When you come to a fork in the road, take it?: Abortion, personhood, and the jurisprudence of neutrality

Journal of Church and State

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 485-497

  Beckwith, Francis J ^a  

^a BAYLOR UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645796098     PISSN: 0021969X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jcs/45.3.485     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Yogi Berra, The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said (New York: Workman Publishing, 1998).
2. Paul D. Simmons, "Religious Liberty and Abortion Policy: Casey as 'Catch-22'," Journal of Church and State 42 (Winter 2000): 69-88.
3. Simmons, "Religious Liberty and Abortion Policy," 71.
4. Simmons, "Religious Libert)' and Abortion Policy," 88.
5. Francis J. Beckwith, "Law, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Abortion: A Reply to Simmons," Journal of Church & State 43 (Winter 2001): 19-33.
6. Stuart Rosenbaum, "Abortion, the Constitution, and Metaphysics," Journal of Church and State 43 (Autumn 2001): 707-23.
7. "Beckwith's charge of circularity is a 'strawman' reading of Blackmun. . . ." ibid., 716.
8. However, as I note in my original essay, Simmons uses the viability criterion as a standard by which to distinguish persons from non-persons whereas Blackmun uses it to determine when the state has a compelling interest in prenatal life. See Beckwith, "Law, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Abortion," 23-24.
9. Rosenbaum, "Abortion, the Constitution, and Metaphysics," 715-719.
10. Perhaps I can take solace in Alvin Plantinga's humorous retort that the term "fundamentalist" has no actual cognitive content in these sorts of discussions, but is merely a visceral reaction on the part of some people to label the "'stupid sumbitch [son of a bitch] whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.'" See Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford, 2000), 245.
11. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Abortion: Whose Right?," Boston Review 20 (Summer 1995): 6, available at http://bostonreview.rnit.edU/BR20.3/thomson. html. (pagination is for the online version).
12. Simmons, "Religious Libert)' and the Abortion Debate," 573.
13. Writes Rosenbaum, "Genuinely reasonable people will surely detect the inadequacies of the alleged reasons Beckwith suggests might deter them from accepting the viability standard of Blackmun and Simmons." Ibid., 718 (emphasis added).
14. Writes Rosenbaum, "Beckwith, and these other 'philosophical fundamentalists,' are wrong to see intellectual, moral, religious, or cultural disaster in yielding to the American and continental traditions' efforts to undermine the cultural authority of reason." Ibid., 723 (emphasis added).
15. Writes Rosenbaum, "Blackmun wisely and deliberately avoided metaphysics. Paul Simmons, too, wisely and deliberately avoided metaphysics." Ibid., 723;
16. As far as my works on this question, see Francis J. Eeckwith and Gregory P. Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1998);
17. Francis J. Beckwith, "Why I Am Not a Relativist," in Why I Am a Christian, eds. Norman L. Geisler and Paul Hoffman (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001);
18. Francis J. Beckwith, "The Metaphysics and Theology of Political and Legal Disagreement: A Review Article," Philosophia Christi 4, no. 2 (2002): 477-92.