Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments and Dedication
- ONE Introduction: Backing into Treason
- TWO The Drift from Natural Rights
- THREE On the Things the Founders Knew – and How Our Judges Came to Forget Them
- FOUR Abortion and the “Modest First Step”
- FIVE Antijural Jurisprudence
- SIX Prudent Warnings and Imprudent Reactions: “Judicial Usurpation” and the Unraveling of Rights
- SEVEN Finding Home Ground: The Axioms of the Constitution
- EIGHT Spring Becomes Fall Becomes Spring: A Memoir
- Postscript, January 2004
- Index
Postscript, January 2004
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments and Dedication
- ONE Introduction: Backing into Treason
- TWO The Drift from Natural Rights
- THREE On the Things the Founders Knew – and How Our Judges Came to Forget Them
- FOUR Abortion and the “Modest First Step”
- FIVE Antijural Jurisprudence
- SIX Prudent Warnings and Imprudent Reactions: “Judicial Usurpation” and the Unraveling of Rights
- SEVEN Finding Home Ground: The Axioms of the Constitution
- EIGHT Spring Becomes Fall Becomes Spring: A Memoir
- Postscript, January 2004
- Index
Summary
At the time this book was in press, the bill known as the Born Alive Infants' Protection Act had still not come to the floor of either house of the Congress. Then came September 11th. With a new crisis at hand, focusing the national attention, everything else, not immediately connected to the problem of terrorism and homeland security, was pushed to the periphery. And yet, on March 12, 2002, the Judiciary Committee of the House brought the bill to the floor. Shorn of those “findings” that set forth the premises and the purposes of the bill, or the lessons it was meant to teach, the bill sailed through, on a voice vote, with no dissent recorded. Or so it appeared at the end of the day. But in the presentation of the bill, the real differences stirred by the bill broke to the surface. Jerrold Nadler had counseled his colleagues to avoid opposition to the bill, but he could not entirely resist waging the argument. He insisted that the bill was not needed because it merely reaffirmed a principle, “enshrined in the laws of all 50 States and unquestioned in law, that an infant who is born and is living independently of the birth mother is entitled to the same care as any other child.” He could claim then anew “that this bill has nothing to do with matters related to abortion.” And on that ground he would assure his colleagues that they could vote for the bill without threatening the “right to abortion.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Rights and the Right to Choose , pp. 295 - 307Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
- 1
- Cited by