Next month, voters in Massachusetts will decide whether to approve Question #2, “allowing a physician licensed in Massachusetts to prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally-ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person’s life”.

With all the discussion here at dotCommonweal in recent weeks about whether, when and how our bishops should enter into the arena of electoral politics, the example of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and how he’s chosen to engage with the challenges presented by Question #2 seems a worthy addition to our ongoing “clarification of thought”.  In the first in a series of columns Cardinal O’Malley is writing in the weeks leading up to the election*,  three things struck me as important aspects of how he is exercising his role as bishop and teacher:

Humility:  O’Malley begins not by invoking his (or the pope’s, or the Church’s) authority, but by framing his forthcoming statements as “some reflections around the theme of end-of-life issues” that he wants “to share with the people (of) the archdiocese”.  He then tells the story of how as a young Franciscan, he “decided ‘to make the sacrifice’ in solidarity with a fellow religious” of showing up to a sparsely attended honorary degree ceremony for the then-little known Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  (There’s a gentle, self-mocking humor exhibited here; it’s a characteristic of the cardinal’s pastoral style often evident in his appearances around the archdiocese.)

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It’s far from conclusive, but there’s growing evidence that the Affordable Care Act could lead to a significant reduction in the number of abortions performed in the United States.  (If true, it also follows that repealing the Affordable Care Act would result in more, not fewer, abortions than leaving the law in place.)

Writing for The Atlantic, Brian Fung reports, “As the number of insured has gone up in Massachusetts, new state data show a corresponding decline in the number of abortions performed there since 2006.” Since passage of “Romneycare”, Massachusetts’ abortion rate has dropped 17%.

Fung hastens to add, “it’s possible that the decline in the abortion rate had nothing to do with Romneycare”, noting that Massachusetts’ abortion rate has declined steadily since 1991.

Nonetheless, researchers think there’s a link.  Fung quotes Dr. Patrick Whelan, who first identified the trend as saying, “When women have more stable access to medical care, they’re more likely to see doctors, they’re more likely to have somebody inquiring about their sexual health. The fact that you have somebody who cares about you results in people being healthier, and that includes not getting pregnant if they don’t want to be.”

“When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.”

That’s the opening paragraph of a detailed and thoughtful reflection titled “How I Lost My Fear Of Universal Health Care” by “Melissa”, a young mother of self-described “Protestant Fundamentalist” background, writing about how her experience of Canadian health care has worked on her, and both calmed some of her fears and changed some of her thinking over the past few years.

Despite the fact that Melissa comes at these issues (including abortion) with a different theological and ecclesiological background that most Roman Catholics do, she shares many of the same concerns.  And, despite the fact she share many of those concerns, some of her conclusions most likely aren’t the ones many of us would come to.

But what I like most about her essay—and why I think it’s worth discussing—is that it’s an excellent example of the power of lived experience.

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