Tag: Roe v Wade

by Ken Masugi   If it’s true that “natural right is dynamite,” as political philosopher Leo Strauss wrote, then Justice Clarence Thomas just went nuclear on the abortion debate. While Thomas’s concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood has received considerable commentary, his deepening of the judicial and, hence, the political debate over abortion demands further elaboration. His reply to the leading threat to the principles of the Declaration of Independence is his latest attempt in a career of restoring its authority. Thomas had argued, “this [Indiana] law and other laws like it promote a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.” The Indiana law had barred abortion for the purposes of sex and race selection, and for fetal disabilities. Thomas critics contend he wrongly introduced elements of the now-(justly) maligned eugenics movement into the abortion debate. But recall that Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade observed (as Professor David Bernstein reminded me), “population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem.” I would argue instead that Blackmun was trying to obfuscate the issue, whose terrible clarity Thomas was trying to highlight: “From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effectuating…