The point I was trying to make is that the principles of non-violence and human inviolability require us as a community to reject all killing (I would include euthanasia and the death penalty though the topic of my blog entry was abortion) not just to make it less common. Ordinarily, this is done but making killing criminal, although one can imagine unusual situations where this need not be so (e.g. in a community committed to anarchism).
I'm open to proposals other than criminalization, but I'm not sure they work. Germany, for example, has experimented with excluding abortion from public health insurance, as an "unconstitutional act of killing", and even requiring the media not to defame the humanity of the unborn, i.e. leaving abortion in some sense nominally illegal but yet not punished as long as prior pro-life counseling has occurred. But my German relatives tell me that these measures have little effect.
I think I'm making the same point that the 1975 German Constitutional decision made (which was reversed in 1993 in this regard): That even if counseling could prevent more abortions than criminal prohibitions, respect for life applies to each individual life, not to life in the aggregate. That is, one cannot withdraw legal protection from some human beings even if the result (getting women to come in for counseling) saves more lives. One cannot say "Just go in for counseling first and then your abortion will be legal", because that would withdraw respect and protection for unborn children as soon as their mothers have gone through counseling.
It's not just preventing deaths by abortion that's the issue. It's the idea that some people get less respect and protection. For example (though thank goodness this is NOT a proposal by DFLA) suppose that we could prevent ALL abortions by pushing true contraception. It would still be wrong to leave abortion legal, because we would still be saying that some of do not get equal respect and protection. (To reduce abortion by means of contraception is like reducing the number of acts of anti-Mexican racism by sealing our borders. Even if it works, it misses the main point.)
I worry that DFLA might let politicians off the hook as long as they commit themselves effectively to minimizing abortions. I want them to come out effectively AGAINST abortion, which at least means coming out against it as a constitutional right under Roe, before they receive any pro-life votes.
Thanks to Rob for posting the Seventh Circuit decision in Christian Legal Society v. Southern Illinois University. It's a great win for the ability of religious (and other) groups to participate in the public square and government-created fora without giving up their essential beliefs. In addition to recognizing the obvious fact that forcing CLS to accept actively gay members would destroy its ability to express and its maintain its biblical beliefs, the court also correctly rejected SIU's claim that CLS was not burdened because it could meet off campus and was merely being denied benefits as opposed to being forced to associate. The "mere benefits" that CLS was denied included the ability to meet privately in law school classrooms like other groups (CLS would have to let other students walk through the room during the meeting), to use law school bulletin boards, to appear on the school website and in publications, and to call itself the "SIU chapter" of CLS. The rule would effectively drive CLS off campus and out of the eye of SIU students. The Court had rejected the very same defense in Healy v. James (1972) when universities tried to bar Students for a Democratic Society from campuses.
On this and other holdings, the Seventh Circuit ruling disagrees with a recent district court decision concerning CLS and UC-Hastings School of Law (linked to here and on Westlaw at 2006 WL 997217). Hopefully the Seventh Circuit's arguments will affect the Hastings appeal, but if the Hastings decision is affirmed in the Ninth Circuit, that case may be prime for Supreme Court review. (Although the Hastings case involves a final judgment as opposed to a preliminary injunction "likelihood of success" question, the Seventh Circuit's analysis in the SIU case virtually says that CLS should win on the merits.)
Tom
Minnesota law prof Dale Carpenter offers interesting commentary on last week's ruling by the New York Court of Appeals on same-sex marriage. In its rational basis review, the court ruled that "the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships.” Carpenter explains:
Children need permanence and stability in their lives. Yet the heterosexual relationships that produce them, said the court, “are all too often casual or temporary.” Homosexual couples do not become parents by “accident or impulse”; they must plan ahead and obtain children through adoption, artificial insemination, or some other “technological marvels.” Unstable relationships among heterosexuals therefore “present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples.”
Note the irony of this argument. For decades, homosexual life has been medicalized and pathologized by doctors, sexologists, psychiatrists, and politicians. Only 33 years ago, homosexual orientation was still officially a “disorder.” Gays, especially gay men, were denounced as hopelessly promiscuous, unstable, histrionic, and self-absorbed. Above all, this medico-political consensus held, homosexuals were dangerous to children and should be kept away from them. From the outset of the gay-marriage movement, a vocal opposition argued that the supposedly innate instability of homosexual relationships disqualified them from marriage.
Now, in the most important judicial decision yet rejecting a claim for gay marriage, we are told that gay couples may be kept from marriage not because they are unstable, but because heterosexual couples are unstable.
Rob
The Chicago Tribune explores the breathtaking decline of Catholicism in Ireland, where mass attendance has plummeted from nearly 90% to 25% in thirty years and where the archdiocese of Dublin last year ordained no priests for the first time in its history. (HT: CT) The article offers an interesting historical snapshot as insight on the nature of the decline:
"The 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II, that was the high-water mark of Catholicism in Ireland," said Simon Rowe, a Catholic commentator and editor of The Voice Today, a new Catholic newspaper.
But the visit also contained the seeds of decline, Rowe said.
About two-thirds of Ireland's population turned out to see the pope during his three-day visit. On one memorable day, more than 200,000 young people attended a special mass at Galway's Ballybrit racecourse. Before the pope's arrival, they were entertained by two of the Irish church's most popular and charismatic leaders: Bishop Eamon Casey of Galway and Rev. Michael Cleary, Dublin's "singing priest," who had his own show on national radio.
A decade later, it would come to light that Casey was the father of a son by an American woman and had "borrowed" from church funds to silence them. Cleary, it was discovered, fathered two children and had an abusive relationship with a troubled young woman who worked as his housekeeper.
Rob
Yesterday the Seventh Circuit granted a preliminary injunction ordering Southern Illinois University Law School to restore recognition of the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society despite the group's ban on members who engage in or affirm homosexual conduct. The court ruled that CLS was likely to prevail on its expressive association and free speech claims, reasoning that:
CLS is a faith-based organization. One of its beliefs is that sexual conduct outside of a traditional marriage is immoral. It would be difficult for CLS to sincerely and effectively convey a message of disapproval of certain types of conduct if, at the same time, it must accept members who engage in that conduct. CLS’s beliefs about sexual morality are among its defining values; forcing it to accept as members those who engage in or approve of homosexual conduct would cause the group as it currently identifies itself to cease to exist.
Rob
