Product Description

Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #134361 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Review
"By a masterful marshalling of the pertinent arguments and a civil engagement with the counter-arguments, Beckwith makes a convincing case for law and social policy based on reason and natural rights rather than the will to power." Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief, First Things "Like a superhero fighting on hostile turf with one arm tied behind his back, Francis J. Beckwith confronts every argument -- popular, legal, and philosophical -- that comes out against the pro-life position and fends them off one by one with steadfast rationality and exuberant invention. Between punches, drawing on the science of embryology and on philosophical anthropology, he develops a gracious and luminous case for the simple goodness of human life and the basic equality of all members of the human community from the moment of conception. Readers will judge for themselves whether or not he delivers a knock-out, but after working through Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice, no one can honestly hide behind such conceits as that all educated people support abortion, that nothing but blind faith rejects abortion rights, or that we are faced with a tragic choice between intelligence and life." James R. Stoner, Jr., Louisiana State University "Using an argument rooted in nondiscrimination and equality of persons, Beckwith deftly combines the analytical tools of philosophy, jurisprudence, and science to construct a brilliant case for governmental protection of the unborn. Critics will have difficulty refuting the logical conclusion that emerges from his basic premises." Carol Swain, Vanderbilt University "Francis Beckwith's Defending Life directly confronts, with careful analysis of specific texts, a wide variety of arguments made by prominent scholars who favor abortion rights, including Judith Thomson, David Boonin, Dean Stretton, Eileen McDonagh, Paul Simmons, and Stuart Rosenbaum. Those who read the book may not agree with Beckwith, but they will have no ground to complain that he has not taken the arguments on the other side seriously, since the book is a sustained analysis and critique of the most important arguments in defense of abortion rights. It is often said that the anti-abortion position is fundamentally religious. Defending Life, however, provides a comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical defense of the position - too often given short shrift in academia - that abortion involves the deliberate, unjustifiable killing of a member of the human community. It is an invaluable contribution to debate on this central social and political issue." Christopher Wolfe, Marquette University "As the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the ban on partial birth abortion and the controversy over stem cell research make clear, the issues surrounding respect for life will continue at the forefront of American politics in the twenty-first century. Professor Beckwith's new book makes an important contribution to these debates. Defending Life is, and is likely to remain for a long time, the most thorough and detailed statement of the pro-life position. It is well-written and learned; the author's command of the relevant literatures, both legal and philosophic, is impressive." Jean M. Yarbrough, Bowdoin College "...in his new book, Defending Life, leading pro-life scholar Francis J. Beckwith offers a precise statement of the philosophical and jurisprudential case the movement has developed...the Supreme Court has not settled the abortion issue; and when the abortion question eventually returns to the electorate, careful thinking will be crucial. That's when Beckwith's Defending Life will be helpful indeed." Ryan T. Anderson, National Review "This is important work... Beckwith performs a most effective demolition job on the pro-choice movement's more hackneyed arguments... [This book] is worthwhile reading for pro-life thinkers who wish to track Roe's deadly march through the American intelligentsia. It's more worthwhile still for pro-life thinkers who know that, while Roe may have won many battles since 1973, the war is far from over. Defending Life will equip pro-life activists to make a logically sound defense of human dignity." Douglas LeBlanc, Christianity Today "Defending Life is a profound and vigorous defense of the right to life, as well as a comprehensive rebuttal to every conceivable argument in favor of abortion." Inside The Vatican

Review
"By a masterful marshalling of the pertinent arguments and a civil engagement with the counter-arguments, Beckwith makes a convincing case for law and social policy based on reason and natural rights rather than the will to power."
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief, First Things

"Like a superhero fighting on hostile turf with one arm tied behind his back, Francis J. Beckwith confronts every argument ­- popular, legal, and philosophical ­- that comes out against the pro-life position and fends them off one by one with steadfast rationality and exuberant invention. Between punches, drawing on the science of embryology and on philosophical anthropology, he develops a gracious and luminous case for the simple goodness of human life and the basic equality of all members of the human community from the moment of conception. Readers will judge for themselves whether or not he delivers a knock-out, but after working through Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice, no one can honestly hide behind such conceits as that all educated people support abortion, that nothing but blind faith rejects abortion rights, or that we are faced with a tragic choice between intelligence and life."
James R. Stoner, Jr., Louisiana State University

"Using an argument rooted in nondiscrimination and equality of persons, Beckwith deftly combines the analytical tools of philosophy, jurisprudence, and science to construct a brilliant case for governmental protection of the unborn. Critics will have difficulty refuting the logical conclusion that emerges from his basic premises."
Carol Swain, Vanderbilt University

"Francis Beckwith's Defending Life directly confronts, with careful analysis of specific texts, a wide variety of arguments made by prominent scholars who favor abortion rights, including Judith Thomson, David Boonin, Dean Stretton, Eileen McDonagh, Paul Simmons, and Stuart Rosenbaum. Those who read the book may not agree with Beckwith, but they will have no ground to complain that he has not taken the arguments on the other side seriously, since the book is a sustained analysis and critique of the most important arguments in defense of abortion rights. It is often said that the anti-abortion position is fundamentally religious. Defending Life, however, provides a comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical defense of the position - too often given short shrift in academia - that abortion involves the deliberate, unjustifiable killing of a member of the human community. It is an invaluable contribution to debate on this central social and political issue."
Christopher Wolfe, Marquette University

"As the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the ban on partial birth abortion and the controversy over stem cell research make clear, the issues surrounding respect for life will continue at the forefront of American politics in the twenty-first century. Professor Beckwith's new book makes an important contribution to these debates. Defending Life is, and is likely to remain for a long time, the most thorough and detailed statement of the pro-life position. It is well-written and learned; the author's command of the relevant literatures, both legal and philosophic, is impressive."
Jean M. Yarbrough, Bowdoin College

"...in his new book, Defending Life, leading pro-life scholar Francis J. Beckwith offers a precise statement of the philosophical and jurisprudential case the movement has developed....the Supreme Court has not settled the abortion issue; and when the abortion question eventually returns to the electorate, careful thinking will be crucial. That's when Beckwith's Defending Life will be helpful indeed."
Ryan T. Anderson, National Review

"This is important work... Beckwith performs a most effective demolition job on the pro-choice movement's more hackneyed arguments... [This book] is worthwhile reading for pro-life thinkers who wish to track Roe's deadly march through the American intelligentsia. It's more worthwhile still for pro-life thinkers who know that, while Roe may have won many battles since 1973, the war is far from over. Defending Life will equip pro-life activists to make a logically sound defense of human dignity."
Douglas LeBlanc, Christianity Today

"Defending Life is a profound and vigorous defense of the right to life, as well as a comprehensive rebuttal to every conceivable argument in favor of abortion."
Inside The Vatican

"...Beckwith has written a careful and meticulous treatise about why the fetus should have a personhood status equal to that of a born human being from the moment of conception. This is exactly where legislation is heading, and his book may bolster those efforts..."
--Eileen McDonagh, Northeastern University

About the Author
Francis J. Beckwith is Associate Professor of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, where he teaches in the departments of philosophy and political science and the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. A 2002-2003 Madison Research Fellow in the Politics Department at Princeton University, he is a graduate of Fordham University (Ph.D., philosophy) and the Washington University School of Law, St. Louis (M.J.S.), where he won the CALI Award for academic excellence in the Reproductive Control Seminar. His more than a dozen books include Is Statecraft Soulcraft? Christianity and Politics (forthcoming); To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (2004); Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment and the Challenge of Intelligent Design (2003); Do the Right Thing: Readings in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy, Second Edition (2002); and The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement (2002), which was a finalist for the Gold Medallion Award in theology and doctrine. With interests in jurisprudence, politics, philosophy of religion, and public policy, Professor Beckwith has published in a wide variety of academic journals including the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Journal of Social Philosophy, International Philosophical Quarterly, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, American Journal of Jurisprudence, Journal of Medical Ethics, Public Affairs Quarterly, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, Social Theory & Practice, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Christian Bioethics, Nevada Law Journal, Journal of Law & Religion, and Philosophia Christi. His website is http://www.francisbeckwith.com.

Customer Reviews

Abortion and the art of sophistry
We live in an age of paradox. On the one hand, scientific concepts are confidently and systematically understood, and our control of the physical world continues to expand through our employ of thorough, rigorous scientific method. On the other hand, the poverty of moral discourse is such that, in the words of J. Budziszewski, "it is...like a great smoke which fills our houses and dulls our minds and makes it difficult to complete any thoughts." Trying to discuss moral issues such as abortion in my experience does not lead to reasoned discussion; instead it is waved off as uninteresting or intractable, or the "right to choose" mantra is immediately invoked.

Francis Beckwith, however, notes that the climate has changed a bit in recent years. People are not so sure of moral relativism in the post-9/11 West. As stem cell research and the spectre of cloning bring to light alarming technological possibilities, we are forced to confront issues of what it means to be human. The thrust of Beckwith's argument, then, is to at the same time clarify the abortion debate and also advance the prolife position, by blowing away the smoke of confusion and appealing to our basic moral intuitions.

On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade was issued, and with its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton, it effectively legalized abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy. However, the reasoning used by Justice Harry Blackmun, who authored Roe, was flawed. To build his case, he had to overcome two legal impediments. The first was regarding the purpose of the anti-abortion laws that many states had enacted beginning in the nineteenth century. The reason, he said, these laws existed was not to protect prenatal life but rather to protect women from dangerous medical procedures. Since abortion was now a relatively safe procedure, there was no longer a need to prohibit it. Going back into common law prior to the nineteenth century Blackmun claimed that abortion was "a fundamental liberty, found in our nation's traditions and history." Therefore, given the right to privacy which the Supreme Court manufactured in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision (but which Blackmun said was older than the Bill of Rights), abortion was declared a constitutional right. Beckwith points out that "since 1973 the overwhelming consensus of scholarship has shown that the court's history...is almost entirely mistaken." It is clear that the primary purpose of the state laws was in fact to protect the unborn from harm.

The second flaw in the court's reasoning in Roe involves the Fourteenth Amendment which protects U.S. citizens from having their rights violated by the government, and whether the unborn are persons protected by it. Blackmun argued that since the court cannot resolve the difficult question about when life begins, the state ought to remain neutral and not prefer one theory of life over another, and therefore not rule against abortion. But in practice he really is taking a position: by legalizing abortion the state is saying that the unborn is the kind of thing that should not be protected by the state and is thus outside of membership in the human community. His argument actually provides a compelling reason to prohibit abortion, since it admits that abortion may result in the death of a human entity who has a full right to life (but we just don't know for sure).

Under scrutiny, these pillars no longer seem to be able to support Roe, so one would think that when the opportunity arose it would be reversed. Such an opportunity was the 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey which unfortunately upheld Roe in a narrow 5-4 decision. What is interesting is that since the original discredited reasoning could not be sustained, all the court could do was to base its decision on stare decisis, the principle that the court respect precedent. Chief Justice Rehnquist, in his dissent in Casey said that "Roe continues to exist, but only in the way a storefront on a western movie set exists: a mere facade to give the illusion of reality." The language of Casey indicated that the court had shifted the basis of abortion from the right to privacy to a new right that they found in the Fourteenth Amendment: the right to personal autonomy. It would seem that the right to abortion was derived not so much from sound legal reasoning as from the sheer force of judicial will.

It is claimed that the prochoice position should enjoy a privileged standing in our legal framework because the prolife position is religious. Beckwith argues that this is false: both positions presuppose some metaphysical point of view. If one is a materialist (believing that the physical world is all there is) one will reject the idea of a unifying human nature. A human being, then, is not a substance ontologically, but is something that comes into being only when sufficient parts or attributes are in place, whether these are brain waves or self-awareness or whatever criteria one chooses. In this view the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, much like an automobile or a table. Many prolifers, on the other hand, argue, as does Beckwith, that the human being is ontologically prior to its parts. From conception it has a human nature that defines and maintains its identity as long as it exists. Personhood is not achieved after a minimum number of attributes are evident, but exists immediately as an integral part of our human nature. The point is that both the prolife and the prochoice positions are in a sense religious; there is no metaphysical neutral ground.

Beckwith deals extensively with popular arguments for abortion choice, and the common denominator seems to be that they all beg the question as to the humanity of the fetus. That is to say, the arguments only work if one assumes from the outset that the unborn is not a human person, but this is the very point in dispute. For example, the argument that abortion on demand would reduce the number of unwanted children and child abuse begs the question, and this can be shown by extending the principle of the argument to post natal persons: would the killing of three-year-olds be acceptable if it would eliminate the abuse of five-year-olds? Obviously not. So the primary issue is whether or not the unborn are human persons or not. Furthermore, making wantedness a criteria for the relationship between a parent and a child is destructive for family life; it gives the parents far too much power if the value of the child is defined by the parent's feelings. Surely wantedness has bearing on value only with things, not people.

There are academic abortion choice advocates, such as Eileen McDonagh, who will grant that the unborn is a human person, but that we should be able to kill it anyway because of what it does to a woman's body. The fetus is regarded as an intruder who actually is causing the pregnancy, doing violence to the woman's body without her consent, comparable to the actions of a rapist. The woman may have consented to sex, but she did not at the same time consent to pregnancy, so she should have the right to expell this unwelcome intruder from her person. But this seems to be grossly counter-intuitive on a number of levels. The nature of the sexual organs, of sperm and ova, as being intrinsically directed toward procreation, suggests that the purpose of sex is pregnancy and for many people a radical separation of the two goes against the grain of their moral intuitions. Second, to assume moral volunteerism is to distort what we know instinctively about parental obligations. And if we applied this standard to the father there would be no moral reason to demand child support from him, for he could just say that he had consented to sex but not to fatherhood.

The arguments for abortion choice may make great slogans, but upon analysis they all fail, whether they are the crude coat-hanger arguments or ones from academic philosophers. Beckwith helps us to see more clearly just what the unborn are, where they belong, and what our duties are toward them. If we are truly an honest and compassionate society, we will not suppress this knowledge because it is inconvenient. We will practice generosity and virtue toward the weakest and most vulnerable in the human community, and we ourselves will be enriched in the process.