Religion & Law

Michael P. suggests that there is an "elephant in the room", and that is is captured with this question:

The sixty-four-dollar question:  Who is more unreasonable:  (1) One who denies that Christians (and others) can in good faith reasonably reject the position (even though, of course, one can reasonably accept it too) that unborn human life has the same moral status from the very beginning of its existence as it has as every later stage; or (2) one who rejects the position that unborn human life has the same moral status from the very beginning of its existence as it has as every later stage?

I suppose this elephant makes many appearances in our conversations about abortion, but it is not clear to me that this elephant made an appearance in the posts preceding Michael's, regarding President Obama's visit to Notre Dame, his calls for "common ground", and my own doubts about those calls. 

The fact that there is disagreement over the "sixty-four dollar question" -- and there is -- does not change the fact that, as Fr. Jenkins said in his introduction of President Obama, the Church -- and, he said, Notre Dame -- has a clear position with respect to this question.  So, for purposes of discussing whether or not it was consistent with Notre Dame's professed character and aspirations to honor President Obama, I'm not sure it matters that there is, in the broader conversation, disagreement among reasonable people with respect to the question.

Also, the fact that there is disagreement about this question does not speak, it seems to me, to my suggestion that hopes for dialogue and "common ground" are undermined by the fact that the Roe / Casey regime distorts the usual functioning of politics, and effectively guarantees one side in the "dialogue" a complete victory.

The question I asked Michael -- it is one to which his latest book, Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court, might speak -- is what he thinks of what I wrote here:

Given the Roe / Casey regime, though (and given Pres. Obama's clear plans with respect to judicial selections), it seems that the common-ground calls are really not much more than calls that pro-life Americans agree to re-brand the pro-choice position as "common ground".

In fact, the more I think about it, Michael's "sixty-four dollar question" would seem to strengthen my point:  If there is this disagreement among reasonable people, then the judicial overreach that is Roe / Casey seems all the more unjustified.  If President Obama were to call for the overruling of Roe, and appoint Justices likely to overturn it, and then invite a conversation about what our compromise, common-ground legal regime should be, I would -- notwithstanding my awareness that the resulting regime would fall short of what I believe justice requires -- cheer loudly.