Recently, a group of Jewish women sued to overturn Kentucky’s abortion ban on religious-freedom grounds, citing long-standing Jewish law on the beginning of life. These women are absolutely correct to file their suit, but for too long, the media has accepted the Christian right’s framing of “religious freedom” as the de facto correct position. In addition to ignoring the diverse perspectives of other faiths, it also ignores the crucial fact that secular Americans have an equal claim to religious-freedom protections.
Freedom of religious expression inherently involves the freedom to not participate in a religion at all. For a rising number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, any law that grounds itself in religious thinking should be presumptively considered an infringement on their rights. Abortion bans are an excellent example of a plainly unconstitutional law that inhibits the religious freedom of both non-Christian faiths and secular individuals. Legalized abortion did not compel a single woman to have an abortion she didn’t want, so no religious freedoms were abridged.
Under the current post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization framework, many states are forcing women to live according to a Christian tenet they might not share. The same laws that protect individuals’ right to practice their diverse faiths must also be applied to people with no particular faith at all.
Adam Colborn, Arlington