Rick Garnett over at Mirror of Justice blog has recommended Commonweal’s new story, “Can we talk about abortion?‘ It will come as no surprise to Catholic readers of this blog that none of the three contributors to the article, Dennis O’Brien, Peter Steinfels, and Cathleen Caveny, give a robust defense of the view that innocent human life should be legally protected from conception. Of the three Professor Caveny comes the closest, arguing what she describes as Professor Mary Ann Glendon’s view, ” “what is important is that the totality of abortion regulations—that is, all criminal, public health, and social welfare laws relating to abortion—be in proportion to the importance of the legal value of life, and that, as a whole, they work for the continuation of the pregnancy.” There is little to quibble with in this statement, but I doubt Professor Glendon, a heroine to me and others in the prolife movement, intended that statement to foreclose or even delay inclusion of the unborn in our laws criminalizing the intentional taking of innocent human life.