One of the 2023 state laws the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down this week is titled the “Life is a Human Right Act.”
The high court focused on a single issue:
“Do the Wyoming laws restricting abortions unjustifiably limit a woman’s state constitutional right to make her own health care decisions?”
All five Wyoming Supreme Court justices agreed that the decision whether to terminate or continue a pregnancy is a woman’s own health care decision protected by Article 1, Section 38 of the state Constitution, and that this is a fundamental right.
The United States Supreme Court spoke on this issue nearly four years prior by deciding Dobbs, the decision that removed the federal right to abortion and left the topic to the states.
While many decried the Dobbs opinion, it was only because their “access” now had local control. That seems to make sense if you are interested in being a state that doesn’t want abortion clinics in your towns. The power is with the people, in the Legislature, with the vote. Because we are a free society.
In Dobbs, the United States Supreme Court wrote, “Abortion is a profoundly difficult and contentious issue because it presents an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of a pregnant woman who seeks an abortion and the interests in protecting fetal life.”
“Fetal life.” Nobody disputes the baby is alive.
It seems impossible to escape the logical rationale that this conversation is actually about whose rights are more important. Or whose rights are more fundamental. Or how long they get to be alive before we have the “right” to kill them.
We layer it in complexity, but doesn’t it come down to that?
Are we a society that must allow the death of children because people decided those babies were inconvenient? Oh, I forgot, free.
But the baby didn’t have freedom when the cold tools clamped her neck. Or when her organs were sucked from her delicate torso with a vacuum.
But, only that baby has ultimate freedom now, blameless in the loving arms of God. While others will atone.
It should be OK to say no as a state. We have a moral duty to protect the most vulnerable human life, and I don’t know what’s more important to fight for than an innocent baby.
If you watched someone attack a newborn with a hammer in the hospital you’d do everything you could to stop it and protect that baby. And the person who did it would be criminally charged.
Instead, moments before exiting the portal to life, you say that exact same baby has no value? That she has no fundamental right to just live?
A right to breathe air and exist. The most fundamental. The first right we have because it gives us Life.
If we extinguish that, who are we anymore?
And if the standard is viability, why stop there? Why not go for euthanasia of people who need help to live, or kids who suffer from horrific genetic abnormalities? I mean, doesn’t this jaded worldview ultimately conclude that life would be easier and freer if we eliminated inconvenient people?
I argue no. Some lines we can’t cross. Being a civilized society comes with consequences, as does being a part of an uncivilized society.
Government can never be the creator of life. God is. And what He has created, no man can truly destroy. We only destroy ourselves trying.
But we won’t solve abortion by outlawing it anyway. People will just go somewhere else. If politics is really downstream of culture, it is up to us to be a generation of people who inspire others to have babies and not kill them.
Only we can do that.
How we fight for them is, we love them. Ones that are ours, ones that are not. And remember your worth and your value. Remember God isn’t some rule book to keep you from having fun. He’s trying to protect you. Most importantly, your heart.
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.” 1 Thessalonians 4:3-6
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
