Abortion and murder -- still more

With all due respect to Eduardo, I do not think that I am (or Ramesh Ponnuru is) trying to "have cake and eat it too."  After quoting from my recent post and Ponnuru's recent piece, Eduardo writes,

I simply can't find a way to reconcile these perfectly reasonable statements with attempts to rule out as unreasonable certain positions on how best to deal with the problem of abortion that do not involve its legal prohibition at all. 

First, my "perfectly reasonable statement[]" regarding the possibility that abortion -- although a grave moral wrong -- need not be treated in law precisely like "murder" is premised on it being the case that the Constitution has been repaired, and that democratic decision-making about abortion is once again permitted.  When it comes to decisions about politics, voting, elections, and so on (to which Eduardo turns later in his post), it seems clear to me that one political party has, as its unshakeable priority, not the reduction of poverty, or the elimination of the death penalty, or peace in the world, but the preservation of those precedents that preclude even compromise regulations of abortion.  So, as to the question whether it is "unreasonable" to "deal with the problem of abortion that do not involve its legal prohibition at all," I guess I think it is more appropriate -- given the truth about what abortion is -- to say "because abortion is the wrongful taking of a human life, it is important that -- even if it is punished differently than murder is punished -- the law identify it as such, call it wrong, and communicate our moral disapproval, through punishment, of it" than to say "we should -- indeed, under the Constitution, this is all we may do -- limit our efforts to stop abortions to measures aimed at creating conditions in which fewer abortions take place, and not pursue -- because, after all, the Constitution would not permit -- measures that reflect our judgment that abortion is immoral."  Ponnuru's openness to compromise and pluralism assumes a background recognition in law that the unborn child is a human being, whose life it is wrong to take, and who ought, in justice, to enjoy protection, of some kind, from private violence.

Eduardo criticizes those who thought or said that "faithful Catholics cannot prioritize issues like the poverty, the death penalty, or the Iraq war over the abortion issue or vote for a presidential candidate who opposes the legal prohibition of abortion."  I have always made clear my recognition that many faithful Catholics did prioritize issues in this way.  (And, I hope Eduardo would agree, many faithful Catholics elected to prioritize abortion, and changing the jurisprudential regime that insulates abortion from democracy, over slight shifts in tax rates or the slightly different approach to Iraq that Sen. Kerry advocated in 2004.)  I think what concerned some of us in 2004 was not simply that Sen. Kerry "oppos[ed] the legal prohibition of abortion" (but was clear about his moral opposition to abortion, and his desire to change people's minds about abortion, etc.), but that he "ran on" abortion and mischaracterized the nature of his critics' opposition to abortion, and that he and his Administration would have opposed even the regulation of partial-birth abortion, would have nominated Justices who would likely shore up the Stenberg decision, would have supported public funding for abortions, here and abroad, and so on.

Eduardo and I agree that, in most cases, "it is perfectly reasonable for Catholics to vote on the basis of issues on which more immediate progress is likely to result from a change in leadership."  In my view, though, in 2004, it did not seem to be the case that a vote for Sen. Kerry would have resulted in "more immediate progress" on issues like, say, the death penalty or poverty, than has, in fact, resulted on issues like abortion from the election of Pres. Bush.  As for the "slow road" charge, it seems to me that -- for all the complaints one might have, and should have, about the Administration's policies and Congress's (in)actions -- Pres. Bush is supporting and signing a good bit of pro-life legislation, and taking many pro-life steps on its own.