A Final, Most Grievous Aspect of the Leaked Dobbs Opinion
May 18, 2022 by David Fowler
I am delighted that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to reverse its abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The opinion does a great job dismantling the faulty historical analysis employed in Roe between abortion and its treatment under the common law. However, one thing I have not mentioned previously was particularly grievous to me in two ways.
I previously noted the majority opinion said, “[A]bortion presents a profound moral question” but having said so, Justice Alito effectively threw up his hands and said, “We have no answer to that question, so we’ll let the majority in each of the 50 states decide.”
It is grievous to me that a court, charged with doing justice, shirked its duty in that regard. But it had to if the justices don’t know what a person is. Justices cannot mete out justice to persons until they know what persons are.
Last week I mentioned that the Court was playing politics, the same as it did in Roe, when it said the rationale employed to refute the “liberty right” to abortion was not to apply to other liberty right analyses, specifically those touching on homosexuality and homosexual marriage. Politics in a legal office is grievous to me and ultimately injurious to law.
To justify his politics and dress up as law his distinction between abortion and those other decisions, Alito wrote,“[a]bortion is ‘inherently different from marital intimacy,’ ‘marriage,’ or ‘procreation.’”
The words set off by internal quote marks come from the opinion in Casey, the decision being overruled! The Casey Court made up that difference because it knew it was playing politics, and Alito returned to the well of politics he superbly discredited to do the same thing again!
But Alito is wrong. Abortion is not inherently different from those other things! They are all inherently interrelated!
Homosexuality as a constitutive aspect of marriage transforms marriage and procreation into a relationship of sterility, the same as abortion did to marriage and procreation between man and woman.
For the Christian who believes God created all things and created man and woman as given, fixed realities equal in being but different in their persons to fulfill for God’s glory certain functions essential to the well-being of an ordered society, this is nothing short of deconstructing human beings into discrete, fragmented, disconnect pieces. It is disassembling the image of God as male and female as constitutive of the broader description of what being human is.
It is breaking into pieces what God did when He joined man and woman together to define it in terms of natural sterility (abortion and two people of the same sex), not natural fruitfulness.
It is dissolving the offices of mother and father as inherent in procreation, making those offices in the life of an unborn person dependent on human choice, not God’s creational intention.
It makes protection and provision for the child no longer a God-given duty (and privilege) but a choice. Abdication of these offices brings about death of the child and the family. Same-sex marriage intentionally leaves one of those offices vacant in a child’s life.
How can the destruction of those realities in Alito’s opinion not break the heart of any who embrace the beauty of the first chapter of Genesis as normative of what is good and right about human existence, marriage, procreation, and the organic familly?
I know many no longer embrace that view, and for them my words will no doubt seem harsh and mean-spirited. If I shared their void-of-a-Creator-God view of reality, I would find them harsh too; getting to make up whatever world one wants is the prerogative of their worldview.
But if the world and all things in it are God’s and have been designed by Him in certain ways and ordered to certain purposes so we could best reflect and manifest His glory and enjoy fellowship with Him forever, then to rage against creation is ultimately futile and worse yet, destructive of those who do so. For friends and others to live in a way that is ultimately futile grieves my heart greatly too.
But while those things grieve me, it is more grievous to me that they might never know, because they never heard it said, that it is in the presence of the God who is the fullness of all Being we find “fullness of joy and pleasures evermore” (Psalm 16:11.). Not saying that, when I believe it true, is not to love my neighbor.
David Fowler served in the Tennessee state Senate for 12 years before joining FACT as President in 2006.
Previously Expressed Griefs Summarized
I previously noted the majority opinion said, “[A]bortion presents a profound moral question” but having said so, Justice Alito effectively threw up his hands and said, “We have no answer to that question, so we’ll let the majority in each of the 50 states decide.”
It is grievous to me that a court, charged with doing justice, shirked its duty in that regard. But it had to if the justices don’t know what a person is. Justices cannot mete out justice to persons until they know what persons are.
Last week I mentioned that the Court was playing politics, the same as it did in Roe, when it said the rationale employed to refute the “liberty right” to abortion was not to apply to other liberty right analyses, specifically those touching on homosexuality and homosexual marriage. Politics in a legal office is grievous to me and ultimately injurious to law.
What Grieves Me Today—Part 1
To justify his politics and dress up as law his distinction between abortion and those other decisions, Alito wrote,“[a]bortion is ‘inherently different from marital intimacy,’ ‘marriage,’ or ‘procreation.’”
The words set off by internal quote marks come from the opinion in Casey, the decision being overruled! The Casey Court made up that difference because it knew it was playing politics, and Alito returned to the well of politics he superbly discredited to do the same thing again!
But Alito is wrong. Abortion is not inherently different from those other things! They are all inherently interrelated!
Homosexuality as a constitutive aspect of marriage transforms marriage and procreation into a relationship of sterility, the same as abortion did to marriage and procreation between man and woman.
For the Christian who believes God created all things and created man and woman as given, fixed realities equal in being but different in their persons to fulfill for God’s glory certain functions essential to the well-being of an ordered society, this is nothing short of deconstructing human beings into discrete, fragmented, disconnect pieces. It is disassembling the image of God as male and female as constitutive of the broader description of what being human is.
It is breaking into pieces what God did when He joined man and woman together to define it in terms of natural sterility (abortion and two people of the same sex), not natural fruitfulness.
It is dissolving the offices of mother and father as inherent in procreation, making those offices in the life of an unborn person dependent on human choice, not God’s creational intention.
It makes protection and provision for the child no longer a God-given duty (and privilege) but a choice. Abdication of these offices brings about death of the child and the family. Same-sex marriage intentionally leaves one of those offices vacant in a child’s life.
How can the destruction of those realities in Alito’s opinion not break the heart of any who embrace the beauty of the first chapter of Genesis as normative of what is good and right about human existence, marriage, procreation, and the organic familly?
What Grieves Me Today-Part 2
I know many no longer embrace that view, and for them my words will no doubt seem harsh and mean-spirited. If I shared their void-of-a-Creator-God view of reality, I would find them harsh too; getting to make up whatever world one wants is the prerogative of their worldview.
But if the world and all things in it are God’s and have been designed by Him in certain ways and ordered to certain purposes so we could best reflect and manifest His glory and enjoy fellowship with Him forever, then to rage against creation is ultimately futile and worse yet, destructive of those who do so. For friends and others to live in a way that is ultimately futile grieves my heart greatly too.
But while those things grieve me, it is more grievous to me that they might never know, because they never heard it said, that it is in the presence of the God who is the fullness of all Being we find “fullness of joy and pleasures evermore” (Psalm 16:11.). Not saying that, when I believe it true, is not to love my neighbor.
David Fowler served in the Tennessee state Senate for 12 years before joining FACT as President in 2006.
