by Christopher Wolfe

About the author: Christopher Wolfe is a professor of political science at Marquette University and the president of the American Public Philosophy Institute in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I've probably been hanging around [political science professor and writer] Hadley Arkes too long. Hadley has a way of coming up with wonderful little pieces of proposed legislation whose main point is less the legislation itself than the principle it establishes or absence of sound principle it exposes. For example, he has proposed that legislation prohibiting abortions in the third trimester (after "viability") be introduced in Congress, in order to force pro- choice representatives to make arguments of some kind as to why such legislation should not pass. They surely would oppose it, but what could they give as a reason for doing so? Such a law might not save...