Is there common ground in abortion debate?
By Charles C. Camosy Religious pro-life voices in the public debate are often marginalized. First, the arguments they make are often simplistic and refuse to engage serious responses from their opponents. Second, secularists simply rule them out of bounds because ‘religion’ has no place in the debate. Third, they often marginalize themselves with their caustic and off-putting rhetoric. This past weekend at Princeton there was a conference of diverse leaders in the abortion debate (both academic and activist) designed to find new ways to think and speak about abortion. But this time the trends mentioned above clearly didn’t hold. Christian thinkers like John Finnis, David Gushee, Helen Alvare, and Cathleen Kaveny all made strong and fair-minded arguments backed by the latest biological, social and legal science. When dismissive mention was made of the overt presence of ‘religious’ thinkers at the conference, even the famously atheist philosopher Peter Singer jumped to their defense by c
