Dark Horses

Choosing the most wretched Supreme Court decision of all time is not an easy task, but John T. Noonan’s A Private Choice (Free Press, $11.95) makes a persuasive case for conferring this distinction on Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the abortion rulings handed down in 1973.

Professor Noonan, who teaches law at Berkeley, has done a masterly job of dissecting Justice Blackmun’s abortion-on-demand opinion on grounds of legal history, scientific fact, common logic, and elementary ethics, and finds it wanting on all counts. In this ruling, Noonan shows, the Court twisted the safeguards of our constitutional law and the facts of scientific record beyond recognition, in order to justify killing a million unborn children annually.

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M. Stanton Evans

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Choosing the most wretched Supreme Court decision of all time is not an easy task, but John T. Noonan’s A Private Choice (Free Press, $11.95) makes a persuasive case for conferring this distinction on Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the abortion rulings handed down in 1973.

Professor Noonan, who teaches law at Berkeley, has done a masterly job of dissecting Justice Blackmun’s abortion-on-demand opinion on grounds of legal history, scientific fact, common logic, and elementary ethics, and finds it wanting on all counts. In this ruling, Noonan shows, the Court twisted the safeguards of our constitutional law and the facts of scientific record beyond recognition, in order to justify killing a million unborn children annually.