Rob asks what Obama could've meant in complaining about "facts cast aside for ideology" in the partial-birth abortion opinion. This video from his campaign website doesn't include that passage, but it does show him complaining about how Kennedy's opinion (1) suggests that women will regret their abortions and (2) fails to defer to the position of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that prohibiting intact D&E would endanger women's health. (Those are my paraphrases; the language starts around 1:30 in the 4 minute, 45 second video.) On both of these counts, it seems to me, one could reasonably question the scientific/empirical argument for the partial-birth abortion ban -- i.e. one could question how many women regret their abortions, and one could agree with the doctors who say the partial-birth procedure is safer for women -- and thus it's comprehensible for Obama to claim that the Act "cast[s] aside facts." (The facts about fetal life and development, of course, can be cast aside in his view ...)
But even accepting all that, the big gap in his reasoning is the claim that the Court is trumping facts with ideology, when what the Court is actually doing is letting the legislature decide -- within boundaries -- about how to respond to the facts and resolve factual disputes. On women's regret over abortions, the Court only claims (slip op. at 28-29) that "some women" may regret the decision; that this is relevant to the partial-birth context because recognizing the difficult nature of the subject may keep both doctor and patient from talking about this procedure fully; and most important, that all of this supports a "legitimate" governmental interest in prohibiting the particular procedure. "Legitimate interest," of course, is the language of rational-basis review with deference to the legislature. The Court didn't make its judgment on the facts, but let Congress do so, within boundaries.
One of the boundaries of course, following the rules of the Casey decision, was that the Act, even if it served a legitimate interest, not impose an "unconstitutional burden on the abortion right" by prohibiting a procedure "necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for [the] preservation of . . . the health of the mother." (slip op. 31) Rational-basis review wouldn't apply if there weren't alternative abortion procedures, pre-viability, that didn't endanger the health of the mother. On that question, the Court found, quoting one of the district courts, that there "continues to be division of opinion among highly qualified experts regarding the necessity or safety of intact D&E" (slip op. 32). Given the medical disagreement, the Court (a) allowed Congress to choose between the competing views and legislate, but (b) only as against a facial challenge -- the Court preserved pre-enforcement as-applied challenges when "it can be shown that in discrete and well-defined instances a particular condition has [occurred] or is likely to occur in which the procedure prohibited by the Act must be used" to protect a woman's health (slip op. 37).
Given the clear language of deference to the legislature, and the reservation of as-applied challenges, Carhart is a decision based on judicial restraint. Not on judges trumping facts with ideology.
President Bush has stirred up irritation-to-outrage among some conservative bloggers of Christian intellectual peruasion, with his comments in last Friday's news conference: for example (from Rich Lowry's summary), "I strongly believe that Muslims desire to be free just like Methodists desire to be free," and "America must never lose faith in the capacity of forms of government to transform regions." Everyone agrees that God desires freedom for all human beings, including political freedom; it's Bush's move from that to the inevitability of realizing these aspirations that provoked the reactions. Ross Douthat: "[T]he attempt to transform God's promise of freedom through Jesus Christ into a this-world promise of universal democracy is the worst kind of 'immanentizing the eschaton' utopian bullshit," and (Douthat thinks at least sometimes), "not one more American soldier should die for the President's world-historical delusions." And Rich Lowry:
Perhaps Methodists and Muslims do equally desire freedom, but Methodism, as a movement that grew out of and thrived in 18th century Anglo-America, would seem to me to be more naturally compatible with an individualistic, liberal democratic order. Culture matters, and that's something Bush is very reluctant to acknowledge. You can believe freedom is a gift from the Almighty and still recognize that some cultural soil is more or less compatible with supporting political systems that protect liberty. . . . In my view, people don't desire freedom first and foremost, but order, and after that probably comes pride.
What are Michael Novak, Richard Neuhaus, and the familiar "culture comes before politics" religious conservatives when the President talks about the "capacity of forms of government to transform regions"?
I vacillate between thinking that the great failures in Iraq are attributable to Bush-style naive universal moralism, and thinking that they're attributable to Cheney-style national-interest cynicism. Probably it's been a toxic mixture of both. From different starting points, they overlapped in suggesting that the U.S. didn't have to worry too much about the fallout of invasion: Bush because God would ensure everything would turn out all right if we showed patience, and Cheney because, well, who cares about the consequences, long-term or to others, if we can enforce our will to make ourselves safer in the immediate term.
Of course diagnosis of the wrongheaded past is not the same as prescription for the way forward, let alone a solution for what to do about Iraq now. But at least two books in the last year -- Ethical Realism by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, and The Good Fight by Peter Beinart -- give ideas for an approach that combines the moral goals with a sense of realism about both the extent to they which can be achieved and the routes for doing so.
The Chicago Tribune reported the other day that the leading candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination had "pledged support for wide access to abortion" (i.e., more public funding, among other things):
Speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards before the family planning and abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Edwards lauded her husband's health-care proposal as "a true universal health-care plan" that would cover "all reproductive health services, including pregnancy termination," referring to abortion.
Edwards was joined by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the group's political organizing conference in addressing issues at the core of the political clash between cultural liberals and conservatives, including abortion rights, access to contraception and sex education.
Now, I suppose that the political reality is that a candidate opposed by Planned Parenthood simply has no chance of winning in the Democratic primaries. Still, it seems unfortunate that, of the plausible nominees, not one is really positioning him- or herself as a "Democrat for Life."
For someone who (like me) leans to the left on non-abortion issues, the Democratic presidential candidates' campaign rite of trying to outdo each other in their enthusiasm for abortion rights is always disheartening. Here is another report on the Dems' appearance before abortion rights activists yesterday in which they condemned the Supreme Court's partial-birth abortion ruling. Would anyone like to take a stab at explaining this statement by Senator Obama? He alleges that, for the new conservative Court, "When the science is inconvenient, when the facts don't match up with the ideology, they are cast aside." Is he talking about Justice Kennedy's statements about women regretting their abortions, or is there something else to which he could be referring?
Joe Carter, the author of the world's most popular Christian blog, Evangelical Outpost, has compiled his list of the 100 best Christian blogs. In my evangelical upbringing, "Catholic" and "Christian" were two separate categories. Nevertheless, perhaps as a sign of the growing evangelical-Catholic synergy, MoJ has made the top 20.
In his elections, Nixon appealed to conservatives and the country as
a culture warrior who was not a moral or religious conservative.
“Permissiveness,” he told key aides, “is the key theme,” and Nixon
pressed that theme against hippie protesters, tenured radicals and
liberals who bad-mouthed America. This kind of secular, tough-on-crime,
tough-on-communism conservatism gathered a “silent majority” that loved
Nixon for the enemies he made.
By this standard, Giuliani is a Nixon Republican. He is perhaps the
most publicly secular major candidate of either party — his conflicts
with Roman Catholic teaching make him more reticent on religion than
either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But as a prosecutor and mayor
of New York, he won conservative respect for making all the right
enemies: the ACLU, advocates of blasphemous art, purveyors of racial
politics, Islamist mass murderers, mob bosses and the New York Times
editorial page.
Gerson worries that Giuliani, like Nixon, is “a talented man without
an ideological compass, mainly concerned with the accumulation of
power.”
Just to underscore the point that he thinks nominating Rudy Giuliani
for president would be a really, really bad idea, Gerson adds that he
fears nominating a Republican who is “in direct conflict with the Roman
Catholic Church.” He writes:
Giuliani is not only pro-choice. He has supported embryonic stem
cell research and public funding for abortion. He supports the death
penalty. He supports “waterboarding” of terror suspects and seems
convinced that the conduct of the war on terrorism has been too
constrained. Individually, these issues are debatable. Taken together,
they are the exact opposite of Catholic teaching, which calls for a
“consistent ethic of life” rather than its consistent devaluation. No
one inspired by the social priorities of Pope John Paul II can be
encouraged by the political views of Rudy Giuliani. Church officials
who criticized John Kerry on abortion are anxious for the opportunity
to demonstrate their bipartisanship by going after a Republican. Those
attacks on Giuliani have already begun.
Houston law prof Leslie Griffin has posted her new paper, Political Reason. (HT: Solum) Here is the abstract:
This essay examines some of comments made about religion and politics by three of the 2008 presidential candidates - Sam [Mike?] Huckabee, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I argue that, surprisingly, if one holds the three candidates to the standard of liberal politics, then Romney appears closest to the Rawlsian standard of public (or political) reason. The goal is not for the Mormon, or Baptist, or Church of Christ candidate to figure a secular way to lead others to his faith. That approach to politics undermines political stability and demonstrates disrespect for one's fellow citizens. Instead, politicians should employ political reason as the starting point for their decision-making on matters of law and politics.
Today's New York Times has a fairly balanced overview of the state of government-funded abstinence education. Today's Chicago Tribunereports on the Democratic presidential candidates' promises of universal health care coverage, including coverage of abortion.
This recently-posted article suggests an interesting angle for the "CST and the City" conference, an aspect of the exploration of "how physical settings contibute . . . to strengthening the family as a social and spitual institution."
Baird Silbaugh, Katharine, "Women's Place: Urban Planning, Housing Design, and Work-Family Balance" . Fordham Law Review, Vol. 76, 2008.
Abstract: In the past decade a substantial literature has emerged analyzing the role of work-family conflict in hampering women's economic, social, and civil equality. Many of the issues we routinely discuss as work family balance problems have distinct spatial dimensions. 'Place' is by no means the main factor in work-family balance difficulties, but amongst work-family policy-makers it is perhaps the least appreciated. This article examines the role of urban planning and housing design in frustrating the effective balance of work and family responsibilities. Nothing in the literature on work-family balance reform addresses this aspect of the problem. That literature focuses instead on employer mandates and family law reforms. This article fills the gap by evaluating the effect of 'place' on work-family balance and the role law plays in creating our challenging geography. I argue that effective work-family balance requires attention to the spatial dimensions of the work-family conflict.
Rob is right, of course, that "Protestant ministers engage in sexual abuse or in sexual activity with minors, too" is hardly the most important thing to be said about the clergy-abuse scandal in the Catholic context. And, just to be clear, please insert here ________ the most unyielding and furious denunciation one can imagine of those priests and bishops who have engaged in or mishandled the abuse of children. Still, it seems to me that the following are true, and troubling:
(1) Non-Catholics have, in my experience and reading, too often indulged the temptation to smugness, as if there were something particularly "Catholic" about the conduct at issue ("Ah, that celibacy thing . . . ", or worse.). There just isn't.
(2) The press has -- and no, to point this out is not to blame the press for the sins and errors of priests and bishops -- systemically (one might even suspect "gleefully") presented this issue as (almost) entirely a "Catholic" one and has, in addition and in many ways, mis-reported the issue in unsurprising but still irritating ways.
(3) The sex-abuse-litigation to date, and the reporting about that litigation, has been Catholic-centric in part, I suspect, because Catholic institutions, leaders, and dioceses are more attractive defendants for big-money purposes.
