Oct 28, 2008 / 15:06 pm
Fordham University’s plans to award Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer an ethics prize at a Wednesday night dinner in New York continue to draw criticism for honoring the justice who has supported abortion rights to the point that he defends partial-birth abortions as constitutionally protected.
Archbishop of New York Cardinal Edward Egan has reportedly called on the university’s leaders to ensure “a mistake of this sort will not happen again,” the Associated Press reports.
The Cardinal Newman Society is one group leading the campaign against awarding Breyer the Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize. The group claims more than 1,100 Fordham alumni and others have signed a petition to the university administration calling for the award to be revoked.
The petition cites Justice Breyer’s majority opinion in the 2000 case Sternberg v. Carhart that struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortion and also notes that the justice dissented from a 2007 Supreme Court decision upholding the ban.