Abortion, Federalism, and My Conservative Critics

In my OTS column last week, I criticized conservatism’s unquestioned allegiance to federalism , saying that we should be for more checks and balances and limits on government, rather than a mere shifting of power from federal to state authorities. Several of my conservative buddies whose opinions I greatly respect took exception to various aspects of my article:

Rick Garnett from Mirror of Justice offers a lawyer’s reservation:

My concern, in a nutshell, is that he has not separated clearly enough two questions that, in my view, need to be distinguished. The first is, “under our particular constitution, what are the powers — that is, what are the scope and reach of the powers — that have, in fact, been vested by We the People in the government of the United States?” The second is, “should questions about the rights and dignity of unborn children be decided at the state, or at the national, level?” It is certainly true, as Carter says, that federalism — as a political theory, or as an institutional-design strategy — ought not to be so fetishized as to obscure the moral obligation of a decent political community to protect the innocent and vulnerable from violence. But, to take seriously the possibility that, under *our* particular constitution, questions regarding the extent to which abortion may or should be regulated belong, generally speaking, to the states, which have the traditional police power, is not to fetishize federalism.

W. James Antle, III from The American Spectator :

Indiana just passed a law de-funding Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider and one of its largest abortion advocates (note that it was party to the above Supreme Court case, a legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s pro-life laws). Federal legislation de-funding Planned Parenthood failed. I can see a theoretical universe in which some states are denying the rights of the unborn in the same way some states once denied the rights of blacks, but we’re not living in it. Greater federalism would make our country’s abortion policy more pro-life than it is now while demands for federal action will, under present political circumstances, result in nothing being done.

Update: Antle has added more thoughts on this issue .

Daniel Larison from The American Conservative :

The Schiavo case was one where many pro-life conservatives lost their bearings and became so fixated on doing what they saw as the right thing that they saw any barrier, no matter how legitimate or appropriate, as an unacceptable obstacle. The controversy over Schiavo’s case also created a wedge between fairly zealous pro-life conservatives who believed federal intervention inappropriate and those maximalists who would settle for nothing less. Frankly, I don’t see how Ron Paul’s federalist position can satisfy such a crowd.

What do you thing? Which of my critics makes the strongest case against my essay?