Beckwith, a philosophy professor at Baylor University, tackles the policy questions by asking and answering questions about anthropology, ontology, and morality. Because we can know that the fetus is a human person by reason and not just by faith, he argues, we know that they are endowed with the same human rights as every being who is human in nature.
Understanding Roe’s impact
“Black and Pro-Life in America: The Incarceration and Exoneration of Walter B. Hoye” (Ignatius Press, 2018) by Robert W. Artigo.
Robert W. Artigo, an award-winning investigative journalist, details the powerful witness of the Rev. Walter B. Hoye II, a popular black Baptist minister who defied an unjust law without compromise, despite all the efforts of pro-abortion authorities to avoid the embarrassment of penalizing a beloved black minister if he would only “bend a little.”
Hoye was arrested on March 20, 2009 after defying a law passed by the City of Oakland, Calif., that made it illegal to approach a woman entering an abortion clinic without her consent. He went to jail for standing on a public sidewalk with a sign saying, “God loves you and your baby. Let us help you.”
Hoye was offered a lesser sentence of community service, provided he agreed never to return to the clinic. Instead, the pro-life leader spent 30 days in jail to serve as a witness to his constitutional right to free speech and his Christian duty to offer help to women in need, most of whom were black like him.
Two higher courts eventually exonerated Hoye; one overturned his criminal conviction, and the other struck down the Oakland “bubble law” as unconstitutional. Artigo provides a detailed play-by-play account of the political pro-abortion machinations that created the “bubble law” and the unexpected violator who defied it — a descendant of slaves and disciple of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Hoye not only scored a huge legal victory for the pro-life movement, he became one of the greatest pies in the face to attempts to legally sacramentalize abortion.
Critiques of Roe v. Wade
“Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade” (Encounter Books, 2013) by Clarke D. Forsythe.
Much can be said of Clarke D. Forsythe’s incredibly detailed recount of how Roe was nothing but an embarrassing legal blunder by seven out of the nine justices of the 1973 Supreme Court. But let’s just quote the review that Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Rosen wrote back in 2013.
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“Mr. Forsythe’s generally fair-minded narrative about the internal dynamics on the Roe court will not change the minds of activists on either side of this intensely polarized debate. Nor can it tell the justices whether to overturn Roe, given that the case has been repeatedly reaffirmed over the past 40 years. But ‘Abuse of Discretion’ provides a cautionary tale about the political and constitutional hazards of unnecessarily broad Supreme Court decisions,” Rosen wrote in his review.
“Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe, said in a 1991 interview that the court’s decision to hear the abortion cases was a ‘serious mistake’ because the justices initially thought they were considering a narrow procedural question of when courts should intervene in pending criminal prosecutions. As a result, they decided the abortion cases without possessing a factual record about the medical, social and legal effects of various abortion restrictions,” Rosen continued.
“This gave a free-floating quality to the deliberations, which Mr. Forsythe documents in detail. Drawing on the private papers of the justices that have been released in the past two decades — including those of Blackmun, Potter Stewart and Byron White — he traces the horse-trading that occurred behind the scenes.”
Forsythe is the senior counsel at Americans United for Life Action (AULA.) So far, there is no account from the pro-choice side that has dared to refute his explanation of how the Supreme Court failed the country and the rule of law by legalizing abortion.
“A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies” (Life Cycle Books, 1979) by John T. Noonan, Jr.
While Forsythe makes his case in a massive, 477-page book, John Thomas Noonan Jr., a brilliant Catholic scholar and federal judge, makes his argument in 192 pages divided into 21 chapters called “Inquiries.”
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