Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Abortion and Hypotheticals

MOJ reader, Josiah Neele, e-mailed me in response to my post about Eduardo's questions to express the view that Eduardo's hypotherical questions lack practical relevance because, "[c]ontrary to the Guttmacher-WHO study, legalizing abortion does increase the number of abortions performed."  He writes:

"Granted, working through the implications of a hypothetical situation can be useful even if you konw the situation does not obtain.  But not always.  Justinian, apparently, thought that homosexuality caused earthquakes.  No doubt if homosexuality did cause earthquakes, this would have some serious public policy implications.  But is it really worth taking the time and effort to figure out what those implications might be?  I think not.  the same goes, I think, for Prof. Penalaver's questions."

Implicit in my prior post is the conviction that addressing Eduardo's "if" question is a worthwhile expenditure of time given the centrality of the question of the relationship between morality and law to our collective effort to articulate a Catholic legal theory.  But Josiah's e-mail prompts me to wonder whether others view the question as a hypothetical not worth pursuing in the absence of more clarity regarding what the data shows. 

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Stabile, Susan | Permalink

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