Death for the Culture of Death

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In this letter to NRLC, Trump stated, "We all have a duty to defend the most basic and fundamental human right — the right to life. As president, I am dedicated to protecting the lives of every American, including the unborn."

If the president turns his dedication into an executive order, the Supreme Court's vetting of its constitutionality would dwarf the controversy that arose over the high court's examination and recent approval of Trump's highly publicized travel ban.

 

Trump's move toward legally establishing personhood for the unborn already entered into legal text last October when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its 2018–2022 plan stating that life begins at conception and, therefore, deserves legal protection.

 

In the introduction of this plan, the government agency declared, "HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception." These regulations are on a collision course with the so-called right to abortion and this collision will ultimately occur in the midst of Trump's future mix of Supreme Court justices.

 

But regardless of how courts will view a baby's right to life, another pressing issue for the Supreme Court will be vetting a doctor's right to refuse to kill babies. The push for doctors and health care professionals to participate in this deadly practice was resisted by Trump in January when he formed, within HHS, the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division. In the accompanying press release, HHS explained the role of this new division is to "restore federal enforcement of our nation's laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom."

 

The division pledges to protect the rights of health care providers who refuse to perform, accommodate or assist in sterilizations, abortions and other procedures that violate their religious beliefs. A doctor's freedom to follow their conscience, based on sincerely held religious beliefs, will be weighed by the Supreme Court against a women's fallacious right to kill her unborn child.

 

This same division will also protect health care providers who refuse to kill their patients. The deadly practice of physician-assisted suicide was broadcast in the 1990's by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a medical pathologist who helped dozens of terminally ill people commit suicide. It wasn't until the highly publicized suicide of Brittany Maynard in 2014, however, that assisted suicide became widely accepted. Eight states and Washington, D.C. have legalized suicide.

 

Not only will the Supreme Court have to uphold the liberty of Americans to reject killing the elderly and the infirm, but the practice itself may also come under their purview. Trump's latest addition to the Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch, has written that such a practice itself violates the natural law principle that human life is intrinsically valuable.

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The high court must also balance the right to same-sex "marriage" it established in the 2015 case of Obergefell v. Hodges with the rights of Americans to refuse to serve what they understand are sham marriages. The Supreme Court punted two such cases back to the lower courts. The first involved a Christian baker from Colorado, who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. The second case involved a florist from the state of Washington, who likewise refused to make flowers celebrating a so-called same-sex wedding.

Neither case addresses the central issue of business owners' right of declining service to same-sex couples who attempt to marry. In deciding the case of Colorado's Masterpiece Cakeshop, Justice Anthony Kennedy admitted that this issue is not yet settled. Speaking of the Christian baker, Jack Phillips, Kennedy, in his majority opinion, verified there's still a "delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power" to regulate same-sex "marriage."

He added that "the outcome of some future controversy involving facts similar to these" is yet to be decided by the high court. What makes it certain that such a case will come before the Supreme Court is the fact that many other cases are now working their way through the lower courts involving, not only bakers, but also florists, printers, photographers, videographers and calligraphers who all agree that their religious beliefs won't allow them to offer their services for same-sex wedding ceremonies.