Assault on Reproductive Rights Is A Call for Church-State Separation
By Gajanan Khergamker
The recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, which underscores the ongoing assault on reproductive rights by religious extremists, serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need to separate church and state. In a 7-2 ruling, the court declared that frozen human embryos are children and hence entitled to legal rights. This decision, steeped in religious rhetoric, even saw the Chief Justice quoting from the Bible to provide a concurring opinion.
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| Chief Justice Tom Parker repeatedly refers to God and his religious beliefs, even quoting from the Bible to justify his decision |
Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker wrote, “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982).”
The case in question involved a clinic that provided in vitro fertilization (IVF). In 2020, an individual gained access to the area where embryos were stored and dropped several frozen ones to the floor, destroying them. The plaintiffs, who were storing the embryos at the clinic, sued and cited an 1872 state law known as the Wrongful Death of A Child Act.
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| The Alabama Supreme Court |
The Alabama High Court held that the clinic was negligent and went on to assert that the Wrongful Death of a Child Act “applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
This ruling deals a significant blow to IVF in Alabama. Given that IVF inevitably involves the destruction of embryos that aren’t implanted in the womb, it’s hard to see how the ruling qualifies legally.
Chief Justice Tom Parker repeatedly refers to God and his religious beliefs, even quoting from the Bible to justify his decision. He maintains beliefs about life beginning at conception and that ‘God made every person in His image’ which are mostly theological, not legal or medical, statements and must have no place in secular court decisions.
It is worth noting that Parker is a protégé of the infamous ‘Ten Commandments Judge’ Roy Moore, who was twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by rulings of higher courts on church-state matters. Prior to getting elected to the court, Parker ran a Christian Nationalist group affiliated with Focus on the Family.
In 2001, Alabama was thrust into the centre of a national controversy about the presence of religious symbols on government property when Roy Moore, the then-chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, installed a 5,280-pound granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state’s judicial building. Moore already had a reputation in Alabama as the ‘Ten Commandments Judge’ after a legal battle over a small wooden display of the Commandments that he hung in his Etowah County courtroom, where he was a circuit judge in the 1990s.
In Alabama, people’s rights are being stripped away for no other reason than how some other people interpret the Bible. This case serves as a stark reminder of the importance of maintaining a clear separation between church and state, and the dangers of allowing religious beliefs to influence secular law and policy.
