The Supreme Court and Reasonable Hope.(Excerpt)

Editor's note. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus will speak at the banquet that closes NRLC 2007, the three-day convention which will take place in Kansas City June 1416. He is president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and editor-in-chief of the institute's publication, First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

In a survey of national leadership, U.S. News and World Report named Fr. Neuhaus one of 32 "most influential intellectuals in America." In a 2005 cover story, Time magazine named Fr. Neuhaus one of the most influential religious leaders in America.

The following excerpt is from an entry Fr. Neuhaus wrote for the blog that appears on the FirstThings.com web site.

Justice Kennedy's 54 majority opinion is notable for accenting the society's legitimate, indeed imperative, interest in protecting innocent human life. That interest had received lip service in Roe and its judicial offspring, but this time it is an operative, albeit not a controlling, concern. President Bush hailed Carhart as bringing us closer to the goal of "a society in which every child is welcomed in life and protected in law." A very little bit closer to a goal still painfully far away. ...

It seems to me that there is another question that should be pretty much settled now. Back in the 1990s, there was considerable argument among pro-life leaders about the wisdom of focusing on partial-birth abortion. It was a strategic decision. Pro-lifers opposed to it contended that partial-birth abortions accounted for only a few thousand abortions per year, and getting rid of that procedure would do nothing to protect the million and more other children killed by abortion each year.

This was another instance of the familiar disagreement over the advocacy of incremental changes or frontal challenges to the abortion regime of Roe. Obviously, one would prefer a frontal challenge that would result in the overturning of that infamous 1973 decision. But it will not work, at least not now. Quite apart from specific decisions of the Court, the focus on partial-birth abortion has been a great success in educating the public to the reality of unborn life and the horror of abortion. In the dissent, Justice Ginsburg objects that the moral repugnance triggered by partial-birth abortion is true of all abortions. Precisely. ...

The Ginsburg dissent is right: In previous decisions, especially those dealing with abortion, the Court said there was no place in law for the "imposing" of moral judgments. Carhart, by way of contrast, evidences a respect for moral discernment, especially as expressed by the legislature. Every law of consequence reflects a moral judgment. The abortion license imposed by Roe previously ...