It is most heartening to read an ongoing dialogue here on the Mirror of Justice among diverse members of our common Catholic faith who all are genuinely committed to an ethic of life. We may not fully agree on how best to advance that sacred principle in a fallen world, but we should celebrate the progress that our community of Catholic academics and legal thinkers has made toward common-ground about at least some politically viable and plausible measures to reduce the loss of human life through abortion.
Further, we likewise stand in agreement that there is ample room within our Catholic communion for all persons of good faith who express and manifest a heartfelt dedication to the protection of unborn human life, despite differences on the political responses appropriate to the moment and political and legal context. We ever must maintain our counter-cultural role, never giving in to the temptation to distort Catholic teaching in a misguided attempt to make Catholic moral principles safe and unthreatening to those who follow the latest secular or academic trends. But neither are we to withdraw from the world or fail to exercise wise and practical judgment when engaging with it.
At the same time, our theological, legal, and political deliberations about the sanctity of human life should not remove us from honest confrontation with what is occurring all around us. We must not avert our eyes from the reality of the culture of the death. We must never forget the heartbreaking fact that the most dangerous place for a child in America is in his or her own mother’s womb.
Some time in the year 2008, the 50-millionth unborn child in this country will be legally aborted, measuring from the time the abortion license was mandated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Fifty million lives lost. No other calamity in our nation’s history resulted in casualties even approaching that number. We should be stunned and humiliated and ashamed that we have allowed this to occur in the nation we call our own.
More than a million unborn children are deliberately killed in this country every year. By contrast, 60 convicted murderers were executed in the United States last year. According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, not once in any single year during the past half century has the number of executions exceeded double-digits (the high mark was 98 in 1999, which was unusually high).
If two new diseases were identified in the United States this year, one that took more than a million lives each year and another that was rare malady affecting fewer than 100 each year, surely we all would agree that society should leave no stone unturned in saving the million, while being more deliberate but hopefully not neglectful toward the rare disease. For the rare disease that affected so few, we might regard it as tragic but understandable if society was unable to marshal considerable resources to eradicate that disease as a high priority, among the many other social justice needs competing for finite resources. Moreover, for the disease that stole away a million lives each year, we would demand diligent and expeditious attention and would reject as plainly inadequate any partial measures that might reduce the death rate by only 15-25 percent, saying that we should not rest until the disease were eradicated altogether or at least until its lethal force was reduced to a tiny fraction.
Turning from the analogy and back to the realities of lives lost each year in this country by deliberate but legal action (particularly abortion and capital punishment), we also must look beyond the rate of occurrence to the magnitude of evil. Any deliberate taking of human life, without necessity, diminishes our society, and in my view (which I believe consistent with and increasingly compelled by Catholic teaching) the execution of convicted murderers who are securely imprisoned for life cannot be justified in this society. Yet it is difficult to generate the feeling that the execution of someone like a Timothy McVeigh was a tragedy. By contrast, abortion steals the entire lives of innocent unborn children, depriving both those persons and the rest of us of all their potential, their communal relationships, and their communion as living people of God. In sum, as Mark Sargent posted earlier yesterday, “the evil is very grave—the deliberate destruction of an innocent human life.”
For these reasons, as much as I welcome any progress, and as willing as I am to accept a political arrangement that achieves some results over an absolutist approach that accomplishes nothing, I still worry that half-measures directed toward intrinsic evils—such as genocide, slavery, torture, and abortion—could easily turn into a road-map toward incomplete justice. By all means, let us create a true culture of life, that abolishes the death penalty as well. But let us never lose sight of the greater priority of protecting innocent unborn human life. Prudential judgment, which is such a valuable faculty for determining how to translate abstract principles of social justice and the good society into practical reality in a complicated world, should not become an excuse for tolerating the most egregious of evils. I may not agree with all that Cathy Kaveny writes in the "Thomist Perspective on Abortion" piece that Michael Perry well highlights here on the Mirror of Justice and in his book "Under God," but one of her concluding points should be emphasized: “A lenient attitude toward abortion [should] be viewed as a prismatic and poignant example of a callousness toward life in general, a callousness that must be eradicated in all its forms” (emphasis added). While we should do what we can today, we must not rest until all—most poignantly including the not-yet-born—are able to thrive in a culture of life.
I was delighted by Marks' updates on MOJ's blog-stats. We might not be Kos or Instapundit, but an average of 550 hits a day -- and nearly a half-million in a little over two years -- is, as Mark notes, pretty good. Thank you all for reading!
And now, a shameless request: Send an e-mail -- do it now! -- to 5 of your smart, engaged friends -- left and right, Commonweal and First Things, Catholic and not, lawyers and real people -- and tell them about MOJ.
Some thoughts in reply to Michael's quick response . . .
First, I am perfectly happy to agree that responding legislatively to abortion in a just way would -- if the Supreme Court would permit such a response -- involve "prudential judgments," about which reasonable people (including faithful Catholics) could disagree. (I'd be surprised if anyone denied this.) And, I would be overjoyed if we ever reached a day when We the People could try to craft a just, workable, honest, and faithful response to what Michael and I agree is the tragedy of abortion. (Note that we are permitted by the Court to have such conversations about capital punishment.)
Second, neither the (I think uncontroversial) observation that responding legislatively to abortion would involve such prudential judgments nor the suggestion that criminalization of early-term abortions would, all things considered, be unwise provides any support for the view that the absolutist Roe / Casey regime should be maintained.
Third, and unfortunately, Bob Casey has made it clear -- in order to secure support from the abortion lobby -- that he will oppose judicial nominees who indicate a willingness to undo Roe's error. That is, notwithstanding his expressed pro-life views, Senator Casey would be committed to preventing us from ever exercising the kind of prudential judgment that Michael and I agree the tragedy of abortion calls for. So, it seems to me that if one holds the Perry / Kaveny / Langan view, one ought to oppose strongly candidates -- like Casey -- who are committed absolutely to preventing democratic deliberations and prudential judgments about the best legal response to abortion.
Fourth, Sen. Santorum's view on capital punishment seems to be moving in a direction that Michael and I both endorse. I will pray for similar growth from those Catholics in the Senate who persist in holding and promoting wrongheaded positions on school choice, religious freedom, and abortion.
Responding to Steve's (important and challenging) questions -- it is not at all clear to me that one who (correctly) regards abortion as a grave moral wrong and an attack on the dignity of human life is therefore required to treat abortion like murder. For all kinds of good reasons, we do not categorize or respond in law to all homicides in the same way. No one thinks (I assume) that we are hypocrites for not responding the same way in law to negligent homicide and malicious torture murders.
But again . . . I cannot wait until Steve's are the questions that we are permitted, as citizens and as a political community, to address. Unfortunately, neither the current Court, nor any Court that Senator Casey's superiors in the Senate would ever permit, will let us tackle these questions.
In addition to the issues raised by Michael, I am interested
in the way prudential arguments do or do not play a role in the particular form
that criminalization might take. If the position is that abortion is murder,
should the aborting woman be convicted of murder? If the death penalty is considered
moral, should she be subject to the death penalty? Also if the fetus is a human
being, should it be deemed a violation of equal protection to outlaw the murder
of some human beings, but not others? On the latter theory, the reversal of Roe
would require criminalization, not just permit it.
My own view is that the position that abortion is
indistinguishable from murder is in reality quite far from the views of the
American people who seem prepared to accept abortions in some circumstances,
but not in others (though the breakdown from state to state may vary
considerably), and, perhaps, have not even been asked what kind of penalties
they would support and whether they would distinguish the aborting mother from the doctor.
When I was a MOJ lurker, I asked questions like these and
Rick posted them for me, but no one answered (other than Rick who sent me a
thoughtful e-mail reply). I am still interested in knowing what people think.
What Cardinal Martini says in my post below is what I say--and, I think, what Cathy Kaveny (Notre Dame), John Langan, SJ (Georgetown), and many other Catholic thinkers say.
Let me be clear: What we say does not leave any room for what John Kerry said and did in the last presidential election: As I saw it, Kerry was essentially cheerleading for NARAL.
(Again, what the Catechism and Evangelium Vitae say leave no room for support for the death penalty in North Carolina or elsewhere in the United States (here).)
But what we say does leave room for a prudential judgment that the criminalization of early abortions is not, all things considered, the best way to deal with the tragedy of abortion in our society.
What public policy with respect to abortion do I support? I concur in Cathy's answer: See M. Cathleen Kaveny, "Toward a Thomistic Perspective on Abortion and the Law in Contemporary America," 55 The Thomist 343 (1991). I quote the most relevant passages of Cathy's essay in my book, Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (2003) at 117-19.
MOJ-readers should also take a look at John Langan, SJ, "Observations on Abortion and Politics," America, Oct. 25, 2004. (The article is here.) As Langan explains,
the enactment of any prohibition of abortion is not simply the
enunciation of a moral truth; it is a political and legal act that is
to be carried out in an arena where there are many conflicting points
of view and interests and where there is widespread hostility to the
pro-life position. There must be room for a variety of judgments about
how best to deal with this zone of conflict, in which pro-life forces
work at a considerable disadvantage. It is reasonable to think that
there can be and will be divergent political judgments about how to
improve the protection of unborn human life in these difficult
circumstances. In such a complex political setting, political leaders
are better suited to make these judgments than are bishops or
theologians or intellectuals. The function of bishops, and more
generally of the churches, is to bear witness to the moral truth that
is at stake, not to determine what is the best legal and political
resolution of the problem. . . . It
would be a brave bishop who would claim to know on theological grounds
just when such compromises are acceptable or justifiable, and it would
be a naïve voter who would follow his opinion on such a question.
Yes, Rick, the Dems have been in the grip of NARAL and the like. I hope that's beginning to change. (My own thinking on the morality of abortion has changed dramatically over the years.) I'm rooting for Bob Casey over Rick Santorum. You're rooting for Santorum. We're both rooting for pro-life candidates, one a Democrat, the other a Republican.
(Maybe I shouldn't be too quick to concede that Santorum is a pro-life candidate: Does he support the death penalty?) _______________ mp
Greg seemed a bit surprised to learn from David Gregory that MOJ does in fact have readers. Indeed we do. While our readership is but a small current in the mighty ocean of the blogosphere, we do average 547 hits a day; we had 1359 in the last 24 hours; and our total hits since inception are 457,516. Not fabulous by the standards of the mega-bloggers, but pretty respectable for a blog on a fairly esoteric subject, and one that can be fairly heavy going at times.
PS David Gregory, whom I have long admired, is a wonderful example of what a Catholic intellectual should be: unassimalable to conventional secular political and ideological categories. We should be uncomfortable with what that world offers us, and we should make that world uncomfortable.
I see Mike's point, and the irony of his reversal of a common mode of distinguishing between abortion and capital punishment with respect to the scope of prudence. Mike siezes, quite accurately, on the element of JP II's analysis of capital punishment that in fact leaves very little room for prudential judgment in the US re the moral unacceptability of CP. I gather Rick seems to agree with that.The issue with respect to abortion is a lot more complicated; I do not think the topic lends itself to Mike's neat reversal. First, even if it is presumed that there is SOME room for prudential judgment, that judgment cannot include the conclusion that abortion should be decriminalized because of the primacy of a woman's choice, or that there is a right to an abortion, and that the right to choose should trump the intrinsic immorality of abortion. I wonder if Mike would see his idea of the scope of prudence as encompassing what would be a principled valorization of the "right to choose." If he would, then we have a disagreement over what he means by prudence, and I could not characterize that position as being even remotely consistent with Church teaching. I think this is what Rick means by suggesting that the position of the Democratic party on abortion could or should not be encompassed by Mike's idea of prudence re abortion. Second, if Mike is making the argument that because the Church's goal is to reduce the number of abortions but to avoid harm to women thru illicit abortions, then prudentially we should not criminalize some very limited category of abortions, I would concede that he is at least making a prudential argument (whether rightly or wrongly) rather than challenging a basic Catholic principle. The prudential judgment, however, depends upon another principle; the principle he would be applying is the "lesser evil" one that Cardinal Martini and others are invoking in the current debate re condoms and AIDS. Fair enough. So, the question then becomes, what scope is there in fact for such a prudential judgment on criminalization of abortion in light of that principle? Just to kick the debate off, I would suggest that with respect to the use of condoms in a society widely afflicted by AIDS, the gravity of the behavior condoned (ie use of condoms by married couples) is much less than the good achieved (preventing transmittal of AIDS). The use of a condom is truly a "lesser evil" In the case of abortion, however, the evil is very grave -- the deliberate destruction of an innocent human life. Is that evil greater or lesser than the evil that would be prevented by decriminalizing some limited category of abortions? Finally, the devil is in the details. Would Mike be ok with a decriminalization that went beyond the first trimester, because women with advanced pregnancies would otherwise be tempted to seek unsafe back alley abortions? In other words, does he believe that an unlimited range of prudential judgments is permissable? If so, we are pretty much where we are now under Roe and Casey, practically speaking, absent the mystery of life and choice rhetoric. In short, I am with Mike on his first ironic proposition, but the second one needs to be thought thru more thoroughly. (There is also the problem that Rick pointed out with the non-authoritative nature of Cardinal Martini's position.)
My friend Michael contends, below, that it is "seriously misleading" to say 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."
Maybe so. That is, I am inclined to agree with Michael that statements like this could be misleading, if they were not expanded to include the "practically non-existent" idea (which Michael discusses), set out in Sec. 2267 of the Catechism. (I continue to think the Catechism's statements on capital punishment are confused, but . . ..)
I'm not at all confident, though, that Cardinal Martini's statements -- which are, it is fair to say, the statements of a learned churchman, but not (necessarily) the teaching of the Church -- do anything to change the fact that there is (quoting Michael) "no room for a difference in prudential judgment about the morality of the [abortion-related legal regime] in . . . the United States," or about the morality of the legal regime that Roe and Casey mandate, or -- since Michael raised the matter of political parties -- about the morality of the legal regime to which the Democratic Party is unswervingly committed.
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. _______________ mp
In his post today (here), Steve writes: "[I]'s not clear that involvement with the death penalty is cooperation
with evil, given that the Church has not definitively ruled it out."
Steve's statement is, at best, misleading and, at worst, mistaken.
True, the Magisterium has not ruled out the death penalty in any and all imaginable circumstances. But it has ruled it out--"definitively" so--in some circumstances, namely, where it is possible for government to "render[] one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself" (section 2267 of the 1997 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church).
The Catechism goes on to say that "the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are ... practically nonexistent.'" (Id., quoting John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae.)
Now, it would be preposterous to argue that the State of North Carolina lacks the ability to "render[] one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm
without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming
himself ..." There is no room for a reasonable difference in prudential judgments about that. (If there were, the Catechism and JPII would be mistaken in insisting that "the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are ... practically nonexistent.'")
So, Steve's misleading statement should be replaced with this: It is clear that the Church has definitively ruled out the death penalty in the circumstances that obtain in North Carolina--and in every other state in the United States. _______________ mp
