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The tragic death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia mother of a six-year-old, laid bare why Roe v. Wade should have never been overturned.

Most people know Roe v. Wade gave women the right to abortion choice, but the decision was so much more than that.

It intentionally sought to offer a compromise between the right of a woman to control her own body and Christian opposition to abortion rights. The ruling actually says that in the introduction.

I say “Christian” opposition because Judaism has always taught that life begins at birth, and the American Muslim community has not sought to convert its religious views on the issue into political power.

So the religious pressure to restrict women’s rights comes solely from Christians – Catholic and Protestant – who insist life begins at inception, a relatively modern belief.

In 1591 Pope Gregory XIV degreed that life begins at the point of “quickening” (movement in the womb) which was around 24 weeks. That lasted until 1869 when Pope Pius IX declared that the beginning of life was at inception.

The 1973 Supreme Court majority was very aware of that belief, but rejected it as a basis for its decision because there was no medical evidence to support it, and still isn’t. It remains a belief, not a fact.

The justices chose to follow the science that said a fetus becomes a life when it can live on its own outside the womb, which is around 24 weeks (similar to “quickening”), what it called “viability.”

They went on to say that the right to privacy clause in the 14^th Amendment applied to a woman’s right to control her own body up to 24 weeks. Thereafter, the court said, states could impose limits on a woman’s choice so long as they didn’t nullify the right of choice within 24 weeks.

It proved wise and workable, representing a compromise between opposing sides that reflected how our democracy is able to function.

I would go so far as to say that Roe v. Wade may have been the wisest decision the Supreme Court has ever made on a moral issue as complex and emotionally charged as is a woman’s right to choose.

But in 2022 the Robert’s court would have none of it, dismissing the wise compromise Roe v. Wade provided the nation that had stood for 50 years, choosing, instead, to make women’s rights a states rights issue.

It was the same argument used in 1964 by southerners who opposed the federal Civil Rights Act and in 1965 opposed the Voting Rights Act.

It is not unthinkable that the current court conservative majority might well have ruled those laws unconstitutional and turned civil rights once again into a states right issue had they been on the court at the time.

But the real story here is that who sits on the Supreme Court has an enormous impact on the kind of nation we are, another reason Donald Trump should never be president again and the Republicans should not control the Senate.

Amber Nicole Thurman (and also 41 year-old Candi Miller) is dead because of who controls the court today.

They opened the door for states to pass abortion choice bans that could not be more flawed, for the following reasons:

– They place trust in politicians to make a decision that under Roe v. Wade was being made by the pregnant woman, her family, and the woman’s doctor.

–  They defy the history of failure whenever governments try to legislate morality (anybody remember the foolish prohibition laws).

– They dehumanize women by turning the anguish involved in a decision to have an abortion into a debate about “policy.”

– They oversimplify an extremely complex and complicated problem that at best can only be resolved by compromise, as the 1973 Supreme Court majority realized.

Such laws reflect ideology that is grounded in a rigid Christian moralism that has done nothing but harm throughout history and is still doing it.

What exposed them for what they are is Amber’s death.

For two years her family thought the doctors treating her had done all they could do to save her life. Now they have found out from a state committee examining what happened that they didn’t.  

The committee report explicitly said her death was preventable. She could have been saved, but the doctors waited too late to do anything.

It happened because moralistic evangelical Catholic and Protestant Christians, taking advantage of the court striking down Roe v. Wade, pushed Georgia Republicans to pass a law that made doctors think twice before living up to their oath to do no harm.

What should not be lost on us, then, is that when the conservative Supreme Court majority ended Roe v. Wade, they de facto gave Christians who have a right to believe what they want to permission to try to force those beliefs on the rest of us.

Thus far they have been successful in 20 states whose legislatures are controlled by Republican majorities. Their goal is to do to the entire nation what they have done to these states.

The way we can prevent that from happening is to win the presidency on November 5th, defeat Republicans up and down the ballot in the process, and then support Congress passing legislation restoring the wisdom of Roe v. Wade and President Harris signing it into law.