life does not per se = morality

I see the biggest problem in State regulation of morality as the question of whose morality is being enforced. A system of morals is one that weighs many alternative paths and chooses one at the cost of others. By regulating morality, a State locks-in the value of each path and therefore eliminates the process of give and take which is a necessity of any moral system. It mandates which path to take at various forks in the road without regard to the system of paths as a whole or the reality that for some people, the forced path takes them too far away from their original course to ever return.

The regulation of abortion provides an example. In Roe v. Wade, the State asserted that as long as at least potential life is involved, it may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman. In its opinion the Court uses a balancing test that says the woman’s right to privacy outweighs the rights of a potential life, but only in the first trimester. The Court can make this decision because it is looking only at the generic concepts of “woman” and “potential life.”

I argue that this decision requires a much more individualized approach because it is actually deeming the future of a human being with a set of present circumstances and another human being with a set of future circumstances. Sending a pregnant woman down the chosen path of childbirth ignores the subsequent questions of morality regarding the potential human being that is the ultimate result of the State’s firm stance, yet the Court’s analysis ends in the delivery room. Is it moral to bring an unwanted child into the world? Is it honoring human life to insist on it, even when it exists in poverty? In abuse? In addiction? In starvation? In insisting on the single path that promotes potential life, the State is actually acting in total disregard for the human life that comes as a consequence.

The rhetoric used by the Court attempts to force the audience into viewing the fetus as a child, but stops short of considering the resulting child for more than a few hours after his/her birth. It is likely that the same people appalled at the abortion procedure would likewise be appalled at images of the 800,000 children in foster care and the 899,121 children in Texas alone who qualify for the public school’s severe need breakfast supplement program. The Court’s opinion is terminally flawed because it allows the state to stake claim to a fetus growing within a woman without requiring the state to prove a parallel interest in the child that results. Until the Court brings post-birth responsibilities into their analysis, the resulting policies will fail to give any dignity to the human life they’ve so vehemently advocated for, thus making the proposed state interest wholly irrational.

The State cannot regulate morality because such statutory regulation does not allow for the give and take that is necessary in reality. While the concept of “potential life” seems like one we should protect in general, the actual human life at stake in such decisions may be provided more dignity in termination than in birth.