Thanks again, to Bob, for his having taken the lead in helping us all think through the health-insurance debate. To be sure, the debate will continue, in many contexts. Bob says, in his recent post, that "double effect settles it." In my view, though, as important as the question that Bob calls "the principal question" is -- i.e., the "question of what the traditional Catholic moral principle embodied in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), along with the familiar moral and legal principles of 'proximate causation' and 'intervening decisions,' might offer each Catholic of conscience wishing to assess the benefits and burdens apt to be brought by the health insurance reform legislation" -- it is not, for Catholics or for citizens, the only question.
To be sure, a faithful, engaged, conscientious Catholic must satisfy herself or himself (as Bob has, of course, done) that "she would not be favoring the legislation with the aim of aiding or abetting the procurement of abortions." I assume that none of my MOJ colleagues favor the legislation with this aim.
This brings us, then, to Bob's "provisional conclusion": "since all empirical evidence seems to indicate that the legislation is apt actually to decrease the incidence of abortion overall, and at any rate certainly not to increase it, any burdensome feature of the legislation apt to be of concern to Catholics is in all likelihood vastly outweighed by its beneficial features." This conclusion -- while certainly not irresponsibly or obviously wrong -- is not as warranted, in my judgment, as Bob thinks it is. I'm pretty sure I am following all this as closely as Bob is, and trying as hard as he is to get the real facts, and to distinguish speculation from responsible prediction, and to "think with the Church", and I am also (therefore) pretty sure that some of the words Bob uses ("all", "certainly", "in all likelihood vastly") are not warranted. But, to be clear, I have no doubt that Bob's conclusion is both reasonable and sincere. I hope he thinks the same about mine. (I have been frustrated by the suggestions, in a number of statements, writings, and posts by Catholics who support the proposal, that those of us who don't are disingenuously using "Catholic" or "pro-life" concerns to justify opposition that is merely partisan. These suggestions are, in my view, cr*p.)
If this proposal becomes law -- I expect, and regret (and not only for abortion-related reasons, but also because I believe, with confidence equal to Bob's, that the proposals beneficial features will "in all likelihood" be outweighed by its burdensome features) -- I hope that those Catholics who support it, and who have worked for its passage, and who have taken on the responsibility of convincing other Catholics to support it, (i) will be equally dedicated in their efforts to do what they can to watch out for, avoid, and remedy any bad side-effects of what they regard as the proposal's good aims, (ii) will remain open to the possibility that their predictive judgments were, while reasonable, mistaken, and so to the necessity of revising the proposal (everyone, of course, should remain open to the possibility that their predictions will turn out wrong), (iii) will work to maintain (against the certain-to-come efforts to make the proposal more congenial to abortion funding than it is) whatever safeguards the law contains against public (direct or indirect) subsidization of abortion, and (iv) will work hard to secure "conscience" protections for hospitals and health-care providers.
It is not the case, though some Catholics have suggested that it is, that the only reason a faithful Catholic could have for opposing this legislation is a warranted concern that it would subsidize (directly or indirectly) abortion, increase the incidence of abortion, or entrench abortion rights in our law and culture. I do have such a warranted concern, but even if I didn't, I would -- I think -- not support this particular proposal. I have no doubt that "reform" is needed in the health-care sector, and no doubt that a just political community should find a way to secure good health -- not just "health care" but good health -- to all, and especially the poor. That the propsal under consideration is called a "health care" proposal, and that it aims to secure greater coverage for those who do not now have it, does not make it a "Catholic" proposal, or a proposal that Catholics -- including, of course, Catholics who aspire to be guided to faithful Citizenship by the Church's social teaching -- should, as Catholics, support. Catholics not only may, but should -- just like everyone else -- be responsible stewards of the political community's resources and of the political community's future.
MOJ friend Pasquale Annicchino, Junior Fellow in the Law and Religion Programme at the University of Siena, writes to tell us:
"We are launching the University College London Human Rights Law Review 2009.
Judge Christos Rozakis will deal with the core question facing the development
of the ECHR case-law: National vs Universal Protection.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Hello Again, All,
Quite a few have been commenting in response to recent posts here reporting new developments in the unfolding debate, among Catholics and others, about the pending health insurance reform legislation. A surprising number of these comments, from my point of view, concern legislative procedure, the contested question (as, among others, between the Bishops on the one hand, Catholic hospitals and nuns on the other) of the Senate bill's comporting or otherwise with the Hyde Amendment, and related questions that millions of non-Catholics as well as Catholics seem to be arguing about all over the nation right now. I've offered replies now and then to some of these comments, but fear that I lack time to continue replying to all of them. More importantly, I should also perhaps not even have begun to do so, as to my mind these narrowly targeted questions all distract us from what I have said repeatedly over the past week or so I take to be the principal question before us as Catholics. That is, again, the question of what the traditional Catholic moral principle embodied in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), along with the familiar moral and legal principles of 'proximate causation' and 'intervening decisions,' might offer each Catholic of conscience wishing to assess the benefits and burdens apt to be brought by the health insurance reform legislation. In my view, as soon as a Catholic can be sure that she would not be favoring the legislation with the aim of aiding or abetting the procurement of abortions -- DDE step 1 -- she should proceed to DDE step 2 and work through a reasonably probability-weighted proportionality analysis, inflected with commonsense legal recognition that not all 'but for' causation is morally or legally relevant causation (my earlier interstate highway hypothetical). As I myself work through that mode of analysis, I arrive at this previously reported provisional conclusion: since all empirical evidence seems to indicate that the legislation is apt actually to decrease the incidence of abortion overall, and at any rate certainly not to increase it, any burdensome feature of the legislation apt to be of concern to Catholics is in all likelihood vastly outweighed by its beneficial features. Those include, again, inter alia: the extension of health insurance to 31 million more impoverished Americans than currently can afford it; the ensuring that the middle class who now have insurance will continue to be able to afford it; the prohibiting of unjust practices such as the denial of coverage for preexisting conditions and the removal of coverage when insurance policies actually are used; the saving of over a hundred billion federal dollars in the coming decade; the relaxing of health insurance company exemption from US antitrust regulation; the guarantee that children be able to remain on family insurance policies to age 26; and countless additional, albeit smaller, salutary effects. That is the proverbial 'forest' here, it seems to me, by traditional Catholic moral-theological lights. I welcome responses to that claim in the comments section.
Thanks as ever,
Bob
From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (para. 149):
Human nature . . . is based on a relational subjectivity, that is, in the manner of a free and responsible being who recognizes the necessity of integrating himself in cooperation with his fellow human beings, and who is capable of communion with them on the level of knowledge and love.
From today's New York Times:
It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.
“We found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way — it could have been, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ — as long as you surf on the shallow level of life you’re happy, and if you go into the existential depths you’ll be unhappy,” Dr. Mehl said.
But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.
Here is Fr. Ted's op-ed, published after the Senate -- on an almost party-line vote -- rejected Sen. Lieberman's efforts to save D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship Program. This rejection is repulsive, and represents the worst kind of pandering to unworthy interests, at the expense of poor children. (But hey, that's just me. And Fr. Ted.) After celebrating the election of Barack Obama, our first African-American president (a president who, of course, came to Notre Dame to pay tribute to Fr. Ted and enjoy some of the glow of his legacy), and after noting the negative consequences of the Senate's decision for Catholic schools that serve low-income (predominantly non-Catholic) kids in D.C., Fr. Ted continues:
I have devoted my life to equal opportunity for all Americans, regardless of skin color. I don't pretend that this one program is the answer to all the injustices in our education system. But it is hard to see why a program that has proved successful shouldn't have the support of our lawmakers. The end of Opportunity Scholarships represents more than the demise of a relatively small federal program. It will help write the end of more than a half-century of quality education at Catholic schools serving some of the most at-risk African-American children in the District.
I cannot believe that a Democratic administration will let this injustice stand.
Unfortunately, this Democratic administration (like any other, given the political givens) will almost certainly let this injustice stand. But, Fr. Ted has, I suspect, a lot more pull than I do in some pretty powerful quarters, so I'll hope his loyalty and confidence does not turn out to be unwarranted.
