The United States Supreme Court has convincingly identified the fatal flaws in plaintiff’s religious freedom claims. Plaintiff argues: “By imposing on Utahns the State’s inherently spiritual and religious view that life begins in the earliest days of pregnancy” the state’s abortion regulations violate article I, section 4 of the Utah Constitution. Decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed an analogous claim. In Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), plaintiffs argued that a prohibition of public funding of abortion violates either “the prohibition under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment against any ‘law respecting an establishment of religion,’” or “the right to freedom of religion protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” Id. at 1311. The specific Establishment Clause argument was that the abortion law “violates the Establishment Clause because it incorporates into law the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the sinfulness of abortion and the time at which life commences.” Id. In regard to Free Exercise, they claimed: “insofar as a woman’s decision to seek a medically necessary abortion may be a product of her religious beliefs under certain Protestant and Jewish tenets, the appellees assert that the funding limitations of the Hyde Amendment impinge on the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause.” 

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