This isn’t a post trying to settle the question of whether authentic federalist principles should have barred Congress from doing what it has done (and what some congressmen have tried to do)–or even venturing an opinion on the matter. I just wanted to note that conservatives should be wary of the argument that it doesn’t matter if there’s a violation of federalist principles because the cause of life is more important. Assuming that the congressmen did violate federalist principles, then the fact that they were acting in a good cause may reasonably affect how harshly we judge them. But we can’t just say that “the Constitution is not an assisted-suicide pact” and move on.

If the Constitution really does bar congressmen from acting here, it is not commanding them to do anything unjust–just to refrain from acting against that injustice. And if it is not commanding them to do anything unjust, they have a moral duty to obey it even if their obedience causes terrible consequences, just as we have a moral obligation not to kill or torture people even where our not doing so causes terrible consequences.

Longtime Corner readers may recall that Prof. Adler and I have debated the constitutionality of a federal ban on partial-birth abortion–he thinks the ban can’t be constitutionally justified, I think it can. If I believed as he did, however, I would certainly stop advocating for it (at least until the Constitution were amended).