Too early? Too late? Or just opportunistically correct?
The National Abrotion Rights Action League has decided to endorse Senator Obama to the chagrin of Emily’s List, pro-choice, etc.
“Naral did not wait long enough to satisfy Emily’s List, which promotes female candidates and has been a longstanding backer of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Ellen Malcom, president of Emily’s List and a co-chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, issued the following statement in response to Naral’s endorsement:
I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton – who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade – to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process. It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”
Story here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/obama-is-narals-choice/
This appears to be an opportunistic rather than principled move, which raises the question of whether NARAL (and perhaps Emily’s List as well) are not part of the past and that generational politics. Everything about pro-life/pro-choice/pro-abortion is getting more subtle, as the debate about Governor Kathleen Sebelius shows. Are these war horse organizations really on the cutting edge or the rear-guard as this contretemps suggests?
And more important, Is Senator Obama’s own generational shift able to get beyond the war-horse obstacles? Could he say, for example, “Yes, Hamas endorsed me too, but that certainly doesn’t mean I endorse them!” “Yes, NARAL [and presumably Emily's list] has endorsed me, but that doesn’t mean I endorse them.”
Looks like NARAL aborted Clinton’s candidacy.
Margaret, would anybody believe, after the statements Obama has made, that he doesn’t generally agree with the aims of NARAL? I wouldn’t, and I’m an Obama supporter.
He’s said some wrong-headed things about abortion. But I don’t think abortion’s on the radar of most non-Catholic voters, not with our foreign policy in a shambles and our economy in a mess.
In Michigan, everybody’s an independent contractor or working 30 hours a week (unless you work for the State). Businesses can’t afford (or know they can get away with not paying for) health care, paid vacation, sick time, etc. People in their mid-forties and up are getting fired and replaced with younger workers because they’ll work cheaper (though not necessarily smarter, which means some companies end up biting their own butts with this practice).
When times are this tough and people can barely afford to care for their born children, it’s hard to get them motivated to care for someone else’s unwanted unborn children. My prediction is that this lack of compassion will soon extend to retirees when the hated Boomers retire. Euthanasia is going to look mighty good to some people as a solution to the stresses that will be placed on Medicare.
Margaret, it is my understanding that NARAL does not endorse during the primary and the endorsement is a recognition that Obama will be the candidate for the general election. Whether it’s too early or likely to put off Clinton supporters, I don’t know, but Kate Michaelman personally endorsed Obama some time ago. In all honesty, I think that NARAL took this step as early as it did because it wants to reach out more to younger women, even at the risk of alienating some of its stalwart supporters. There is just no denying that younger women support Obama.
If Barak Obama said, “Yes, NARAL has endorsed me, but that doesn’t mean I endorse them,” he would be lying.
My thought here (and perhaps my deluded hope) was that Obama, who probably agrees with NARAL, doesn’t need to embrace them.
The Sebelius brouhaha points to a more complex and nuanced situation than the one NARAL has always defended. My hope, deluded or not, is that a younger generation of voters and politicians will move beyond NARAL, Bishop Naumann, et al., and actually work to diminish the conditions that encourage or drive women to have abortions. Everybody can do that no matter their views of Roe, abortion, etc.
And wouldn’t it be terrific if Emily’s List supported woman candidates without their pro-choice litmus test.
This is an arena that really does need a new politics.
I think McCain’s abortion probelms are far more fascinating.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4824779&page=1
Quote from article:
“If he were to change the party platform,” to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother’s life, “I think that would be political suicide,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, to ABC News. “I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble.”
Is abortion the central issue of the Presidency of the United States?
I suspect the vast majority of the citizens ofthis country will resoundingly answer “No” to that question.
If those who disagree continue to object, whether they are Emily’s List, NARAL, Bishop Naumann, or the Family Research Council, then they will deserve to be politically marginalized.
Jean,
“My prediction is that this lack of compassion will soon extend to retirees when the hated Boomers retire. Euthanasia is going to look mighty good to some people as a solution to the stresses that will be placed on Medicare.”
You are absolutely and terrifyingly correct. I dont think people realize the truly unsettling trajectory this society faces in this regard. I can only say that those who so vehemently proclaim, construct and live out the childless, self-obsessed, youth obsessed, ‘choice/freedom’ obsessed society of today may have bitter cause to regret it when they actually face the reality of growing old in the society they are building. It will have neither use nor sympathy for them.
RM
It was an audacious hope that Senator Obama wouldn’t embrace NARAL’s endorsement. That news was buried beneath the news of John Edwards’ endorsement, but it can be found at <>.
There are few places, if any, where Obama’s hopeful, conciliatory rhetoric–which is appealing and needed–rings more hollow than on abortion. He is a man of great talent, but his stance on abortion reveals politics-as-usual: beholden to financial backers and party leaders, he offers not even the slightest olive branch (or, alternatively, concession) to the majority of Americans on this issue (e.g., any restriction at all on an effectively unrestricted abortion license).
I will not vote for either the Democratic or Republican presidential nominee this Fall (as in the past two presidential elections, I will write-in for President and VP Minnesota’s two pro-life Democratic congressmen: Jim Oberstar and Collin Peterson). But, at least John McCain has taken positions that run counter to significant portions of his base (even if, as on immigration and torture, he has disappointingly backpedalled at times). Even Bill Clinton was willing to do so (e.g., welfare reform). Obama’s rhetoric will have substance only when he breaks with elements of his base on this issue.
There is not only moral, but political blindness at work here. Abortion is important not simply in itself, but as a bellwether of political culture. Given Peggy’s proclivity for pragmatic politics, such a break would cost him little from his base (they’re not going to vote for McCain or stay home in substantial numbers) and tap a significant realm of support among “white working-class voters.” But, who needs those voters, after all?
Is abortion the central issue of the Presidency of the United States?
I suspect the vast majority of the citizens ofthis country will resoundingly answer “No” to that question.
If those who disagree continue to object, whether they are Emily’s List, NARAL, Bishop Naumann, or the Family Research Council, then they will deserve to be politically marginalized.
I wouldn’t say that, for example, sympathy for Nazis, is the central issue of the presidency of the United States, but if a candidate were to express sympathy for the Nazi point of view, that would disqualify him or her from the presidency, and, if that candidate were Catholic, I would expect his/her bishop to have a talk with her.
Ms. Raber’s post reveals why Ms. Steinfels approach, as much as we might wish it will work, will not. So long as we fail to reject abortion, we will continue to accept greater and greater transgressions against human life. Caring for women in crisis pregnancies, or helping to avoid them, is admirable in itself, but does not address the injustice of having a class of persons unprotected by the law. So long as that is the case, anything else we do will be a house built on sand.
I think younger voters are less rigid, but they are also less likely to make abortion a decisive issue in their voting calculus. The hot button issues of the young people I talk to are gay rights (they loathe gay bashing) and the environment. What would send them in the direction of NARAL would be efforts to restrict access to contraception.
abortion+Nazis is so marginal John, you proved my point. Nobody will take you seriously.
“but if a candidate were to express sympathy for the Nazi point of view, that would disqualify him or her from the presidency, and, if that candidate were Catholic, I would expect his/her bishop to have a talk with her.
You would expect that in vain because, when those exact opportunites were actually present in Spain, Argentina, Paraguay and Germany, the bishops, by a great majority, defied your expectations, and sided with the Fascists agan and again. Don’t ask about episcopal behavior under Communism. All around, a bad example.
American bishops can’t even “have talk” to their own priests about sexually abusing their own parishioners. When bishops selectively address mortal sins that are outside their direct control, while conveniently failing to addres the sins they actually can control, they forfeit the right to be taken seriously on the subject of other people’s sins.
To state the obvious: If abortion is not legal it will be illegal; nonetheless, there will continue to be abortions.
Don’t we still have a responsibility to change the conditions that pressure or drive women to have abortions whether or not they are legal? Or is that the part where they go to jail?
David R. Carlin, a lifelong Democrat and former Democratic leader in a state senate, has an interesting “Short Take” in the current Commonweal about why he can’t vote for the Democratic presidential nominee in this election cycle. He plans to vote for McCain.
Like Christopher Ruddy, I can’t in good conscience vote for either Obama (or by some superdelegate miracle, Clinton) or McCain, and I recently came to the conclusion that I’d go the write-in route also, though I haven’t settled on a name. After reading Mr. Ruddy’s post, I won’t be surprised if “Christopher Ruddy” ends up on my ballot.
Joe McFaul–
Could you be a little more specific about what you mean by “[i]s abortion the central issue of the Presidency of the United States?”
The presidency itself as a political institution? A particular presidential administration? What does “central” mean? Is “central” something static and unchanging? If some issue is not “central,” does that mean it has no significance?
Having edited David Carlin for many years, I recall that he could never bring himself to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate; I was of the belief he simply didn’t vote for president. I am a little surprised that he now has cast his lot with McCain. Is this the lesser of two evils?–the standard by which other Commonwealers known to me have cast their ballot while holding their noses.
Any fair reading of polling numbers suggests that no candidate and no party track the views of the American people (or at least those that answer surveys). The vast majority do not cast their ballots on the basis of their views on abortion. The abortion debate in most elections keeps the pro-life view out there, but the debate between advocates and advocacy organizations on both sides serves mostly to annoy the hell out of people (at least in my experience). Maybe that’s the point–to keep everyone irritated.
Robert M, I agree with Margaret that we need to get beyond the easy explanations for abortion and euthanasia (i.e., people are callous, selfish, materialistic, and immoral) and face up to the challenge of reducing these evils.
While I don’t doubt for a moment that callousness contributes to these problems, that’s not the whole picture.
It costs huge amounts of money to deal with a catastrophic or chronic illness. The elderly who rely on Medicare alone shoulder 20 percent of their own medical care, and the frequency of medical diagnostics (mammograms, etc.) has been reduced from an annual to a biannual rate.
Unless we face up to it, we’re looking at a growing number of elderly who will be euthanized by lack of care–and it won’t take long for someone to come along and start promoting the Black Capsule as kinder, gentler–and a lot cheaper.
I am always surprised at the number of people who dance around the issue of how does a girl get pregnant? And, in effect, the number who thus accept the philosophy of the fellow who said “I just had a roll in sack; she’s the one who got pregnant”.
I recall that at one of the pregnancy centers, a black young woman who first arrived depressed and unhappy. She had been to a Planned UnParenthood place and was told she was pregnant. She was offered advice on how to apply for Medicaid for the $1500 cost.
Then it turned out she was not pregnant. She was cheered up; she took a happy attitude. And recounted that when her “boyfriend” approached her again, she told him “Buzz off, Sam”.
This myth of the weepy, depressed, helpless young woman is just that – a myth. So much for the “empowerment” talk of the feminists. The real feminists – Susan B. Anthony – knew how babies were made. They were the first to empower women – young or old – and say “Buzz off, Sam”.
Gabriel, I think we’re all aware that you think poorly of Planned Parenthood. Many of the rest of us feel the same. And as one who doesn’t support PP, I resent the fact that you seem to want to conflate what we’ve been saying here with some of the rhetoric that comes out of PP.
What exactly has been said that makes you feel anyone’s “dancing”?
Saying “buzz off” is, indeed a fine thing for young women to tell young men on the make. But as a solution in and of itself it completely ignores the fact that young men are also capable of controlling their urges–and that young women are not devoid of sexual response.
Jean, I am not sure what exactly you are saying. I certainly don’t think I was offering up ‘easy explanations’, and ‘ignoring the challenge of reducing those evils’. If however your intent is to imply that confronting health care costs is somehow harder and is a challenge society is more likely to avoid, I might disagree with you there. In fact I rather think there’s a danger of addressing symptom rather than cause.
You are absolutely right that health care costs will be an incentive for ending life (or more likely it will be euphemistically expressed as ‘allowing it to end’). That has in fact already begun in some of the more ‘advanced’ societies. But the underlying cause that enables that in the first place is the transformation of the society into a self-centered, me/now environment. I am no expert but nonetheless will predict quite confidently that we will not be able to successfully address the one until we have acknowledged and confronted the challenge of the other.
I do not think that recognizing and addressing the morality and philosophy that creates the environment in which these things blossom is either offering a so-called ‘easy explanation’ nor is it somehow ‘avoiding the real challenges’.
RM
While not wanting to sound toooo pragmatic, I think it is a mistake to conflate abortion and euthanasia, which seems to lie at the center of this debate, that is, that abortion will inevitably lead to euthanasia. Who can know the future?
Don’t these two forms of social disorder reside in very different social and economic contexts? They both seem to require medical interventions, at least in our “advanced” state, but they certainly were carried out in pre-modern settings. But for very different reasons.
Now, they seem to rest on economic limitations (too poor, care too expensive, etc). But we don’t have to see them that way. Isn’t the fear of a euthanasizing regime simply the nightmare of the boomer generation? And isn’t that because we have grown so dependent on medicine preserving and saving us–often in unnecessary or futile ways? The idea of a “natural” death has receded from our consciousness and social experience. But at some point, couldn’t each of us take responsibility for living out our lives without medical intervention (asprin aside). This is not or need not be choosing to die, but accepting that we were created and exist as finite creatures. In other words, there are spiritual, psychological, and social resources for elders in making decisions about how we live our final days–modern medicine, and/or high-tech medicine need not be the primary one, or even present in the mix at all.
If that is so (and it may be a big jump for some), then the coercive regime that underlies the nightmare of euthanasia could not take hold.
Robert, I think we are basically on the same page, but in my experience with hard-line pro-choice family members, the language used to justify abortion and euthanasia (Margaret, they do see these two issues as part of the same package) isn’t really part of the culture of selfishness as you describe it, though perhaps it amounts to the same thing.
In their view, it is not socially responsible or kind to bring unwanted children into an already over-populated world, nor to bring handicapped children into a world where they will be marginalized, perhaps placed in abusive institutions after the deaths of their parents, and will drain economic and emotional resources from other family members.
Neither do they think it is kind or responsible to let someone suffer agonies of a terminal illness for months on end while they deplete the resources of the remaining family members.
Margaret,
Abortion and euthanasia may not be the same thing, but they arise from exactly the same source. It is not the social and economic context that matters most, but the spiritual. Both arise from a spiritual bankruptcy, and the foulest selfishness. Once human life is primarily a burden and not a gift, once the individual’s desires to design his or her existence trumps responsibilty to God – both are inevitable outcomes. Even in primitive culture and ancient cultures where health care costs aren’t an issue, where you have abortion as an acceptable practice, suicide and euthanasia are acceptable and widely practiced as well. It is wrong not to conflate them.
The problem of politics and values continue here in aerguments often previously repeated.
Late yesterday, the print copy of America arrived with what I thought were two interesting book reviews- both favorable.
Marha Nusbaum”s “Liberty Of Conscience” stresses the importance in our society of balance between recognizing and respectiing that we are not only multi cultural but also multi faith (including atheism) and increasingly so, and that we are a Country of values where people of faith cannot be diminished or marginalized in the public sqaure by the secularists.
John DiJulio’s “A Godly Republic”, recounts his work on faith based initiatives, and his leaving disenchanted over the religious right’s desire to use public service money for proselytizing purposes.
The author is described as not only fully pro-life but fully committed to the entire Gospel message and its spread through service.
Reading through this, I recalled the attempt here (and across the uS) by the Roundtable of Social Justice folk at the National Pastoral Life Center to bring together right to life and peace and justice groups.
From experience within my family, the result here was a rather quick falling apart as the right to life folks demanded priority – or, pardon the expression, “one issue.”
This thread then covers lots of old ground and I particularly object to the ideologuically driven “Nazi” nonsense that sounds like a kind of catholic swift boat.
Life and gospel issues deserve better!
Nusbaum’s argfument sounds much like the reason BXVI appreciates the US vs. Europe and needs to be taken seriously in the debate here.
Personally, I think the DiJulio approach of service is a far more effective argument than those who wish to crimninalize by legal chnnels.
I deeply sympathize with Granta nd Cathy who have a role of providing our values in the complex religion/political maze that this election will bring.
Sean,
I think there is a major distinction between physician-assisted suicide, where the afflicted person decides to end his or her life, and euthanasia, where others decide to end the afflicted person’s life, possibly against his or her own will. Setting moral issues aside and being completely practical, those of us in a position to influence law and social policy don’t need to be concerned about abortion, because we can’t be aborted. But we all may grow old, or become sick or disabled. Even if people are guilty of extreme selfishness, they are still concerned about their own future and would not want to give someone the power to euthanize them at some future date. Also, a great many elderly people and disabled people are still voters and are not about to give up their right to life.
Sean, I guess I come at this from a more personal point of view.
I have been able to stay one step ahead of the euthanasia issue with my own father, who has been terminally ill for more than two years now, by finding humane alternatives to plans that were afoot.
I doubt my dad would be alive today if I had given way to the anger and frustration I often felt with my parents and accused him and my mother of being spiritually bankrupt and full of foul selfishness.
What motivates people to consider euthanasia (and abortion, I believe) is often fear justified with a false sense of emotional and economic “pragmatisim.”
Sorry for taking the thread so far away from the original point.
Euthanasia is also unlike abortion (at least in the U.S.) because the Supreme Court has ruled there is no constitutional right to die. Small point I know, but just for the mix.
OK this has wandered a bit afield, my original introduction of the euthanasia angle was just in reaction to Jean’s original comment, which touched a nerve with me.
Sean, I agree it is not an issue of ‘conflating’, the two indeed arise from the same root and are part of a sort of black or anti ‘seamless garment’. I do not want to get into trotting out slippery slopes and s.g.’s though — just think it’s pretty self evident, and somewhat disingenuous to argue otherwise or try to find some sort of superficial distinction (which of course do exist, and have been pointed out in subsequent posts) — these are all true, but merely allow us to resist addressing the root cause by pretending these things can all be somehow ‘solved’ in isolation.
Jean, yes I do think we are substantially in agreement. And yes, I do in fact think the arguments you describe your ‘hard line pro-choice family members’ as making ‘amount to the same thing’ as what I was saying — arguments from what is, essentially, selfishness (or more classically, pride, which is as always at the root of most every other sin). When reduced to its core, the argument stems from the basic assumption that one is somehow empowered to decide better than another who should live/be born, and who should not.
Also be clear I am talking about euthanasia, not suicide (a related, but different, issue). Everyone who thinks ‘it couldn’t happen here’ and all those elderly voters would never let it happen — hope you’re right, but I doubt it. I’m not saying ‘Logan’s Run’ is just around the corner, but it is simply an inevitable outcome of this trajectory — in a world where resource constraints will continue to grow, where ‘self’ and ‘freedom’ (as defined by today’s idealogues) are prized above all else, the old, infirm, or otherwise ‘imperfect’ will be triaged out, economically, socially, and yes, eventually legally if they resist. All sorts of euphemistic terms and morally tortured arguments, (many of which have already been test run in the abortion ‘debate’) will be deployed to justify it and salve consciences. But it’s a perfectly logical and plausbile outcome of the trajectory society is on, and to dismiss it or refuse to address its root cause now (before it bears its ugly fruit in the trials that may lie ahead) seems to me a pretty big risk.
RM
If selfishness is “seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others,” it’s begging the question of when life begins to blame abortion on selfishness. Almost no one who believes abortion should be permissible believes that “others” are involved. While people who call themselves “pro-life” may see (or claim to see) an equivalence between a fetus and a disabled person or an old person, I don’t think that’s what a majority believes or ever will believe. Jews have put the dividing line between actual person and potential person at birth, and while valuing potential life, don’t hesitate to sacrifice a fetus to save the life of the mother. Yet they haven’t developed a tradition of killing off the disabled and the elderly.
David,
You say, “I think there is a major distinction between physician-assisted suicide, where the afflicted person decides to end his or her life, and euthanasia, where others decide to end the afflicted person’s life, possibly against his or her own will.”
I say, certainly, but not as to the sinfulness of the act. It is the same act. Motives may differ but the wrongfulness is the same.
As for selfishness, one “other,” that you fail to consider in your analysis is the Lord. The mother of a dear friend of mine died last month after a long bout with breast cancer. At the wake he told me that on her death bed, although in pain and having difficulty breathing, she joked around with her children and the doctor. One of her son’s was worried that she didn’t fully appreciate that this was, in deed, the end. He asked the doctor what he thought. The doctor said he had told her, but that he would make certain. He went back in the room and began to explain what was happening, and that she had no more than hours at the most to live. She pulled away her oxygen mask, looked him in the face and said, “Doctor, the Good Lord gave me this life, and He will take it when He thinks it’s time.” She started joking around with her family again, and died a hour or so later.
It is selfish to take something that does not belong to you.
Also, I don’t care what a majority think if they are wrong. Today there are some people who think profoundly disabled people have no right to live independent of what society grants them. On the day they can muster a majority, will such unfortunates suddenly cease to be human? Did African slaves become people when enough white people agreed they were?
Jean,
I am sorry to hear about your father, and I will pray for him. And I am sorry if I hit a nerve.
However, please don’t presume that I don’t understand the personal toll of these issues and have no experience with them. I am a believer in what CS Lewis says. Being a Christian means having a soft heart, but a tough mind. In that vein I have great sympathy for those who feel compelled to kill themselves for any reason, but I still say it is a selfish and profoundly sinful act.
We should look to Mother Theresa as the model for end of life care, not Dr Kevorkian.
Sean, I’m not arguing with anything you’re saying.
But I think my parents would have used their Final Exit plans long ago if I’d simply given them big long lectures about their selfishness.
Neither do I doubt your tough-mindedness. I take them to heart more than you know. They’ve certainly solidified my sense of unfitness to be a Catholic.
But I can’t say I discern much of the soft-heartedness you profess, perhaps we have to chalk that up to the limitations of blog communication and my sense that you see your role here as one of exhorter rather than coddler of the weak and lax.