Religion & Law

From the First Things blog, I learned that an appellate court in Belgium has ruled that damages may be recovered from physicians who fail to act in accord with (what the court determined was) the legislature's intent, in authorizing "therapeutic abortion", to "help avoid giving birth to children with serious abnormalities."  In my view, the law should not recognize the "wrongful life" cause of action, notwithstanding the fact that, certainly, there have been and will be cases where parents who would have procured abortions had they been provided with certain information.  Still, it strikes me -- and it is unsettling -- that the refusal of most American jurisdictions to recognize the "wrongful life" tort sits uneasily alongside the rest of our abortion-related legal regime. 

Legal scholars often talk about law's "expressive" and "pedagogical" functions.  What does the law say, and what does it teach us to think, about the disabled, when it recognizes a wrongful life tort?  (The wrong things, I think.)