Peter Berkowitz ladles out a few compliments, but his review of The Party of Death in the Wall Street Journal is pretty critical. (Actually, it’s a review of a few chapters of the book, but he didn’t have much space.) We have some real disagreements. But some of his criticisms, and even non-critical observations, are based on misunderstandings, so I’ll deal with them first.

First, a rhetorical point. Berkowitz writes, “Mr. Ponnuru argues that abortion is the murder of innocent human beings.” Well, no, I don’t. Berkowitz characterizes my language as “sometimes inflammatory”—I don’t believe it is ever gratuitously so—but I don’t call abortion murder (or abortionists murderers). I believe that the term “murder” is inappropriate in discussions of abortion for several reasons. I do quote nineteenth-century sources who describe abortion as murder, and mention a poll asking people if they would describe it that way. Berkowitz puts the M-word in my mouth twice.

Second, Berkowitz writes, “Opinion surveys . . . suggest that Americans are antiabortion but pro-choice. Mr. Ponnuru blames this seemingly confused outlook on commentators who misrepresent the law laid down in Roe.” It would be preposterous to argue that people are ambivalent about abortion because they misunderstand Roe, and I don’t argue it. I invoke the misrepresentation of Roe to help explain why the public, in polls, supports Roe. I don’t use that misrepresentation to explain public ambivalence about abortion in general. Berkowitz wastes time arguing that even if the public understood Roe better it would still be ambivalent about abortion. I believe this contention is correct, but it does not touch any argument that I have actually made. (Berkowitz’s description of that ambivalence also strikes me as misleading—he depicts the public as more pro-choice than I believe the evidence presented in my book indicates it to be.)

Third, Berkowitz writes, “At the core of The Party of Death is the argument that an embryo has the same claim on us as a newborn child because, from the moment of conception, it contains the genetic structure of a unique human being.” There are three errors here. The most important is that I do not say that the embryo “has the same claim on us as a newborn child.” I argue that that is the wrong way to think about the matter. Instead, I argue, the embryo has the same right not to be killed. Second, I don’t hang anything on uniqueness. (Twins with the same genetic structure each have the right to life.) Third, I don’t argue that the human embryo has a right to life merely because it contains the human genome—another argument that Berkowitz attributes to me twice—since to do so I would also have to maintain, absurdly, that individual skin cells have a right to life.

Fourth, Berkowitz presents me as making a principled case against compromise on abortion policy. Not only is that case not the core of my book, it is not even present in my book. It is true, however, that the logic of my position militates against certain compromises (such as the one he seems to prefer).

More later.