Fordham Students Object to Award for Supreme Court Justice

By MARY ANN POUST

The Respect for Life Club of Fordham University is calling on Fordham to rescind a prestigious award due to be presented to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the majority opinion that overturned state bans on partial—birth abortions in 2000.

Breyer is scheduled to receive the Fordham—Stein Prize in Ethics, bestowed by Fordham Law School, at a dinner Oct. 29 at the university's Lincoln Center campus.

In an open letter and petition to Fordham's president, Father Joseph M. McShane, S.J., officers of the campus respect life club and its Republican club asked that the award not be granted because of Breyer's "repeated and influential work in favor of legalized abortion" in his public life.

The letter states that the jurist's work has placed him "in a position of complacency with grave moral evil, and leaves him in a position of irreconcilable conflict with the fundamental teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and by extension, those of the university, in its role as one of this nation's leading Catholic universities."

"We are actively opposing this," said Sheldon D. Momaney, a junior who is president of the Respect for Life Club.

"We want the faith on campus, and we're not OK with having a Catholic university give this award," he told CNY. He added that the students' protests will be "respectful."

A spokesman for Fordham, asked by CNY for a comment, said the Jesuit—run university "is not going to be speaking on this issue."

In the petition, the students cited Breyer's 2000 vote and opinion in Stenburg v. Carhart, which overturned laws banning the partial—birth abortion procedure.

It also cited Breyer's 2007 vote, this time in the minority, against the Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld a Congressional ban on the procedure.

The petition supported its objection to Breyer's award with citations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that "formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense"; and from the U.S. bishops' document "Forming Faithful Citizenship," which says abortion "must always be rejected and opposed and must never be supported or condoned," and the bishops' 2004 document "Catholics in Political Life," which says that the Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act "in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."

Also cited in the petition was Cardinal Egan's Aug. 26 statement that anyone who "dares to defend" the killing of another human being in an abortion "should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name," and the principles of Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, "Ex Corde Ecclesiae," which states that Catholic universities must be faithful to the teachings of the Church.

The petition is available in an electronic version on the Web site of the Cardinal Newman Society, which describes itself on its Web site as an organization that monitors Catholic colleges' and universities' fidelity to Church teachings.

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