I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a “Mormon”). As such, I have a personal religious belief that abortion should not be used to terminate a pregnancy except in cases of rape, incest, or when the health or life of the mother is at risk.
So, here’s the problem. When you make a law, you are, by definition, saying that something is criminal, will have to be monitored by law enforcement, and will result in fines or imprisonment if it is found you did the crime. So, this fear (or “deterrence”) would keep people from committing the “crime.” The problem is, that abortion is actually a medical procedure, and the situations when it might be used are very, very complicated, and thus cannot be decided in a black and white way by a black and white law. And so we see the results.
I can believe something is immoral and still not want it to be a crime. Mormons believe a lot of things are “immoral,” or against the rules of God, including extramarital sex, drinking alcohol, and smoking, but no one is suggesting we make laws that would make those things a crime.
Imagine trying to enforce a law that made extramarital sex a crime. What would that look like? Cameras in every bedroom, the back seats of cars, monitored by whom? Those laws would be unenforceable and arbitrary.
I believe people should make their own decisions about all these things in the privacy of their own lives, following their own moral compass. I reserve the right to try to persuade people to feel differently about their morals (thus all the missionaries with their sweet little name tags). And so I believe we should return to the rules of Roe v. Wade. And that doesn’t make me pro-abortion. It makes me believe in freedom, bodily autonomy, free agency and fairness.
Deanna Tolman, Orem
