Introduction

As YOUR SERVANT WRITES THIS, we are approaching the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision which even many pro-abortion legal scholars admit was poorly reasoned. Of course, that's the least one can say about it: Roe was an arrogant act of judicial usurpation, which wrested the abortion question away from the states, and attempted to "settle" it by baptizing killing in the name of the Constitution. Since then, an activist Court has continued to impose a new moral vision, one which rejects traditional American values-so argues Hadley Arkes, whose eloquent voice leads our issue.

Professor Arkes is well-known to readers of the Review, most recently (Summer, 2002) we heard from him as an architect of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, passed last summer, a bill which seeks to protect a baby who survives an abortion. In this issue we present a chapter from Arkes' new book, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, in which he argues persuasively that the American political class has drifted away from the belief in natural rights and "into premises quite at odds with the premises of the American Founders." The "liberal project," which claims to be about expanding rights has, in the name of "privacy," "sexual freedom" and the "right to choose," taken away rights that ought to be constitutionally protected. In Chapter 6, "Prudent Warnings and Imprudent Reactions: 'Judicial Usurpation' and the Unraveling of Rights," Arkes writes about judicial activism in the context of a raging controversy sparked by the journal First Things.

You may remember the story. In 1996, Arkes participated (along with First Things editor-in-chief Father Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Bork, Robert George, Russell Hittinger, and Chuck Colson) in a symposium titled The End of Democracy? These contributors warned that the actions the courts had taken, especially since the Griswold and Roe decisions, had been decided on principles fundamentally at odds with the morality upon which our nation was founded. "Step by step, the federal courts had shown a willingness to challenge, at their root, the laws that restrained the taking of human life at the beginning (with abortion) and at the end (with euthanasia and assisted suicide). . . . What the judges were doing, virtually on their own, was remodeling the very matrix of laws on birth, death, sexuality and marriage." And all this had been done without "much awareness, among the judges or the political class," of the anti-Constitutional thresholds that had been crossed. So, the question posed was: are we a democracy, if we are ruled, in effect, by an elite class of judges, who were not elected by the populace, and whose decisions contradict the very principles of our democracy?

The authors were unprepared for the firestorm their words ignited. Furious critics, including some (they had thought) "like-minded" colleagues, accused the symposiasts of flat-out treason. Arkes answers the charge: "For our own part, we never thought we were repudiating the American regime. Quite the reverse: We were seeking to vindicate the principles of the regime, to restore them in the face of a political class that was artfully replacing that regime with something else."

Arkes also emphasizes the compelling parallels of our current situation with 19th century America, when our country was divided over slavery. Citing the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, he writes, "Some of us have argued for years that Lincoln's arguments on slavery, and the crisis of the republic at the time, were the closest analogies to the questions we were facing with abortion and our recent crisis. But for some of us it has become ever clearer that Lincoln's argument was not merely analogous: He was dealing with the same problem, or to put it another way, our problem today radiates from the same questions in principle, which is why that problem of abortion has held such a grip on us."

In spite of Roe, the majority of Americans remain uncomfortable with abortion, and, as polls have consistently demonstrated, they support restrictions-from 24-hour waiting periods, and parental consent for minors, to a ban on partial-birth abortion, another bogus "right" recently protected by the Supreme Court. The abortion issue needs to be given back to the democratic process, Arkes says, "ending the monopoly of the courts and judges, and returning the question of abortion to the arena of legislatures and the arguments of citizens in the natural discourse about 'rights' and 'wrongs.'"

This reasonable remedy is what the pro-abortion lobby fears the most-which is why they spend millions trying to convince Americans that every proposed limitation of the abortion license is a dangerous ploy by fanatics to take away a woman's "right to control her reproduction." The subject of our next article is a perfect example. National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez writes about the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (ANDA), a sensible piece of legislation which would protect religious hospitals and healthcare workers who oppose abortion from having to provide or participate in the procedure. Yet the bill has been described by the National Organization for Women as "one of the most dangerous and burdensome of all the many anti-abortion and anti-contraception bills being promoted by extremist opponents of women's reproductive health care." As Lopez writes, though this bill is truly a matter of freedom of choice (and freedom from coercion) "it's just short of a miracle that it successfully passed the House," because of the "ridiculous rhetoric" released about it. It faces a battle in the Senate, but as you'll read in Lopez' informative analysis, it ought to have some support from unexpected voices-for example, here's what (now Senator) Hillary Clinton said in the summer of 2000: "Even though I am pro-choice, I do not think it would be constitutional or appropriate for the government to be telling a Catholic hospital, 'You haveto do something which is totally contrary to your religious beliefs.'" Er, . . . Amen, Hillary.

What follows is another eloquent, and urgent, plea for Americans to exercise their rights as participants in a democracy, and prevail upon Congress to stand firmly against the new encroaching evil: cloning. In this case, our esteemed colleague Wesley Smith cautions us about the true colors of those who advocate cloning, and warns that nothing less than a total ban on cloning will protect us from their Brave New World plans.

The cloning issue is being played along familiar lines. From the start, the American people have had a deep, instinctual aversion to the idea. "Poll after poll has shown that the vast majority of the American people wish to prevent the development of this technology. Unfortunately, the legislative attempt to outlaw cloning stalled when pro-cloners dangled the utilitarian hope that cloning for biomedical research . . . would lead to miraculous medical treatments." Pro-cloning forces are appealing to the public's self-interest and compassion for those afflicted by diseases by asking people to support "only" the so-called "therapeutic" cloning (remember "therapeutic abortions"?), which supposedly holds promise for wonderful cures. Of course, there is nothing "therapeutic" about the research for the embryos, which are created only to be destroyed-nor is there much real evidence that there are any cures around the corner. Furthermore, the appeal is dishonest: pro-cloning advocates know that a partial ban on cloning will not prevent reproductive cloning-allowing one would open the door to the other.

As Smith writes, the debate over research cloning is serving to obscure the most crucial information the public needs to know: the eugenic agenda of the cloning enthusiasts. Smith burns away the fog in his revealing essay: he goes straight to the words of the "mad scientists" themselves, as he reviews for us four major books on cloning, exposing the authors' dreams of seizing control of human evolution and "improving" the human race.

You will no doubt be shocked by the scenarios envisioned in the books Smith reviews; you might be tempted to write the authors off as science-fiction nuts. But you can't-all four are professors at major universities, with positions of power and prestige. Lee Silver is a prime example: a professor of biology at Princeton (now proud home of Peter Singer as well), and author of Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World, Silver looks forward to a world where cloning has made genetic engineering a reality, and humans are "enhanced." He predicts a time when humanity will be split in two: "the "Naturals," doomed to go through life unenhanced, who will become the drone class, and the superior, demi-god-like enhanced humans, whom Silver names the "GenRich." Silver gets all starry-eyed about the promise of such a society, proving, as Smith writes, that the "human advancement agenda is merely a new version of discredited eugenic master race thinking."

Meanwhile, over in Ireland, the pro-life movement is struggling to recover from its internecine warfare over last year's referendum. You can read about it in our special section, Revisiting Ireland's Pro-Life Civil War, which has its own introduction on p. 55.

In our Fall, 2001 issue, we welcomed a new European contributor, F. P. Tros, who wrote about the upcoming (April 2002) "official" legalization of euthanasia in the Netherlands (of course, it had been unofficially allowed there for years). We are pleased to have him back: this time, in "Onwards Libertarian Soldiers," he gives us a valuable-if tragic-look at voices in his country that cried out against the evil of euthanasia: the Roman Catholic Bishops. The occasion for his reflections was the release of Euthanasia and Human Dignity, a collection of the contributions of the Dutch Bishops' Conference to the legislative procedure, which marched relentlessly on into the brave new world they warned against. The Bishops' words on solidarity in suffering and death are a powerful testament, writes Tros, to "the continued and continual bearing witness to the moral values that forbid any willful putting to death."

Our final two articles explore a subject the "liberal project" would like to deny exists: the negative consequences of abortion for women. Australian journalist Melinda Tankard Reist is an expert on the sad subject of post-abortion grief. Her book, Giving Sorrow Words, is the result of her interviews with almost 300 women who had abortions (we reprinted an excerpt in our Winter, 2001 issue). The immediate catalyst to "Silencing Women" was an incredibly tasteless, ranting column written by a well-known journalist and feminist personality in Britain, Julie Burchill. You'll see why Reist couldn't let this one go by. Burchill herself exposes another hypocrisy of the "choice" movement: the unwillingness of abortion advocates to admit that women not only grieve abortion, but that their suffering is aggravated by the enormous pressure they are under to suppress their feelings. (This is probably the only area of human experience women are not encouraged to "share.")

As our next author, Professor Ian Gentles knows, there is also evidence of a trend (to put it kindly) to overlook or downplay studies which find connections between abortion and several physical and psychological disorders. Gentles, a professor of history and Research Director of the deVeber Institute for Bioethics, has recently co-authored (with Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy) Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence, a review of over 500 books and studies on the medical and psychological effects of abortion. In this article, he gives an overview of the book, citing important studies whose results have been neglected by the media-for example, on the connections between abortion and breast cancer. Gentles says even the authors and sponsors of some of the studies have "shied away from the implications of their findings." Yet: If women have a right to choose, don't they also have a right to know? Moral matters aside, "informed consent must be an essential ingredient of good patient care. . . . I co-authored this study because of a conviction that the increased risks associated with induced abortion . . . are serious enough to merit dissemination beyond the pages of professional journals." Those of you who want to read about these studies in more depth can order the book (see our "About this Issue" for details).

* * * * *

Our appendices section begins with further commentary on abortion and the courts. In Appendix A, George Will discusses an interesting legal case in Michigan which further illustrates how Roe's "right of unlimited abortion on demand" comes into conflict with moral judgments expressed in state laws. Appendix B, by Dinesh D'Souza, echoes Hadley Arkes' evocation of the Lincoln era as a parallel to our times. D'Souza says he has learned something new about the abortion question from studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates over slavery, and advises prolifers to learn from Lincoln's incremental approach-we ought to try first to reduce the number of abortions. In Appendix C, Noemie Emery reports on the "widespread whipping" the pro-choice extremists took in the November elections-heartening news that the press just didn't have the heart to report. The fact is, "pro-choice support crested around 1990, and since then has been declining"-all the more reason for action by prolifers to try and save lives through legislation which would restrict the number of abortions. Adam Mersereau, in Appendix D, looks at prolifers' prospects in 2003, and advises "cautious optimism"; he too compares our government's tolerance of abortion to its former tolerance of slavery, and sees hope that more Americans will realize that "a legitimate government has no right to declare certain human beings less than human. . . ." Yet he warns that "pro-choicers are preparing for war"-of course they are, they're worried. (So worried that the National Abortion Rights Action League decided they needed a new, less in-your-face name: Naral Pro-Choice America.)

Our final appendix strikes out in a different direction, but one with an unquestionable place in our pages. Nurse Nancy Valko describes what should be a controversy in the medical community: a new method of organ procurement called non-heart-beating organ donation. Brain-death used to be the necessary condition for organ harvesting. NHBD may involve taking organs from patients who are not brain-dead, but who are deemed (by whom it is not clear) to have no "meaningful" quality of life; they are taken off life support, and if their heart stops, they are considered "good to go" for harvesting. As Valko explains, ventilators are often temporarily necessary in cases of brain injury, but the extent of a patient's injury, and the chances of recovery, are very hard to predict.

As usual, to comfort the reader faced with our sobering material, we include excursions to the ridiculous, with cartoons from our friend. Nick Downes.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Fall 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved