Not So Open Hearts and Minds: Another Take on the Princeton Conference

Over at The Catholic Thing Austin Ruse has a post on the recent conference on abortion that took place at Princeton.  Rob, who was a participant, posted on the event here and here, and Rick posted this entry which included a passage from his colleague John Finnis’ contribution to the event.

Ruse’s assessment of the conference is somewhat less sanguine than what others have offered.  Ruse found that “[e]very single panel was weighted in favor of the pro-abortion side, some embarrassingly so” with some purportedly pro-life panelists demurring on the question of the morality of abortion and the legitimacy of the legal regime that sustains it.  Thus, says Ruse, the conference “was at least in part the Left speaking to the farther Left.”

Ruse closes by noting that (friend, MOJ alumna, and conference participant) Helen Alvare found the conference enlightening in one respect: “It reminded her that the arguments of the other side have not really changed in the almost forty years of the Roe regime.  The pro-abortion side, she said, is convinced that pro-lifers don’t really care about the unborn child but care more deeply about punishing sexual practices of which we disapprove.”

Even if the conference managed to open hearts and move minds ever so slightly, plainly, so much more remains to be done.