Monday, March 6, 2006
Notre Dame law prof Carter Snead has forwarded me a study on the efficacy of pro-life abortion laws that diverges significantly from the conclusions reached by The New York Times.
Rob
UPDATE: The author of the study responds directly to the Times article here.
Sunday, March 5, 2006
Statistics analyzed by The New York Times suggest that parental notification laws may not have much of an impact on abortion rates among teenagers.
Rob
Saturday, March 4, 2006
My opposition to a pharmacist's right of conscience is grounded, in significant part, on my desire to maintain a vibrant "moral marketplace" in which pharmacies can serve as limited mediating structures, carving out their own identities on contested moral issues, e.g. whether or not to offer Plan B and whether or not to honor a pharmacist's own claim of conscience absent a legal mandate. The reality of a moral marketplace presumes, of course, that the government will allow it to exist. That appears increasingly in doubt, as evidenced by Wal-Mart's announcement yesterday that it would, under pressure from various state governments, reverse its corporate policy and begin selling Plan B at all of its pharmacies nationwide. Wal-Mart indicated that it would allow individual pharmacists to refuse to dispense Plan B, subject to their willingness to refer the customer elsewhere. NARAL immediately objected even to this loophole, contending that this limited pharmacist opt-out "really does leave the door open for women to lose access."
Rob
Friday, March 3, 2006
Richard John Neuhaus reports on a recent homily given by Cardinal-designate William Levada explaining the wisdom of the recent instruction on homosexual priests:
In addition to the question of psychosexual maturity, Levada said, “the question also needs to be viewed from its theological perspective,” particularly in light of “the biblical image of God’s spousal relationship with his people and Gospel passages in which Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom.” He took note of “the situation of the gay priest who announces his homosexuality publicly, a few examples of which we have recently heard reported.”
“I think we must ask, ‘Does such a priest recognize how this act places an obstacle to his ability to represent Christ the bridegroom to his bride, the people of God? Does he not see how his declaration places him at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity?’” Levada added that this provides “a good example of the wisdom of the new Vatican instruction.”
Rob
Thursday, March 2, 2006
It's not often that the Catholic Church is praised as "courageous" in a New York Times editorial, especially when the praise is a result of the Church staking out a position in defiance of the prevailing legal culture.
Rob
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Michael asks whether any MoJ-ers have written anything directly critical of the "torture memo." Not that it's a particularly formidable task to criticize that memo, but here's my effort nonetheless.
Rob
This week UC-Berkeley is convening a pep rally conference titled "California's Stem Cell Initiative: Confronting the Legal and Policy Challenges." (HT: Solum) Here is the description:
Most scientists concur that human embryonic stem cell research holds considerable promise for advancing human health. In 2004, California voters endorsed a bold initiative (Proposition 71) to fund stem cell research by the issuance of $3 billion in bonds, which will be allocated over a 10 year period to researchers.
However, foundational legal and policy issues remain to be resolved – from intellectual property rights to other ownership issues (e.g., the form of donor consent), to how (and whether) the state of California should expect to recoup its investment in the research, to name just a few. This conference seeks to provide insights and recommendations from leading thinkers that will enable California’s bold initiative to be successful.
A couple of presumptions jumped out at me. First, the conference takes as a given that the health benefits of embryonic stem cell research are largely undisputed and that California's initiative is "bold" (used twice in two paragraphs!) and should be "successful." With premises like these, the conference marginalizes many of the most pressing issues surrounding the initiative. Second, how could the "foundational legal and policy issues" not include any discussion of the ethical or moral dimension of state-funded embryonic stem cell research? Perhaps they just weren't significant enough to include in the description. Or perhaps the conference organizers presume that such questions are not worth exploring in the first place. Or perhaps they presume that such questions are not properly encompassed by a conference on law and policy. The divinity school types need something to talk about at their conferences, I suppose.
Rob
Monday, February 27, 2006
In his statement today to the Pontifical Academy for Life (at this conference), Pope Benedict:
reaffirmed Catholic teaching that life begins at the moment of conception, saying embryos are "sacred and inviolable" even before they become implanted in a mother's uterus. . . .
By making such a defense of life, the Pope appeared to be trying to cut short any debate that the period between conception and implantation could be seen as a time for legitimate experimentation or manipulation on embryos.
Rob
Friday, February 24, 2006
I was hoping someone would respond to Eduardo's earlier question on the Massachusetts bishops' attempt to gain an exemption allowing Catholic Charities to categorically exclude gay couples from adoption. I generally resist state efforts to impose contested moral norms on religious groups, but I'm troubled by the bishops' decision to contest this moral norm, at least to the extent that it impacts the well-being of children. This news report underscores, in my view, the difficulty with the bishops' position:
Of the 720 adoptions handled by Catholic Charities of Boston since 1987, roughly 60 percent involve foster children with the DSS, and 40 percent are babies and children who come into the agency from individual families.
Of the approximately 430 foster children adopted through Catholic Charities during that time period, 13 were placed with same-sex couples, said Virginia Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the agency.
They were all children who had been abused or neglected and were considered hard to place because they are older or have special needs, Reynolds said.
It is easier to understand the Church's opposition to civil marriage being opened to homosexuals if we understand marriage as not just a reflection of human relationships as they are, but as an aspirational statement of relationships as they should be. (There is still the potentially insurmountable problem of translating the aspirational quality of marriage from a religious notion into an aspiration that resonates in non-religious terms.) But for adoption, it seems that we need to view public policy as a reflection of reality, not aspiration: there are abused and neglected children who are very difficult to place in loving environments. Why would we want to categorically preclude a segment of the population from providing such environments simply because the Church's ideal form of relationship is not reflected in that environment?
If the Massachusetts bishops' opposition to gay adoption under all circumstances emanates from the same aspirational norm as the opposition to gay marriage, that seems problematic. But if the opposition emanates from a conviction that the discernible measures of children's well-being are negatively impacted in gay adoption scenarios such that those adoptions should be precluded outright, then it seems that it will boil down to a battle of empirical studies. So would the bishops drop their opposition if a study showed that children of gay couples can thrive under the criteria that generally apply to measure children's well-being, or would the bishops argue that the children of gay couples are, by the very nature of their environment, not capable of thriving?
Rob
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
A loyal MoJ reader (and former student of Michael Perry) wonders whether future FDA approval to sell Plan B over the counter will bring into relief the extent to which professional elitism drives much of this debate by making cashiers the only relevant moral actors in the store:
Do "professionals" have more of a right to scruples than cashiers because wisdom, or at least discretionary judgment, is their stock in trade? Are "professionals" members of a state-sanctioned cartel with artificial barriers to entry to potential competitors, who should thus have special common-carrier like obligations to the public that the ordinary cashier does not?
One of the distinctive things about pharmacists is that, compared to most members of regulated or "learned" professions, they are these days especially likely to be salaried/hourly employees of large corporations which are not owned or managed by members of their own profession and which derive very substantial revenue from products/services other than those uniquely provided by the pharmacists. I.e. they often work in the back of what are essentially glorified convenience stores selling condoms, cigarettes, etc. up front. (Put another way, they have a less effective cartel than we lawyers do!) I would expect these aspects of their situation may make some of them extra-prickly about "professionalism" and how being a member of a profession is absolutely positively qualitatively different from being a cashier.
Rob
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