A Private Choice:
Hoyt, Robert G.
that is, the actual end of the institution of course, also her creator and the conven- Someday I will understand Ausch- Negro slavery-the...
...On the eviings by other scholars critically loyal to fessor Noonan, among others, for re- dence ofA Private Choice, I believe John the Christian/Catholic tradition, the re- miew...
...yet economy that made this "liberty" unguises used to shield what is actually the author's passion does not tempt him touchable by lawmakers...
...The greatest of these scenes Choice...
...Although her listener, he is, of break in upon even sacred silence...
...On the road to this recommendation it...
...I when the high court constituted itself a abortion...
...Another chapter, or "inquiry," deals was to be expected of John T. Noonan, Noonan's critique of Blackmun's with the "dynamism" of the Jr., professor of law at Berkeley, author majority opinion in Roe v. Wade is one of decisions-for example, their conse- of Contraception, scholar among scho- the two achievements of the book most quences for medical practice in the carry- lars...
...draft amendment would not express any Rather, through telling Sophie's story he Robert G. Hoyt national judgment on the legality or morwill have his stab at understanding mas- ality of abortion...
...doctors, lawyers, nurses and many others book (one for which my praise will later Finally, my reservations._ They have to besides those most immediately con- be qualified) is to be found in the careful do with the gaps in the book, what it does cerned...
...Its learn is the power of restraint...
...For all he learned from Steiner, he resents the A PRIVATE CHOICE: criminal law is concerned...
...In this book, deponent sayeth not-but second half largely in Paris where he Participants include: I have a clue...
...Paul Tarazi, St...
...exponent of "absurdism," the defender Fr...
...I viewer is no longer certain of these cer- ing paragraphs of the draft were excised...
...Does it weigh with him that cr 1di- writer whose tragic death in an audates elected to defend the right to life tomobile crash occurred twenty years National Conference tend also to be restrictive of other rights ago...
...Given acceptance of that community reflects obvious realities...
...but chapters on "the object of the rises out of a passionate double commit- the Court discovered in the Constitution a liberty"-the being in the womb-and ment, to the protection of the unborn and laissez faire understanding of political on "the masks of the liberty"-the dis- to the principled construction of law...
...Jerusalem Consulate crucial final chapter on law wound up Obviously a warm admirer of Camus, Costs: $40-Registration, materials, meals...
...In contrast the dilemma of a woman for whom pregnancy is tragedy is barely acknowledged, never made vivid...
...What I is ridden by the renewed horrors of the cies in the power of the telling...
...would add that no one emotionally and superlegislature by overriding state laws With sometimes bitter irony, the book intellectually equipped to attend to what intended to protect the health or other traces the transformation of language oc- the text actually says will fail to learn rights of workers...
...No one will enced no correlative to emancipation but she says as to compensate for deficienever understand Auschwitz...
...above all it affects the fetus...
...Also just published as an Image Book: a secondary order, not to be placed on the same scale with the biologicalTHE WOUNDED HEALER philosophical truth that human life is conFienri Nouwen's positive, hope-filled book on differeh, t ways of approaching the problems of ministry in tinuous from the moment of conception...
...human reality, personal or political...
...By implication (not lished sources but largely on interviews Palestine Human Rights Campaign, quite spelled out), the decision was to be with numberless people connected di- 1322 18th St...
...The traditional recognition of with the support of six other Justices, he rent with his earlier critique of the aborabortion as a social question put to the enacted his own preferences and pre- tion decisions...
...the real and true story was told by that normal perceptions may be social the clowns...
...Such legislation casioned by the felt need of abortion ad- nrom it...
...The descrippuberty...
...He is devastating in his critique of the euphemized language of law, medicine and press agentry used to encourage essentially casual attitudes toward abortion...
...It is perfectly cohesions...
...But she is unaffected by the assesses his success Styron himself mea- prisoners from Warsaw to Auschwitz encounter, and Styron thus reveals, con- sures it in the line quoted on these pages...
...A the trauma and the tragedy of the act, and ary and political history always related to new Christian voice speaking out on this issue could help bring peace through justice for all they should seek to minimize the inci- Camus but at times so tenuously that his the peoples of the Middle East...
...On the evime, but the little things which took dence of this book he would not agree place between the great scenes...
...critique, it is all but compellingly persuaAbortion affects men as well as women, The second major achievement of the sive...
...N.W., Washington, made, not by a judge or a panel of doc- rectly or indirectly with Camus, who live D.C...
...cuts through every callous that has grown sciously or not, that the creative task he There is a certain weakness inherent in upon our consciousnesses after our many undertook in writing about Sophie is one Styron's dependence upon Sophie's exposures to holocaust literature, and in in which he car...
...the principles of distributive justice are of An Image Paperback Original, $3.95...
...In so doing he removed tie vote in the relevant Senate subcomusing "the impersonal authority of the from the political forum an issue that, mittee (and therefore failed of adoption), Constitution" (Frankfurter) to run the precisely because of the profound con- seeks victory for his own views on aborcountry their way...
...templation...
...The prodigious factual Sponsors-Palestine Human Rights Campaign forbidding it but by generously support- history of this biography comes from ex- Mid-East Task Force, Chicago ing the freedom to decide in favor of the tensive research, not dependent on pub- Presbytery (For further information contact: gladness of birth...
...The Nazi perpetrator of the central, sheer virtuosity keeps the frail account of -Sophie's Choice personal crime against Sophie's moral Sophie from snapping under the weight it condition outside the circumstances of identity assaults her because as a death- must bear...
...But his might have set down with more ac- '50s, '60s, and early '70s...
...The first lobbying and electioneering tactics Weekly, Herbert Lottman, has written an impressions of a book tend to be different would he find acceptable in their sup- unusually long biography of the French from later judgments...
...sought, for example, to restrict the libvocates to distract themselves and others One thing any controversialist might erty of certain employers to work their from the reality of the "procedure...
...by the woman: Abortion is truly a social lingly pregnant women, but in the last Largely because of the abortion con- concern but ultimately a private choice...
...The adoption...
...Congress than any similar proposal...
...Clergy and Laity Concerned book summing up the proceedings of the...
...celibacy, prayer, and con- new conditions...
...ous partisans of Professor Noonan's own He dissects what he calls the "legends" Next, a partial assessment...
...analysis the state would decide according troversy, and because of recent prompt- My final draft was submitted to Pro- to criteria set down in law...
...But his book is "We invite a deeper look at the issue ofPa estiment on abortion...
...Ralph Abernathy, President Emeritus, hired to rewrite several chapters of a nent figures of his generation: the leading S.C.L.C...
...They should recognize as much history as it is biography, liter- nian human rights as a Christian concern...
...Justice in reporting the content of the decisions...
...20036, (202) 296.5089) 11 May 1979: 28...
...rather, it would restore sive evil...
...The permit evil to retain a privileged status...
...Human Rights and the besides the liberty of abortion-to be The book appears to be a detailed and Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: Responsibilities for the militaristic jingos abroad and reactionary complete account of Camus's exterior Christian Church" at home on issues of welfare and life of which the first half was spent in May 18-20, 1979 employment...
...His action and reasoning are at sensationally brutal episodes that lie tic fantasy that haunted him since his the core of Styron's attempt to under- ready to hand in the record...
...A dozen years ago I was gradually grew into one of the most emi- Rev...
...Professor Noonan ENRI J. M. NOUWEN appears closed to revisionist understanding of legal and/or moral codes inherited Clowning in Rome from an age of patriarchy, codes that are "It wasn't the red cardinals or the Red man-made and may therefore serve male Brigade who had the most impact on rather than human purposes...
...port...
...Instead, and political system...
...The jacket blurb accurately suggests impressive to me...
...I cannot understand, for exam- There remained much emphasis on the such laws, if they are enacted, will work...
...To moderation of Professor Noonan's pro- not say...
...the horror remains intact and cause she talks of a moral and physical Sophie herself, Styron does, indeed, asunaffected for all his profound and pas- landscape alien to the listening young sert art's power and thus art's right to sionate concern...
...troversy surrounding it, calls for resolu- tion without doing violence to his underThis tradition, now nearly sacred, is tion by the people through the elected standing of the American constitutional simply ignored in the '73 abortion deci- representatives closest to them...
...This book is an to Congress in its jurisdictions (e.g., the Sophie's Choice, then, continues on exercise in advocacy...
...If state legislatures are once questioned about his life story, that preparation of each of Camus's books is more able to pass laws expressing the the history of poor families does not carefully narrated, and rather than giving interest of society in abortion decisions, make interesting biographical reading...
...happened in Poland during the war his itself remains inexplicable...
...This part of Mr...
...It is written territories) and to state legislatures in from Nat Turner...
...nation alone is inadequate to account for in RXOE V. Wade and Doe v. Bolton...
...Still, he has to make Sophie's story yield its larger meaning, spurred, among other things, by his reading of George An exercise in advocacy Steiner on the holocaust...
...ple, why the rigorous argumentation employed in the abortion controversy cannot be brought to bear with respect to Camus as stranger the nuclear arms race and other issues of large consequence and lead us to equally today in Algeria, France, United States, ALBERT CAMUS firm conclusions...
...It is filled with the kind For Noonan, claims rising out of the of insights and compassionate understanding we have come to facts of social disorder, experiences of expect from the author of Creative personal anguish and hopelessness and Ministry and Reaching Out...
...and political enemies, have helped Mr...
...that this book is a model of its kind, as Blackmun...
...judices into law...
...his own critical estimate of the book, this what kind of laws would the author of A To contradict such theory, the journalist biographer prefers to quote abundantly Private Choice favor, and what kind of and correspondent for Publishers' from the reviews of each book...
...pect, that such rationality is not reasona- Herbert R. Lottman Friends of Camus, as well as personal ble, does not respect the complexity of Doubleday, $16.95, 753 pp...
...with the crucial final paragraphs slanted Mr...
...This book employes more than 60 hours a week...
...Why import unhappi- camp official he has become so accus- When Styron himself bypasses Sophie ness...
...dence of abortion-not, however, by figure is dimmed...
...man...
...Finding the conflict over luctant to enact by amendment (or to emdissent, Frankfurter as a private scholar the status of the fetus unresolvable in power Congress to enact) a national crimand finally Black speaking for a majority theory, he resolved it in practice by re- inal statute that would restrict the liberty...
...She matches the capacity of his stand Auschwitz, and before the reader tion of the journey of the trainload of imagination...
...He is confident that most unusual fairness, but nonetheless an Justice Blackmun had to insert into the given time the Court's own self- advocate...
...Vladimii s Orthodox 1967 Harvard University-Kennedy of the rights of man, a gifted writer Seminary Foundation symposium on abortion...
...The form of suggestion that silence is the only fit ABORTION IN AMERICA IN THE SEVEN- amendment favored by the author is one answer to what occurred, that what was TIES largely of his own devising which, he unspeakable is best left unspoken...
...Lottman goes to great pains to em- accomodations toward compromise...
...only hope to unburden voice for so much of the narrative be- such writing, far more than in the story of himself...
...Nor is he in apparent doubt that human beings are never placed in a situation where they must choose evil, mournCommonweal: 280 fully, because no not-evil choice can be tors, social workers and counselors, but duty to provide social support for unwilmade...
...Once a religious man, he occurs toward the close of the novel, and Sophie comes to his bed, although she is longs for the return of God and so devises as in Nat Turner he evokes pity, fear, on the eve of returning to her lover and to an act so sinful that it must be recognized terror, and theological anguish without certain death, and gives him as an uncon- as sin and therefore must restore a judg- recourse to extended descriptions of the ditional gift the fulfillment of every ero- ing God...
...this continent...
...Don Luce...
...In the final narrative mastery continues to be ascuracy would have been: Someday I scene, the young author having recently tounding and since Sophie's story is alwill write about Sophie's life and masqueraded as a Presbyterian minister ways part of the particular story of what death, and thereby help demonstrate awakes on the beach in the morning to happened in Brooklyn in 1947 as well as how absolute evil is never extin- find that it is morning-excellent and fair part of the monumental story of what guished from the world...
...He demonstrates in the ing out of abortions and also for the regu- that people on all sides of the abortion opinion a regression to the bad old days lation of research on fetuses destined for controversy will be challenged by it...
...Foreign Service Officer...
...that is, the actual end of the institution of course, also her creator and the convenSomeday I will understand Ausch- Negro slavery-the narrator of Sophie's tion of his listening and reflecting at witz...
...Auschwitz but not a judgment day-only morning...
...At the close of the summer of '47 ment of them...
...F IRST, definition...
...But whereas Nat, unable to pray in the These decisions had the effect of in- the book critically examines the jurispruopening scene in jail, does in the morning validating state laws restricting abortion dential philosphy (or philosophies) and scene at the close have a Bible given him and substituted for them the Court's own the constitutional theory embedded in the and with it once again bridges social evil criteria, which create a virtually unli- Court's decisions...
...he raises questions about the and what happens to "it" in the opera- read him closely enough the more zealmotives at work and the purposes sought...
...First it should be acknowledged his opponents, particularly Mr...
...If they affluent...
...amendment: Before agreeing to support The literary and political history it one wishes to ask what will follow its C AMUS HIMSELF used to say, when comes largely from printed material...
...The author inquires and divine benevolence-foreshadows, mited "liberty of abortion" so far as also into the sources of the social and Commonweal: 278 political pressures that have made abor- done in an abortion-are meant to re- into the unpardonable and damaging extion newly respectable, and locates them quire the cooperative reader to look cesses of polemicism that have marked in certain elites, mostly male, white and steadily and gravely at what the fetus is and still mark this controversy...
...The laws should re- phasize the most appealing and the most $25-Registration, materials, meals only flect the diversity of conscientious judg- noble traits of his subject...
...can't agree in principle, and I don't think titudes...
...To John T. Noonan, Jr...
...it is a further study of to promote the adoption of a con- theirs "the power to protect life, includthe intrusion into human history of an stitutional amendment that would over- ing the unborn...
...His presentations of the child Constitution an unassailable liberty correcting processes will overturn the in the womb and of the abortion operafounded on an all but absolute right of abortion decisions, but he is unwilling to tion are calmly worded and straightforprivacy that shielded the individual preg- wait while fetuses die in an epidemic...
...tomed to gross atrocities that, he realizes, and directly imagines the Polish scenes, It is a question of which Styron is they are acceptable and sinless because calling them up almost as incantations, acutely aware throughout Sophie's there is no God to enforce such a judg- he is superb...
...reports, has received more support in acquiesce, he affirms, is to conspire to The Free Press, $11.95, 288 pp...
...should...
...When the book appeared the clos- Noonan would support a similar policy...
...John Noonan is an advocate of redefine abortion as "a private choice," posed amendment...
...Later I will side of the conflict will experience reused to support the abortion cause and announce personal doubts and reserva- buke, though not as painfully as some of examines the performance of the media tions...
...his own use of language will alert New from serious feminists of either gender that he is not of their number...
...The reason is, I sus- Germany, Italy, Morocco, Israel...
...Responding to The Chicago Cluster of Theological Schools Bellany.Theologkal Seminary NINE SCHOOLS: (Church of the Brethren) With a common fetus upon preparation for professional ministry, plus a wide variety of programs for laity and adCatholic Theological Union vanced degree programs for clergy (serving sixteen orders) Evangelicals, Catholics, Liberal Protestants, Mainline Protestants in actual cross-registration sufficient to provide opChicago Theological Seminary portunity for serious dialogue in numerous courses (United Church of Christ) Sharing resources in an outstanding university and metropolitan context-providing students with both depth DeAhdrels Seminary (Vineentian) and breadth of educational opportunities: Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago -over 450courses, 150 faculty, 750,000 library volumes Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago -inter-school concentrations In personal or social (Lutheran Church in America) transformation, in cross-cultural communication, In preaching, teaching, and worship McCormick Theological Seminary -special resources in religion and science, urbon(United Presbyterian Church, USA) industrial ministry, world perspectives, Latino studies, parish renewal, pastoral care and counseling MeadvIlle/Lombard Theological School (Unitarian Universalist Association) write: Northern Baptist Theological Seminary Frederick K. Wentz, Chicago Cluster, 1100 E. 55th S (Amirican Baptist Churches, USA) Chicago, IL 60615 11 May 1979: 279 such decisions, Holmes and Brandeis in her pregnancy...
...Algeria, especially in Algiers, and the Christian Life Center LaGrange, 111...
...In the event, my final draft of the friend and opponent, Jean-Paul Sartre...
...My whose books (novels, plays, essays) Wes Michaelson, Sojourners Magazine Dr...
...constructs, or that the natural law reWritten during a recent five- quirements of a time when earth was month stay in Rome, this all-new empty and death rates high may alter with book contains reflections on solitude...
...Hanna Nasir, President, Bir Zeit Uniimpossible commission was to play it touched the young as convincingly as versity down the middle as a good reporter only one other writer of that day did: his Alexandra U. Johnson, former U.S...
...that is, to restrict or evil so enormous that historical determi- rule the Supreme Court's 1973 decisions regulate or place conditions on abortion...
...ward, yet powerful, and he reinforces nant woman from all but the most mini- But though he is absolutely opposed on them with plots and scenes from mal societal influences with regard to the ethical grounds to "the liberty of abor- Hemingway, Didion, O'Neill, Updike choice of abortion throughout the term of tion," as constitutional scholar he is re- and Roth...
...established the classic principles of self- moving the protection of the law from all His draft amendment, which received a restraint that prevent the Court from fetuses as a class...
...This was a brave statement choice has since the holocaust experi- times appears not so much to enrich what but innocently absurd...
...Lottman in the task of amassing his As for Professor Noonan's draft Wallace Fowlie documentation...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 9
