An audience of 200 mostly liberal professors got a bit of a shock at the recent convention of the American Political Science Association in Boston. Duke University's Stanley Fish, the well-known left-wing social and literary critic, expressly disavowed support for "abortion rights" and chastised the "pro-choice" movement for refusing to acknowledge the fact that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being.
Fish, whose advocacy of "deconstructionism" and other fashionable causes has earned him iconic status in much of the academy, made his rather unfashionable remarks in response to criticism of his earlier writings on the subject by Princeton political theorist and constitutional scholar Robert George.
George took Fish to task for comments in a 1996 article in First Things asserting that the pro-life view depends on "religious conviction," while the pro-choice position appeals to "scientific facts." "If the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into when a new human being comes into existence," George observed, "then the pro-choice position simply collapses." Fish's response: "Professor George is right, and he is right to have corrected me." Fish went on to say that the pro-choice movement has decided to ignore the facts of life before birth now that science and technology make clear that the being killed by abortion is a human being.