Chaos between the states post Roe v Wade
Prior to the Civil War, Congress passed several Fugitive Slave Acts, but the one that really impacted the nation was the act enacted in 1850. [1] The act effectively forced northern states to help retrieve escaped slaves and return them to their masters, a well as enacting penalties on those who refused to cooperate. Several northern states then enacted their own “personal liberty laws” designed to thwart the penalties placed by the Fugitive Slave Act.
We are now poised to enter a similar era of states conflicts with abortion. Texas has effectively deputized the public in order to chase down abortions performed in Texas. Texas is also criminalizing the mailing of medical abortion items [2]. Missouri is about to enact legislation[3] that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps with a woman get an abortion in another state, including citizens OF those other states.
In response, much like the “personal liberty laws,” Connecticut passed the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act [4]. “A “clawback” provision would protect Connecticut residents from Senate Bill 8 in Texas and similar laws that allow for lawsuits again a doctor for performing an abortion in Connecticut on a woman who traveled here from Texas for medical care. If a Connecticut resident is sued under a Texas-style abortion law, the bill would give them the right to file a counter-suit in order to recover reimbursement, attorney’s fees, and costs.”
From Goldberg’s New York Times column, “Experts don’t know how these kinds of interstate battles are going to play out because there’s so little precedent for them. If you’re searching for close parallels, said Ziegler, “you’re looking at fugitive slave cases, because there are not many times in history when states are trying to tell other states what to do in this way.” The point is not that abortion bans are comparable to slavery in a moral sense, but that they create potentially irreconcilable legal frameworks.”[5]
In short, we KNOW the right won’t be stopping at the overturning of Roe v Wade. Their goal is a total theocratic implementation of their worldview on this topic, steeped in patriarchy and their particular brand of religion. As Abdul El-Sayed pointedly reported in his Incision Newsletter [6] The.. “underriding assumption that life begins at conception is imputed from the most extreme interpretation of ONE faith. It’s an assumption that shares little consensus among other faith traditions. Draconian abortion bans violate the religious freedoms of adherents of other faiths — let alone those of people who claim no faith at all.”
I would go further and say that it is not just the extreme view of one faith, but rather the extreme view of only a couple sects within that one faith, i.e. some sects with Christianity. Certainly not ALL varieties of Christianity.
[1]
https://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts
[3]
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/19/travel-abortion-law-missouri-00018539
[5]
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/opinion/roe-abortion-culture-war.html
