The Mother of All Ironies

This follows on my immediately preceding post (here).

It is often said that according to the magisterium:  (1) abortion is intrinsically immoral and there is no room for a difference in prudential judgments about the morality of abortion, but (2) capital punishment is not intrinsically immoral and there is room for a difference in prudential judgments about whether government may rely on a system of capital punishment.

This statement is seriously misleading.  The truth of the matter is that:  (1) as I said in my preceding post, there is no room for a difference in prudential judgments about the morality of capital punishment in North Carolina or in any other state in the United States, but (2) there is room for a difference in prudential judgments about whether using the criminal law to ban pre-viability abortions is, all things considered, the best way to deal with the tragedy of abortion.  Recall what Cardinal Martini said recently (as reported by John Allen in The Word from Rome on May 5, 2006):

On abortion, Martini firmly upheld the moral teaching of the church, but acknowledged the complexity of writing it into public policy.

“It seems to me difficult [to imagine] that, in situations like ours, the state would not distinguish between acts that are punishable in a penal fashion, and acts for which a penal solution doesn’t make sense,” he said. “That doesn’t mean a ‘license to kill,’ but that the state doesn’t intervene in every possible case. Its efforts should be to reduce the number of abortions, to impede them with every means possible (above all after a certain period from the beginning of the pregnancy), to reduce the causes of abortion, and to take precautions so that women who decide to take this step, especially during the period when it’s not illegal, do not suffer grave physical damage or have their lives placed at risk.”

Martini noted that the risk of serious physical injury is especially grave in the case of clandestine abortions, and hence said that, all things considered, Italy’s abortion law -- which permits abortion during the first trimester -- has had the positive effect of “contributing to the reduction and, eventually, elimination” of back-alley procedures.

I titled this post "The Mother of All Ironies".   During the next few election cycles, watch to see how many Catholic thinkers--Republican or otherwise--point out that although a Catholic legislator, in the exercise of his or her prudential judgment, may decline to support the criminalization of pre-viability abortion, he or she may not, according to magisterial teaching, decline to oppose the death penalty.
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