Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec acknowledge that Obama isn’t “the perfect pro-life candidate.” In this they display a rare talent for understatement. Still, they insist that he is genuinely “pro-life” in a meaningful and “real world” way in that he wants to reduce the frequency of abortion. On what basis are we to believe that Senator Obama is truly committed to this goal? It certainly cannot be gleaned from his record in public life.
Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec say that Obama sees abortion as a “tragic moral choice,” and indeed during the campaign Obama has himself said that the entity developing in the womb carries “moral weight.” But this “moral weight” and the “tragedy” of the choice for abortion have counted for all of nothing in Obama’s public record. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec can point to no legislative action on Obama’s part – either in the Illinois legislature or the U.S. Senate – in which he has worked to protect the life of the unborn child. Indeed, he has opposed even the most modest restrictions on abortion – such as laws involving parental notice and restrictions regarding the transportation of minors across state lines – at every turn. Moreover, the only measure he has acted on to reduce abortions has been to vote in favor of more public funding for contraceptive use – an abortion reduction strategy that seems intuitively sound but which has proven to be of dubious value in practice. (I should add that this is wholly apart from whatever moral problems that promotion of contraception may pose in its own right).
Many rightly believe that we should support programs that provide more generous social assistance to women in crisis pregnancies. Indeed, a number of commentators on MOJ, myself included, have written in support of such efforts. At the same time many writers, including Weigel and several commentators on MOJ (myself included), have raised serious doubts about how effective such policies will be in reducing the frequency of abortion. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec’s flippant response to these arguments (i.e. “the U.S. isn’t Sweden”) reflects the superficial response of political pundits, not the thoughtful response one has come to expect from these legal scholars.
Moreover, given Obama’s record, recounted above, one would hope that Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec would understand if pro-lifers greet the eleventh-hour additions to the Democratic platform and Obama’s expressed interest in reducing the incidence of abortion with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Beyond his obvious and oft-repeated support for the abortion license, and the doubts surrounding the ability of social programs to greatly reduce the incidence of abortion, there are other reasons to question Obama’s sincerity with respect to abortion. The reasons why abortion is “a tragic moral choice” and why the entity in the womb carries “moral weight” is the ground that the pro-choice lobby most fears for the public to tread. And this is the place where Senator Obama has not dared to go. Indeed, the pro-choice lobby, who can barely stomach the description of abortion as “tragic,” becomes positively apoplectic when the reasons why this is an apt description of abortion are explored.
What they most fear is that an intellectually honest discussion of the matter would lead many to confront the humanity of the unborn child. Not daring to venture into this hazardous territory of honest discussion, Obama has been content with the rhetoric of “tragic moral choice,” confident that this will convince most Americans that he is as moderate and restrained on the issue as his calm and easy manner suggests. Obama's pro-choice supporters have tolerated this otherwise unmentionable description, knowing that, as a substantive matter, he subscribes to their views with unfailing devotion. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec have been complicit in this deception by failing to acknowledge let alone criticize Obama for the radical positions he in fact espouses.
...to say, Blessings to all on this solemnity of All Saints Day. For me this is a day to contemplate the saints in my life - canonized and not, living and dead. And it is a day to give thanks for those who inspire me by their example of discipleship, for those who (to use Pope Benedict's description of the saints) "bring to light in creative fashion quite new human potentialities."
My extended reflection on the day is posted on my blog.
Friday, October 31, 2008
A reader writes:
Three points in response to Susan Stabile’s point that
solving the problems in education will require much more than vouchers.
1. One significant reason why the school choice
movement hasn’t made more progress is the near obsessive focus on
vouchers by their advocates. The fact of the matter is that there are
nowhere near enough seats available in private schools across the country to
absorb a large block of public school children. I realize advocates claim
that you don’t need to move all of the kids because losing some of the
kids will force the public schools to compete and that will make them
better. But even if competition was effective, you would need a big
enough block of kids who might move to make public schools feel any
competition. It’s not at all clear to me there would be enough
space in private schools to get to that number. Nor is it at all obvious
to me that the problem with public schools is lack of competition.
Certainly there are problems in many public schools. Teachers are often
under-qualified and are too hard to fire. In many districts there is
excess bureaucracy (a problem made worse, not better, by No Child Left
Behind). But most of the problems of (at least urban) public schools are
problems of the community. Their students do not live in stable homes and
therefore most schools have transient populations; students are often food
insecure; they are not around educated adults very much; and there is no
parental involvement in their educations. Not one of those problems is
helped by vouchers. This does not mean that the exceptions – the kids
whose parents are involved and provide a stable environment –
should be stuck in schools with all of those problems. But it does mean
that vouchers could only be a small part of the solution – helping those
kids get out but not doing much to solve the underlying problems faced in the
public schools left behind.
2. My experience, and that of many other voucher skeptics,
is that voucher advocates tend not to support many of the things that would
help resolve those community issues in the schools left behind. They don’t
want to support programs that improve communities or get parents more involved in
the schools because those cost a lot of money. Now I know that money isn’t
everything, and that’s the retort you always get from voucher
advocates. But the data clearly shows that educating children in poverty
is much more expensive, particularly when those children have not had any early
childhood education. When I see a vocal voucher advocate who has an
education plan that addresses those other issues rather than treating vouchers
as a silver bullet, I’ll start listening more.
3. Finally – and I think this point is actually
wrapped up in the first two – I have my doubts that most voucher
advocates support them because they really think they will change education for
poor kids. Don’t get me wrong, there are some well-intentioned
people who certainly do believe that (even if, in my view, they’re
misguided). But here’s an anecdote that colors my view, and that I
think resonates with lots of voucher skeptics. In one community where I
used to live the parents at a local catholic school outspokenly opposed funding
for the local public schools. Many of them said – without any apparent
shame – that they hoped denying funding would result in the public
schools’ failure, because then the state would be forced (under state
law) to provide residents with vouchers, which (surprise surprise) they really
wanted to help pay for the schools they were already using. I get this
sort of sense (anecdotally, of course) from lots of voucher advocates –
what they really want is a subsidy for their kids to go to school. Now it’s
a separate question whether people who want to send their kids to catholic
schools should get a subsidy so they can, as I’ve seen many on
this site describe it, “make a meaningful choice.” [I happen
not to buy that argument. I think all community members get lots of value
from a good public school system (whether or not their kids go there), so it’s
wrong to say that parents who send their kids to catholic school are “paying
twice.” I also wonder whether the conservatives who make the “choice”
argument would be willing to generalize their point to a principle that the
freedom to do something is not meaningful unless the government subsidizes the
choice so people can afford it. No one is stopping people from sending
their kids to private schools.] But it seems to me the religious freedom
point is a separate point that, even though it’s really driving many
supporters views, is obscured behind claims that the vouchers are good for the
poor kids.
