Notre Dame on life

My alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, released an Institutional Statement Supporting the Choice for Life on 8 April 2010:

Consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church on such issues as abortion, research involving human embryos, euthanasia, the death penalty, and other related life issues, the University of Notre Dame recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.

Although this brief statement is fine as far as it goes, one might question the wording of the title. Why "the choice for life" rather than, say, "the defence of life"?

Controversy over abortion remarks

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Roman Catholic primate of Canada, has stirred up controversy by reiterating his church’s position on abortion at a recent pro-life conference. In response, Charles Lewis asks: Is the Pope Catholic?

Why abortion is different

The following is this month's instalment of my regular column, "Principalities & Powers," for Christian Courier, dated 14 September. Isn't it time you subscribed to Christian Courier today?

Over the years in this space I have been critical of those pro-life Christians who cast their votes solely on the abortion issue. After all, governments have a full array of duties to perform in fulfilling their central task of doing public justice. Even if a government fails in one area, it may discharge its other responsibilities conscientiously, thus earning the support of its citizens. On the other hand, a given leader may claim the pro-life label and yet demonstrate incompetence in governing. This ought not to be taken lightly.

However, those claiming that abortion is just another issue are themselves on shaky ground. In the current policy debates in the United States, a number of activists are claiming that health care too is a moral issue, as are the environment and the minimum wage. It would not do to belittle such claims, because there is a large measure of truth in them.

Yes, health care is important. It is only just that all people have access to the best medical attention possible so they can fulfil their life callings. Similarly, it matters that we protect the environment, because we owe it to future generations whose lives will depend on it. Christians in particular are aware that, as God’s image-bearers, we have been given a stewardship over his earth, which we are to use wisely and carefully. It is indeed necessary that we ensure that all workers be able to feed and clothe their families and to keep a roof over their heads.

Nevertheless, not all issues necessarily have the same import or significance – something the language of morality may mask. In fact, there is a qualitative difference between abortion and the cluster of issues touched on above. In the case of the latter, no one disputes that the environment must be protected; the current debate revolves around how best to do so. Some favour a market-oriented approach, while others are convinced that government must play a central role. Again no one denies the desirability of furnishing the best health care to all citizens. Disagreement arises over whether this is best done through private or public insurance plans. Though Canadians and Americans have taken different paths on the issue, both approaches have their flaws – serious flaws, as it turns out, which illustrates that calling health care a moral issue cannot itself resolve the political debate.

Abortion is different. Here the quarrel is not over the best way to protect the unborn; it is precisely over whether to do so at all. Those believing women should have the right to terminate a pregnancy hold this position despite the presence of the vulnerable child. Those who believe that the unborn deserve protection do so because of the child’s presence. This fundamental disagreement over what is at stake is what sets the abortion issue apart from most others. Proponents of the so-called consistent life ethic generally fail to comprehend this. Such bishops as Denver’s Charles Chaput are right to make a fuss over Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. Abortion is not merely a private opinion; it is a clear matter of justice that needs to be addressed head on.

This does not mean there is no room for compromise. It would be politically foolish for pro-lifers to push for a total ban on abortion and refuse to accept half measures that would fall short of this lofty goal. Yet it is quite another thing to deny, as some Christians do, that abortion is a justice issue at all and to equate it with, say, health care, where the overall policy goal, if not the means of getting there, commands general agreement.

Another pro-life Kennedy?

Although the recently deceased Senator Edward M. Kennedy was far from being a pro-lifer towards the end of his life, this was not always the case, as indicated in this remarkable 1971 letter, which can be enlarged by clicking on the image below:



A more readable transcript of the letter can be found here.

Abortion reduction

Last year around this time, when a number of prominent evangelicals were claiming to have toned down the Democratic Party's pro-choice policy, I expressed scepticism and wondered whether they had allowed themselves to be taken advantage of with nothing to show in return. My genial, if curmudgeonly, friend Keith Pavlischek says yes and cites concrete evidence that the Obama administration has no intention of pursuing an abortion-reduction strategy, despite the claims of Jim Wallis and others to the contrary: Ceding the Common Ground on Abortion.

It is one thing to recognize that politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck is reputed to have said. Like it or not, involvement in the political process necessarily entails accepting compromise and settling for what one observer has called proximate justice. It is quite another, however, to yield ground so totally on an issue of importance, to receive nothing in the exchange, and then to claim the opposite. This comes close, if not to outright deception (I prefer to be charitable here), then to something approaching acute political ineptitude.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921-2009)

With gratitude, we celebrate the life of a gracious and kindhearted woman, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, whose compassion for the mentally disabled led her to found the Special Olympics. What is less known, and what the media, with some exceptions, are generally neglecting to tell us, is that she was also very much pro-life, thus making her one of a very few prominent Democrats left to hold this position, as reported here: NBC Notes Eunice Kennedy Shriver Was 'Lifelong Opponent of Abortion'.

Canada's own Fr. Raymond J. de Souza puts this stance within the context of her Catholic faith with this piece in the National Post: A tale of two Kennedys.

The Shrivers represented the old Democratic Party -- economically liberal and culturally conservative. . . . Eunice was the ideal of the Catholic in public life -- passionately committed to the poor, defender of the weak, pro-life, morally upright and a woman of faith and family.

May she rest in peace until the resurrection.

More resignations from Order

The fallout continues from last year's controversial award of this country's highest honour to abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler: Resignations from the Order of Canada. One of those whose resignation the Governor General accepted is Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, Archbishop of Montreal.

The abortion debate

Here in Canada abortion appears to be on the radar screen of no major political party or politician. After Brian Mulroney's failed attempt to enact a law regulating abortion more than a decade and a half ago, it was dropped from the national agenda, a political hot potato that no one wanted to touch. We Canadians are largely a quiescent lot, unwilling to rock the boat on the most divisive of issues, seemingly content to allow our élites to act on our behalf.

Our cousins to the south have no such qualms about raising and tackling difficult issues. This was exhibited in the third presidential debate last week between John McCain and Barack Obama, where Bob Schieffer brought up the issue. Although views on abortion once crossed party lines some three decades ago, they no longer do. The Republican Party platform is now definitively on the pro-life side, even if not all Republicans necessarily agree with this position. Similarly, the Democratic Party is now solidly on the pro-choice side, with dissidents increasingly relegated to the margins of, if not completely excluded from, the party. Democrats who were once pro-life have gradually been brow-beaten into going along with their party's mainstream.

In the wake of the debate, it would be difficult to imagine two more contrasting responses by fellow Christians than these: At Long Last: Obama, Abortion, and the Courts, by Fr. Neuhaus; and A New Conversation on Abortion, by Jim Wallis.

First, Neuhaus. My perceptions of how the two candidates comported themselves are at such variance with Neuhaus' that I find myself wondering whether we were watching the same debate. I thought Obama came across as cool and composed — even presidential — while McCain looked distinctly ill-at-ease with a smirk pasted across his face. Admittedly, this is only to focus on the images projected by the two gentlemen, which leaves McCain at a disadvantage.

I am also wary of Neuhaus' description of the "two nations" (shades of Lord Durham!) uneasily co-existing in the United States today, which is a little overwrought. I think Jim Skillen is closer to the mark in discussing the two exodus stories that divide Americans. Nevertheless, I share Neuhaus' concern over Obama being put in a position to change the composition of the US Supreme Court in the direction of greater judicial activism. I have little sympathy with Colin Powell's "difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court" as his reason for endorsing Obama, "conservative" in this case referring to someone unwilling to legislate from the bench.

Now to Wallis. It seems to me that his above-cited piece definitely reflects his pragmatist rather than prophetic side. Wallis appears to believe that, in the interest of bipartisanship, the issue of the justice of abortion can be set aside, as long as both parties can be brought to agree on the need to reduce the number of abortions. As noted before, Wallis portrays himself as an agent of reconciliation on this issue, although he admits ultimately to being pro-choice. The notion that innocent life might deserve legal protection he describes as a mere posture.

In the comments to a recent post, "gerard" asks: "Hasn't [Wallis] a point that every step into the right direction is one to appreciate?" Certainly, provided we have correctly discerned which direction is really being taken. Politics has been famously described as the art of the possible. It may be necessary to settle for less than one would like out of the political process. I have little sympathy with those pro-lifers who would sooner bring down the entire political order than tolerate a single abortion.

That said, Wallis' effort to play the political game, if I may be permitted that metaphor, lacks the sort of savvy needed to assess where his own political party is actually headed. Despite his claim to have influenced the Democratic Party's platform (see p. 45.18-31), its policy statement on abortion appears to have hardened in its support for Roe vs. Wade ("strongly and unequivocally"), dropping the old language of wanting to make abortion "rare," consenting only to expand the number of choices available to pregnant women who might decide against abortion. Such language not only makes no dent in the party's pro-choice position; it is entirely consistent with it. In short, there is good reason to think that Wallis and company allowed themselves to be used for partisan purposes while gaining nothing of significance in the exchange. In this respect, his claim to have moved the party in a better direction rings hollow.

What would real progress on abortion look like? I disagree on prudential grounds with those who would begin and end their efforts by working to ban it altogether. However, an expressed commitment to a supposed right to abortion is not even a place to start. In the real world we may have to accept some regulation that falls short of full protection of the unborn from conception onwards, while doing everything within our power to nurture a public consensus in favour of legally defending life in the womb. I suspect that Wallis' functional pacifism prevents him acknowledging the need for the law, with its coercive sanctions, to speak to this, which further suggests a defective understanding of justice.

Have Democrats softened on abortion?

Back in the 1980s many of us had good reason to think that the Reaganite Republican Party was co-opting evangelicals and Catholics by giving lip service to the pro-life position. A quarter-century later, are Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and others being used by the Democrats to bring evangelicals on side? Wallis waxes enthusiastic about the party's supposedly changed platform during this election year: A Step Forward on Abortion. But pro-choice Judith Warner is unpersuaded: Walking the Abortion Plank.

At least the Republicans gave lip service; the Democrats have thrown not even so much as a few crumbs at pro-lifers. Then again, I suppose we have to remind ourselves that Wallis himself, despite his claimed consistent life ethic, is ultimately pro-choice.

Misplaced honour

Our own Sir Frederick Banting was knighted in 1934 in recognition of his discovery of insulin and his contribution to extending the lives of diabetics. Three-quarters of a century later Dr. Henry Morgentaler is to be awarded the Order of Canada for his contribution to shortening the lives of infants in the womb. Makes us proud to be Canadians.

CLC honours great 'humanitarian'

The Canadian Labour Congress has made its own small contribution to the culture of death: Dr. Henry Morgentaler Receives Canadian Labour’s Highest Award. Funny, some of us thought that this country's slowly declining labour movement wanted more, not fewer, people. Small wonder then that the CLAC is growing.

Unrepentant 'murderer' behind pulpit

I somehow managed to miss this story when it first hit the blogs last year, but an editorial in the July/August issue of Touchstone brought it to my attention: Alma’s Mater: The Violent Hypocrisy of Some Peace & Justice Christians. The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in New York. Last year she wrote an article in Tikkun titled My Choice, in which she confessed to having aborted her fourth child, whom she named Alma. Unlike most people styling themselves pro-choice on the abortion issue, Schaper freely admits to having murdered her child:

I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to.

She claims to have made this difficult choice "as a mature sexual being" who believes that "birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history." For her the recommendation of abstinence as an alternative is "immoral to its core." The incoherence of her ethical reasoning is too obvious to warrant further comment.

However, it is worth noting that Schaper recently contributed to Jim Wallis's God's Politics blog, where she commented on the Virginia Tech shootings last April: Worship in a Time of Catastrophe. Someone unacquainted with the complexities of a consistent life ethic might be forgiven for wondering on what basis she would object to the murders committed on that campus (though, perhaps tellingly, she never once uses that word). After all, was not the killer simply exercising his freedom of choice as a mature adult?

More on abortion

If anyone doubts where the CBC stands on the abortion issue, this country's public broadcaster seems bent on removing any lingering uncertainties by giving Heather Mallick a voice (Abortion rights and abortion fights) without providing for an opposing viewpoint. Just a sample of her rhetoric: "anti-abortionists" engage in "mean, small-time work," and "try to lure women to change their minds, terrifying them with misleading photographs and false information."

South of the border, Jim Wallis has his own take on the issue: "We have supported a 'consistent life ethic' - which seeks a dramatic reduction in the actual abortion rate in America, without criminalizing what is always a tragic choice and often a desperate one." Some people failing to comprehend the intricacies of a consistent life ethic might be inclined to call his position, well, pro-choice.

Abortion and partisan politics

In the January issue of First Things (not yet on-line), Fr. Neuhaus recounts at some length the argument of a recent Human Life Review article by George McKenna, Criss-Cross: Democrats, Republicans, and Abortion. Some 40 years ago it looked likely that the Republican Party in the US could become the pro-abortion party and the Democrats pro-life. At that time the old New Deal coalition remained at least partially intact, with four major groups constituting the Democratic Party's support base: southern whites, black (or African) Americans, liberal intellectuals and Roman Catholics. The Catholic bishops themselves were closely aligned with the party, perceiving its ongoing efforts to champion the cause of the "little guy" to be in keeping with the church's social and political teachings, as found in the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.

Given the significance of these ties, it would have been unthinkable, even as late as the early 1970s for the Democratic Party to thumb its nose at one of its largest constituencies by embracing the abortion licence, particularly since the party had been compelled to do precisely that to southern whites by embracing civil rights for blacks. Indeed, given the Republican Party's libertarian and free-market orientation, an educated guess made in, say, 1965 would have seen that party the more likely to allow freedom of choice on the issue and to spurn efforts to involve government in so personal a matter.

Yet by 1980 the two parties had polarized on abortion, with the Republicans pro-life and the Democrats definitely pro-choice. Although there are pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans, they are increasingly marginalized within their own parties. Few recall anymore that Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton and Al Gore once opposed the abortion licence, only to embrace it as a right when the party began to make it a test of political orthodoxy. What had happened in the meantime? That's the story McKenna tells in what Fr. Neuhaus effusively labels "a remarkable article."

Though I largely agree with Neuhaus' assessment, something is conspicuously lacking in both McKenna and Neuhaus: a recognition of the historic trajectory of liberalism as it developed and worked out the logic of its own tenets in the public square. Their focus is almost entirely on policy programmes, issues and coalition groups, not on the spiritual underpinnings of the larger liberal project as manifested in different ways in the two American parties. My own view is that, because the Republicans and Democrats represented earlier and later stages respectively in the development of liberalism, it should not be surprising that the latter should take the side of the issue that would expand human choice virtually for its own sake. True, there was nothing inevitable in this and it's easy to be a retrospective prognosticator, but it shouldn't have been altogether unexpected.

On the other hand, perhaps no one should be surprised that Neuhaus at least should neglect the undergirding spiritual foundations of liberalism. As I have written before, Neuhaus is a liberal critic of liberalism who persists in believing that liberalism is basically a good thing that some have nevertheless merely distorted. All the same, I firmly believe that, as long as the debate over abortion remains within the parameters of an individualistic focus on rights, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make any headway on the issue.

Pro-life is not enough

As promised, I am posting a slightly altered version of my column for the 21 November issue of Christian Courier:

For just over three decades now – for as long as I have been aware of the abortion issue – I have considered myself pro-life. The premature birth of our daughter 7 years ago reinforced this conviction, due to our experience of her pains and joys when she should still have been in the womb. Nevertheless, I have opposed the argument that one should vote only for the obviously pro-life candidate at election time. Why?

To be sure, I do not accept the reasoning of those who, following the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, claim to adhere to a “seamless garment” approach linking together abortion, capital punishment, warfare and poverty as pro-life issues. Good people can disagree on the best way to address poverty, on whether to wage war in contingent circumstances, and on whether the death penalty is proper retribution for those who have taken innocent life. However, the abortion issue is qualitatively different. Here disagreement revolves around, not how best to protect the unborn child, but whether to do so at all. For this reason those attempting to tie such different issues together sow confusion.

At the same time, there are professed pro-lifers who are so preoccupied with this single issue that they are in danger of overlooking the intrinsic worth of political order itself as a gift of God's grace. Some would seemingly risk bringing down this order if it would serve to prevent one more abortion. Yet John Calvin writes of civil government that “Its function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun, and air; indeed, its place of honour is far more excellent.” Even when government tolerates specific injustices, it nevertheless plays a crucial larger role in the maintenance and flourishing of human social life. Although it would take too much space to recall every possible way it does this, it is worth pointing out six basic tasks: (1) to uphold the public legal framework within which a variety of human activities take place; (2) to defend life, liberty and property; (3) to protect the diversity of human communities; (4) to care for the commons, that is, the shared patrimony of the body politic; (5) to temper the harsh edges of the economic marketplace; and (6) to assume some responsibility for the economically disadvantaged.

The fact that a given government fails to, say, defend the lives of all the unborn or to protect marriage as a distinctive institution cannot by itself vindicate the single-issue voter, especially if the chosen issue is detached from a recognition of the larger task of government to do public justice. The 17th-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes was arguably pro-life in the sense that he believed the chief task of the sovereign to be the protection of his subjects’ lives. Yet he also believed that the most effective government to this end was one ruled by a single will unconstrained by law. In short, Hobbes may have got that one issue right, but his overall understanding of government and its role was severely defective.

Fortunately, the vast majority of pro-lifers understand this and respect the institutions of government as the good gift of God. But when some ask their supporters, as one website does, to sign a pledge that they will vote only for pro-life candidates, they effectively ask them to overlook the importance of a variety of issues that may impact the well-being of the constitution as a whole. They ask them to overlook corruption, greed, incompetence and bad domestic and foreign policies, any of which might adversely affect the general functionality of the political system. This is far from adequate as a coherent political agenda.

Of course, we have every reason to call ourselves pro-life and to defend the unborn to the best of our abilities. But we shouldn’t use this label as an excuse to avoid the necessary but difficult job of thinking and working communally through the larger task of the state to do public justice. Nor should we allow it to shortcircuit the needed effort to discern the spirits behind the ideological visions that people bring to the public square.

Once more with feeling: "I'm personally opposed, but. . ."

Here is Princeton University's Robert George, who put a delightful spin on the logic of this oft-repeated position a decade ago:

I am personally opposed to killing abortionists. However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in a sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go so far as to support mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even nonjudgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity-not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately pro-choice.