>Americans' confidence in the court has dropped sharply over the past year and reached a new low in Gallup's nearly 50-year trend. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, down from 36% a year ago and five percentage points lower than the previous low recorded in 2014.
> Americans' confidence in the court has dropped sharply over the past year and reached a new low in Gallup's nearly 50-year trend. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, down from 36% a year ago and five percentage points lower than the previous low recorded in 2014.
The headline is accurate, the Democrats and independents are not into the religion-related rulings and the Republicans are not into the Supreme Court not reinstating their king after he lost the election. Everyone is disappointed.
I'll note that you can offend "both sides" and still not act correctly, or morally. That's the fallacy that mainstream media seems to believe: if people on both sides of a spectrum tell me I suck, I must be doing things right. In the media's case, they're not, they're just sucking. Let's not make the same mistake here.
It's not terribly surprising. The biggest drop was among Democrats and (probably Democratic-leaning) independents, and this court isn't very friendly to their ideological priorities.
With modern polarization, "confidence" actually seems to mean "confidence I'll get the result I want from it" (e.g. how ideologically aligned it is to me).
The nation’s loss of Confidence in the court is due to the law yesterday changing this morning putting our nation 50 years into the past, all while going against all previous precedent, against the new judges testimony prior to confirmation(meaning at least 3 judges lied to get on the court), and the uncertainty that additional laws will change on the whim of religious fundamentalism, laws that our nation was built upon like separation of church and state, that we have been taking for granted.
If laws were changed due to new information and were consistent with other laws regulating things like shutting down life support for brain dead adults when compared to abortion, I doubt the SCOTUS would have lost the confidence of the nation.
It should be noted that a court not friendly to human rights and the separation of church and state is not merely against the Democrats, but all Americans.
This is how we end up causing our institutions to crumble. Your average American has no idea what Roe means or doesn’t mean, or what it’s repeal means or doesn’t mean. It’s incumbent upon elites to tell the truth. Instead, people are playing fast and loose with the truth for political gain. Erin Chemerinsky, for example, a prominent Constitutional law scholar, called overturning Roe a “pure exercise of Republican power.”
In reality, Roe was the left’s Lochner. A pure exercise of judicial law making that could not point to anything in the Constitutional text or history to support a sweeping rule. It’s a precedent that even folks in the left have taken to defending merely by virtue of its existence as such. It’s protection of second trimester abortions is out of step with public opinion, and out of step among the law in other civilized nations.
Not all liberal precedents are like that. In fact most aren’t. There’s a huge difference between Brown and Loving and Obergefell and Roe both legally and in how the relevant issues have played out in domestic and international politics. Nonetheless, it will make political hay to act like overturning Roe will unleash the floodgates of rolling back everything else. Never mind the fact that, even though Roe was so vulnerable from the very beginning, it took conservatives 50 years of single-minded effort to overturn it.
If there isn’t a difference, why didn’t the other four Justices in the majority join in his concurrence?
There’s a spectrum of opinions among legal conservatives on many decisions. Kennedy wrote Obergefell and Gorsuch wrote Bostock. But no legal conservative thinks that Roe was correctly decided and a fair number of legal liberals don’t either. (Alito quotes a liberal legal scholar in this opinion who said of Roe at the time that it wasn’t Constitutional law and didn’t even try to be.)
> If there isn’t a difference, why didn’t the other four Justices in the majority join in his concurrence?
Because commenting on other cases is generally not something the supreme court finds acceptable, heavily preferring to only comment on the questions directly before them.
Hello sanity. The opinion explains this all in great detail. But few will read it - many will just get angry. Saying this as someone that would like abortion legal federally.
People get angry because millions of people are profoundly affected, while some here are pretending that nothing will happen, this is just a course correction.
As a foreigner, what I admire most about Americans is their ability to dispassionately accept the results of legal procedures. I truly think that’s what is responsible for the success of America and England before it. We have people who have high minded principles and notions of justice in Bangladesh. That’s not special. What we lack is a populace that will accept even monumental decisions contrary to what they wanted and move on. And that’s what I fear is being eroded.
You don’t have to agree with overturning Roe, but that’s no excuse for third-world country style rhetoric. As a matter of legal process, overruling Roe is unremarkable and consistent with longstanding principles of the kinds of cases that can be overruled notwithstanding stare decisis.
I could use your argument in the other direction. What useful purpose it served to overturn it after 50 years ago, other than to kick political compromise to the curb and increase polarization and harm.
Mostly I agree, but "just accept the government's decisions" can only be expected to go so far. "I disagree with a legal decision" is not the same as "my right is being taken away", or, "I am being harmed", and the line is highly subjective for each person. On certain topics, the conflict is inevitable.
I'm sure, if they wanted to, the supremes could come up with an originalist argument as to why slavery should be legal again. Even if that legal argument was amazing and air-tight, it won't make it right. The means don't justify the end.
Who decides what’s “right?” Is the Supreme Court a vehicle for highly educated lawyers (of either party) to impose their values on the country?
If the law doesn’t produce an answer through legal reasoning, then that means the public needs to decide. Having the supremes sit as a moral Guardian Council isn’t how it’s supposed to work.
It's ironic, but your last sentence reminds me of how the Islamic Republic of Iran is organized, with their Grand Ayatollah and council of Ayatollahs in a moral Guardian Council watching over the executive and legislative branches.
I doubt that this was a benevolent step ensuing that Roe is replaced by something more real. This is not the pattern we are seeing, or else explain the other religion-related decisions. More importantly Roe was universally accepted as real.
> I doubt that this was a benevolent step ensuing that Roe is replaced by something more real.
It has nothing to do with "benevolence," but Roe being uniquely vulnerable in that its shortcomings as a legal decision made it a target even for the quarter of the GOP that disagrees with the party line on abortion.
> This is not the pattern we are seeing, or else explain the other religion-related decisions.
The explanation is that the Establishment Clause precedent is the next weakest after Roe. The U.S. was founded on religious pluralism, not French-style secularism. The absence of religious belief is, from the Constitutional perspective is not "neutral" but instead just another belief system. Excluding religious organizations and schools from public funding is plainly unconstitutional.
This is neither controversial in the US (a country where 2/3 of people disagree with the Supreme Court decision banning school prayer), or most other countries. Religious schools can get public funding in Sweden. Why not the US?
> More importantly Roe was universally accepted as real.
But isn't Roe weak because of the fundamental irresolvability of questions like when a fetus becomes a person, and thus Roe existed to leave room for political compromise. And even if it's a bad, constitutionally defective law, isn't overturning it 50 years later only causes harm and more polarization, kicking democracy further down the drain?
Actively playing favorites with a religion is not religious pluralism. Besides reality-wise how would all the fundamentalist stance about what America founded on, and how this and that should be interpreted based on that is useful if the country can't serve it's people. Nobody back then really thought that the country should not adapt to thrive.
Yes, there is a not-unreasonable purely legal argument for overturning. Yes, it would be to the benefit of all if this was better understood. But, patently, that does not obviate the practical consequences for individuals, which is much more obvious and just as true. Focusing on those consequences is not misleading.
Americans reasonably feel extremely strongly about this. When a perceived right is forcefully taken away by one's state, the legal argument for or against the federal mechanism that was preventing that takes a back seat, to put it mildly.
No nation is ruled by law, they're all ruled by people. Certain people on the supreme court decided to take a right away that's been in place for 50 years. Due to the current dynamics of the political system, they could have handed down the decision with just "because we say so" and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Legal argument was always a back seat to the end goal.
Roe was essentially established in the first place because liberal justices said "because we say so". And now we have the current justices saying "no, that's not how this system works" (and I highly recommend reading their opinion, its not 'because we say so'). Even RBJ has agreed that Roe was a faulty decision.
If you are against "If we say so" rule of government, you might like this supreme court opinion.
There is plenty of precedent for overruling constitutional decisions. From a legal perspective this is not new, see Brown v Board overruling Plessy v Ferg.
In case it wasn't lost, this isn't a theoretical academic exercise. This effects real actual people. So no, I might not like this supreme court opinion.
Really? So you hand wave the consequences of the change as "because we say so?".
At the time of the ruling, it was obvious. You cannot legislate something you cannot see, and you cannot see that someone is or is not pregnant. This change undermines patient privacy laws, HIPAA, and many other foundational decisions. It's going to create more bizarre impacts than you or I can imagine, like woman being examined by court order for evidence of an abortion, and other woman taken in for questioning about the help they provided their friend. It's an ugly, uncomfortable, and clearly insane decision. It will ultimately be overturned if we still have a republic in a few years. Their opinion is garbage.
The media narrative is incredibly dishonest. I support both the right for abortions with certain limitations AND Dobbs. They are not contradictory. One thing is the Supreme Court pushing down an extreme view of abortion rights down every state's throat, while another is letting the states and Congress debate and decide the nuances of how we protect both the rights of the mother and the unborn child.
There’s nothing in the Constitution that comports with this philosophy. You can’t “see” gay conversion therapy or whatever physical characteristic such therapy aims to target, and yet it’s eminently reasonable (and most would agree Constitutional) for State legislatures to outlaw its practice.
I’m as pro-choice as anyone else, but it’s pretty clear that the Constitution has always been mum on the subject. Sometimes things can be good and important, but not currently a Constitutional right.
There's nothing in the constitution about oh so many things. Perhaps a constitutional amendment that gives people their privacy back is in order? But I believe the Constitution does say something about "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It stands to reason (in Roe) that, unless someone's religion (separation of church and state?) believes a life begins before birth, the right of a woman's privacy and control of her own life and happiness is primary. Any other logic, as in Dobbs, is superseding her right to privacy, life, and happiness, with the religious belief in the life of an unborn child. Sadly, we used to believe in logic and the enlightenment, back in the 70s. Now we are no more enlightened than the Holy Roman Empire.
> There's nothing in the constitution about oh so many things.
That's exactly the point; and those "oh so many things" are left to the States.
> Perhaps a constitutional amendment that gives people their privacy back is in order?
Perhaps, I'd be supportive of something like that!
> "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
This just means that the absence of an enumerated right doesn't imply that the right is absent by default. The fact that the Constitution doesn't outline a right to drive a car (or consume heroin) doesn't mean that driving a car or consuming heroin is by default illegal; it's just left to the States (and the people) to decide what to do with those things. But (importantly), just because the Constitution doesn't outline a right to consume heroin, the 9th Amendment does not confer a Constitutional right to consume heroin — that would be absurd. It's still something that can be decided upon by the legislatures, and if a legislature decided to outlaw the consumption of heroin, you can't point to the Constitution to invalidate such laws.
> It stands to reason (in Roe) that, unless someone's religion (separation of church and state?) believes a life begins before birth, the right of a woman's privacy and control of her own life and happiness is primary.
I agree with the normative assessment that the right of a woman's privacy and control of her own life/happiness is primary (at least up to a certain point in the pregnancy); I'm pro-choice. That said, the fact that people may use their own religious views to come to a different conclusion and pass laws to that effect is NOT a violation of the separation of church and state. All "separation of church and state" means is that there's no official state religion, and policymaking isn't delegated to the clergy without democratic input — that's it.
To illustrate with an example, it doesn't really matter that (historically) the majority of people derived their beliefs on the morality of assault/murder from the Ten Commandments, the fact that murder is illegal is not a violation of the separation of church and state.
> Any other logic, as in Dobbs, is superseding her right to privacy, life, and happiness, with the religious belief in the life of an unborn child.
Except this belief is not exclusively religious. There are plenty of atheists that are pro-life, and similarly believe that (at least after a certain point of a pregnancy) the right of the unborn child should be balanced with the right of the mother.
If there's a separation of Church and State, does that mean that we can allow a State to be run by religious zealots? What if Afghanistan were a state? Would our nation allow them to stone harlots, and behead adulterers?
Let's face it: The right of women to privacy, life, and happiness runs directly afoul of a religious belief (not shared by all religions, not even by Christianity, Judaism, or the bible, only Christianists) in the theoretical life of unborn children. Who but the mother is best suited to choose the right balance of rights?
> If there's a separation of Church and State, does that mean that we can allow a State to be run by religious zealots?
If the so-called "religious zealots" were duly elected through free and fair democratic process, then yes absolutely. The "separation of Church and State" does not mean "secularism", it means religious pluralism, with no favorites for a particular religion. The absence of religious belief is not "neutral" but instead just another belief system, and all belief systems are treated equally. This is why we don't administer religious tests to enter office, which allows atheists to enter office, but (importantly) also allows religious people to enter office regardless of their faith. All that said, the Constitution disallows religious zealots from explicitly codifying religious scripture into the legal process or from establishing a state religion.
> What if Afghanistan were a state?
Afghanistan's problems stem from 1) the fact their religious zealots have taken over the country by force rather than via free and fair elections and 2) the fact that they have an officially established state religion that explicitly operates on Sharia law.
> Would our nation allow them to stone harlots, and behead adulterers?
It would not, but that's not because of some abstract commitment to secularism, but because that would likely violate the 8th Amendment which proscribes cruel and unusual punishments. In fact, the Constitution likely permits States from outlawing adultery if their citizens so desire. One might choose to support such laws because they think "cheating is bad", but it doesn't matter which book made them think that "cheating is bad". The Constitution places guard rails on which human rights may not be violated — and unfortunately abortion isn't one of those human rights enshrined in the Constitution.
> Let's face it: The right of women to privacy, life, and happiness runs directly afoul of a religious belief (not shared by all religions, not even by Christianity, Judaism, or the bible, only Christianists) in the theoretical life of unborn children. Who but the mother is best suited to choose the right balance of rights?
Again, one's opinion on how society should choose the right balance of rights is a function of the core belief system they operate off of. One may derive their belief system from secular sources, like reading Harry Potter as a child or being raised a particular way, or from religious sources like the Bible or the Quran. "Separation of church and state" does not mean that the government cannot regulate behavior based on religious beliefs, it just means that the State cannot establish a state religion.
In Islam, gambling is a sin, and one may choose to personally vote to outlaw gambling because they are Muslim, but that doesn't mean that outlawing gambling is a violate of "separation of Church and State". It doesn't matter what people's reasons are for voting a particular way, as long as the end result is otherwise permissible.
As it relates to abortion, yes you're correct that the majority of pro-lifers are religious, and likely derive their views on abortion from non-secular belief systems, but there are also many secular pro-lifers (https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0018333/), even Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim pro-lifers (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...). Even though they're in the minority among their respective groups, they apply some belief system to derive their moral views, and then use those moral views while participating in democracy. Again, it does not matter what people's r...
I really appreciate your very consistent and clear arguments. I would feel much better if the arguments coming out of the Supreme Court right now were anywhere close to this consistent and clear. Please don't get me started on the EPA ruling ... in this case there's a very clear law on the books that permits the EPA to regulate pollution of the air and water and thus protect the citizenry from externalities that clearly cross state lines.
But they didn’t. They issued a well reasoned decision that is undeniably correct if you even believe a little bit that the Constitution is written law like other laws, and not a vehicle for elites to impose their values on the public. And the result of the decision does not ban abortion, but returns it to the democratic process, which is the case in nearly every other developed country.
> When a perceived right is forcefully taken away by one's state, the legal argument for or against the federal mechanism that was preventing that takes a back seat, to put it mildly.
To be clear, the “right” only came into existence because the Supreme Court in the 1970s conjured it out of thin air. Several other high courts in advanced democracies took up the abortion question around that time. None found a legal right to abortion. Most found it to be an issue for the legislature. Germany found abortion to violate the Basic Law’s Right to Life (and that precedent still stands!)
Germany's legal doctrine on that is complicated. In theory it's completely illegal, but doesn't lead to prosecution when obeying some limits (you need to get counseled, only in the first 12 weeks etc.).
But if abortion were truly a violation of law (not to speak of the Basic Law) it would necessarily open the perpetrator to acts of self-defense (or self-defense of others, not sure about the English phrase).
But our Constitution Court specifically ruled that "other-defense" is not applicable, even when the abortion violates the 12 week limit.
It's just as political here as over there in America. And the legislative and courts are also muddling through.
Side note: on the very same day Roe v. Wade was overturned the German parliament legalized advertising for/informing about abortions (depending on who you ask).
Notably based on a survey that was only in the field June 1-20, so missed the actual Roe v. Wade ruling (though probably the leak did a fair amount of damage on its own).
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread>Americans' confidence in the court has dropped sharply over the past year and reached a new low in Gallup's nearly 50-year trend. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, down from 36% a year ago and five percentage points lower than the previous low recorded in 2014.
The Gallup poll shows pretty much that?
> Americans' confidence in the court has dropped sharply over the past year and reached a new low in Gallup's nearly 50-year trend. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, down from 36% a year ago and five percentage points lower than the previous low recorded in 2014.
With modern polarization, "confidence" actually seems to mean "confidence I'll get the result I want from it" (e.g. how ideologically aligned it is to me).
If laws were changed due to new information and were consistent with other laws regulating things like shutting down life support for brain dead adults when compared to abortion, I doubt the SCOTUS would have lost the confidence of the nation.
This Supreme Court is blatantly corrupt.
In reality, Roe was the left’s Lochner. A pure exercise of judicial law making that could not point to anything in the Constitutional text or history to support a sweeping rule. It’s a precedent that even folks in the left have taken to defending merely by virtue of its existence as such. It’s protection of second trimester abortions is out of step with public opinion, and out of step among the law in other civilized nations.
Not all liberal precedents are like that. In fact most aren’t. There’s a huge difference between Brown and Loving and Obergefell and Roe both legally and in how the relevant issues have played out in domestic and international politics. Nonetheless, it will make political hay to act like overturning Roe will unleash the floodgates of rolling back everything else. Never mind the fact that, even though Roe was so vulnerable from the very beginning, it took conservatives 50 years of single-minded effort to overturn it.
There’s a spectrum of opinions among legal conservatives on many decisions. Kennedy wrote Obergefell and Gorsuch wrote Bostock. But no legal conservative thinks that Roe was correctly decided and a fair number of legal liberals don’t either. (Alito quotes a liberal legal scholar in this opinion who said of Roe at the time that it wasn’t Constitutional law and didn’t even try to be.)
Because commenting on other cases is generally not something the supreme court finds acceptable, heavily preferring to only comment on the questions directly before them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/23/roe-v-...
You don’t have to agree with overturning Roe, but that’s no excuse for third-world country style rhetoric. As a matter of legal process, overruling Roe is unremarkable and consistent with longstanding principles of the kinds of cases that can be overruled notwithstanding stare decisis.
If the law doesn’t produce an answer through legal reasoning, then that means the public needs to decide. Having the supremes sit as a moral Guardian Council isn’t how it’s supposed to work.
The more things differ...
That legal tidal wave could very well come.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/23/roe-v-...
It has nothing to do with "benevolence," but Roe being uniquely vulnerable in that its shortcomings as a legal decision made it a target even for the quarter of the GOP that disagrees with the party line on abortion.
> This is not the pattern we are seeing, or else explain the other religion-related decisions.
The explanation is that the Establishment Clause precedent is the next weakest after Roe. The U.S. was founded on religious pluralism, not French-style secularism. The absence of religious belief is, from the Constitutional perspective is not "neutral" but instead just another belief system. Excluding religious organizations and schools from public funding is plainly unconstitutional.
This is neither controversial in the US (a country where 2/3 of people disagree with the Supreme Court decision banning school prayer), or most other countries. Religious schools can get public funding in Sweden. Why not the US?
> More importantly Roe was universally accepted as real.
A real what?
Actively playing favorites with a religion is not religious pluralism. Besides reality-wise how would all the fundamentalist stance about what America founded on, and how this and that should be interpreted based on that is useful if the country can't serve it's people. Nobody back then really thought that the country should not adapt to thrive.
Americans reasonably feel extremely strongly about this. When a perceived right is forcefully taken away by one's state, the legal argument for or against the federal mechanism that was preventing that takes a back seat, to put it mildly.
If you are against "If we say so" rule of government, you might like this supreme court opinion.
There is plenty of precedent for overruling constitutional decisions. From a legal perspective this is not new, see Brown v Board overruling Plessy v Ferg.
There’s nothing in the Constitution that comports with this philosophy. You can’t “see” gay conversion therapy or whatever physical characteristic such therapy aims to target, and yet it’s eminently reasonable (and most would agree Constitutional) for State legislatures to outlaw its practice.
I’m as pro-choice as anyone else, but it’s pretty clear that the Constitution has always been mum on the subject. Sometimes things can be good and important, but not currently a Constitutional right.
That's exactly the point; and those "oh so many things" are left to the States.
> Perhaps a constitutional amendment that gives people their privacy back is in order?
Perhaps, I'd be supportive of something like that!
> "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
This just means that the absence of an enumerated right doesn't imply that the right is absent by default. The fact that the Constitution doesn't outline a right to drive a car (or consume heroin) doesn't mean that driving a car or consuming heroin is by default illegal; it's just left to the States (and the people) to decide what to do with those things. But (importantly), just because the Constitution doesn't outline a right to consume heroin, the 9th Amendment does not confer a Constitutional right to consume heroin — that would be absurd. It's still something that can be decided upon by the legislatures, and if a legislature decided to outlaw the consumption of heroin, you can't point to the Constitution to invalidate such laws.
> It stands to reason (in Roe) that, unless someone's religion (separation of church and state?) believes a life begins before birth, the right of a woman's privacy and control of her own life and happiness is primary.
I agree with the normative assessment that the right of a woman's privacy and control of her own life/happiness is primary (at least up to a certain point in the pregnancy); I'm pro-choice. That said, the fact that people may use their own religious views to come to a different conclusion and pass laws to that effect is NOT a violation of the separation of church and state. All "separation of church and state" means is that there's no official state religion, and policymaking isn't delegated to the clergy without democratic input — that's it.
To illustrate with an example, it doesn't really matter that (historically) the majority of people derived their beliefs on the morality of assault/murder from the Ten Commandments, the fact that murder is illegal is not a violation of the separation of church and state.
> Any other logic, as in Dobbs, is superseding her right to privacy, life, and happiness, with the religious belief in the life of an unborn child.
Except this belief is not exclusively religious. There are plenty of atheists that are pro-life, and similarly believe that (at least after a certain point of a pregnancy) the right of the unborn child should be balanced with the right of the mother.
If the so-called "religious zealots" were duly elected through free and fair democratic process, then yes absolutely. The "separation of Church and State" does not mean "secularism", it means religious pluralism, with no favorites for a particular religion. The absence of religious belief is not "neutral" but instead just another belief system, and all belief systems are treated equally. This is why we don't administer religious tests to enter office, which allows atheists to enter office, but (importantly) also allows religious people to enter office regardless of their faith. All that said, the Constitution disallows religious zealots from explicitly codifying religious scripture into the legal process or from establishing a state religion.
> What if Afghanistan were a state?
Afghanistan's problems stem from 1) the fact their religious zealots have taken over the country by force rather than via free and fair elections and 2) the fact that they have an officially established state religion that explicitly operates on Sharia law.
> Would our nation allow them to stone harlots, and behead adulterers?
It would not, but that's not because of some abstract commitment to secularism, but because that would likely violate the 8th Amendment which proscribes cruel and unusual punishments. In fact, the Constitution likely permits States from outlawing adultery if their citizens so desire. One might choose to support such laws because they think "cheating is bad", but it doesn't matter which book made them think that "cheating is bad". The Constitution places guard rails on which human rights may not be violated — and unfortunately abortion isn't one of those human rights enshrined in the Constitution.
> Let's face it: The right of women to privacy, life, and happiness runs directly afoul of a religious belief (not shared by all religions, not even by Christianity, Judaism, or the bible, only Christianists) in the theoretical life of unborn children. Who but the mother is best suited to choose the right balance of rights?
Again, one's opinion on how society should choose the right balance of rights is a function of the core belief system they operate off of. One may derive their belief system from secular sources, like reading Harry Potter as a child or being raised a particular way, or from religious sources like the Bible or the Quran. "Separation of church and state" does not mean that the government cannot regulate behavior based on religious beliefs, it just means that the State cannot establish a state religion.
In Islam, gambling is a sin, and one may choose to personally vote to outlaw gambling because they are Muslim, but that doesn't mean that outlawing gambling is a violate of "separation of Church and State". It doesn't matter what people's reasons are for voting a particular way, as long as the end result is otherwise permissible.
As it relates to abortion, yes you're correct that the majority of pro-lifers are religious, and likely derive their views on abortion from non-secular belief systems, but there are also many secular pro-lifers (https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0018333/), even Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim pro-lifers (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...). Even though they're in the minority among their respective groups, they apply some belief system to derive their moral views, and then use those moral views while participating in democracy. Again, it does not matter what people's r...
To be clear, the “right” only came into existence because the Supreme Court in the 1970s conjured it out of thin air. Several other high courts in advanced democracies took up the abortion question around that time. None found a legal right to abortion. Most found it to be an issue for the legislature. Germany found abortion to violate the Basic Law’s Right to Life (and that precedent still stands!)
But if abortion were truly a violation of law (not to speak of the Basic Law) it would necessarily open the perpetrator to acts of self-defense (or self-defense of others, not sure about the English phrase).
But our Constitution Court specifically ruled that "other-defense" is not applicable, even when the abortion violates the 12 week limit.
It's just as political here as over there in America. And the legislative and courts are also muddling through.
Side note: on the very same day Roe v. Wade was overturned the German parliament legalized advertising for/informing about abortions (depending on who you ask).