Family Law Commons^™

Abortion, Moral Law, And The First Amendment: The Conflict Between Fetal Rights & Freedom Of Religion, Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

The status of abortion as murder, and therefore amenable to governmental intervention and criminalization, has been asserted by those favoring limits on abortion. Opponents claim a superior right of privacy and/or equality exists under the Constitution, vesting in a woman the right to decide activities and actions that affect her physical corpus. The claimed interest of a State to protect the fetus is impliedly based on the concept of “morality” or “natural law,” specifically on the premise that feticide is violative of the basic code of conduct of societal norms. To my knowledge, until now, this is the first investigation …