The Nootbaar and Ken Starr Institutes organized and held a lively discussion on abortion restrictions and reproductive rights, particularly on how several ongoing cases across the country relate to constitutional law and religious freedom at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law with around 50 attendees.
Hill referenced the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization the court ruled in favor of Mississippi state law, banning almost all abortions after 15 weeks. The Supreme Court found that abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution or is an essential part of United States history. Since then, the issue of abortion and religious rights has gained more attention, Hill said.
“We generally associate abortion with the liberal left and religion with the conservative right. Now we have a marriage of political ideas,” Hill said, while pointing to partisan policy and politics as a core reason.
In the Q&A portion of the event discussion, a first-year law student from Kentucky, referenced the Cameron v. EMW’s Women Surgical Center case.
He asked how federal and state jurisdiction would play out in abortion and religious rights cases across the country.
Cases in the next couple of years will struggle to reach a final verdict due to “a stumbling of procedural orders,” rooted in how religious freedom should be interpreted by various states across the country, Hill said.
Both political sides of the argument need help to break down what religious freedom is and the scope to which it applies to abortion bans, Hill said. She said that different religious communities do not agree upon when the time of life starts, some argue it’s during conception and others argue at the time of birth.
Religious communities are struggling with agreed exceptions to potential abortion bans, Hill said.
“Religious freedom doctrine has to be broken down to be improved,” Hill said.
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Email H.L. McCullough: hubert.mccullough@pepperdine.edu
