The Abortion Exception: A Response to 'Abortion and Religious Liberty'
Featured in Columbia Law Review Forum’s Vol. 124, LRRP Director Liz Reiner Platt’s article responds to recent critiques of litigation articulating a religious liberty right to access abortion. It argues that under current and expansive religious liberty doctrine, patients arguing for a religious right to abortion have standing to sue even prior to pregnancy; their sincerity should not be unfairly disputed; and existing secular exemptions in abortion laws undermine the state’s alleged compelling government interest in prohibiting abortion. The article concludes by noting that if legislators and courts are unwilling to apply the rules they created in cases like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Tandon v. Newsom, and Fulton v. Philadelphia to religious right to abortion litigation, then our existing religious exemption laws should be reconsidered. The alternative—a regime in which only expansive RFRA claims made by religious conservatives are granted—is both constitutionally problematic and normatively unfair.