Proportionality: 48 Million Against _____?
My goal in this post is to address whether it is consistent with Church teachings for a Catholic vote for Obama in the upcoming election. My conclusion is that it is not possible to do so. Before going further, let me add a few disclaimers:
1. I am not arguing that a Catholic must or should vote for McCain.
2. I am not arguing that voting for Obama makes you a bad Catholic or a non-Catholic – every Catholic I know including myself has done things inconsistent with Church teaching.
3. I do not claim any special authority or knowledge.
I will start by expanding on my first disclaimer:
The Catholic Case Against Voting For McCain
I am not going to make the entire case, but I will point you to a couple of sources I think do a strong job of the case that a Catholic either should not or even cannot vote for John McCain. First, I direct you to the blog of Mark Shea. Mr. Shea is a lay Catholic author who will not vote for most Democrats because of the abortion issue. He has lately, over the last few years, become increasingly disenchanted with most Republicans as well. His issues in this respect appear to me to be torture and the Iraq war. He is also disappointed with the GOP’s very imperfect opposition to Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) and believes that too many GOPers use abortion to get votes, but do nothing about it. Anyone interested should review his blog, especially over the last couple of months. Two good posts to start with on this topic are here and here. That last post includes an exchange between one of Mr. Shea’s readers and a bishop on the issue of whether a Catholic may vote for a candidate who supports grave evil in order to oppose and potentially defeat another candidate who would bring about an even greater evil. The subtext appears to be whether the reader can vote for John McCain who supports ESCR, or must the reader vote for a third-party candidate who is purer but has no chance of winning. The bishop responds that it is permissible, Mark Shea agrees, but also argues that it is better to vote for the third-party candidate, at least under present circumstances. [By the way, Check out Dawn Eden for a very respectful disagreement with Mark Shea on this issue.]
I acknowledge that part of my motivation in calling these essays to your attention is to attempt to establish some good faith, but please, I urge everyone to take Mark Shea’s, and Zippy’s argument’s very seriously. I have.
The Primary Position of the Abortion Issue
Last week the USCCB released a statement that provides that:
Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an ‘intrinsically unjust law’ we are morally obliged to oppose (see Evangelium vitae, nos. 71-73). Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life.”
— Joint Statement by Cardinal Justin Rigali, Chairman, Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Bishop William Murphy, Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, October 21, 2008.
It has been reported that:
“A quarter of America’s bishops have said that the most important issue for voters in the forthcoming presidential election is abortion – comments that may help boost the fortunes of Republican candidate John McCain.Some 50 out of the nation’s 197 active bishops have published articles or given interviews during the run-up up to the election urging abortion as the key issue on which voters should decide which way to vote”
The author of that articles provided an update, and some clarifications to those figures.
To my knowledge, this is unprecedented, and the reason, I believe, is that Obama is the most radical pro-abortion politician in US history.
The Case Against Obama
To begin, review my entry on Obama and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA).
As I noted in the BAIPA post:
Beginning mostly in the 1990s, the anti-abortion movement tried a new strategy. Activists started calling attention to the more extreme edges of US abortion policy, and pro-life legislators introduced various pieces of legislation that had dual aims: to find and impose limitations on abortion that courts would uphold, and to use the votes on these measures as political tools.
Obama — with the help of a Congress controlled by Democrats in both houses — would eliminate all of these restrictions.
Here are some of Obama’s other abortion and life positions:
Rated 100% by NARAL on pro-choice votes in 2005, 2006 & 2007
Voted against banning Partial Birth Abortions.
Supports federally-funded embryonic stem cell research.
Voted against extending SCHIP health insurance eligibility to unborn children.
Voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion
Voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions
Obama has expressed support for repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal medicaid dollars from paying for abortions.
[Hat tip to blogger Red Cardigan for the inspiration for this list.]
Further, he has stated that his first act as president would be to sign the abortion Freedom Of Choice Act:
Obama wants to “play offense” on abortion rights. He tells Planned Parenthood that “We are not going only to win an election, we are going to transform this nation.”
With a President Obama and likely Democratic majorities in both he House and Senate, FOCA will pass. What is the FOCA? It would
abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would “sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.”
Robert George “Obama’s Abortion Extremism”
Mr. George’s article also points out the extreme nature of Obama’s support for ESCR, to the extent that Obama voted against research for alternative stem cell research methods, and was one of only 28 senators (all Democrats) to oppose such research:
Decent people of every persuasion hold out the increasingly realistic hope of resolving the moral issue surrounding embryonic stem-cell research by developing methods to produce the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells without using (or producing) embryos. But when a bill was introduced in the United States Senate to put a modest amount of federal money into research to develop these methods, Barack Obama was one of the few senators who opposed it. From any rational vantage point, this is unconscionable. Why would someone not wish to find a method of producing the pluripotent cells scientists want that all Americans could enthusiastically endorse? Why create and kill human embryos when there are alternatives that do not require the taking of nascent human lives? It is as if Obama is opposed to stem-cell research unless it involves killing human embryos.
I cannot commend Robert George’s article strongly enough. Please read the entire thing, with all due care. I particularly recommend his analysis of whether you can justify voting for Obama by hoping that his support for increased social spending — especially for healthcare — would actually lower the abortion rate. I will add some points to that in a moment, but first let me quote from this article again, in case you do not take my advice and read the whole thing:
We know that the federal and state pro-life laws and policies that Obama has promised to sweep away (and that John McCain would protect) save thousands of lives every year. Studies conducted by Professor Michael New and other social scientists have removed any doubt. Often enough, the abortion lobby itself confirms the truth of what these scholars have determined. Tom McClusky has observed that Planned Parenthood’s own statistics show that in each of the seven states that have FOCA-type legislation on the books, “abortion rates have increased while the national rate has decreased.” In Maryland, where a bill similar to the one favored by Obama was enacted in 1991, he notes that “abortion rates have increased by 8 percent while the overall national abortion rate decreased by 9 percent.”
So, while you consider the possibility that higher social spending would reduce abortions, it is necessary to counter that possibility with the actual evidence that laws such as FOCA, by removing all legal obstacles, increase abortions.
New York, Social Spending, and Abortion
New York sidesteps the Hyde Amendment and pays for Medicaid abortions by using state-only funds to do so. This is permitted under the Hyde Amendment. New York also has unrestricted abortions for minors. New York also has famously high spending on social services generally, and Medicaid and health care in particular. In fact, New York spends more on Medicaid than do Texas and California combined. So if a high level of social spending and especially healthcare spending would reduce abortions, that should be reflected in New York. Instead:
In most of the United States, 24 abortions are carried out for every 100 live births. In New York, 72 abortions occur for every 100 live birth.
Crains New York, “High Abortion Rate Worries New York Experts.” Again, New York has virtually no meaningful legal restrictions on abortions, and a massive bureaucratic network of contraceptive distribution. As the same Crains article notes: “free or low-cost contraception is offered through 59 publicly funded programs at 218 sites in New York state.” The result is that New York has triple the rate of abortion nationwide.
Other data supports the conclusion that government social programs do not reduce the incidence of abortion. In 1995, the US Bishops, through the USCCB, opposed the welfare reform passed by President Clinton and a Republican Congress, in substantial part because the bishops feared that reducing welfare benefits for single mothers would increase the abortion rate. In fact, the second Clinton term continued a trend of reduced abortion rates. This trend has continued through the two terms of Republican George Bush, such that “the overall U.S. abortion rate is at its lowest level since 1974.” [NB: I am not arguing for against welfare reform, but merely noting that the evidence does not support a conclusion that it increased abortion rates.]
Legal Restrictions Work
Why has the rate of abortion gone down for 30 years? Legal restrictions work. The very restrictions that Obama and a Democratic Congress would overturn, work to reduce the rates of abortion. As demonstrated by the research of Michael J. New:
For instance, the 1990s decline in the abortion rate–a decline that is eagerly touted by these Obama and Kerry supporters–had virtually nothing to do with policies enacted by President Clinton, and much to do with the dramatic increase in the number of states that were enacting pro-life laws. The information below comes from NARAL’s Who Decides, an annual publication which provides information about abortion legislation:
- In 1992, virtually no states were enforcing informed-consent laws; by 2000, 27 states had informed-consent laws in effect.
- In 1992, no states had banned or restricted partial-birth abortion; by 2000, twelve states had bans or restrictions in effect.
- In 1992, only 20 states were enforcing parental-involvement statutes; by 2000, 32 states were enforcing these laws.
As explained by Richard M. Doerflinger, the Associate Director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Many women are pressured toward abortion, and they need our help. The pressures are partly, but only partly, economic in nature. Women are influenced by husbands, boyfriends, parents and friends, and by a culture and legal system that tells them the child they carry has no rights and is of no consequence. Law cannot solve all problems, but it can tell us which solutions are unacceptable – and today Roe still teaches that killing the unborn child is an acceptable solution, even a “right.” Without ever forgetting the need to support pregnant women and their families, that tragic and unjust error must be corrected if we are to build a society that respects all human life.
Proportionality
When can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights? Archbishop Chaput of Denver has written as follows:
8. So can a Catholic in good conscience support a “pro-choice” candidate? The answer is: I can’t and I won’t. But I do know some serious Catholics — people whom I admire — who will. I think their reasoning is mistaken. But at the very least they do sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And even more importantly: They don’t keep quiet about it; they don’t give up their efforts to end permissive abortion; they keep lobbying their party and their elected representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can support “pro-choice” candidates if they support them despite — not because of — their “pro-choice” views. But they also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it.
9. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.
I think this puts the issue remarkably well. Do your reasons for potentially voting for Obama meet that test? I will not try to rebut them here. Any attempt to do so, even in a summary fashion, would require attacking Obama on other issues, and arguing in favor of McCain or Republicans. I have no desire to do that. I will, however, provide a caution, to please be aware of the limitations of your own knowledge. On almost every issue, reasonable Catholics can, and do, disagree. On abortion, there can be no dispute among Catholics that is consistent with Catholic teaching. How absolutely certain can you be, that your positions on any other issue are so necessarily right that they can outweigh a conscious decision to support a candidate on this issue?
This is for each of you to judge for yourselves.
There have been more than 48 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Proportionality.
We Should Be Proud To Stand Up For Catholic Values
Some surveys and reports have indicated that Catholics might be shy about coming across as pushy, one issue voters. Planned Parenthood openly courts one-issue voters on the other side. So does NARAL. Is everyone in your office, or neighborhood, pro-choice? Do most of them plan to vote for Obama? Does it comfort you to tell them, “I am opposed to abortion personally, but …”? It shouldn’t.
The truth is that for some Catholics, the abortion issue has never been a comfortable cause. It’s embarrassing. It’s not the kind of social justice they like to talk about. It interferes with their natural political alliances. And because the homicides involved in abortion are ”little murders” – the kind of private, legally protected murders that kill conveniently unseen lives – it’s easy to look the other way.
“Little Murders,” Charles J Chaput. Yes, that is Archbishop Chaput again, speaking as a private individual, not in his official capacity. If you have given me the great courtesy of reading this far, please indulge me, and read his entire “Little Murders” essay before you vote. I am tempted to quote the entire thing. Catholic blogger Amy Welborn deserves credit for calling this essay to my attention. Also, this is slightly off-topic, but if you are interested in how the Democrats, the historical political home of Catholics in the US, became the abortion party, I recommend this essay at First Things, How We Got To Where We Are.
Catholics should be proud to support life and liberty:
It is of the greatest importance to re-establish the essential connection between life and freedom. These are inseparable goods: where one is violated, the other also ends up being violated. There is no true freedom where life is not welcomed and loved; and there is no fullness of life except in freedom. Both realities have something inherent and specific which links them inextricably: the vocation to love. Love, as a sincere gift of self, is what gives the life and freedom of the person their truest meaning.
Evangelium Vitae, John Paul the Great.
