Religious Freedom Lawsuits to try to reinstate abortion rights

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/religions-don-t-agree-on-abortion-that-s-why-some-faiths-plan-to-take-their-case-to-court/ar-AAZFjux?cvid=802368a4fa954033b2e6edd0a20d9e3b

Excellent tactic.

A broader approach should work as well. Since all that's required to validate ones faith in a particular religion is the assertion of a sincerely held belief in it, courts will be constrained to honor any such plausible claims and proceed accordingly.

I've actually researched on how to start a religion...

Just so that our rights are protected..

Something pertaining the effect of being agnostic (not sure whether or not there is a god, but are open to seeing evidence) while maintaining a secular disposition in life (you follow the science and face the world objectively) while remembering that we as individuals are nothing in the grand scale of the history of the universe, that we are just a whisper on the wind. Yet, like the butterfly, our actions have consequences, our goal is to leave the world in a better place than we found it - as such, we pride ourselves on personal liberty and individualism. The definition of ones self cannot be defined by another.

I could go on, I've been thinking about it for a while. But if I have to protect my rights by making up a religion that is plausible, so be it. It won't be Christian-based though, so suck on that, government.

It's a fantastic idea but what you're describing sounds very much like secular humanism, and secular humanism is very much not a religion. I'm afraid that in order to meet the definitional criteria of "religion", it must involve some analog of a sky-father/mother/flying spaghetti monster/unprovable proxy for rationality. Hopefully I'm mistaken.

Simple. Declare the energy that ruptures to create individual universes (multiverse theory, and subsequently, the big bang) inherently divine. Go further to say that it is a current in which all things flow, it is the keeper of balance where it destroys, it also creates.

This of course can be watered down to the scientific level to some degree and it'd still be accurate.

You're on the right track. That might work. I'd worry about it being labeled a cult without affiating itself with an established faith with membership in the 10's of thousands, though for purposes of religious freedom the nature of the faith may well be irrelevant.

I got ordained through the Universal Life Church a few years back to officiate my best friend's wedding, which technically makes me a minister lol. He and his wife welcomed their first child into the world a year ago last month.

I bring this up only to suggest it may carry more clout to form a denomination of that (or another) church and thereby create your own "charter" or whatever, while still being able to point to the venerable banner above you if asked for your church's credentials. Just a thought. Frankly the mission statement is the important part. The minutia can get sorted out later.

It shouldn’t have to come to this, abortion rights should be for everyone regardless of what kind of spirituality is knocking around inside your head, but because this SCOTUS clearly favors religious plaintiffs above just about everyone else, it’s a smart strategy.

Here’s what SCOTUS could do to try to reach the expected result of ruling against pro-abortion religious plaintiffs:

—Abortion bans are neutrally-applicable laws and fundamental enough to provide for no exceptions. Just as you can’t murder in the name of your religion, you can’t abort in the name of your religion.
—Abortion isn’t an essential part of anyone’s faith-practice. Much like the government telling you to wear a face mask in church, these public health-related anti-abortion laws simply have nothing to do with theology. (Problem with that is SCOTUS *has already* said that churchgoers can’t be forced to wear face masks in church, so SCOTUS would simply have to be hypocrites to rule this way… not that they have a problem with that.)

Additional problems — such a case may require SCOTUS to do one or all of these things:
(1) Determine, flatly, that “abortion is murder,” which would in effect create a SCOTUS-imposed national ban on abortion and be even more radical than the Dobbs decision;
(2) Determine that views on abortion have no relatedness to one’s religious beliefs, which simply flies in the face of reason, given that religious evangelicals have been the driving force behind abortion bans for decades;
(3) Determine what “is and isn’t” a valid religion. Find that conservative-values religions are more “authentic” than liberal-values religion. And on some level question “the sincerity of professed religious belief,” which SCOTUS has told us again and again it wouldn’t do.

I am quite sure this is exactly the case SCOTUS doesn’t want, but they opened this can of worms with Dobbs. It’s coming.

Pro-abortion has never been part of the equation. A failure to coherently frame the issue at stake in clearly defined terms is why the conversation has spent generations going nowhere.

Pro-abortion is what China's 1-child policy lead to. Forced abortion. No choice, just like the group currently termed Pro-life. Those extremes are the 2 ends of the spectrum: forced abortion and forced gestation. Pro-choice is the middle ground, not the opposite of what should logically be termed "anti choice", since framing the issue in terms of pro vs anti life is absurd and extremely hypocritical for a bunch of zealots who support the death penalty, fetishize tools created explicitly for killing humans, murder abortion doctors, and give zero fxcks about the life of the wouldbe mother. And since communist china isn't part of the equation, the secular (read: scientific) framing of the issue is pro vs anti choice. Of course that's just my opinion.

I support people's right to choose what to think. If I don't agree with it, I just say I'll do me and you do you. Any by you do you, I mean go fxck yourself. 🙂

(Not talking about you slobama, want to make that clear.) Also wouldn't personally condone abortion beyond the 20th week or so, since at that point it would make more sense to induce a premature birth and then leave it for some pious rightwinger to raise. Hey, you wanted the little fxcker brought into the world against the wishes of the people doing the bringing? Then YOU take care of it.

Before 20 weeks a fetus can't survive outside of the womb. Ergo it is not a person, but the makings of a person. This distinction falls on deaf ears when offered to people who consider the morning after pill murder, or jerking off into a sock abhorent, or jerking off at all a sin...neither here nor there. I just take exception to people's options being limited because of that type of absolute horseshxt.

That’s a good point — “pro-abortion” doesn’t exist as a political category in our country, in the sense of state-mandated abortions, like they would have in a Chinese “One Child Policy” type system. THAT would be the true opposite of “pro-life” i.e. state-mandated birth.

Without the right-to-privacy that Roe v. Wade secured, there is no longer any case law that would stop a state from passing a One Child Policy. I laugh at what SCOTUS would do if presented with a case like that. The Constitution doesn’t say you can’t ban birth, nor does our “history and tradition” (seeing as eugenics laws existed in the U.S. in the early-20th century, laws that were admired and emulated by Adolf Hitler, actually.)

Pro-choice really is the middle ground, and really is pro-freedom.

Yep yep, at least from my vantage point.

It has been a real struggle for me to reconcile how many people vehemently disagree with this position. Harder still has been internalizing not just that I am morally obligated to embrace their right to believe whatever they choose, but to accept the validity of those beliefs, even when they condemn my own.

Great points too, Slobama. I'm really glad DFire recently guided me towards the user-generated streams. It's refreshing to converse constructively for a change, and I see that I'm in very good company.