Pro-Lifers
can chew gum and walk at the same
time. Honestly!
The
wonderful men, women, and increasing numbers of teenagers involved in the
Pro-Life movement witness to the sanctity of human life at all its stages in an amazing diversity of
ways.
They
rally together to provide a public witness of solidarity with the unborn.
They
provide educational opportunities to draw attention to the scandal of hundreds
of thousands of unborn children being snuffed out before birth.
They create,
support, and volunteer with crisis pregnancy centers to provide services to
women in difficult situations to bring their unborn child into the world and then
to carry mother and child forward to thrive in our society.
And,
yes, some participate in political campaigns of pro-life candidates (of both
political parties) at the national and state level. Or they may work with organizations to endorse
and support pro-life candidates for elective office. Those who have been in the “political trenches”
of this battle well know the challenges, the difficult calls, and the nuances
involved when anyone, especially people of faith, turn to the democratic process
to promote a particular cause.
Still
others focus on the legislative process, at both the national and the state
level. They draft, debate, and lobby for
legislative initiatives —
* to ensure that those faced with
a difficult situation are informed about the options for bringing an unborn
child to birth and about the development of the child in the womb,
* to reverse the exclusion of
parents from interactions between their pregnant daughters and those affiliated
with abortion clinics and the abortion industry,
* to prevent late-term abortions
(the modern American form of infanticide), or
* to carve out adequate space in our
society for individuals and mediating institutions to uphold their values
without being required to follow conflicting government mandates.
And some Pro-Lifers
advocate in the courts to uphold legislation that protects unborn life and
upholds informed consent. Or they defend
the rights of citizens, churches, and organizations to stand up on behalf of
life and not be forced to subsidize abortion.
From time to time, someone may lose heart and advise that Pro-Lifers involved with the electoral process, with
legislative bodies across the nation, or with the judicial process should surrender that calling and withdraw from the political or the legislative or the legal arena.
But, thank God, that’s not going to happen.
Those directly involved in the Pro-Life
movement well understand that they cannot in good conscience abandon the field the political and legal field
to those who advocate —
* public funding of abortions,
* removal of all restrictions
on even late-term abortions,
* requiring even Catholic medical schools to provide
instruction in performing abortions as a condition of accreditation,
* demanding
that even Catholic hospitals open facilities to performing abortions as a
condition of state or local approval, and
* demanding that religious-based
institutions offer abortion pills through their insurance coverage of
employees.
Some of these frightening proposals are being pursued aggressively right now by "Reproductive Rights" advocates, although Pro-Life lawyers, officials, and activists through tireless efforts hold back the tide (to a greater or lesser extent). Some of these options may seem unlikely, but the abortion industry and its supporters are pressing hard at every turn, laying the foundation for these initiatives, and would gladly fill the policy vacuum if Pro-Lifers deserted their posts.
Importantly, these legal, legislative, or political efforts hardly come at the expense of the Pro-Life movement’s consistent
witness to the culture, educational efforts to respect human life, and
volunteer work with pro-life charitable organizations could have displayed a
rich tapestry of changing hearts and transformed lives. Pro-Lifers can multi-task.
In our
own St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, the “Respect Life Outreach works
to promote respect for human life from conception to natural death, to bring
about a conversion of heart and mind to be open to God’s special gift of
life.” Through this and related programs
in the Catholic community in the Twin Cities, there
is a vibrant Pro-Life effort, reaching out to and involving young people,
especially in the Catholic high schools, who in turn are spending time working
with those in need in crisis pregnancy centers and elsewhere. Public policy advocacy is but a small part
of that overall effort — and none of it involves political election campaigning.
In sum, our colleagues in law schools and the legal profession, our students, our
families, and our friends who give sacrificially of their time, energy,
talents, and money to advance the cause of human life have wonderful and
inspiring stories to tell us of legal obstacles to protection of life being brought down, both hearts and minds being changed, people served with compassion, and unborn lives saved — through the work of every sector of a
multi-dimensional movement.
Those who
have given their hearts to the Pro-Life movement reflect the great
strength and diversity — both in political perspectives and operational mission
— within that movement. Take the time
today to thank someone you know who is working tirelessly in this mission for life.
I can’t really speak to the relative dearth of quality
scholarship on the pro-choice side (though I agree with that assessment, even
as applied to some of the pro-choice authors Mike cites) but I can offer a few thoughts
on the relative lack of quality works on the pro-life side.
I would say that the relative lack of quality in pro-life legal
scholarship is due to the relatively small amount of pro-life legal scholarship
overall, and that this in turn is due to the enormous disincentives faced by
those potential pro-life scholars seeking to become law professors as well as those
academics seeking tenure, promotion, and advancement.
When I was first thinking about a career as a law professor,
I spoke with my teacher and mentor Mary Ann Glendon. She gave me a lot of helpful advice, e.g.
that I should be open to teaching in different parts of the country, that I
should identify the specific courses I would like to teach and think about how
I would teach them, etc. She also said that
no matter how enthusiastic I was about teaching, prospective schools would
judge my candidacy on how productive they thought I would be as a scholar so
that I should work hard to publish some law articles before entering the job
market. Here she warned me “Don’t write
about abortion. Your goal is to get
hired and most faculties will not hire someone who is pro-life. Write about something that interests you but
is not especially controversial. Indeed,
I would advise you not to write about abortion until after you have tenure and
are at a school where you could see yourself spending the rest of your career.”
Because I was acquainted with Mary Ann’s own writings on the
subject, and since I had written my third-year paper on abortion at Harvard
under her direction, I was somewhat puzzled by this advice. But she assured me that the bias in the
academy was enormous and a real impediment to entry into the profession.
I took her advice to heart and succeeded in obtaining a teaching
position. Moreover, as she suggested, I
did not begin to write on the subject until after I received tenure at a school
where I felt comfortable, knowing even then that it would likely foreclose some
career opportunities that might otherwise be open in the future. I have always been thankful for Mary Ann’s
guidance, and I have passed on this same advice to young lawyers who have
sought my counsel as they contemplate a career in law teaching.
As a faculty hiring committee member and chairperson I have reviewed
literally thousands CVs and AALS forms from prospective candidates. As I think other MOJ members will confirm, it
is quite common to see candidates with publications addressing abortion or some
related topic from the perspective of “reproductive freedom.”
From this, it is apparent that those on the pro-choice side
aren’t receiving the same advice that I was given. And why would they?! The number of schools where scholarship in
favor of the abortion license would count as a negative are very few indeed –
perhaps a handful. And it is,
unfortunately, not a problem at the vast majority of law schools that operate
under Catholic auspices – schools that downplay (with some honesty) their
Catholic identity as a meaningful presence in the intellectual life of the school
even as they champion academic freedom and openness to diverse points of view.
With few exceptions, the academic culture at secular schools
manifests either a well-trained indifference or a deep-seated contempt for the
pro-life message. (Of course this might
otherwise be described as exhibiting a latent fear of the pro-life point-of-view
and a kind of intellectual sloth bred by keeping uniform company with the
advocates of “choice”). The last two
major conferences on abortion, at Yale in October 2008 (see here) and at UCLA
in January 2013, just a few weeks ago (see here) are indicative of this phenomenon. Of all the individuals invited to speak at
these events, the number of scholars invited to speak who could plausibly be
described as “pro-life” is exactly zero.
A quick review of the law review article databases on SSRN
and Westlaw using “abortion” as the search term yields a large volume of
articles (1025 articles on Westlaw and 1069 on SSRN). Now, I haven’t read every one of these
articles. But, from a brief survey of
the titles, abstracts and author names, I would be extremely surprised to learn
that anything other than a relatively small percentage of these articles reflect
a pro-life perspective, and I would be even more surprised to learn that
anything beyond a tiny fraction of these articles are published in top ranked
journals. Even the examples that Mike
Moreland cites demonstrate this point.
While Reva Siegel and Jesse Hill publish in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford
Law Review, and the Texas Law Review,
Mark Rienzi and Helen Alvare do not.
So if your ambition is to be invited to write on the topic
from a pro-life prospective, chances are you won’t be invited to speak at
conferences at elite schools like Yale and UCLA, and chances are you won’t be
published in the top journals at Stanford and Texas.
Good legal scholarship about abortion, like good academic
literature in any area, needs to be encouraged and cultivated. That there are only a few really good
articles in the fields of bankruptcy, civil procedure, contracts, tax, or
property each year means that there are several hundred more that are not especially
good or are only passable and workmanlike.
But professors continue to write in these fields not only because that
is where their interest lies, but because they are supported in this by their
colleagues and home institutions.
At the vast majority of law schools, this kind of support simply
does not exist for the intrepid young teacher who dares to publish an article
on abortion from a pro-life perspective.
In all likelihood that young law professor will keep his or her pro-life
cards close to the vest, and will instead devote his or her scholarly energies
to some non-neuralgic topic in his or her field that will be published and help
satisfy the requirements for tenure.
After tenure, there is promotion, and the possibility of moving to a
more desirable school, all of which work as a disincentive to writing on abortion
with pro-life sympathies.
So is it really a surprise to observe that this faculty
member, whose heart was with the pro-life cause when he or she became a
professor, never ventures into the scholarly debate surrounding abortion in his
or her written work? And without the
maturation of thought and the honing of one’s writing in the area by a larger
pool of scholars, is it really surprising to conclude that there is relatively
little good legal scholarship on abortion?
On Feb. 1, 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed new rules that would exempt certain religious organizations,
including houses of worship, schools and hospitals, from a new mandate
to offer free contraception services to women employees. The new
regulations would instead require the nonprofits’ health-insurance
providers to offer and pay for contraceptive services. The new proposal
is the latest step in a controversy that first arose in 2010, with the
enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The
contraception mandate has been the subject of much debate and the object
of many lawsuits (read more about public opinion on the birth control insurance mandate).
To help explain what today’s announcement might mean for the debate,
the Pew Forum asked Professors Ira C. Lupu and Robert Tuttle of The
George Washington University Law School to discuss the new rules and the
possible outcome of the legal challenges to them.
In a recent HuffPo piece, to which Michael Perry linked here, Chuck Reid re-presents the familiar (though not entirely warranted) complaint that the pro-life movement has, since 1980, mistakenly and counter-productively aligned itself with the "right wing" and all its unsavory aspects, thereby putting itself on a "wilderness road" to "irrelevance and isolation." Certainly, Chuck is right that the pro-life movement is not well served by being connected -in fact or in people's minds -- to mean-spirited ignoramuses and blowhards (though such folks are plentiful all across the political spectrum). Chuck says that "another way" is open, pointing back to 1976 (when there were still some prominent pro-life voices on the political left). Chuck's narrative misses completely, though, an important part of the story: It's not merely that the pro-life movement chose to align with the political right; it is that the political right in fact embraced (even if, in some cases, tepidly and tactically) while the political left chose to reject and purge the pro-life movement, and to align wholeheartedly with the cause of abortion rights.
University of St. Thomas law prof Chuck Reid on where to from here for the pro-life movement. An interesting--and to some MOJ readers, no doubt, provocative--piece. Here.
I have posted a little exchange that Paul Horwitz and I had about his new book, First Amendment Institutions (2013), over at CLR Forum, and invite you to have a look. I'll note the podcast of our discussion when it is up.
The longtime bishop of the Diocese of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, Bishop John D'Arcy, died on Sunday morning. He was a really good and deeply holy man. He was also a stand-up guy and a mensch. Click on the link to learn more about him, and pray that more like him are called to the priesthood and to religious life.
A story of stewardship, Catholic education, and the vocational blessings flowing from a commitment to Catholic education.
The stewardship model which funds Catholic schools in the Diocese of Wichita has blessed the local Church with numerous priestly and religious vocations, the diocesan superintendent of schools said.
“Combined with the intensive daily formation in faith that our students receive in our Catholic schools, the spirituality of stewardship and the constant interplay between family and parish motivates young people to see their choice of vocation to be an act of stewardship in responding to God’s call,” Bob Voboril told CNA Jan. 30.
“Because the stewardship way of life has been instilled so strongly into our families and students, our families are active members and leaders in their parishes.”
The largely rural diocese with a mere 114,000 Catholics currently boasts 46 seminarians. Voboril noted that the openness to God's will in Wichita's young people can be seen as a natural effect of their parents' generosity in supporting His Church.
The Wichita diocese provides tuition-free enrollment in its schools to the children of active parishioners, through its vigorous model of stewardship.
Under Bishop Eugene Gerber, the diocese adopted its stewardship model in 1985. By giving generously to the diocese, families were able to send their children to the diocese's elementary schools for free.
The model started at St. Francis of Assisi parish under Monsignor Thomas McGread in 1968. He challenged his parishioners to each give at least 5 percent of their income to the parish so that all its obligations would be met.
He later pushed for 8 percent donations to the parish, saying he could then pay for all the students to attend Catholic high school.
After the model was adopted throughout the diocese, schools continued to expand and to be financially stable, and since 2002 every Catholic school in the Diocese of Wichita has been tuition-free for active parishioners. Wichita's 38 schools educate nearly 11,000 students, forming them to be disciples of Christ.
I have a piece in Public Discourse today, reflecting on the just-concluded "National School Choice Week." Check it out (please). A bit:
National School Choice Week is not an exercise in reaction or nostalgia. The point is not to treat struggling Catholic schools like rickety historic landmarks or heritage sites, or to attach a “Justice Sonia Sotomayor Studied Here” plaque to the wall at Blessed Sacrament. The school-choice movement, and last week’s celebrations, are not about sentimentality; they are, as John Coons once put it, about “simple justice.” School choice—and, more specifically, public support for the education of the public that is provided by parochial and other religious schools—is required in justice.
Last week’s events should not cause us to sigh and look back wistfully. Instead, they should wake us up, and fire us up. Kids in the situation that Justice Sotomayor faced and neighborhoods like the one in which she grew up don’t have to lose out, and schools like Blessed Sacrament don’t have to close. The school-closing epidemic is not caused by a decline in demand for Catholic education but by our foolish and unfair unwillingness to support financially the good work of Catholic schools and students’ choices to attend them.
Our local paper today published an op ed piece I wrote about the guidance published recently by the Department of Education on how schools can satisfy their legal obligations to make their sports programs accessible to students with disabilities. The school in Minnesota are, I think, exceptionally progressive on this front; it has been a surprising blessing for my son and my family.
Watching how my son has benefited from being involved in sports has radically shifted my own perspective on high school sports programs. As a nerdy non-athlete, I've frankly been rather skeptical about the place of sports programs in schools, as a pedagogical matter. Watching my son and his teammates (who have no realistic hope or aspiration of college sports scholarships or professional sports careers), in an odd way has let me see the effect of involvement in sports stripped clean of the benefits that only accrue to the very best athletes, as I describe in the op ed piece. So, chalk this up as yet another of the many things my son has taught our family.
