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39 B.U. Int'l L.J. 1 (2021)
Practical Piety: Divining Religion's Role in Reproductive Policymaking

handle is hein.journals/builj39 and id is 7 raw text is: PRACTICAL PIETY: DIVINING RELIGION'S ROLE IN REPRODUCTIVE POLICYMAKING Matthew J. Stanford* ABSTRACT By examining the regulation of family planning in three governmental contexts-theocracy, ethnoreligious democracy, and secular liberal democracy-this Article contends that the secular liberal democracy overreaches both when it adopts disingenuous legislative rationales simply to avoid the appearance of promoting religion and when it judicially dismantles general welfare legislation based solely on a burden that it imposes on a tertiary religious doctrine. These phenomena short-circuit the democratic process. The former deprives lawmakers and their constituents of the opportunity to evaluate the true motivations behind a proposed bill. If a proposal is religiously inspired, its palatability to a religiously pluralistic society should be evaluated for the normative value that religious doctrine purportedly promotes, not some post hoc rationale developed solely to satisfy constitutional scrutiny. The latter's invalidation of duly enacted, generally applicable legislation to protect even the most ancillary forms of religious expression transforms the judiciary into a religious tribunal. This both contravenes notions of religious freedom that undergird these democracies and places judges in the impossible position of selecting which religious doctrines deserve legal protection. A task best left to the legislative process. CONTENTS INTROD UCTION .......................................................................................... 2 I. REGULATING PROCREATION IN A THEOCRACY ...................................... 4 A. Iranian Governmental Structure ............................................. 4 B. The Islamic Republic: Religion in Revolutionary Iran ........... 8 * Matthew J. Stanford is an attorney and Senior Research Fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law. He received his B.A. (2012) from Penn State University and his J.D. (2017) from Berkeley Law. He wishes to thank Professor Laurent Mayali for advising him through early drafts of this Article. He would also like to thank the BUILI editorial team for their tireless and meticulous work editing this Article, especially during such an unusual school year. All views expressed and any errors are his own. 1

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