Calling all theologians, politcal scientists, and philosophers
November 14, 2007, 3:00 pm
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
What can be made of this statement (via John Allen) by Archbishop Chaput:
“I think there are legitimate reasons you could vote in favor of someone who wouldn’t be where the church is on abortion, but it would have to be a reason that you could confidently explain to Jesus and the victims of abortion when you meet them at the Judgment,” Chaput told NCR. “That’s the only criterion.”
I hope I am not out-of-bounds insofar that I am neither a theologian nor a political scientist. In fact, I firmly believe that most of what passes for political science is just focused sociology. So, rushing in where angels fear to tread:
First off, I think it shows some pastoral maturity on the part of His Excellency.
Secondly, while invoking the Last Judgment is very provocative rhetoric, t does help put the question in perspective and states rather more succinctly what John Allen explains in discussing proportionate reason, “a Catholic may never vote for a candidate who favors an intrinsic moral evil such as abortion because of that position, there may be rare circumstances in which ‘proportionate reasons’ suggest voting for that person despite that position.”
This narrows the field considerably, since I believe even most of the “pro-life” presidential candidates (and other “pro-life” politicians) are not “where the Church is on abortion.” Most allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Any statistics I have ever seen put the number of abortions for rape and incest at about 1 percent of the total. That is a small percentage, but taking the National Right to Life Committee’s figure of 48,589,993 abortions since 1973, that’s at least 485,9000 people plus Jesus you will have to explain yourself to if you vote for a “pro-choice” candidate, such a Romney or McCain, who permits exceptions for rape and incest.
If Jesus and the victims of abortion asked me why I didn’t quit my job, abandon my family, fast and stand on the street corner for the rest of my life holding up a sign that says “end abortion now,” I would tell them that I concluded that doing so would probably not stop even a single abortion while sacrificing other important goals. I will give them the same explanation for why I voted for a candidate who supported an intrinsic evil — I chose to accomplish the good I beIieved I could accomplish, rather than sacrifice an achievable goal in a futile effort to achieve an unachievable goal.
The allusions to the last judgment turn up the volume, but don’t really change the discussion. We are accountable for ALL of our actions at the last judgment. Regardless of how we vote, we need reasons that we can confidently explain to Jesus, the victims of abortion, the victims of torture, the poor, etc. when we meet them at the last judgment.
The Church allows for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in jeopardy, but your point is a very good one.
However, I would point out that Abp Chaput, unlike Bp Lori in his press conference this afternoon, does not, at least in the statement, Margaret posted, conflate being pro-life only with opposing abortion. Of course, for adherents of Cdnl Bernardine’s seamless garment theory of what it means to be pro-life, among whom I count myself, this makes the act of voting even more complicated.
Christopher–
I see your point and I respect it, but when making a moral decision is the difference between an “achievable goal” and an “unachievable goal” a basis for making that decision? The abolition of slavery was an unachievable goal for hundreds of years, yet there were always abolitionists who made the moral choice to, if nothing else, keep the issue in the public eye despite the futility of effecting peaceful change. I have to think they received a hearty welcome when they stood before Jesus.
Peggy, I thing your heading is marvelous since neither theologians, political scientists, and philosophers (to which I would add the magisterium) have a clue as to the solution. Someday one of the contributrors will post a thread on that question.
As for now Chaput’ s statement is quite important as it shows some movement. Which is to say that maybe the light is going on that the theocons have been an enormous blight not to say bust. That the faith was being associated with one party is one of the major blunders in history. Hopefully, both parties will be challenged to foster justice rather than the one that is financially and politically profitable to certain individuals.
I think he’s laying the groundwork for statements favoring the pro-choice Guiliani over the pro-choice Clinton on lesser evils grounds.
“The Church allows for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in jeopardy . . . .”
Scott,
No it does not. If you are talking about surgical intervention in cases of ectopic pregnancy and uterine cancer (the two classic cases in which life-saving surgery is permitted even though the embryo or fetus will definitely die), I can’t of any other cases. And I don’t think anyone would call those two cases abortions. And even in the case of ectopic pregnancy, there are restrictions on the kind of surgery that is permissible.
David Nickol beat me to it. I often find myself in the position of explaining that the Church’s position on abortion is not nearly as flexible as many people seem to think it must be. I find that to be a very telling sign about the reasonableness of that position.
I would add a nuance to David’s explanation: The Church does not forbid a woman from undergoing medical treatment during pregnancy even if the effect of that treatment might be harmful to the fetus, so long as fetal harm is not the “direct” effect or intent of that treatment. So, for instance, chemotherapy for breast cancer would be permitted.
This is the doctrine by which the Church justifies permitting the removal of a fallopian tube (salpingectomy) during ectopic pregnancy but not the administration of cytotec or methotrexate to deal with the ectopic pregnancy.
As a general, broad principle, Catholic teaching allows for the option of an abortion is cases in which the mother’s life is in danger under the principle of double effect. This means, among other things, that the intended consequence cannot be the deliberate killing of the in utero child.
You move too quickly from a broad principle to two particular sets of circumstances: tubal pregnancies and uterine cancer. In the case of the cancer, I presume the thinking is that there are other ways of treating it. In the case of a tubal pregnancy I am not sure what kind of sugical intervention you are referring to.
I think in all this it shows how difficult it is for a politician, who actually wants to get elected, to be where the Church is on the issue of abortion across-the-board. All of this puts me in mind of an article that appeared in ‘America’ magazine in May 2005: entitled “No to abortion, posture, not policy’ which begins:
“IT IS CLEAR THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH has a moral position on abortion. It is not clear that it has a political policy on the issue. Moral positions do not automatically create public policies.”
I don’t wish to engage in “proof-texting” but it does seem appropriate to cite an authoritative text from Scripture regarding what we should expect at “the Judgment”:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them from one another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. The the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’”
And we know the reverse side of this story from Matthew 25…sounds pretty “non-negotiable” to me!
” . . . .the intended consequence cannot be the deliberate killing of the in utero child . . . .”
Scott,
I agree with this statement, but aside from the two specific cases I mentioned (which are always used as illustrations of the principle you mentioned, and which I wouldn’t call abortions), I can’t think of any scenarios in which something called “abortion” would be permissible. Do you have any examples?
I am pressing the point because I am quite sure politicians who say they support abortion to save the life of the mother are not “where the church is.”
Scott’s mention of a 2005 America article reminded me of a column in that magazine written by Fr. John Kavanaugh shortly after the 2004 presidential election, in which Fr. Kavanaugh excoriated both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on political/moral issues and made the point that “all politics involves morality. Every part of life is a moral arena.” Here’s a snippet:
“The split between the Republican and Democratic parties in many ways embodies the fatal division that individuals make when they separate their personal lives from their cultural and political worlds. Some Republicans seem to think that reproduction issues are the only moral issues. Some Democrats seem to think that reproduction is the only area that is exempt from moral questioning. Both sides are wrong.
And they both have become specialists in the art of denial. What they miss is that all politics involves morality. Every part of life is a moral arena. Our problem in the United States is partial amorality: we are fiercely committed only to certain selected ethical issues, and we steadfastly deny that other ethical problems even exist. What is more, we strangely isolate the personal realm from the social. But sexual expression and reproduction are never merely private choices. These choices themselves influence and are influenced by our social and economic environment. People who trumpet capitalism and individualism fail to realize that those very forces drive human choices about sex and child-bearing. Others who trumpet sexual autonomy and private choice over the fate of the unborn fail to realize that those very values legitimize pro-choice wars and self-interested individualism.
The mindless rhetoric of both sides was one reason why so many were relieved that the political campaign was finally over. The problem was not that people were tired of rational argument and informed data. They were just frustrated with the inane repetition of slogans and distortions. Extreme ideologists, like Pavlov’s dog, salivate at the sound-bite signal of their preferred taste. The Pavlovian right gives George W. Bush credit for everything. The Pavlovian left gives him credit for nothing. The right thinks him an angel; to the left he is a devil. Until the right and left muster the courage to be a little self-critical of their own ideologies, the moral wound afflicting America will only widen.”
Fr. Kavanaugh decided before the 2004 election that he couldn’t give his vote to either candidate of the major parties. (He voted the Green Party instead.) I’m at that same point now as to the contenders we have for the 2008 presidential election.
The entire column is worth a look:
http://americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3892
(Apologies for the length of this post.)
If abortion is defined strictly from a moral standpoint as the deliberate taking of an innocent life in utereo, then the answer to the question is obviously “No, there are no instances I can think of under which abortion is permissible according to Catholic moral teaching.” If abortion is defined in more neutral terms, however, as a pregnancy ending with the death of an in utereo child, then yes. After all, aren’t there so-called spontaneous abortions? If, in the course of a therapy intended to save the life of its mother, the unintended death of the unborn child occurs, this, too, would be an abortion, but it is not the deliberate taking of the life of the child.
Stated simply, abortion is a neutral, not a moral, term.
First, we need to remember that Chaput has said this before, I think to Melinda Henneberger in Commonweal, right? He said that Catholics can vote for pro-abortion politicians for compelling reasons. It was notable as quite a shift from his “Vote for Kerry=Go to Hell” stance in 2004.
Of course, what Chaput says is totally obvious. The huge mistake made by Catholic Answers and others is to assume some sort of equivalence, or proximity, between an act and voting for a person who supports this act. “Non-negotiable” means you cannot do it, no matter the consequences. You cannot directly choose evil. But in voting, the object of your act is voting, not choosing evil. Only if you share the evil intent is it formal cooperation in evil. Otherwise, we are talking remote material cooperation, which is justified based on proportional considersations.
Which leads me to answer Chaput’s question: my not voting for the supposed por-life candidate did not lead to an increase in abortion. In fact, voting for the candidate who supported universal health care and poverty alleviation actually reduced the abortion rate. At the same time, I did not vote for somebody who implemented torture, denied insurance for children, and started unjust wars.
By the way, getting back to proximity, it is clear that the proximity of the average Bush voter to the act of torture is far greater than the proximity of the average Kerry voter to the act of abortion (had he been elected).
A final point: for those who still equate voting withe the act itself: you cannot choose the pro-torture person over the pro-abortion person as the “lesser of two evils”. Why? Because your starting point is that voting entails formal cooperation in an intrinsically evil act. To choose between two intrinsically evil acts is proportionalism, rejected by the Church.
Morning’s Minion wrote: “… my not voting for the supposed pro-life candidate did not lead to an increase in abortion. In fact, voting for the candidate who supported universal health care and poverty alleviation actually reduced the abortion rate.”
There’s more on this in “A Catholic Votes for John Kerry,” by James Kelly, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Fordham http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3769 — America Magazine, September 27, 2004
This is from the article’s first paragraph:
“[C]an a pro-life Catholic even consider voting for a pro-choice presidential candidate? Despite being pro-life, I am going to vote for John F. Kerry, a pro-choice Catholic, rather than for George W. Bush…. Because this is such a difficult decision for me as a pro-life Catholic, I will ignore all the other reasons why I prefer Kerry to Bush and focus on the question of abortion, because, strange as it may sound, I am voting for Kerry because I am pro-life. I will make my case as a social scientist who believes that voting involves a prudential judgment that must look at the facts and not just what candidates say. I believe that President Bush, if re-elected, will not deliver on his promises and that a Kerry administration would support economic programs that would in fact reduce the number of abortions.”
About 2000 words later, Kelly concludes: “As for this election, data and discernment will bring me, though not without some reluctance, to pull the lever for John Kerry.”
MM — Could you say a bit more about your claim that the “average Bush voter” is more “proxim[ate]” to torture than the “average Kerry voter” is to abortion?
Is the claim that “torture” was more important to, and more completely explains the vote of, the “average Bush voter” than “abortion rights / Roe” was to, or explains the vote of, the “average Kerry voter”? I suppose that Commonweal readers (whether we voted for Bush or Kerry) are not much like “average Bush voters” or “average Kerry voters”, so maybe you and I are stuck having to guess, but I would be surprised if the premise of (what I take to be) your claim was supported by the facts.
Or is your “proximity” claim something different?
Chaput is merely trying to be provocative. If one has an obligation to vote, when there is any basis for deciding between two candidates, then one must make the best calculation one can, taking ALL the relevant facts into consideration. I can well conceive of voting for someone who is “pro-choice” as a preferential option when the other candidate is plainly so defective as a candidate, even if professedly “pro-life”, that to vote for her/him would be morally repugnant. Given the candidates, I easily foresee this happening. I will vote with a good conscience making the best calculation I can. What will Caput do? And wil he tell us and why, in detail?
Chaput is merely trying to be provocative. If one has an obligation to vote, when there is any basis for deciding between two candidates, then one must make the best calculation one can, taking ALL the relevant facts into consideration. I can well conceive of voting for someone who is “pro-choice” as a preferential option when the other candidate is plainly so defective as a candidate, even if professedly “pro-life”, that to vote for her/him would be morally repugnant. Given the candidates, I easily foresee this happening. I will vote with a good conscience making the best calculation I can. What will Caput do? And wil he tell us and why, in detail?
There is something in Chaput’s comments that suggests he does not really appreciate the religious character of those who will vote for someone not entirely committed to making abortion illegal.
Insofar as the Last Judgment is shorthand for accepting responsibility for our actions before God, who the heck else does he think a Christian, Jew, Muslim, or other committed theist cares about when making important decisions?
It will not help this and other important religiously informed discussions go anywhere so long as it is assumed that the one with whom one disagrees is merely faking her or his religious convictions.
i have learned after being a conscientious voter for over forty years that my vote was good for nearly nothing–that it was my political activism that REALLY counted… so now I show up in my Congressman’s local office, get to know my Senator’s aides. write scathing faxes directly to the Senators–and work with them directly to get my voice heard (even though I have no money to give them, I DO get heard this way–I have seen the results!) I also do NOT read the newspapers, watch TV, go to movies, listen to the radio, or get my news through the usual channels–which are all loaded with innuendo and false information. There are much more reliable sources in this “information age” So do I vote for people who vote pro-choice? No, I do not–I don’t vote for anyone, anymore! When our elections really are the vote OF the people, FOR the people, and BY the people, THEN I will participate. Right now I feel it is FOLLY because i do not vote for the person I really want, anyway.
Michael,
I know Jesus didn’t say this explicitly, but don’t the other “works of mercy” imply, “I was vulnerable and you protected me”?
Before we again throw on the fig leaf that social welfare spending reduces abortions – some facts
In 1973, when Roe V. Wade was decided, there were 744,600 abortions in the US. In 2002, there were in 1,293,000 (according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute).
In 1973 all state and federal spending for needs based social welfare spending was 11.1% of government outlays, it was 18.6% in 2002. Spending in real terms (2002 dollars) went from $185.94 Billion to $522.16 Billion in that same period, a 181% increase (according to the Congressional Research Service) The biggest components of this spending were medical treatment, cash assistance, and food benefits.
We should debate social welfare programs on their own merit, not as “abortion prevention” to assuage the guilty consciences of liberal Catholics.
God bless Archbishop Chaput.
This may seem impious, but….
What does anyone think Jesus and the victims of abortion would say to those Wisconsin voters who cast their ballot for Archbishop Burke’s first accusee, David Obey?
Rick– I mean proximity to each act of torture and abortion, respectively.
A pro-abortion politician has marginal influence on abortion. He or she merely re-affirrms and supports a supposed right handed down by the Supreme Court. All he or she can do is tinker around the edges, or endeavor to change the Supreme Court, which is in itself a complex and highly uncertain strategy.
On the other other hand, the election of Bush led to the institutionalization of torture in the US. It is possible to say otherwise, but itis highly likely that this would never have occurred under Gore and Kerry. In this sense, the proximity of the average voter is closer to the evil act itself.
To put it differently, it is the government that tortures (and executes the death penalty). A vote for Bush turned out to be a vote for torture in a fairly direct sense. In the case of abortion, the government’s role is to enable individual decision making. At this point, it doesn’t even fund those decisions.
To be even more snarky: When the bishops arrive at the pearly gates, I wonder what they will say to those poor boys and girls whose abuse they pretty clearly enabled, many of whom led tortured lives, some of which ended in suicide. We can play the accountability and enableing game all day long, and I doubt if it works out in their favor.
As I am always fond of pointing out–and I hope no one will get angry at me pointing it out again here–if life begins at conception, there will be an extremely large group on Judgment Day that will have a lot in common with the victims of abortion. It will be those who were conceived but whose embryos never implanted in their mothers’ uteruses. The best guess is that they will make up somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of the people there. Presumably their fate is the same fate as a fetus who was aborted or otherwise died before birth. What will their grievances be?
I only conjecture: it would seem that whatever grievance they might have would be against G-d!
Seems to me that there is a lot of [deliberate?] talking off the topic. In this country, there are few cases of torture. But there are many abortions. Likewise with the death penalty. No longer hundreds each year; but there are millions of abortions.
The parallel with slavery is enlightening. Stephen Douglas’ “I am personally opposed to slavery but…” has a familiar ring.
Abp. Chaput had a fairly clear statement: The Church should not tell the politicians what to do. It should tell the people, and let the people tell the politicians.
Gabriel,
It seems to me that deciding whom to vote for, even if you are firmly “pro-life,” is an extremely complicated decision. (See “A philosopher steps forth” above.) So I am bewildered that so many who call themselves “pro-life” seem to think it is so simple.
But, if it really is so simple, why doesn’t the Church just pick a candidate, endorse him or her, and command all Catholics to vote for the Catholic-approved candidate under pain of mortal sin?
The difference between abortions on the one hand, and torture, the death penalty, and all the killing in Iraq (as someone has already pointed out) is that the government PERMITS individuals to make their own choices about abortion, but the government and its agents directly torture, carry out executions, and kill people in Iraq.
Permitting something evil by not making it against the law is morally quite different from actually carrying out an evil act. There are many “intrinsic evils” that our government does not outlaw. I am sure your response would be that abortion is different, because it involves the taking of innocent human lives. However, has anyone seriously suggested there must be legislation shutting down fertility clinics, which create and destroy embryos routinely? Is this part of the”pro-life” agenda of any of the “pro-life” candidates?
Presumably their fate is the same fate as a fetus who was aborted or otherwise died before birth. What will their grievances be?–
David, the hierarchy was never concerned about them when they were miscarriages. Your thesis is fantastic and shows the absurdity of the argument.
MM and Barbara — With respect, I do not agree (with your comments above).
The “abortion is private but torture is government policy” point overlooks, I think, (a) the public-funding question and also (b) the fact that it was the government (i.e., the Court, and legislatures) that removed unborn children from the law’s protection. (An analogy here might be the racially-restrictive covenants case.) A candidate who runs, explicitly, on an “I will protect Roe” platform is asking voters to join him or her in institutionalizing a regime in which unborn children are singled out for exclusion from the law’s protections, and made vulnerable to private violence. (We would not think much of a candidate who said, “vote for me, and I will be sure to block anti-lynching laws.”). This singling out, it seems to me, is no less unjust than the singling out of terror-suspects as beyond the protection of the usual laws against excessive force by officials.
As for whether a vote for Bush was a vote for torture in a “fairly direct sense”, it would seem that one needs to factor into the equation the question whether President Bush ran on a platform of “vote for me and I will torture detainees”, and also the question whether Bush’s promise-to-torture was the reason the voter cast his ballot for Bush.
David–
You said the following above:
“[H]as anyone seriously suggested there must be legislation shutting down fertility clinics, which create and destroy embryos routinely? Is this part of the”pro-life” agenda of any of the “pro-life” candidates?”
IMO the destruction of excess embryos by fertility clinics, or the use of such embryos for embryonic stem cell research, absolutely has to be part of a pro-life position.
Slate.com columnist Michael Kinsley wrote an op-ed in the WP in July 2006 in which he highlighted the logical inconsistency in being pro-life but unconcerned about the many embryos destroyed as the result of the in vitro fertilization process in fertility clinics. Kinsley is strongly pro-choice and a proponent of embryonic stem cell research:
“Even strong believers in abortion rights (I’m one) ought to acknowledge and respect the moral sincerity of many right-to-lifers. I cannot share, or even fathom, their conviction that a microscopic dot — as oblivious as a rock, more primitive than a worm — has the same human rights as anyone reading this article.”
I very much disagree with his assessment of the “microscopic dot,” but he raised a very good point in the op-ed when he stated that “[s]tem cell research tests that belief [i.e., that embryos have the same legal rights as post-partum humans], and sharpens the basic right-to-life question, in a way abortion never has.” He’s also right that there has been little concerted effort by pro-lifers in opposition to the destruction of human life in fertility clinics. Until that issue is addressed more fully, I think that there is (unfortunately) a chink in the armor of the pro-life position.
Kinsley’s op-ed is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601554.html
William,
Michael Sandel, in his book The Case Against Perfection (an expansion of his article in The Atlantic by the same name, available here http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0056.html) argues that nobody really believes life begins at conception, or Bush would have tried to shut down fertility clinics when he made his stem-cell research decision, and the “pro-life” movement would see the number of embryos lost because of failure to implant as a medical crisis of the first order. He asks if a fertility clinic were on fire, and there was the opportunity to rescue either the one employee in the building, or a cannister with a large number of embryos–one life or many lives–who would choose the embryos.
That is a Catholic site that reproduces the article. I doubt that they would agree with the chapter in the book on stem-cell research.
David–
I can’t seem to get your link to work for some reason.
However, I do…”really believe[ ] life begins at conception.” I may be the only one who believes this, but I doubt it. :)
Bush shutting down fertility clinics? There is no law on the books that I’m aware of that prohibits in vitro fertilization, so any attempt to shut down such clinics would have been illegal. Bush likely strongly dislikes the NY Times. That doesn’t mean he can shut it down. I think one reason fertility clinics have been under the radar is because people go there for help because they are looking for help in bringing a new life into the world. They are motivated by creation, not destruction. Yet, perhaps blinded by that worthwhile motivation, they are unaware or oblivious to the destruction of the unused embryos that are a by-product of the process.
Failure to implant? We’re back to that? ;) It’s not a medical crisis, IMO, nor is it a pro-life issue. Yes, it happens, and hopefully there are researchers working to find medical solutions. However, failure to implant as a moral issue is light years away from abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Failure to implant is morally neutral so long as there was no intentional action taken to effect the failure to implant. Abortion and embryonic stem cell research are intentional acts to interrupt and terminate the pre-progammed development of a human person.
William,
The Commonweal site is interpreting the closing paren in my message to be part of the URL, so the link is not working. This should work
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0056.html
The article doesn’t contain anything about the issues involved if we assume that life begins at conception. That’s only in the book. But it’s an excellent article about issues involving genetic manipulation and “designer babies.”
I should have said something like “making fertility clinics illegal,” instead of “shutting them down.” (I hope I am representing his argument correctly. I will check the book when I get home.) Another point he made is that it seemed illogical for Bush to forbid the use of funds for stem-cell research but not to attempt to put restrictions on it. He says Bush was in effect saying that stem-cell research is the taking of innocent human life, and that should be left to the private sector!
Maybe failure to implant is not a moral issue, but suppose it suddenly began to happen that instead of dying a few days after conception, 50 to 80 percent of babies began to die a few days after birth. Don’t you think that would be considered a major medical crisis. For those who believe life begins at conception, the three-day-old embryo is just as much a person as the three-day-old baby.
And failure to implant could be a moral issue. I wouldn’t want to make this argument myself, but suppose a wife knows she is infertile not because she can’t conceive, but because of consistent failure of embryos to implant. The couple, who perhaps don’t want children, has no fear of having intercourse at any time they please, because they know if a child is conceived, it will conveniently die before they even know it exists. Do they have the right to create lives that can only be snuffed out almost immediately? Or should they at least practice NFP to do what they can to prevent the creation of a life? Or should they refrain from intercourse completely, just to be safe?
Someone has suggested that NFP itself is responsible for a higher rate of early embryo loss than other methods of birth control because what pregnancies may occur are more likely to occur at the end of the woman’s fertile period, at which point embryos are more likely to fail to implant. From what I have read so far, it seems to be total and complete baloney, but what if it turns out to be true?
What I don’t think has been mentioned thus far is that the strategy of considering an important decision in light of how it would look to you at the final judgment is taken right out of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Only the Archbishop has put it in such a way that it suggests that the victims of abortion are a court of judgment, and that is, of course, something completely different. Ignatius puts it (roughly) that when considering an action, imagine you are standing in the court of heaven before Jesus and all the saints (not a civil court, but an assembly of the holiest and most loving and best of all people) — now, before this audience, what do you wish you could say you had done? I find this exercise useful because it pulls us out of our immediate surroundings, and the circle of reasoning that may be driven by petty concerns and obsessions, There are motives, sometimes, of which we ought to be ashamed, and imagining them “in the light” is the best way to overcome them.
Peggy, I don’t think this is the sort of thing you are looking for, but it’s what occured to me when I read your post.
Thanks Rita. I can’t say I was looking for anything specific so your observation is very welcome. Maybe posters should try that exercise as they hone their rapier wit!