There is no issue more divisive and heated in American society than abortion. While the battle plays out in our living rooms, streets and courts, if we ever hope to resolve the struggle over abortion we must first answer one central question: When does life begin?
On Election Day 2008, Colorado voters were asked to decide a question that theologians, ethicists, philosophers and parents from time immemorial have struggled with: when does life begin? A ballot initiative asked voters to expand the definition of “personhood” in the Colorado constitution to include any fertilized egg, zygote, embryo or fetus. If they decided that a fertilized egg is a person, then every fertilized egg would have inalienable rights, just like you--the reader.
But deciding “when life begins” is so much more complicated than a re-definition. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court refused to rule on the matter, saying that it was in no position to decide a question about which there was such great division: “When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the court again rejected arguments that a fetus was a person, with Justice Blackmun writing: an abortion is not “the termination of life entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection. Accordingly, a State’s interest in protecting fetal life is not grounded in the Constitution. Nor, consistent with our Establishment Clause, can it be a theological or sectarian interest.”
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