In a pluralistic society of different beliefs, does the Christian have the right to impose their religious beliefs on those who do not believe?

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I disagree. You are saying that the courts simply made a currupt moral decision, but in reality, it seems to me at least, they simply found the laws at that time to be unconstitutional regardless of their moral beliefs. In other-words the reasons for why abortion was illegal in the first place was found wanting in light of secular law…It was a recognition of a limitation in the courts power to enforce that law, to criminalize women based on the unproven belief that to terminate a pregnancy is the same thing as terminating a living person. The idea that a human embryo from the moment of conception should be considered as having the same value and rights as you and me is not something that can be proven in in a secular court. What practical evidence do we have that an embryo has a personal soul from the moment of conception given by God? The courts cannot enforce Christian faith on society.

The whole issue hinges on peoples metaphysical beliefs.It’s not simply about what people think is moral. Couple that with a secular legal system and what you have is a system that cannot guarantee or protect human life from the moment of conception. It’s entirely in the hands of the pregnant women.
 
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To be fair many may have seen it as an evil act but simply also felt compelling women to carry to term and undertake that risk when they didn’t want to to also be evil, and felt the balance should fall on the side of the woman having the choice. The lesser of two evils in other words.
 
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Please explain how the death of a human being is the lesser of two evils when the other evil is a person’s inconvenience.
 
How we were lied to about abortion an excerpt from the link Ed posted
It is clear that permissive abortion is purposeful destruction of what is undeniably human life. It is an impermissible act of deadly violence. One must concede that unplanned pregnancy is a wrenchingly difficult dilemma. But to look for its solution in a deliberate act of destruction is to trash the vast resourcefulness of human ingenuity, and to surrender the public weal to the classic utilitarian answer to social problems.
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To abandon faith in human life as a good in it’self and adopt a morality that values human life based on it’s usefulness to the common good.
 
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IWantGod said:
What practical evidence do we have that an embryo has a personal soul from the moment of conception given by God? The courts cannot enforce Christian faith on society.
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I think this is a secular value put in action.

If you are hunting with a friend and you spot movement in a bush. You can’t be sure if it’s not your friend. Do you shoot? Not knowing if it’s human life is evidence enough to be certain that ending the life of a human zygote is wrong.
 
We can always reverse the split between church and state. I don’t think people are actually required by law to view life as sacred. I believe we live in an age of social contracts, far removed from traditional views of moral value.
 

The Court declined to adopt the district court’s Ninth Amendment rationale, and instead asserted that the “right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”[37] Douglas, in his concurring opinion in the companion case, Doe, stated more emphatically, “The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights.”[38]
 
The argument was that it was only a “potential” human being. Everyone reading this began in the same way. To terminate a life even at the zygote stage means that person, with their own DNA, is considered not a person. I don’t write this lightly. In the beginning, it was said that abortions should be safe and rare. The rare part did not occur.
 
IWantGod said:
The idea that a human embryo from the moment of conception should be considered as having the same value and rights as you and me is not something that can be proven in in a secular court. What practical evidence do we have that an embryo has a personal soul from the moment of conception given by God? The courts cannot enforce Christian faith on society.
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Evidence of a soul isn’t required. That it’s unknown when human life begins is evidence enough to afford it dignity until it is certain that it doesn’t already have it.
 
From a purely circular perspective there really is no reason to think that an embryo from the moment of conception is a person in the catholic sense of the word. And the Catholic definition does matter and is relevant. If there is no soul then an embryo from the moment of conception is essentially a lump of matter that is potentially a person like you and me; but it is not actually a person. It’s death has no consequence in a practical sense. You say that we must error on the side oif caution, but by doing so you are essentially asking a secular court to judge the matter in a Christian context based on nothing more than the fact that we have faith.
 
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edwest211 said:
The argument was that it was only a “potential” human being. Everyone reading this began in the same way. To terminate a life even at the zygote stage means that person, with their own DNA, is considered not a person. I don’t write this lightly. In the beginning, it was said that abortions should be safe and rare. The rare part did not occur.
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I think the word ‘potential’ is a key you point out for me.

Rarity must not have been much valued in the beginning then, or as you suggest, that would be happening. I think it will happen because of advances in technology.
 
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IWantGod said:
lump of matter that is potentially a person like you and me; but it is not actually a person.
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But the zygote is reducing human potency to actuality. Potential human person in common language should also suffice for legal rights since if it isn’t known whether or not it possesses human dignity, it should be assumed it does. The risk of killing a human person should be enough.

Edit: added the word person
 
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IWantGod said:
We can always reverse the split between church and state. I don’t think people are actually required by law to view life as sacred. I believe we live in an age of social contracts, far removed from traditional views of moral value.
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According to the Constitution we have inherent rights. If that is considered sacred or not is another matter.
 
Not quite.
The zygote has his/her very own DNA, and will proceed to divide and develop in a very precise way (at no time are the unborn a formless mass of cells. They look exactly as they should for their level of development.)
If we don’t protect the rights of every human being, no matter how young, then what we are doing is playing a game of deciding who is worth protecting–the big enough, the useful enough, the interesting enough, the independent enough, etc.
 
I’m not sure where I read this, but I think it is applicable:

“When you take Christianity to the extreme, you get the likes of Mother Teresa.
When you take Islam to the extreme, you get the likes of Bin Laden.”

I’m still unsure what Christian beliefs would be an unreasonable imposition on a society.
 
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