This isn't specifically a reply to the post of yours it seems to respond to, BTW.
The commonplace observation that laws relating to life-and-death matters may often be traced to ancient religious codes obfuscates the nature of lawmaking in the kind of democratic, complex and scientific society we are lucky enough to inhabit.
Today when laws are instituted or rescinded, the justifications given exclude any exclusively religious considerations.
It is obvious why those who would legislate their religious views must call them "moral" ones.
There has been a long, bitter struggle against the blue laws, for divorce reform, for legalization of birth control, and against the prosecution of homosexuals. Strong religious justifications for oppressive practices had found their way into the law, and once they were seen to stand alone as supports for these prohibitions, the laws were changed.
If Neocon were successful in stipulating in the law that a cell cluster was a human being, it is clear he would have been successful in perpetrating a purely religious percept, the "sacredness" of those cells, into the law.
There would come a time when the cruel, and thus immoral, religosity of that oppressive law would be obvious to all, or almost all, and common sense would prevail, just as it does now where birth control is concerned. |
