Abortion in Controversy
Stephen E. Sachs (Harvard Law School)
First-Year Seminar 73Y 4 credits (Fall Term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Today the law of abortion in America is more in flux than it has been for decades. Educated citizens should have opportunities to study the issue in detail and to decide what they think. This seminar is designed to help first-year students discuss, in an academic setting, the difficult, important, and controversial questions raised by abortion. These include questions of ethics, policy, and law; of human personhood and futures of value; of autonomy and equality; of politics and history; and of unenumerated rights and judicial power.
Many of these questions are both highly abstract and deeply personal. While they are the subject of intense and heartfelt commitment on both sides, this seminar is offered in the belief that they are also a proper subject for intellectual inquiry. Within each unit, the assigned readings are roughly balanced as to viewpoint: they take deeply conflicting positions, and each student will certainly disagree with some of them. Students are expected to participate fully in the discussions and to complete occasional short writing assignments in response to the readings.