Yep — It’s extremely difficult to overcome one’s own beliefs and deeply held assumptions — and the average person doesn’t NEED to overcome them. The purpose of the law is to hold sacred MY right to determine MY own autonomous actions regardless of other people’s judgments and assumptions.

The law is the principle that protects all of us from taking up the burden of responsibility for other people’s property, decisions, bodies, etc, even if we WANT to take up that burden or exercise that power. The law is the barrier protecting evangelicals from being forced to abort just as surely as it is the thing preventing non-evangelicals from being forced to house and carry another person inside their bodies for any length of time.

The law is set up so that we can aim to make it free of bias, and the only morals it must uphold are the principles outlined by our constitution. The MOST sacred of those objective principles is that of individual bodily autonomy — you can see it in the evolution of that document, too. The right to refuse housing to soldiers, the right to speak freely so long as it doesn’t threaten the safety (bodily autonomy!) of another person, the right to self-determination, the abolition of slavery and the imposition of another’s demands on the individual body….all of it is confirmation of that one right above all others.

And no religious or political belief is more sacred than that one core principle here in America.