Is the Pro-Life View Essentially Religious?

Joe Rogan recently called the pro-life position “essentially religious” in a discussion with J.D. Vance. Dr. Jonathan Fuqua sets the record straight.

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In his recent discussion with J.D. Vance, Joe Rogan claimed that the pro-life position is “essentially religious.” This is one of the most common arguments made by those on the pro-choice side of the aisle: the pro-life view is essentially a religious one and therefore shouldn’t be put into law. The thought here is that judicial decisions and legislative enactments made on the basis of the pro-life view violate the separation of church and state, thus running afoul, not just of sound moral principles of public reason, but also of the First Amendment. Justice Sotomayor’s handwringing to this effect were on display in her questioning of Scott Stewart, the Solicitor General for Mississippi, when she made the following remarks:

“How is your interest anything but a religious view? The issue of when life begins has been hotly debated by philosophers since the beginning of time. It's still debated in religions. So, when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that's a religious view, isn’t it.”

But is it true that the pro-life view is an essentially religious view? It’s not, in fact, and it’s important to see why this is the case and, moreover, to see why the religious facts surrounding the abortion debate do not imply that pro-life judicial decisions and state laws are not morally or legally invalid.

First, the fact that a view is consistent with a religious teaching does not make it a religious view, let alone an essentially religious view. Cosmologists tell us that, in all likelihood, the universe began to exist, which is obviously consistent with the religious teaching that God created the world ex nihilo, but this consistency between cosmology and the theological doctrine of creatio ex nihilo does not imply that the view that the universe began to exist is thereby a religious view. Likewise, the view that slavery is wrong is consistent with the religious view that all human beings are made in God’s image, but that doesn’t make the rejection of slavery religious.

Second, the fact that a view held by some people for a non-religious reason is also held by other people for a religious reason does not imply that the view in question, whatever it is, is thereby a religious view. A cosmologist might believe that the universe began to exist for purely scientific reasons while a theologian might believe it for purely biblical reasons. This would not imply that the view that the universe began to exist is thereby a religious view. Again, one person might reject slavery for reasons deriving purely from moral philosophy and another might do so for theological reasons; this wouldn’t imply that the rejection of slavery is therefore religious.

Third, the fact that a view has theological implications does not make it a religious view either. Perhaps the fact that the universe began to exist implies, in conjunction with other premises, the conclusion that God exists; if so, that would not imply that the view that the universe began to exist is religious. Again, perhaps it’s true that slavery is wrong only if all human beings have dignity, and that all human beings have dignity only if all human beings are made in God’s image; that would not imply that the view that slavery is wrong is thereby religious.

The application of the foregoing to the pro-life view is obvious: it is not a religious view simply in virtue of the facts that it is consistent with religious teachings, is held by some for religious reasons, and has, possibly, theological implications.

What then does make a view essentially religious? A view would seem to be essentially religious only if one of two conditions is met. First, the view can be rationally held only on the basis of some proposition with explicitly theological content; second, the view itself has explicitly theological content. It’s clear that the pro-life view satisfies neither condition. It has no theological content, nor is it the case that one can rationally accept it only on the basis of a religious premise (i.e., a proposition with theological content). Here, for example, is a perfectly reasonable argument for the pro-life view that contains no religious premises:

1. It is always wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

2. The unborn entities in the wombs of pregnant women are innocent human beings.

3. Therefore, it is always wrong to intentionally kill the unborn entities in the wombs of pregnant women.

The point here is not to settle the abortion debate with this argument; maybe it’s fatally flawed somewhere. Rather, the point is that one could rationally believe the conclusion on the basis of its plausible and non-religious premises, and thus that the pro-life view isn’t an essentially religious view. Of course, it can be held as a religious view, such as is the case when someone holds it only on religious grounds; however, it isn’t essentially religious and can thus also be held on other, purely philosophical, grounds.

Someone may still object: “Fine, but aren’t religious justices and religious legislators religiously motivated when they make pro-life decisions? And aren’t they therefore pushing their religious views on the rest of us, codifying them into law? And isn’t that wrong and also unconstitutional?”

These are complicated issues that require their own proper treatment, but here we can note two difficulties. First, the Constitution doesn’t forbid political actors who work for the government from possessing a religious motivation. It forbids them from establishing a state church (at the federal level, anyway) and bids them to respect religious liberty. So, it prevents judicial decisions and legislative enactments from having theological content that runs afoul of those provisions, but it does not forbid those who make judicial decisions and legislative enactments from being religiously motivated. Many of those who worked for suffrage and for civil rights were religiously motivated, but no one thinks that such motivation implies that judicial decisions and legislative enactments made to protect women’s voting rights and civil rights for minorities thereby run afoul of the Constitution. Second, nor does it appear to be immoral for the state’s official actors to render judicial decisions or legislative enactments for religious reasons. A legislator who voted for the Civil Rights Act on the basis his or her conviction that doing so was the only way to protect the God-given rights of minorities would not thereby be doing anything immoral.

The moral and legal status of abortion, then, will have to be adjudicated on moral and legal grounds. It cannot be settled by the false claim that the prolife position is essentially a religious view.

About Dr. Jonathan Fuqua

Jonathan Fuqua is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Conception Seminary College. His most recent books are the co-edited volumes The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology (Cambridge, 2023) and Classical Theism: New Essays on the Metaphysics of God (Routledge, 2023). In teaching, he is a generalist, and in research, he focuses largely on explaining and defending, often using the tools and verbiage of analytic philosophy, the premodern realist tradition of commonsense philosophy. He is currently at work, with co-author Brian Besong, on a forthcoming monograph for Routledge, entitled, Moral Commonsense: Existence, Explanation, and Implications.