As the Biden Administration looks for ways to increase abortion availability in the likely event of the Supreme Court reversing federal protections of Roe v. Wade, one of Alaska’s most politically left-leaning lawyers says that abortion is a free speech right, protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The bloody process of eliminating a child from the womb is an interpretation never before tried in the history of free speech and opens the door to other novel interpretations of speech.
Under the reasoning of lawyer Scott Kendall, who authored the flawed Ballot Measure 2, was Gov. Bill Walker’s chief of staff and apologist, and was legal counsel to the campaigns of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Jewish faith at times actually encourages abortion up until the moment when the child takes his or her first breath.
Kendall claims that, as such a tenet of faith, abortion is protected because his faith is protected by the First Amendment.
Kendall posted his hot legal take on Twitter, with documentation to back it up. According to Kendall, “Abortion isn’t prohibited by my faith — in fact abortion is supported, and even encouraged, when health of a woman (including mental health) is at risk. Allowing laws that favor some religious groups’ beliefs over those of others violates our 1st Amendment rights to Free Exercise.”
Kendall cites an advocacy paper from National Council of Jewish Women that says life does not begin at conception, and that the soul does not enter the body until the first breath of oxygen reaches the lungs of a baby at birth, according to the Torah.
Kendall’s authoritative source says Jewish law does not consider a fetus to be alive and further, if violence is done to a woman who is pregnant, and she miscarries as a result, the perpetrator only has to pay a fine, for the miscarriage, and is punished only for whatever harm is done to the mother herself. That’s because the baby in the womb is not considered human.
Kendall’s sources say that abortion is even required by Jewish faith if the mother’s psychological health is not well. NCJW advocates for abortion access as an essential component of comprehensive affordable, confidential, and equitable family planning, reproductive, sexual health, and maternal health services and says that a fetus is not considered a person.
The Kendall Doctrine is different from what President Joe Biden is saying. Biden said, “The idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard.”
It was the “C” word that caught critics’ attention: Biden described the in-utero infant as a “child,” unlike what Kendall considers it, which is not a living being because it hasn’t taken a breath.
Biden, who is also a lawyer and who is at the top of the government pyramid, made it clear that it’s a human who is killed during the abortion. His administration is now weighing options for how to assist women in the killing of what he admits is their offspring.
“Officials are discussing whether Medicaid funding could be made available to women to travel to other states for an abortion, according to outside advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, but many doubt whether that is feasible,” according to The Washington Post.
Although it’s not final, on Monday, a document was leaked by the U.S. Supreme Court that shows that in February the justices voted by a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark legislation that put sideboards on state laws prohibiting abortion. The ruling, which is a draft at this point, would turn the matter back over to states for them to decide their own abortion laws. Alaska has few abortion providers but very liberal abortion laws and an extremely liberal Alaska Supreme Court that decides in favor of unfettered abortions, under the Alaska Constitution’s right to privacy.
Kendall’s political ally, Bill Walker, also vented about the overturning of Roe. On Tuesday, the former governor and current gubernatorial candidate said that Alaska’s privacy protections were imperiled by the Supreme Court decision.
In fact, Alaska’s abortion laws will not change with the ruling that is being drafted at the Supreme Court, but if Alaska has a constitutional convention, which Kendall opposes and is leading an effort to defeat, the rights of the unborn would become a front-and-center item of debate. The constitutional convention question will appear on the November ballot.
