Religion & Law

Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis have a thoughtful analysis of Doug Kmiec's arguments for Obama here http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.11.03_Anderson_Ryan%20T._The%20Pro-Life%20Case%20Against%20Barack%20Obama%20.%20.%20.%20and%20Doug%20Kmiec_.xml. In partial defense of Doug, I'm sure all of us get somewhat blinded by partisan committments now and then, myself certainly included. Makes one appreciative of the Church's wisdom in forbidding its clergy from holding public office.

Noting that Steve Shiffrin has difficulty in identifying embryos as fellow humans, since they are just  "human organisms" still without brain function and the like, I have to agree that this is a problem for me and for many others as well. Even though we know in our minds that each human being begins its life at conception and continues in continuity of being until death, we have trouble intuiting this transtemporal identity when faced with a human embryo. In this brief essay, I think I have found a way to stretch our imagination to make it congruent with what we are told by reason: http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/stith/doesmakingbabiesmakesense.pdf (A fuller exposition can be found in "Construction, Development, and Revelopment" available on the M of J website.)