Hudson, Kmiec, and Abortion Politics
[This is a revised and somewhat shortened version of a letter I wrote to Deal Hudson last week; he has posted his own summary of the letter on the InsideCatholic website and promises to respond.]
Dear Deal,
I just read your latest response to Douglas Kmiec’s article in Slate about the possible appeal of Barack Obama to Catholics. You argue that Obama’s position on abortion should keep all faithful prolife Catholics from supporting his candidacy, even if they agree with other parts of his platform. You write that it is a mistake for Kmiec to suggest that voting for Obama is even an option.
I agree with you that the church’s position on the morality of abortion is non-negotiable, and that this fact should have some bearing on every Catholic voter’s deliberations. But in your rebuke of Kmiec–and more generally in your dogged defense of the Republican party–I think you are making a serious category mistake. If this were merely a matter of logic, I wouldn’t mention it, but I think it has important consequences for the way we think and talk about politics.
You lean hard on the legitimate distinction between the church’s non-prudential, non-optional teachings, and prudential political judgments. This is a real and important distinction, which has been invoked and helpfully developed by many Catholic theorists and pundits.
But those who insist on this distinction need to be very careful about it; they should not push it further than it really goes. The distinction between non-prudential and prudential is the distinction between what is simple and unconditional and what is complicated and contingent. It is not the distinction between the more important and the less important. Clarity and gravity are not the same thing. This is why the predicament of Catholic voters in the U.S. is not as easy to resolve as you seem to think. One can make a strong (but not unanswerable) argument that a Catholic should not vote for a prochoice Presidential candidate–at least not now, when the reversal of Roe v. Wade seems to be within reach. (For what it’s worth, I don’t plan to vote for a prochoice candidate until Roe v. Wade is reversed, or until there seems no immediate chance of its being reversed.)
You write as if the priority of the abortion issue should mean the same thing for all Catholics no matter what they think about other issues. Your easy confidence on this point would be more persuasive if you did not happen to agree with the Republican Party on most other issues as well. This is not a trivial coincidence. If your only options were, say, a rigidly prochoice Republican and a prolife socialist who believed that the United States should give up its national sovereignty and join a world government, I suspect your abortion-trumps-all rhetoric would change somewhat. As it is, your position involves few trade-offs. This is not the way it is for many, perhaps most American Catholics. If you believe, as I do, that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake and also a grave injustice, and that universal, state-sponsored health care is not only the most efficient and rational medical system but also an obligation for a society as rich as ours, then you will not find it so easy to settle for a Republican presidential candidate just because he says he is prolife. (Here, too, we face prudential questions, questions that require us to calculate consequences. We must ask ourselves how prolife a self-described prolife politician really is–how willing is he to invest real political capital in this cause? We must also ask ourselves about circumstances: What possible–or likely–effect will a politician have on abortion law now? His opinion, merely as an opinion, is of little political consequence until it is translated into legislation or judicial appointments. And these may have no consequence, or the wrong consequence, in a democratic society that refuses to accept the prolife premise. Kick it back to the states. Good. Then what?)
Of course the church has no non-prudential teaching about the details of health-care reform or this or that particular war, but that tells us nothing about the importance of the Iraq war or health-care reform as political issues. The church says nothing about the priority of the U.S. Constitution or the viability of nation states in the twenty-first century, but I doubt you consider these things to be of marginal importance.
Since both of us consider ourselves prolife, and since both of us acknowledge that the profile cause is, among other things, an important political movement, you may think the rest is hair-splitting. It is not. Your position–or, at least, the rhetoric in which it is couched–entails a terrible constriction of the political imagination. And it gives American Catholics a way to let themselves off the hook: they do not have to question the GOP’s economic and foreign-policy positions because the church offers no official pronouncement on these positions–those issues are up for grabs and therefore relatively unimportant. That kind of sectarian minimalism is really not a very Catholic way to think about politics. If the church’s social teachings are about any one thing, they’re about solidarity: solidarity between the born and the unborn, but also between the rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, the powerful and the powerless. Not every part of the “seamless garment” is of equal importance, and not every stitch is clear, but we make a terrible mistake in clutching at one sleeve and forgetting about the rest. Prohibiting abortion is an important goal of the pro-life movement, but it is not the only goal. We want to prevent as many abortions as possible. To do this we will have to persuade our non-Catholic neighbors, people whose opinions are not changed by appeals to the church’s authority, and that will mean persuading them to think differently about what we owe the most vulnerable members of our community.
Regarding the Republican party and abortion, David Leonhardt touched on this in today’s Times albeit while commenting on a different matter:
“In campaign after campaign for more than 30 years now, Republicans have been denouncing Roe v. Wade. Yet even though they have held the White House for most of that time — and made 12 of the last 14 Supreme Court appointments — abortion remains legal.
This straddling has served Republicans well. They have been able to win over voters who care about abortion above all else without alienating swing voters, most of whom, polls show, think it should be legal at least some of the time. Talking tough and governing gently helped the party build a majority.” David Leonhardt, NY Times , 3/27/08
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/27leonhardt.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=leonhardt&st=nyt&oref=slogin
How about this dilemma: Can a Catholic vote for a pro-choice candidate (who has been accused of not being “pro-choice” enough by the most extreme liberals in his party) in a Democratic PRIMARY to help block another, even more vocally pro-choice, Democrat from winning the nomination? Especially if said Catholic plans to vote for the pro-life Republican in the general election? Or does it depend on how many pro-choice and pro-life voters can simultaneously dance on the head of the same pin?
I agree. Which is why I said before, as Catholics we seem to now have a moral obligation to vote for the pro-choice candidate who says he’s pro-life and against the pro-choice candidate who says he’s pro-choice.
Good response to Hudson. It’s appalling that he is trying (with many allies) to twist Catholic teaching to claim that Catholics must vote for the Republican party. Ugh.
So far as I can see, to make a political decision to cast a vote for a politician who opposes criminalizing abortion is not the same thing as casting a vote for someone who encourages abortion, whether through funding or through other governmental programs.
To oppose criminalization does not imply endorsement of an immoral act.
In my view, NO single political issue regarding what should be legal or illegal can rightfully trump all other considerations. And the abortion issue before the electorate is a political issue. Nobody has the right to vote on a moral issue as such. Something is either morally right or wrong, votes notwithstanding.
I also agree that the church’s position on the morality of abortion is non-negotiable. However, I believe there are other non-negotiables that similarly prevent me from voting republican.
Matthew–
An excellent letter. Might there be a link available to the full letter?
And it’s both comforting, and disappointing at the same time, that Scott and, I’m presuming, Matthew will be absent with me from the voting booth on Election Day 2008.
Matt, thanks.
Whatever Professor Kmiec’s intention (I have no reason to to believe it is anything other than straightforward), I still think the FUNCTION of the letter was very, very favorable for Republican Catholics. It allowed people like Mr. Hudson to pen a very vigorous response –and to raise the politically divisive issues of 2004– without without exacerbating the culture wars by a staging a conservative attack on liberals, and playing into Obama’s “beyond polarization” rhetoric.
So politically speaking, I think Crisis and First Things ought to send Professor Kmiec a thank-you note!
I have said and will continue to. The abortion issue is a fraud and everyone is guilty of continuing it. This sentence Jimmy lifted out of today’s Times says it all.
“In campaign after campaign for more than 30 years now, Republicans have been denouncing Roe v. Wade. Yet even though they have held the White House for most of that time — and made 12 of the last 14 Supreme Court appointments — abortion remains legal.”
If this is not fraud, please tell me why!
“If this is not fraud, please tell me why!”
It is not a fraud if you consider morality as mostly just having the right attitude.
FWIW – I’ve always believed that pro-choice Republicans are a much larger chunk of their party than pro-life Democrats are of their’s.
Also FWIW – Justice Stevens was nominated by President Ford, who never claimed to be anything but pro-choice AFAIK, and was approved by a Democratic Senate.
I guess Justice Souter is the “missed opportunity”. But my recollection is that Souter came onto the court with the Bork nomination fight still casting a shadow. Wasn’t it moderate Republican Senators who sank Bork? And didn’t virtually all of them eventually suffer payback by pro-life Republicans?
The dilemma in my mind is that 1. Mainstream Repubs are pro-life lite, they have an endgame legal strategy of ignoring natural law reasoning, utilizing only a dubious “strict constructionist” interpretative theory- though this is something that doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny- where is the outcry over corporations being considered legal persons- certainly not a founding father intent. So, if abortion is at least as immoral as slavery- how can sending the legality of such back to every state be a true pro-life goal? To me the Republican strategy on Life is one I liken to Pontius Pilate- appearing to be a sensible legalist, but failing to lead ultimately.
Second- In my prudential judgments, based on serious reading/study of the social doctine of the church- I believe that the Repubs are more likely to bring about great calamities to our nation- affecting my children and everyone elses. Their neo-con foreign policies and neo-liberal economic policies breed terrorism and impoverishment- all factors in contributing to unjust wars and economic depressions. I would also include the Repub loathing of a juridical framework for global human rights, worker rights and conditions of labor, and for regulations designed to protect the environment. The combination of all these important issues- war/peace, economics, global solidarity, stewardship of earth’s resources/ecologies- could bring about a situation whereupon our whole nation and world could be sent into a spiral of self-destruction where legal abortion would disappear as a serious issue as most people are simply trying to survive in a social darwinist world of haves versus have nots.
The Dems are marginally better than the Repubs on these other prudential concerns- Ralph Nader makes a good case for that- but just the same- the truth is that we need a new crop of total social doctrine CAtholic leaders to emerge- courageous enough to stand up to liberal/conservative ideological establishment pressures. I am attempting such- http://www.timshipe.com
Matthew,
Although I agree with you that the difference between a non-negotiable moral teaching and when which relies on prudential judgment does not necessarily equate to the gravity of the matter, I think you miss two critical points. The first is that the difference is not just between clarity and simplicity on the one hand and complexity and contingency on the other, but of certainty.
In the case of abortion, the Church teaches it is wrong in itself. As you say, this is a non-contingent, non-negotiable principle. This is not just a matter of clarity, it bears on the certainty with which I must treat it. I have tried to get this across before by using the analogy of rape. Another act which is wrong, unconditionally. I could not, consistent with that principle, support a position that permitted or sanctioned some rapes so that I might reduce rape generally. I can’t countenance something I know certainly to be wrong on the chance that I might prevent other wrongs.
Contrarily, taking an example that you raise, medical care, the same certainty does not apply. We may agree that the goal of a health care system should be to provide the highest quality care, to the most people, in a way consistent with their human dignity. One proposed solution is a single-payer system. Another may rely on more free-market mechanisms. Each has potential benefits and potential risks as they bear on the commonly agreed goal. A free market approach runs risks of not caring for the most people and can affect the dignity with which we treat the have-nots, while a single payer system runs risks of reducing the quality and availability of care for many or all, and can affect the dignity of the users through rationing and bureaucratic dehumanization. Contingency doesn’t just mean complexity, it means uncertainty. As a person who generally supports free market solutions, I do not see a position that supports a single payer system with the same moral abhorrence I view legalized abortion on demand. This is not just because of the clarity of the moral position, but because I might be wrong.
Second, although the moral certitude of a teaching like abortion does not by itself equate to gravity, it does relate very clearly to it. The direct destruction of God’s greatest gift is not just clearly wrong, but profoundly serious. I submit that not a single issue on which you might agree with Sen Obama is as morally grave. Even assuming his position regarding the war, for example, is morally superior. He is uniformly against any limits on abortion, and was among just a handful of senators who opposed banning late-term abortions. By way of comparison, more than three times as many infants have been killed by later term abortions in the US than service members have been killed in Iraq over the same time. For that matter, more than twenty-five times as many infants have been aborted in the US since R v. W than all the deaths in all the wars in US history. And for all the concern (correctly) over the mental and spiritual suffering of our returning service members, this is dwarfed by the enormous, but largely ignored, suffering of tens of thousands of post-abortion women.
I am not one to say that the only correct position for a Catholic to take is a Republican one. I don’t believe that. Neither, however, do I think it consistent for so many Catholic progressives to ignore or minimize the gravity of the Church’s teaching on abortion in a “trade off” for other issues with far less certain, and I believe grave, moral consequences.
“Neither, however, do I think it consistent for so many Catholic progressives to ignore or minimize the gravity of the Church’s teaching on abortion in a “trade off” for other issues with far less certain, and I believe grave, moral consequences.”
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem consistent for so many Catholic radical nationalists to vote for people (like our current president) who have publically espoused a pro-choice lite position. The true alternative seems to be that one sits out most elections. Yet when I see groups of people handing out brochures about five non-negotiable positions, I have never once seen them saying that we should pass on the next election.
This post doesn’t contain anything new or controversial, but given that this is a public forum, perhaps it’s worth saying:
Matthew, I believe your distinction between an issue’s clarity and its importance is very good.
Of course, the church teaches, not only that its opposition to abortion is “non-negotiable”, but also that human life is *foundational* – life is the human right upon which all other rights depend.
So, while the “non-negotiable” aspect of what the church teaches about abortion doesn’t really address its importance, the church does, nevertheless, teach clearly that the sanctity of human life is of paramount importance.
About 43 million children have been killed by abortion in the US since Roe v Wade. Clearly, it’s important.
If it can be argued that you many not vote for a pro-choice candidate in spite of his or her position on abortion, maybe it should be argued that you may not remain a tax-paying citizen in a country in which abortion is a constitutional right. Until the time Roe v Wade is struck down (which may be never), whether you like it or not, the United States government has construed the most fundamental American document to protect the right to an abortion. If abortion is so morally offensive that you cannot vote for a candidate who supports it as a fundamental right, which it undoubtedly is, even when you agree with that candidate on every other issue, then maybe American citizenship should be considered cooperation in perpetuating abortion, even for those who are working to ban it.
Politicians swear an oath to uphold the constitution. As things now stand, the constitution guarantees the right to abortion. Even Justice Roberts has said Roe v Wade is settled law. May Catholic politicians not in good conscience take an oath of office?
It seems to me that arguing you may not vote for the candidate that best represents your view is not in accord with the principles on which this country was founded and still operates. The extreme anti-abortion argument is based on religious principles and tells you that that no matter how you feel about war, or health care, or immigration, or the death penalty, you must vote against a pro-choice candidate who is abiding by the constitution. If you cannot vote for the candidate of your choice, for religious reasons, because he or she supports a constitutional right, maybe you cannot in good conscience cooperate in any way with the United States. Nicaragua might be a good choice to emigrate to, since there it is not against the fundamental principles of the government to enact Catholic moral teachings into law.
About 2000 people renounced their American citizenship over the Vietnam war. Some abortion opponents seem to regard abortion deaths in the United States as a far greater crisis than the Iraq war is or than the Vietnam war was. Is anyone in the pro-life movement suggesting American citizenship is intolerable?
Short version of previous post . . .
If your religion prohibits you from voting for a pro-life candidate, maybe the appropriate conclusion is that you cannot in good conscience be an American citizen, since abortion in America is a right guaranteed by the constitution.
David–
The word “abortion” is not mentioned in the Constitution. The R v. W court labeled abortion a so-called “penumbral right,” kind of a ghostly presence lurking near a specified right, and, according to the court, worthy of recognition. The court did not construe a statute enacted by legislators in ‘finding’ this penumbral right in the Constitution; instead the court took it upon itself to locate this right in the shadows cast by the Constitution.
But leaving the shaky jurisprudential underpinning aside, your view of the Constitution would have made it impossible, for example, for American citizens to have sought the repeal of Prohibition after it had been added to the Constitution by amendment. By your reckoning, the Constitution is a static document. It’s anything but, however. Some provisions in the Constitution have rarely been addressed throughout its history. For example, the Supreme Court is hearing a case this judicial term on what exactly the right to bear arms means in the Second Amendment. And there have been libraries of books written on the concepts of “due process” and “equal protection.” The short of it is that provision and clause set forth in the Constitution is potentially subject to expansion of contraction over time.
I happen to think that the death penalty is “cruel or unusual punshment” under the Eighth Amendment. Others will disagree. Does that mean that a death penalty opponent elected to Congress can’t take the oath of office because the Supreme Court has not construed “cruel or unusual punishment” to include a prohibition on the death penalty? If such were the case, there could be no challenges to what the Constitution means, and we might as well cast in in stone and halt its evolution.
At least Constitutional phrases such as “cruel or unusual,” “search and seizure,” and “interstate commerce” have had many years of interpretaion and refinement as the result of court decisions. The so-called “penumbral right” underlying abortion, created not by legislative fiat but by overreaching justices in R v. W, should IMO also be open to challenge. At a minimum, it is certainly not unamerican or bad citizenship to seek to change the law on this issue.
Sorry. This sentence should be: “The short of it is that every provision and clause set forth in the Constitution is potentially subject to expansion and contraction over time.” And it’s “cruel and unusual punishment,” not the disjunctive “cruel or unusual punishment.”
One final point and I’ll stop: I think Justice Roberts said R v. W is “settled law” during his confirmation hearings. IMO his statement has to be viewed in the context of the political football game that is a confirmation hearing. In addition, he’s too good a lawyer, as are most SC nominees of all political stripes, to let himself get trapped by his words. The Dred Scott decision (i.e., that slaves are not persons subject to Constitutional protections), one of the most abominable decisions in SC history, was settled law until it, too, was overturned as the result of political and cultural changes resulting from our country’s near-destruction during the Civil War. There are forces–political, cultural, medical–that may (and I emphasize “may”) result some day in an explicit reversal of R. v. W. But again, Roberts is too good a lawyer to not realize that if R. v. W. won’t be directly overturned, it might be effectively overturned by limiting its scope through a series of SC decisions that narrow the “right” dicovered in R. v. W.
William,
I see no conflict–for those who believe in American democracy–in swearing to uphold the constitution and at the same time trying to change it. It’s all part of the democratic process, and if it were somehow illegitimate to attempt to change the constitution, there would be no process for doing so. Basically the first thing the Founders did with the constitution was to change it (by adding the Bill of Rights).
However, if permitting others to choose to have an abortion is so morally reprehensible that a Catholic may not vote for a candidate in spite of the fact that he or she supports the current interpretation of the constitution–the law of the land–it seems to me that the Catholic citizen is in a position that is beyond opposing something and trying to change it. Consequently, the position of being “personally opposed” to abortion but supporting others’ rights to choose is considered to be just as “pro-choice” as being wholeheartedly in favor of abortion for a politician. It seems to me to be fundamental in American democracy that a public official can act in his capacity as a public official when his public actions are in conflict with his religion. But on the issue of abortion, this is not permitted of Catholic officials. And it seems to me as a voter in American democracy, one should not be troubled by voting for a candidate whom you consider the overall best for the job, even if there are some of his positions you do not agree with. But some are arguing that abortion is such an overriding issue, it alone should determine one’s vote.
When the disagreement is this extreme, it raises questions about what other ways a Catholic may not cooperate with a country that guarantees the right to abortion. If you feel your government is permitting the taking of a million or so innocent lives a year, it seems to me voting against pro-life politicians once or twice a year and staging the occasional demonstration is a disproportionately small response. If there were some kind of “ethnic cleansing” going on in the United States, and the government stood by and allowed a million people a year in some ethnic group to be killed by some other ethnic group, I am sure I would move to another country, comfortable as I am here. But as far as I know, people who talk about abortion as “killing babies” by the millions don’t seem to be leaving the country for places like Nicaragua or Chile.
David –
>>[T]he position of being “personally opposed” to abortion but supporting others’ rights to choose is considered to be just as “pro-choice” as being wholeheartedly in favor of abortion for a politician. It seems to me to be fundamental in American democracy that a public official can act in his capacity as a public official when his public actions are in conflict with his religion.<>And it seems to me as a voter in American democracy, one should not be troubled by voting for a candidate whom you consider the overall best for the job, even if there are some of his positions you do not agree with. But some are arguing that abortion is such an overriding issue, it alone should determine one’s vote.<>If you feel your government is permitting the taking of a million or so innocent lives a year, it seems to me voting against pro-life politicians once or twice a year and staging the occasional demonstration is a disproportionately small response. If there were some kind of “ethnic cleansing” going on in the United States, and the government stood by and allowed a million people a year in some ethnic group to be killed by some other ethnic group, I am sure I would move to another country, comfortable as I am here. But as far as I know, people who talk about abortion as “killing babies” by the millions don’t seem to be leaving the country for places like Nicaragua or Chile.<<
This is a variation on the argument that some pro-choice supporters make when they criticize pro-life supporters for not agreeing to adopt the children of women who are deciding whether or not to abort. The argument diverts attention from the real focus of the issue: whether abortion is immoral in and of itself. Even if I were to agree with you for the sake of argument that there has been a “disproportionately small response” by pro-lifers to the millions of lives aborted each year, the response would say nothing about the morality of abortion and whether it should be allowed. Slavery was not any less wrong because it was tolerated by the great majority of the people in the South. The slave owners were entirely responsible for their actions, as were the Nazis for the Holocaust, which was not any less evil and immoral because many who knew about it did nothing to stop it. You say that you would leave the U.S. if the government tolerated ethnic cleansing. I would respect your decision, but whether you chose to go or stay, the immorality of the ethnic cleansing would not be diminished in any way, and those carrying it out would bear full responsibility for their immoral actions. If abortion is immoral, then those involved in it are responsible for it irrespective of the response of people opposed to it.
David –
My post above didn’t format properly. I’m giving it another try.
>>[T]he position of being “personally opposed” to abortion but supporting others’ rights to choose is considered to be just as “pro-choice” as being wholeheartedly in favor of abortion for a politician. It seems to me to be fundamental in American democracy that a public official can act in his capacity as a public official when his public actions are in conflict with his religion.<>And it seems to me as a voter in American democracy, one should not be troubled by voting for a candidate whom you consider the overall best for the job, even if there are some of his positions you do not agree with. But some are arguing that abortion is such an overriding issue, it alone should determine one’s vote.<>If you feel your government is permitting the taking of a million or so innocent lives a year, it seems to me voting against pro-life politicians once or twice a year and staging the occasional demonstration is a disproportionately small response. If there were some kind of “ethnic cleansing” going on in the United States, and the government stood by and allowed a million people a year in some ethnic group to be killed by some other ethnic group, I am sure I would move to another country, comfortable as I am here. But as far as I know, people who talk about abortion as “killing babies” by the millions don’t seem to be leaving the country for places like Nicaragua or Chile.<<
This is a variation on the argument that some pro-choice supporters make when they criticize pro-life supporters for not agreeing to adopt the children of women who are deciding whether or not to abort. The argument diverts attention from the real focus of the issue: whether abortion is immoral in and of itself. Even if I were to agree with you for the sake of argument that there has been a “disproportionately small response” by pro-lifers to the millions of lives aborted each year, the response would say nothing about the morality of abortion and whether it should be allowed. Slavery was not any less wrong because it was tolerated by the great majority of the people in the South. The slave owners were entirely responsible for their actions, as were the Nazis for the Holocaust, which was not any less evil and immoral because many who knew about it did nothing to stop it. You say that you would leave the U.S. if the government tolerated ethnic cleansing. I would respect your decision, but whether you chose to go or stay, the immorality of the ethnic cleansing would not be diminished in any way, and those carrying it out would bear full responsibility for their immoral actions.
My last try to exorcise the formatting gremlins.
David –
“”[T]he position of being “personally opposed” to abortion but supporting others’ rights to choose is considered to be just as “pro-choice” as being wholeheartedly in favor of abortion for a politician. It seems to me to be fundamental in American democracy that a public official can act in his capacity as a public official when his public actions are in conflict with his religion.”
This is the Mario Cuomo-at-Notre Dame scenario. It has some superficial appeal, but IMO it simply provides strategic cover for a Catholic politician to avoid taking any actions to reduce the incidence of abortions. For example, Cuomo could have promoted social safety net programs for pregnant mothers, and he could have done it without once resorting to religious language, but he did nothing of the sort during his tenure as governor of NY.
“And it seems to me as a voter in American democracy, one should not be troubled by voting for a candidate whom you consider the overall best for the job, even if there are some of his positions you do not agree with. But some are arguing that abortion is such an overriding issue, it alone should determine one’s vote.”
I’m not troubled by this. However, it is equally acceptable for a voter in our American democracy not to vote for a candidate if there is an issue—e.g., the war in Iraq, the war in Vietnam in the 60’s, abortion—that is of “overriding” concern to the voter. Some pro-choice voters would not vote for a pro-life candidate even though the pro-choice voters are in complete agreement with the candidate on all other issues of concern.
“If you feel your government is permitting the taking of a million or so innocent lives a year, it seems to me voting against pro-life politicians once or twice a year and staging the occasional demonstration is a disproportionately small response. If there were some kind of “ethnic cleansing” going on in the United States, and the government stood by and allowed a million people a year in some ethnic group to be killed by some other ethnic group, I am sure I would move to another country, comfortable as I am here. But as far as I know, people who talk about abortion as “killing babies” by the millions don’t seem to be leaving the country for places like Nicaragua or Chile.”
This is a variation on the argument that some pro-choice supporters make when they criticize pro-life supporters for not agreeing to adopt the children of women who are deciding whether or not to abort. The argument diverts attention from the real focus of the issue: whether abortion is immoral in and of itself. Even if I were to agree with you for the sake of argument that there has been a “disproportionately small response” by pro-lifers to the millions of lives aborted each year, the response would say nothing about the morality of abortion and whether it should be allowed. Slavery was not any less wrong because it was tolerated by the great majority of the people in the South. The slave owners were entirely responsible for their actions, as were the Nazis for the Holocaust, which was not any less evil and immoral because many who knew about it did nothing to stop it. You say that you would leave the U.S. if the government tolerated ethnic cleansing. I would respect your decision, but whether you chose to go or stay, the immorality of the ethnic cleansing would not be diminished in any way, and those carrying it out would bear full responsibility for their immoral actions.
From a practical standpoint Roe v Wade will not be directly overturned during the next president’s term in office. The only real difference lies in the successful candidates nominee for the SC.
With Democratic majorities likely in the Senate, no unequivocal voter to overturn will be confirmed. The question then comes down to a judgment about whether the common good is better served by a prolife president, who might lead us into another senseless and immoral war, or by a prochoice president who might nominate a SC Justice who could strengthen R v W.
Personally I find it a rather easy moral judgment,
I find this whole debate to be a bit misplaced.
The real problem is that we think it is adequate to distinguish between politicians’ attitudes. This one says she’s pro-choice. That one says she’s pro-life. We have to vote for the pro-life politician. This is a false choice, however. Attitudes don’t mean anything at all. They have to be accompanied by action. And we have to judge actions not just on the basis of the cursory things that someone might do to show that they have the right attitude. We have to judge actions on the basis of what kinds of actions are available.
The “pro-life” GOP Congress and “pro-life” GOP Senate under the “pro-life” GOP president could have easily shut down the Congress and the government over this issue any time they wished over the course of six long years. They were certainly willing to do it for lots of other issues. They could even do it right now as the minority party. But they don’t.
When it comes to voting for people we hear from Republicans that “The Magisterium” commands us to vote for the “pro-life” candidate because abortion attacks a most fundamental right to life. When it is proposed that the “pro-life” Congress then proceed to take its power to shut down the government, Republicans suddenly go all moderate on us and the realpolitik that the Democrats argued before the election is thrown back into their faces.
The debate is a smokescreen. “Pro-life” is really no more than a ticket that buys one a bunch of religious votes. If the “pro-life” people here are really consistent, then they need to sit out the election unless the “pro-life” candidate has either tried to shut down the government (in the case of an incumbent) or vows to (in the case of a new candidate). And little appeals to “abstinence only” education and partial birth abortion bans don’t count.
William,
As I understand the Catholic “pro-life” proponents, they are less interested in reducing the number of abortions than making abortions illegal. I have had discussions here in public, as well as in private, with Catholics who would prefer a total ban on abortion that resulted in more abortions (although illegal ones) than an approach that actually reduced abortions through various social programs but kept abortion legal.
In America, where we have a secret ballot (and where voter coercion is a crime), voters may cast or not cast their votes for any reason they choose, but it is supposed to be their choice. If those arguing in favor of the Catholic position Matthew Boudway is arguing against are correct, Catholic voters may not make up their own minds. They must vote against pro-choice candidates no matter what–unless, of course, they can demonstrate to their own satisfaction that the opposing pro-life candidate will do something that results in more deaths of innocent people.
Actually, the argument I am interested–and that the Catholic pro-life proponents are making–is not about whether abortion is immoral or not. It is about how Catholics may vote. Abortion happens to be the current focus in the argument about how Catholics may vote, but there are other issues where the same argument has been made or hinted at (stem-cell research, same-sex marriage).
The question at issue in this thread is whether or not there is a clear Catholic moral argument regarding how a Catholic in a pluralistic democracy, with separation of church and state, is supposed to vote. As far as I know, the argument being made by pro-life Catholics doesn’t rest on a long tradition of arguments about the morality of voting, but rather is pretty much a response to the abortion dilemma. However, if there are clear principles on how a Catholic may vote when abortion is involved, it seems to me they would apply in other matters as well, although it seems to be frequently argued that abortion is somehow unique.
So in my mind, the issue is not abortion, but the morality of voting in a pluralistic, democratic society that has as bedrock principles the separation of church and state and the rights of minorities. As I have often pointed out, the Catholic religion teaches that personhood begins at conception, and the Jewish religion teaches that personhood begins at birth. While Catholics and Jews may come to substantial agreement in most cases, I don’t see how any amount of arguing between Catholics and Jews will result in a conclusion that abortion is always immoral. It seems to me United States law has to accommodate both views in some way, but that does not seem to be the Catholic view, which raises questions in my mind about whether Catholicism and American democracy are fully compatible.
All below is lifted directly from Whispers in the Loggia. I thought it was quite interesting. First, here is a remark from the Papal Nuncio, concerning the Pope and his visit, that made me smile, and could be applied the abortion issue.
From the Papal Nuncio
“Catholics believe the pope is infallible in questions of faith and morals, but “he very rarely makes infallibility an issue. There is so much absolutism, so much infallibility in each of us, the pope uses it very little by comparison.”
Sambi, eyes twinkling, repeats, “People will be surprised.”
and then this is from John Allens coverage of the Peace and Justice conference.
“National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen is there and filing away with some of the conference’s flavor….
Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta’s reflections on the USCCB’s election-year pastoral on “Faithful Citizenship”:
In a Feb. 23 op/ed piece in the Washington Post, former NCR Washington correspondent Joe Feuerherd summarized the message of “Faithful Citizenship” this way: “Tap the touch screen for a pro-abortion-rights candidate, and you’re probably punching your ticket to Hell.”
Gregory, however, said that’s not what “Faithful Citizenship” teaches.
“Defending the right to life is obviously a primary concern,” Gregory said. “It’s the point of departure for everything else.”
Nonetheless, Gregory said, it is “at least possible” that a Catholic who carefully weighs the issues could decide that, on balance, a candidate who is not explicitly pro-life is preferable to one who opposes the legalization of abortion but who does not share Catholic positions on other matters of moral importance. Gregory was speaking in the abstract, without reference to any specific candidate.
In that sense, Gregory said, “Faithful Citizenship” cannot be reduced to an absolute obligation to vote for a pro-life candidate, regardless of his or her stances on anything else.
“It’s a complicated document,” Gregory said. “It suggests that people have to think hard about their choices.”
Gregory, a former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, drew attention to another op/ed piece on “Faithful Citizenship,” this one in the Feb. 26 Chicago Tribune. It’s written by Charles W. Murdock, a law professor at Loyola University of Chicago.
In the piece, Murdock asserts that “Faithful Citizenship” is “far more balanced and nuanced than its critics acknowledge.”
“No one candidate or political party has a monopoly on moral positions,” Murdock wrote. “The sooner that liberals and conservatives within the church accept this complexity and find a way to talk about the issues, the better off the Catholic Church will be. And, for that matter, the country.”
Adopted during the bishops’ fall meeting in Baltimore, “Faithful Citizenship” addresses the role of Catholics in political life. Beginning in 1976, the bishops have produced such a document regularly during election years.
In his remarks to the Social Ministry Gathering, Gregory encouraged Catholics to carry several messages to Capitol Hill:
• “The lives of unborn children need protection”;
• “Poor children need justice”;
• “Families need affordable health care”;
• “Immigrants need to be treated as brothers and sisters, not enemies”;
• “The hungry of the world need food”;
• “Those living and dying with HIV/AIDS need compassionate care”;
• “The people of the Holy Land need a just peace”;
• “The unending war in Iraq requires a responsible transition.”
Each item on the list drew applause, and Gregory himself received a standing ovation both at the beginning and the end of his comments.
“We are not a lobby,” Gregory told the social ministers, “but a community that serves the poor and vulnerable every day. We are not an interest group, nor are we advocating our own narrow interests, but speaking for the voiceless and standing up for the common good.”
Gregory described the journey to Capitol Hill as “not a secular mobilization, but, in a sense, a pilgrimage.”
We go not to impose some sectarian doctrine,” Gregory said, “but to add our voices and our convictions to the debates and decisions on what kind of nation we are becoming, what kind of world we are shaping.”…
“In supporting the basic right to life, we cannot allow mothers and children to be forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because the resources are not made available,” Gregory said.
Gregory conceded that some people have been surprised and even angered by the bishops’ position on immigration – “including,” he said, “even some Catholics.” He lamented what he called a “coarse and polarizing” debate on immigration policy.
“I would envision another kind of public dialogue,” he said, “where the centuries-old experience of Christianity can help balance the harsh exigencies of law.”
I suppose it might be helpful to ask the question “what are Catholics doing when they vote”?
In countries with parliaments, the differences between parties are usually more clear. People vote more for the platform than the person. While parties in the US have platforms, we believe (or act as though we believe) that the candidate is somehow also independent from his party’s platform. This can give rise to questions that would be complete nonsense in a parliamentary system (like “could Obama really be, in his heart of hearts, a Muslim?”), but it makes questions of what we like to call a candidate’s “personal character” important in the US.
“Character” is important in parliamentary countries too, but what people are looking for in those cases is whether there is anything about the person’s character that will cause them to go against the platform. The kind of things that would do this are usually scandalous by nature; things that people could be blackmailed for.
A major distinction however, between our style of government and parliamentary styles is that a parliamentary voter believes that their moral obligation is to vote for the platform. We talk about platforms, but we really believe (or act as though we believe) that our moral obligation is to vote for the person. We make a separation between person and platform in the United States and I will argue that this separation is the source of our moral confusion here when it comes to issues like abortion. If we call ourselves pro-life, we think that it is enough to vote for a “pro-life” candidate. Since in this country most of the people running on a “pro-life” platform are in one particular political party, that party appears to have a pro-life platform. However, that party continually fails to execute its platform even when it is entirely in power for extended periods. There is a gap (and since this has been going on for three decades, a radical gap) between what the candidates claim to believe and what they actually do when they get the power to execute their beliefs. The “pro-life” voter, however, tolerates this and in fact (in the case of Catholic voters) still seems to think that they have a moral requirement to vote for the person who claims to hold pro-life principles.
I know that I have spoken about things like “shutting down the government” as something that the GOP could have done to advance a pro-life cause it claims to support. My point is that unlike you or me, the politicians in that well organized party have power that we don’t have that they are perfectly willing to use in other contexts but not in this one. What I am suggesting here is that it is not enough to say one is pro-life. One has to execute it with one’s power. Since the Republican Party doesn’t execute a pro-life strategy with the power it has had at hand, it really isn’t pro-life. And therefore it becomes irrelevant that it’s individual members claim to be “pro-life”. It further follows that the Catholic voter has not only not discharged any moral obligation by voting for someone who claims to be pro-life (but who is not really going to do anything about it); such a Catholic voter is culpable for promoting the deadlock.
What do we do then? We can sit out an election and claim that we can’t vote for either candidate for ethical reasons. Or we can use our vote to try to change things, in the manner of good citizens. It is perfectly clear that politicians have been manipulating people on the basis of their pro-life (or pro-choice) ethic for thirty years to keep getting elected in order to actively and stridently support all sorts of other things that either don’t relate to a pro-life ethic or in some cases are inconsistent with it. And we have not only tolerated this situation; we have been promoting it by displacing the discussions about the political process in the United States into general questions about abortion as such. In the meantime we have been electing people that are willing to lie to us to assuage our guilt so that we can pat ourselves on the back for being good Catholics while the actual situation on the ground remains unchanged for a full generation.