This commentary was written by Paul Manganiello MD, MPH. Manganiello is an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and the co-medical director of the Good Neighbor Health Clinic in White River Junction.

I was born into a loving Roman Catholic family, which fortunately for me, was reasonably functional. I was educated in Catholic schools, but became an agnostic while at a Catholic university. A few years later, while in medical school, I met my future wife, and currently, we are practicing Lutherans. As my belief system has evolved, my stance on the issue of abortion has also evolved.  

In the ’90s, my mother suffered a stroke, which left the dominant right side of her body paralyzed. She was very religious, and although she was unable to attend her local church daily, she was able to view the various Catholic religious services on television. On one visit to see her, there was a discussion on the Catholic channel deliberating on the teachings of the theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. They were discussing his teaching on the “hominization” of the human being. 

The current official teaching of the Catholic Church, that human life begins at conception, is relatively new, and it is not infallible teaching. It was stated, in Pope Pius XI’s 1930 Marriage Encyclical “Casti Connubii.” 

St. Thomas (circa 1300s) recognized both the physical and spiritual dimensions of all living things: plants, animals and humans. The term for the spiritual dimension was the soul. He proposed a hierarchy whereby human life would demand more respect. He wrote that human life proceeds through developmental stages (hominization). Under such a scenario, the embryo, at the time of conception, would have a “vegetative” soul, and as the embryo developed further in the process, a fetus would attain a sensory, “sensate” soul. At some point in time, during the ongoing developmental process, when God deemed appropriate, the human organism would be invested with a human, “rational” soul. At the time of St. Thomas, “quickening,” the perception of fetal movement by the mother, which usually occurs at approximately the fifth month of fetal development, was thought to be the time that the human organism was provided with a rational soul and became a human being. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito claimed “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” His statement is the peak of human hubris! Justice Harry Blackmun, who delivered the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade in 1973, humbly stated: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when (human) life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of Medicine, Philosophy, and Theology are unable to arrive at any consensus. The Judiciary at this point in the development of men’s knowledge is not in a position, to speculate as to the answer.” 

I would say that the current judiciary of the Supreme Court is still not in a position to “pontificate” on an opinion. The Alito decision, speaking for the majority, is the culmination of conservative judicial activism, “governing from the bench,” which has roiled Republicans for years when the court was not dominated by the conservative justices we have today. 

The contorted decision for Alito’s argument was made for the need to interpret the original intent of the Founding Fathers, “originalism.” His three objections to Roe and Casey: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision”; the right to abortion is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and the “permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy, by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” 

Alito’s rationale for his reasoning is incomprehensible. Black people were not free at the time the Constitution was written, and some of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Women didn’t have the right to vote, and we didn’t have marriage equality. The Founding Fathers allowed for Constitutional amendments such as the 14th Amendment, the right to privacy, as well as the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, because they saw the Constitution as a “living” document. 

This is exactly why we need a decision by the federal government to protect the rights of all women. It feels as if we have regressed to the time when Black people were fighting for their civil rights in the southern states. If President Kennedy and subsequent federal administrations had not acted, Black people would still be living under Jim Crow laws today. 

A Jewish congregation, L’Dor Va-Dor in Florida, is challenging the state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age. The plaintiffs argue that the ban is counter to the state and the federal government’s constitutional “free exercise clause,” since the law establishes life beginning at conception. It goes against the plaintiff’s religious beliefs. It also goes against the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religions.” This Florida law specifically advantages a “white Christian nationalist’s” worldview. The Jewish plaintiff does not believe human life begins at conception, but rather at birth after the infant takes its first breath. 

The current Supreme Court is making our country less democratic; rather, it is trying to make us into a Christian theocracy. The majority of Americans need to forcefully take back the narrative. Abortion is NOT murder; it is a medical option. A human being/person is NOT just conceived but is born.  

The medical definition of an embryo is a human organism (not a person) that forms at conception/fertilization and evolves into a fetus after eight weeks of development. At 20-24 weeks, the fetus has the potential of living independently from its mother. An embryo is not an unborn baby/child, it is an embryo; a fetus is not an unborn baby/child, it is a fetus. 

We are a religiously diverse country. We all have the personal right to believe that an embryo/fetus is an unborn baby/child, but that is a personal religious belief. No religion should have a monopoly on morality. To quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “You are entitled to ‘your’ opinions (beliefs), but you are not entitled to ‘your’ own facts.” 

We all need to have hope. It may take a while, but this “egregious” decision will eventually be reversed. This fall, please vote for Prop 5/Article 22.

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