Rights, Duties and the Common Good: How the Finnis-Fortin Debate Helps Us Think More Clearly about Abortion Today

Abstract

Forty years ago, Fr. Ernest Fortin reviewed Natural Law and Natural Rights for the Review of Politics. In 2015, John Finnis published a lengthy response to Fortin’s review calling it “one of the most, and most enduringly, influential” reviews his book had ever received. The present article revisits Fortin’s review—situating it in his trenchant critique of modern rights theories more broadly—so as to better understand his disagreement with Finnis about the relationship between duties and rights. Though I will suggest that some of their debate was methodological, and some based on misunderstandings Fortin had of Finnis’s project, dissecting the debate in its entirety can teach much about the proper relationship between duties and rights, and the relationship of both to the common good. I argue it can also help us think more clearly about the fraught issue of abortion today.

Keywords: Duties, Rights, Common Good, Abortion, Jurisprudence, John Finnis, Natural Law, Natural Rights