Just to Clarify, 'For Me' Double Effect Settles It: And another 'Thank You' to Rick

Greetings Again, All,

And many warm thanks to Rick for his thoughtful post.  I think, a propos Rick's reflections, that I might do well quickly to emphasize a bit more some of what I do mean, and some of what I do not mean, in saying that 'for me, Double Effect settle it.' 

I definitely do not mean to suggest that I think DDE simpliciter settles things, any more than I think most of the 'tests' regularly employed by courts in reviewing legislation for its comportment with the US Constitution's Due Process or Equal Protection clauses can generally of themselves settle things.  Indeed the DDE's settling things of itself here would be quite impossible in view of (a) the mere analysis-schema that DDE affords us on the one hand, and (b) the inherently uncertain nature of the 'inputs' that must be 'put into' that schema as employed in connection with the current health insurance reform bill on the other hand. 

Because (a) my own estimation of the probabilities involved here, as well as (b) my comparative valuation of the probability-weighted benefits and burdens themselves even prior to probability-weighting, and (c) the moral-and-legal relevance I attach to the 'intervention' wrought by the 'intervening decisions' of to-be-insured parties all unsurprisingly differ from Rick's (hence my earlier 'that's what makes horse races' remark in my last reply to one of Rick's thoughtful posts), I suppose it is also unsurprising in the end that DDE might settle little old me in favor of the legislation while not settling Rick in favor of the legislation, and perhaps even while settling yet others (with yet further differing probability assessments and comparative valuations) definitely against the legislation.    

On the matter of my probability estimates, I should emphasize that these are the product of several considerations.  Among these are (a) the initial intuitive expectations that (i) abortions are little if any less readily procured when not insured than when insured, while (ii) decisions to bring children to term and indeed raise them are significantly wealth-responsive; (b) a wealth of statistico-empirical studies, about the proper interpretation of which everyone of course can and always does seem to argue, tending to corroborate those intuitive expectations, as well as cognate studies correlating unwanted pregnancy rates with poor education and high poverty rates; and finally -- as well as quite crucially -- (c) careful analyses of the actual language of the Senate Bill, including Jost's and others cited inter alia by the Catholic Hospitals and the nuns, tending to indicate that there is little if any reason to think that bill apt even to permit any more aborting than is occuring right now.  Combine that with the intervening decision consideration, and compare it to the boost in the insured population by 32 million, the prohibition on unjust practices by oligopolistic health insurers, the guarantee of family insurance coverage to children until age 26, the CBO-estimated 1.1 trillion dollar cut to the federal deficit over the coming two decades, and the other salutary changes that the bill appears apt to bring that I've recited earlier, and I find the proportionality step of DDE pushing me strongly toward favoring the bill.  And this is so notwithstanding much disgust with this bill that I have described here in the past.

Finally, let me close by signing-on entirely to the expressions of hope found in Rick's final two paragraphs.  I've no belief what ever to the effect that the only way that a Catholic could oppose this bill would be by being indifferent to social justice or the Church's broader social teachings, and think it an offense for anyone to claim any necessary relation between those two characteristics -- just as it would be for anyone to claim any necessary relation between support of the legislation on the one hand and contempt for or indifference to the Church's full ethic of life on the other. 

Moreover, Rick probably knows me well enough by now to know that I'll certainly for my part be pursuing the agenda sketched in his penultimate paragraph whether the bill passes or no.  Indeed, as I've regularly urged here since December, I think a very salutary thing Catholics could be pushing for, quite independently of the fortunes of the current obviously imperfect bill, is regulation of the health insurance industry with a view to requiring all companies that offer abortion-covering policies also to offer otherwise-identical abortion-excluding policies.  Had we taken that step decades ago, we'd never have been faced with the need to engage in hair-splitting to figure out whether the House or the Senate bill better achieves the Catholic-regrettable need of abortion-neutrality.  For instead of hairs, we'd have split literally all the insurance policies instead. 

Thanks again,

Bob