Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and bioethics: How his philosophy could shape the court

gorsuch
U.S. President Donald Trump and Neil Gorsuch (L) smile as Trump nominated Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque - RTX2Z35Y

In his Senate confirmation hearings, Neil Gorsuch gave little away…Practiced, garrulous, tedious, combative, and smugly civil, the judge repeated stock answers that deflected from his constitutional philosophy and his more controversial court decisions, such as those that favored corporations or the religious liberty of non-church entities.”

Despite claims of objectivity, the type of justice that Gorsuch will be is not a complete mystery. His philosophy is apparent in the cases he has decided.

[S]ocial conservatives have long defined their “pro-life” ethic as a “seamless garment,” covering a person’s life from birth through death. In this “consistent life” philosophy, abortion and stem cell research, as well as euthanasia and assisted suicide, are of a whole cloth—one is only defensible so much as the others are.

“Once we open the door to excusing or justifying the intentional taking of life as ‘necessary,’ we introduce the real possibility that the lives of some persons (very possibly the weakest and most vulnerable among us) may be deemed less ‘valuable,’ and receive less protection from the law, than others,” Gorsuch writes in his book, using language long employed in the anti-abortion wars

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: The Bioethics of Neil Gorsuch

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