Janet Smith gave a great plenary address at this years UFL Conference on the question of whether it is morally permissible to lie to abortion clinic workers to obtain the truth about their practices. She notes at the outset that both St. Thomas and St. Augustine believed that all lies are immoral, but in some [...]
The Spring 2012 NCBQ arrived in yesterday’s mail (many academic journals tend to run a few months behind), and I’d like to make brief mention of several things from the previous issue (Winter 2011) and the new one. In the Winter 2011 issue there is a review, by Germain Kopaczynski, OFM, of Joseph W. Dellapenna’s Dispelling the Myths [...]
In a past post, I mentioned the dialogue between philosopher Fr. Martin Rhonheimer and his critics – or, perhaps one should say, one of the dialogues, or one aspect of the dialogue – namely, that concerning his ‘vital conflicts’ theory. In the Autumn 2011 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, there is more, dealing [...]
Earlier this year I posted a link to an editorial arguing that fathers should have a right to veto the abortion of their children. I noted that the US Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law that required husbands be notified of a wife’s intent to have an abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, notwithstanding that notification could be avoided by [...]
SSRN has a new article entitled The Jurisprudence of Dignity (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1928768). The author, Leslie Meltzer Henry, identifies the variety of meanings given to the word “dignity” in Supreme Court cases: institutional status as dignity, liberty as dignity, equality as dignity, personal integrity as dignity, and collective virtue as dignity. The article reveals that the Court’s [...]
Over at the Public Discourse blog, UFL member Chris Kaczor responds to Dennis O’Brien’s argument that prolifers are not serious unless we seek to impose the same criminal penalties for murder and for the performance of an abortion. In Let’s Talk About Abortion: A Reply to Dennis O’Brien Professor Kaczor argues that there are many [...]
