Does valuing a fetus’s life above all else mean that Gorsuch is a principled jurisprudent or simply a conservative ideologue?

Doesn't that depend on whether one who believes in natural law is ipso facto a "conservative ideologue?"

I am pretty sure I hold some views that would get me labeled as "conservative ideologue," but natural law isn't one of them. I believe law and morality are both just game theory for the masses. A culture develops viable, sustainable customs and enforces them as laws. It just happens that treating life as inviolable is a pretty good strategy, so many people attribute it to an infallible giver of strategies. But it's still just a strategy invented by humans for humans.

I may think, as a conservative, that abortion weakens our commitment to the excellent strategy of treating life as inviolable, so abortion should be taboo and illegal. Or I might recognize that , like prohibition, outright bans on abortion simply do not work and so must be rejected in favor of something less onerous.

Is pragmatism always "unprincipled," or is a commitment to practicality as "principle?? The question dissolves into semantic soup.