The Court Sets Off Tremors – Again, by Hadley Arkes

By Hadley Arkes, The Catholic Thing, June 1, 2021

Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus at Amherst College and the Founder/Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding.  …

Friends: I’m still hoping we can end this fundraiser on our 13th anniversary tomorrow, but we’re still a couple thousand short of our minimum, even allowing for checks and other donations that are still to come via the mail. …

Not long after Roe v. Wade was decided (1973), a notable figure in medical research opined that the Court had not been liberal enough in fashioning this right to have an abortion virtually through the end of the pregnancy.  He suggested that the parents be given four or five more days to gauge any disabilities in the child and whether they wished to keep her alive.

Let’s imagine a scheme in which the parents were given as much as 30 days to “try out” their comfort with the child.  And let’s imagine that pro-lifers persuaded a legislature to cut that down to 15 days.   We can readily assume that the pro-choicers would go into panic mode, seeing in this move the portents of sweeping away that right to abortion.  But of course, nothing in the shift of 15 days would have marked any difference in the nature, or human standing, of the child. …

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