presuming the law is enforced) is something that that society is going to view as bad, or at least risky. What a society permits and encourages and subsidizes is something a society will value and view as good, or at least advantageous! Legislation creates cultural norms – both of what’s good and what’s bad – and it changes the way people behave. Everyone knows this. Even if they don’t like it or are unwilling to admit it.
The truth is that our society can, and should, and must legislate morality. It’s the only thing we can legislate and our laws shape the kind of people we are and will become. The question is not whether we will enforce a religion – but which religion? The Christian faith, which is America’s cultural heritage, or the vengeful totemist and fetishistic religion of secular pagan Progressivism – our legal system demands we choose a religion…it cannot be both.