Books, Arts & Manners

Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind, by Roger Rosenblatt (Random House, 194 pp., $20)

MR. ROGER ROSENBLATT has claimed the attention of a wide audience as an “essayist” for the MacNeil / Lehrer NewsHour and editor-at-large at Life magazine. Affecting in this book to search for a settlement of the vexing problem of abortion, he seeks guidance, in part, through an embassy to the state of Iowa. There he finds the reaction of Middle America, good folk who are, as the saying goes, “conflicted.” They are thoughtful people, or at least they are given to much pondering, with little result. They are too honest to pretend that the offspring in the womb is anything other than a human child; but in Rosenblatt’s account, they cannot quite bring themselves to reject even the most facile reasons that are served up as excuses for abortion. Like many other mortals, they find it hard to reason about the matter in a demanding, coherent way, especially when it touches their own interests. They can-not give a principled account of their own motives, or provide a justification for their judgments. In short, they reflect the state of mind of the writer himself. And that demonstrates, to Mr. Rosenblatt, that they are “sensible” Americans.

About the Author

Hadley Arkes

Hadley Arkes is the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding.

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Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind, by Roger Rosenblatt (Random House, 194 pp., $20)

MR. ROGER ROSENBLATT has claimed the attention of a wide audience as an “essayist” for the MacNeil / Lehrer NewsHour and editor-at-large at Life magazine. Affecting in this book to search for a settlement of the vexing problem of abortion, he seeks guidance, in part, through an embassy to the state of Iowa. There he finds the reaction of Middle America, good folk who are, as the saying goes, “conflicted.” They are thoughtful people, or at least they are given to much pondering, with little result. They are too honest to pretend that the offspring in the womb is anything other than a human child; but in Rosenblatt’s account, they cannot quite bring themselves to reject even the most facile reasons that are served up as excuses for abortion. Like many other mortals, they find it hard to reason about the matter in a demanding, coherent way, especially when it touches their own interests. They can-not give a principled account of their own motives, or provide a justification for their judgments. In short, they reflect the state of mind of the writer himself. And that demonstrates, to Mr. Rosenblatt, that they are “sensible” Americans.