By Michael Meade

The recent act of judicial extremism on the part of six Supreme Court justices has stripped bodily autonomy from tens of millions of women and ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion rights in the United States. It is difficult to overstate how devastating this is for pregnant women, for women of all ages and for anyone who values individual freedom, equality of choice and genuine justice.
 
The situation becomes all the more harrowing when it is revealed that rescinding reproductive rights of women is just the beginning of an all-out assault on civil rights in America. That exact pattern has appeared in every country that has recently scaled back abortion rights. And that raises the question of whether a country can truly be a democracy, in which government derives its power from the people, if it subjugates half of its population, giving them fewer rights, fewer freedoms and fewer liberties.
 
While some claim that taking away a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices is a win for religious freedom; others argue that prohibitions on abortion violate their religious beliefs. A number of Jewish organizations repudiated the Supreme Court decision for violating traditional Jewish beliefs. Ancient ideas in Judaism hold that a fetus is part of the mother's body and is only considered a person after its first breath is taken.
 
While interpretations vary across Judaism, the Women's Rabbinic Network argues that forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy or one that endangers her life violates Jewish law precisely because it prioritizes an unborn fetus over the living adult who is pregnant. The American Jewish Committee stated that, "overturning abortion access denies individual's health care options consistent with their religious beliefs, presenting issues of religious freedom and personal privacy."
 
The extreme abortion bans being reintroduced into American law favor one religious viewpoint over others; while the first amendment  guarantees that no single religion should be enshrined in law or dictate public policy on any issue. At the same time, the notion that reversing pro-choice legislation means a return to America’s origins as a Christian nation is a case of “false originalism” as well as a misinterpretation of history.
 
Before 1840, abortion was a widely available, largely acceptable experience for American women. During that period, the legal system used the “doctrine of quickening,” taken from British common law to codify the legality of abortion. Quickening occurred when the pregnant woman could feel the fetus move, typically considered to be between the fourth and the sixth month of a pregnancy. This turns out to be, with variations on timing, a view of pregnancy found in many traditions worldwide.
 
The era of abortion legality in America coincided with a period of 278 years during which the Catholic Church also allowed for abortions up to the time of quickening. “Ensoulment” was the official term for the moment when the soul became present and what is now being called “personhood” occurs. The sense of a distinct spirit and unique soul determining personhood is also found in traditions around the world.

Current doctrine in the Catholic Church states that since the first century the church “has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion” and that “this teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.” However, just like the courts, the position of the church on abortion has changed many times in the past two millennia.

At first, following Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, most Catholic thinkers held that a human being did not come into existence upon conception, but only many weeks later. Eventually, the church's rules on chastity and limiting sex to the “conjugal embrace” of marriage came into conflict with the traditional ideas and practices of abortion.

The main issue with abortion was that the only allowable reason to have sex was the procreation of more human beings. Thus, contraception became wrong and sinful because it allowed people to have sex for erotic pleasure. And abortion became deeply sinful, because it nullified the only acceptable reason for having sex. Of course, throughout the ages, people had sex for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of positions, while the church altered and changed its positions regarding abortion.
 
For example, in the 15th century, Saint Antonius, the Archbishop of Florence, defended abortions for medical reasons as long as they occurred before the time of ensoulment. Antonius was not a radical or controversial figure; rather the pope at the time declared him a brilliant theologian. The views of St. Antonius were shared by many theologians and the principle of ensoulment happening several months into pregnancy came back into prominence. 
 
Then, under the heading of this has happened before, things changed in the 1580’s when Pope Sixtus the Fifth came to power. Sixtus was a notoriously harsh man, who had been recalled from his role as Inquisitor General in Venice due to his extremism. In 1588, he issued a papal bull declaring that abortion at any stage of pregnancy was simply homicide. It's hard not to notice the similarity to similarly extreme laws being promulgated again in conservative states in the U.S.
 
Under the heading of things might just change again, the hardline stance on abortion lasted only three years. In 1591, Pope Gregory the 14th repealed the decision of Sixtus; declaring abortion to be allowable after ensoulment or about halfway through the second trimester. That is the decision that lasted for 278 years, until Pope Pius the 9th reversed the decision yet again in 1869, and made all abortions after conception a sin that automatically excommunicated those involved in the abortion and in its procurement.
 
Throughout all the changes regarding abortion in Christianity, there has always been a vein of thought going all the way back to Aristotle. The principle known as “the primacy of conscience” suggests that when navigating complex moral issues and deeply personal questions, a person must look to their own conscience, not simply to religious or political leaders.
 
The primacy of personal conscience is not a matter of abstract morality. Rather, it is a matter of the same individual soul that is the indication of personhood; the same soul that can be said to rest in each person's heart of hearts, a place that by definition has to be private, as well as personal. 

We live in a time of the narrowing of minds and hardening of hearts and for some that means a return to the old mistakes of trying to restrict, inhibit and diminish the womb, which otherwise has always represented the great feminine force of life. Ancient ideas considered that the womb held, not simply the seed of life, but also the mystery of life.

In ancient wisdom traditions Mother Earth appeared as the womb from which all life comes and also as the tomb to which all lives return at death. This exchange between womb and tomb, between life and death has always been the core of the mystery of life on earth, as well as the dynamic of nature itself. That is to say, we are born and live within the mystery of life, death, and renewal, or birth, death and rebirth. And that mystery that lives inside the womb of mother Earth and is also embodied by each woman, seems to be what all kinds of theories, doctrines, and laws are opposed to and seemingly afraid of.

In this crucial time, when issues tend to become existential, our existence, as well as our mutual freedoms and the future of the Earth are all at risk. The womb, which is being so devalued and disrespected, is the place of both birth and death which are the two great transformers of life. And you can't have one without the other.

We have all been born into the mystery that involves life and death as well as the inborn capacity for renewal and regeneration. The energy needed to reconnect to nature and revive and restore a more humane vision of human culture waits to be reborn within each of us. As the poet Goethe once wrote: "so long as you have not experienced this, to die, and so to grow, you are just a guest on this dark earth." And this is not the time to let those who try to reduce the mysteries of life to restrictive dogmas and invasive laws to make decisions about life and death for the rest of us.