Michael Ian Black: Anti-Abortion Zealots Flex Their Biblical Muscles at the Supreme Court
Welp, they’re debatin’ babies up at the Supreme Court again.
On Tuesday, SCOTUS heard oral arguments regarding the “morning after pill,” mifepristone. The drug was approved for use in 2000, and is now used in half of all abortions. The case before the court is about limiting the ability of patients to receive the drug through the mail.
Not surprisingly, the plaintiffs in this case are a thinly veiled Christian nationalist project called The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, founded in 2022. Their website has no information about the group’s members, but I’m guessing their footwear of choice is “sensible.”
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I’m not going to debate the legal merits of the case, since my legal training extends no further than playing a bowling alley manager on the early-aughts NBC show Ed, about a lawyer who buys a bowling alley. What I will argue, instead, is that the plaintiffs are 100 percent correct to bring this case.
If you believe, as the Alliance and their allies do, that human life begins at fertilization, then I think you’re morally obligated to do anything and everything you can to prevent those lives from being terminated, even if the science, public opinion, and the law don’t agree with you. In fact, there is no length that is too far for you to travel, because protecting a human life is, prima facie, the highest possible priority.
Filing legally dubious lawsuits in friendly courts is one of the least offensive tactics at their disposal. It’s also one of the most effective tactics, now that the 50-year project of overturning Roe is at an end, thanks to the efforts of the Federalist Society, Mitch McConnell, and the Trump administration.
Protestors during the "Bans Off Our Mifepristone" action organized by the Woman's March outside of the Supreme Court on March 26, 2024 in Washington, DC.
The law, we are learning, is a very expensive, putty-like substance that can be molded however one sees fit. No wonder the conservative movement spent decades and untold millions to pack the courts. Once you own the judges, you own the law.
Now that they’ve got the judges, they’re angling to maximize returns on their investment. If they win their mifepristone fight, next they’ll come after the Pill. They’ll come after gay marriage and they’ll attempt to codify a binary definition of “biological sex” into the law, and they’ll keep going until they’ve made life as miserable as they can for anybody who can’t recite John 3:14 from memory.
And, again, they will be correct to do so.
They will be correct because their worldview is fundamentally different from those of us who do not accept the Word as the final word. They may declare their devotion to the Constitution, but the parchment they worship is far older. It’s also contradictory, confusing, highly symbolic, and far more open to interpretation than the actual laws of this land. This is why the Bible is also the perfect delivery system to convey whatever the hell it is you want to convey.
Here’s what the Bible has to say about when life first begins: It doesn’t.
The closest it comes is in Genesis, when describing how Adam came into being:
“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
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If we are to take the Bible literally, as so many in these organizations purport to do, then a human isn’t “a living being” until God breathes into the nostrils. Which would suggest, in my opinion, that life doesn’t actually begin until at least birth, because there’s no air within the womb. Also, it would mean that I’m not a living being because nobody has ever blown air in my nostrils, even though that is my kink.
In Numbers 5, the Bible goes further, ordering husbands who suspect their pregnant wives of adultery to present themselves in front of a priest who will mix together a special potion for her to drink. If she has been faithful, nothing will happen. But if she has been adulterous, the potion will cause a miscarriage. (It’s biblical mifepristone!)
Kate Hoeting from Catholics for Choice group holds a sign during a protest outside the Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments in a bid by President Joe Biden's administration to preserve broad access to the abortion pill, in Washington, DC., on March 26, 2024.
Unsurprisingly, the plaintiffs did not raise the issue of Numbers 5 in Tuesday’s oral arguments.
Ultimately, though, this isn’t about the Bible. It’s about an interpretation of the Bible by a group of radical Christian nationalists. It just so happens that their interpretation of biblical law is overturning actual American law.
And again, they are correct to collect as many gains as they can, for no other reason than they believe they are right and have the money and resources to force their will down the gullets of an American populace already choking on the poison gas of the culture wars.
One thing about the righteous: they are “right.” It’s in the name. As a righteous person, your interpretation of right/wrong is, definitionally, the correct interpretation. No matter if your POV has no basis in law, medicine, or science. No matter that your POV runs contrary to the wishes of a majority of your fellow citizens. Nothing matters except your certitude regarding your own beliefs.
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So yes, you are correct to rob women of the ability to handle their own medical issues. Yes, you are correct to declare what sex acts are moral or immoral. Yes, you are correct to favor teaching students a history of the planet that is at odds with, literally, everything we know about the planet. You are correct to do all of this and more because you are righteous.
Presumably, it is the cold comfort of righteousness that will protect them as real women continue to suffer for their beliefs. Women carrying non-viable fetuses will continue to be forced to carry those pregnancies to term. Women will be forced to give birth to the children of their rapists. Some women will lose their lives. All of which pales in comparison to the heavenly reward they believe is their due.
In Paul’s Letters to the Romans, he writes, “No one is righteous. Not one.” Paul obviously went to court against the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. If you’re unfamiliar with the quotation, you can pick up a copy of the new Trump-branded Bibles available for the low, low cost of $59.95, plus shipping and handling.
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