Politics of Virtue-C

In a thoughtful and compelling examination of our nation's most controversial issue, the authors explore how abortion was transformed from a dilemma in the realm of morality and theology to a ``question of medical expertise and personal choice.'' Mensch and Freeman, a married couple who teach law at the State University of New York at Buffalo, investigate theology and morality to arrive at a position of nuanced compromise between pro-life and pro-choice positions. In examining a possible moral approach and the moral traditions in this country before Roe v. Wade , they trace the development of the Catholic natural-law tradition, of Protestant contextual ethics and of Protestant evangelicalism, then argue cogently that the divide over abortion is as much within religious communities as between the secular and the religious. They consider the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision a mistake for legal, sociological and political reasons, noting that it polarized an issue in which compromise was possible. They propose that recent Supreme Court decisions suggest such a compromise, which, as in Western Europe, may mean permitting abortion while also discouraging it. (Aug.)