The Twenty-First Century Inquisition

The recent acts of the conservative Supreme Court Justices, most newly appointed by Donald Trump in a Republican Senate palace revolution against modern liberal thinking, has witnessed the birth of a grave threat to rights of women and individual personal freedoms not seen since the 16th Century Religious Inquisitions. The acts of conservative legislatures in Texas has all but aborted a woman’s right to determine her own reproductive future past the embryonic stage of pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a conservative majority has allowed this reduction of personal rights by a State within the Union to remain in effect, feigning the contemplation of the unique attack by the State of Texas on the individual rights of others granted by Federal Law.

When the United States formed the Federalist wrote the constitution without a bill of rights because they felt that individual rights were already guaranteed by each state in their own constitutions. Thomas Jefferson argued that they needed to be included and not just inferred so they were protected. How true indeed did Jefferson’s fears become true. States governments have begun an offensive attack against personal freedoms and individual rights based on religious viewpoints while ignoring the understandings of science.

About 20 percent of organisms fail during the embryonic period, usually due to gross chromosomal abnormalities.¹ This means the women’s own reproductive system aborts the pregnancy during the embryonic period up to 12 weeks because of a dangerous developmental failure of the human chromosomal process. Further, developing child is most at risk for some of the most severe problems during the first three months of development. During this is a time most women are unaware that they are pregnant. Through no fault of the woman, the fetal process is either spontaneously aborted or complications have lead to problematic fetal development.

These chromosomal and development complications bring with them the private personal decisions needed by women and their families. It was the advancements of medical science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that allowed women to become aware of the need for personal rights about their own reproductive systems and use medical knowledge to make their lives safer and more meaningful. The science further allowed them to see into, and decided, the futures of their own as well as their families.

The right to be free to continue the fetal development or not has now been erased by the US Supreme Court and the restrictive policies of a single outlaw State. These rights have been rescinded solely on the religious concept of when humanity consciously begins and not on the personal safety, mental health or conditions of the alive woman.

This religious biases against women’s rights are not unlike the unscientific religious viewpoint in the 16th century that the earth was the center of the universe known as Geocentrism(the earth not moving at the center of the universe). If the earth is indeed the center, then God is trying to tell us that we are special to Him. We are unique. We are destined to be with Him forever. All these ideas drove the government to detain, imprison, persecute and torture individuals in the name of a religious not scientific belief.

They argued the bible professed the truths. They believed it was bible truths. “Yea, the world stands firm, never to be moved.- 1 Chron. 16:30 ” The earth was considered God’s focal point since it was created first and the sun and planets later adorned it. Those who reject geocentrism must explain why they do not submit to this rule of biblical interpretation set forth by two infallible councils.

Copernicus and Galileo both contradicted the religious authority of the 16th Century with their view that the Earth orbited around the Sun. Galileo Galileo, in 1633, was brought before the Inquisition, a judicial system established by the christian church in 1542 to regulate doctrine. This included the banning of books that conflicted with then current religious beliefs. Galileo was sentenced for heresy by religious courts in 1633 for his scientific advancements that countered the religious authority’s belief in Geocentrism. Both Copernicus and Galileo were breaking the law for reasoning with science.

Today, five of the nine justices are Roman Catholic. Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Roman Catholic, professes to now be Anglican Catholic ( Episcopalian ). The other three are Jewish. The Justices have denied during Senate confirmation processes any preconception of a judgment outcome based on their faith or any Christian concepts held by themselves.

However, the notion of life and when it begins has been defined by those who wish to restrict women’s reproductive rights and bodily privacy. Life begins, according to those religious beliefs, with the entrance of a divine soul at conception or the chromosomal mix in a woman’s uterus at fertilization of an ovum. It is at this point that the concepts of human consciousness and those of strict religious ideologies conflict.

There is no definition within the religious concept of creation that allows for the modern scientific concept of consciousness. The concept of human life beginning at a point in fetal development that is also sometimes referred as the point of viability. The point where a fetus becomes aware because of the development of the cerebral cortex and simultaneously could survive outside of the woman’s uterus. This happens when the fetus cerebral cortex forms in the brain at about 23 to 24 weeks after fertilization.

It is the viability concept that for nearly 50 years has been used by States and Courts to define women’s reproductive rights. It is also the concept used by many States including the outlaw State that has all be denied women’s reproductive rights to allow doctor’s and their ethics committees to withdraw life support with State support using Futile Care Laws. The State is allowing dying or brain dead patient based on medical science to expire, despite in some cases, the opposition of families.

Those opposed to the concept of human awareness at 22 weeks and conscious human life are usually opposed to the rights of a woman to decide on her reproductive future. They cannot separate their religious belief of human life beginning at conception. This is, of course, is similar to the social bias during the sixteenth century belief in Geocentrism. The woman’s rights opponents transmute all rights of life at the point of conception to the fetus as an equal to the living woman.

Science has shown us this is not the case and has created a time period through which a woman, with her doctor and her family can safely determine her reproductive future. The point of viability or formation of consciousness in the human embryo. Consciousness is the ability of having perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. Prior to the Cerebral Cortex development there is no connection between the lobes in the forming brain that creates an overall cognitive ability. Each section of the brain reacts independently to stimulus independently with instinctual motor reaction.

You are not consciously making your heart beat or lungs fill but you are aware of it. Prior to this point the woman must be allowed to decide alone the individual and heart wrenching decisions facing her life. It is a moral duty of society to support and help her in these decisions.

A purely secular State cannot predetermine or force the woman’s decisions based on religious concepts of conscious human life any more than the State could make the earth the center of the solar system. The State runs on the rules of religious beliefs that are based only on temporary societal moral beliefs that change as science enlightens and have in the past been proven inaccurate.

Those that force the woman into their religious inquisition morality courts do not advance humankind but inhibit it. They burn the woman’s rights based upon their religiously biased moral authority alone.

They sow the destruction of individual freedoms of all mankind. As where does the restrictions on freedoms end? Do we return to the days of religious clerics controlling the very nature and make up of government?

PopePaul VI, in Humanae Vitae³ July 25, 1968, declared all artificial birth control methods are unlawful as are all specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. While he also outlawed outright termination, he created a further understanding that all couples must remain celibate and for married couples to be celibate between child births as the only preventative method of birth control. He further wrote, “Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life … can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”

This is the religious concept for the banning all types of birth control even the use of prophylactics. While the concepts of Paul VI are not a moral mainstream law. I am sure many of those in opposition to women’s rights to her own body will stand up and say that will never be the case. It is also not an accusation that current Supreme Court Justices, who are Catholic, cannot think beyond religious concepts. They certainly cannot be without confliction to understand their secular legal opinions versus their religious or biblical concepts. They must come to grips with their own beliefs and understanding with their relationship with God. This, just as a woman does in making the hardest decision of her life. However, it must be understood that it is just this type of invasion of religious ideas into a free secular society that has arisen the attack on women and their reproductive rights despite science showing them the path to moral limits.

The inquisition or the Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith established in 1588 to combat Protestantism and used to convict Galileo still exists today. Leaving the right to one’s own body and reproductive rights were unfortunately left by Madison and Jefferson as ‘inferred’ in the Constitution and has proven as not protected by the States Maybe it is time to define a woman’s rights in federal law instead of interpretation.