Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice

Francis J. Beckwith

Aug 2007 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Defending Life is arguably the most comprehensive defense of the pro-life position on abortion - morally, legally, and politically - that has ever been published in an academic monograph. It offers a detailed and critical analysis of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as arguments by those who defend a Rawlsian case for abortion-choice, such as J. J. Thomson. The author defends the substance view of persons as the view with the most explanatory power. The substance view entails that the unborn is a subject of moral rights from conception. While defending this view, the author responds to the arguments of thinkers such as Boonin, Dworkin, Stretton, Ford and Brody. He also critiques Thomson's famous violinist argument and its revisions by Boonin and McDonagh. Defending Life includes chapters critiquing arguments found in popular politics and the controversy over cloning and stem cell research.

About the author

Francis J. Beckwith is Associate Professor of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, Texas, where he teaches in the departments of philosophy and political science and the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. A 2002–3 Madison Research Fellow in the Politics Department at Princeton University, New Jersey, he is a graduate of Fordham University, New York (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 and Public Policy, the Journal of Social Philosophy, International Philosophical Quarterly, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Journal of Medical Ethics, Public Affairs Quarterly, the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, Social Theory and Practice, the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Christian Bioethics, the Nevada Law Journal, the Journal of Law and Religion, and Philosophia Christi. His website is http://www.francisbeckwith.com.