Even if you’re willing to concede such a legal novelty, what about the rights of others to control their own bodies: e.g., the surgeon who would be forced by law to perform the abortion, but won’t because of his religious beliefs; the hospital administrators or nurses or clinic workers who likewise won’t help kill a baby in the womb because they know innocent human life is never to be deliberately destroyed?
This whole question of whether the U.S. government can issue concessions for religious belief and conscience – or not – was already settled when George Washington wrote a letter to the Newport, Rhode Island, Touro Synagogue, which he visited in 1790. Moses Seixas, the Warden of the synagogue, later wrote to Washington asking for assurances of religious freedom for Jews.
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