For those following the back and forth, I’m pleased to highlight that John Finnis has replied at length to my First Things response to him on the topic of the constitutional personhood of the unborn. The bulk of his reply is dedicated to contesting my view of how his theory would operate in practice. We have some fundamental disagreements, but I don’t think that going another round is going to reduce or resolve them, so I will give him the last word.
I will add just one comment on a separate point. Finnis contends that “abortion at any stage of gestation was seriously unlawful under common law even in those jurisdictions that treated pre-quickening abortion as not indictable.” (His emphasis.) But if abortion pre-quickening wasn’t punishable except when it resulted in the death of the mother, I’m not sure what it means to say that it was “seriously unlawful.”
I will also note that Finnis (as is fine for him to do) refrains from replying to my comments on what role that his Equal Protection theory ought to play in pro-life legal strategy.