Today is election day, and we should all take time to recognize what we believe, and why, especially as that informs how we vote, and again, why.

I am ideologically realistic. In fact, my stoic realism is off-putting to many people who perceive it as confrontational, arrogant.

However, here is an ideal I find very compelling: A free people committed to a democracy insuring for all life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The United States of America began at least rhetorically along this path, but has fulfilled that ideal only sporadically and often begrudgingly.

The country began in slavery, took a century and a half to allow women to vote, and another four decades to begin to acknowledge racial equality.

In my lifetime, states had to be compelled by the Supreme Court to allow interracial marriage and gay marriage, and of course, a woman’s right to reproductive rights were granted and then stripped away.

Here at what is reductively called the abortion debate is where I see an essential right that cannot be separated from anyone’s full humanity, and of course, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—universal body autonomy.

Universal body autonomy includes reproductive rights and access to abortion, but our public debates would better serve our ideals if we focused on universal body autonomy.

Since no man is ever compelled to carry a pregnancy to full term, no woman should be compelled to carry an unwanted or medically dangerous pregnancy to full term.

To me, it is that simple in terms of political and cultural ideology—that clear if we as a people do genuinely believe in human freedom and autonomy and that elusive right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Focusing narrowly on abortion is reductive, but that element of body autonomy and reproductive rights can be navigated along the same lines.

First, claims that life begins at conception is a belief, not a medical fact. Among a free people who honor religious freedom, anyone has the right to hold and practice that belief.

However, no one has the right to compel others to conform to their beliefs.

I fully support those who want to advocate for fewer or even no abortions, but again, that is a reductive stance. Abortion is the consequence of unwanted pregnancy and medical danger.

To reduce abortion, we should advocate for practices that reduce unwanted pregnancy (universal access to contraception, comprehensive sex education) and support universal healthcare.

Historically and currently, though, adult men are by default more free than women and children, the latter two experiencing reduced body autonomy by law, compelled or neglected by government policy.

This brings me back to election day, voting, how we vote and why.

Increasingly in my lifetime, Republicans have used religion to justify government restricting basic human autonomy—ignoring religious freedom, individual freedom, and the ideal of universal life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Whether an elected official is openly religious or not is irrelevant; when an elected official chooses to use government to impose beliefs of a few onto everyone, then we no longer find ourselves in a democracy seeking the ideal that should ground us.

Abortion access and reproductive rights are subsets of universal body autonomy, and until we guarantee everyone universal body autonomy, we remain no better than our founders who used “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as mere rhetoric for anyone not like them.