NATURAL RIGHTS AND THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE

by Hadley Arkes

Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002

288 pages, $28 To order: 800-872-7423 or www.cambridge.org

One might think that, after three decades of legalized abortion in the United States, there is nothing left to say about the issue that hasn't already been said. But the conversation continues to develop — indicating its importance to countless Americans long after politicians and judges have wished it would just go away.

Hadley Arkes' Natural Rights and the Right to Choose is a worthwhile entry in the dialogue. Arkes, the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., is frequently published in both Catholic and public-policy journals. He was a key figure in the creation of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001.

Natural Rights is part philosophy lesson, part memoir. As a tutorial in the philosophy of law, it is not light reading. But neither is it beyond the comprehension of most adult readers, and it certainly rewards the effort. For those who have never considered the basic philosophical foundations of American law (or even realized it had philosophical foundations), Arkes offers a lucid and practical explanation.

Most essentially, he shows how the single-minded protection of “the right to abortion” in America's halls of justice has only been possible by rejecting the idea of a natural law on which all rights are based. We have rights, the courts say, not because of some inherent dignity that each of us bears simply by being a human person but because our government has decided to grant them to us. The story of legalized abortion is, Arkes writes, “a story of the radical absence of rights, our nakedness of rights, until those rights are conferred by the powerful.”

But if philosophy is not what you're looking for, don't let that keep you from opening the book. Natural Rights is also an engaging and informative memoir offered by a primary player on the legislative front in the battle to establish a culture of life in America.

We read about behind-the-scenes strategizing by experts in the intricacies of the legislative process and their efforts to use that process — not only to produce laws that protect the unborn but also to stimulate a conversation among the American people about our current laws and their moral dimensions. We also read a firsthand account of the unbelievably stubborn refusal of some politicians and “women's-rights” agitators to consider for a moment the slightest restriction on the sacrosanct right of any woman (or girl) to procure an abortion for any reason.

I had read disturbing descriptions of partial-birth abortion before, always provided by pro-life activists. And yet the clinical description of the procedure that Arkes cites, offered by its inventor, is the most grisly I've come across. Equally repulsive is the evidence Arkes offers for the practice of “live-birth abortion.” He cites the testimony of several nurses, given in congressional hearings, of the practices at Christ Hospital in Chicago, where doctors induce labor and deliver a live fetus only to set it aside to die over a period of hours, wrapped in a disposable towel. So much less of a mess that way. No pieces. And in a place named after the Son of God.

Arkes' book is a clear reminder that, though we have recently observed the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, there is still much that needs saying and doing.

Barry Michaels writes from Blairsville, Pennsylvania.