To the editors:
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Florence has a particularly odious habit of quoting “authorities” who are least to be trusted. Thus, she quoted a footnote in Roe v. Wade to prove that Wade was correct. She also quoted from the notoriously anti-Catholic organization called Catholics for a Free Choice for the Roman Catholic Church’s viewpoint! That’s like asking Phyllis Schlafly what Eleanor Smeal believes, or vice versa. It’s so patently ridiculous it doesn’t merit a rebuttal. Any Reader reader who would be fooled by such reasoning is beyond hope. But the footnote in Wade is another matter. It must not be allowed to go unchallenged. The Supreme Court’s finding that unborn children are not 14th Amendment persons was deeply influenced by its own narrow interpretation of history which, for all practical purposes, was dictated by an uncritical acceptance of two law review articles by abortion advocate Cyril Means. The Court referred to them in footnotes as “Means I” and “Means II.”
Anglo-Saxon law before the Norman Conquest penalized abortion civilly with heavy fines and ecclesiastically with penances. In the 13th century, abortion of a fetus “formed [or] animated, and particularly if it be animated,” was condemned as homicide by Bracton and, later in the same century, by the anonymous legal writer Fleta.
Richard O’Connor
