In any event, and this is really my principal point in writing this post, given the differential treatment of abortion, I think it is highly inappropriate for advocates of prohibition … [to use] the rhetoric of "murder" … arguments that almost always rely on the language and imagery of murder (e.g., Cardinal George's blood-drenched language, frequent references to the killing of millions of defenseless "children," comparisons to the holocaust, etc.). I don't think that proponents of this particular mode of argument can have their rhetorical cake and eat it to.
Eduardo wrote this in the context of this year’s election, but if this “rhetoric” is inappropriate in the context of an election, maybe it is inappropriate elsewhere as well.My questions for Eduardo and others is this:Is using “blood-drenched language, frequent references to the killing of millions of defenseless ‘children,’” merely “rhetoric”?Or, is it language designed to express the truth of the matter asserted?
Is abortion the taking of a life?Is the form of the taking an act of intentional killing of a life?Is the life taken innocent of any wrongdoing?Is the life taken human?Is the method of taking the innocent human life brutal?If the answers to these questions are “yes,” then Cardinal George’s “blood-drenched language” is a form of truth telling, not merely rhetoric, political or otherwise.
And, it seems to that it is beyond dispute that the answers to these questions are “yes.”Don’t misunderstand.By saying that it is beyond dispute, I am not attempting to shut down the conversation.Quite the opposite, I am inviting the conversation.I would like someone who is opposed to this truth telling rhetoric to explain to me how abortion is not the brutal and intentional taking of innocent human life. In other words, what is untrue about the rhetoric?
I read Lisa's recent post, on debate about abortion within the women's movement, just after I saw this, "Democrats play both sides of abortion politics in congressional races," from the Feminist Law Professors blog:
Two contrasting views of the Democratic Party’s use of the abortion issue in this year’s election have emerged in recent press reports. When one reads them together, a fascinating picture emerges of how the Dems are deploying and funding anti-choice messages in the conservative House districts that they hope to pick up from Republicans while simultaneously playing up pro-choice messages in districts where that works for them. Pragmatic or just smarmy?
The strategy is pretty clear: say whatever works on the social issues in order to capitalize on the wave of anger and frustration bordering on desperation that is about to sweep Obama into office and possibly change the face of Congress. And hey, I’ve got no desire to stand in the way of that. . .
[quoting the New York Times:] …[T]his year, the party has not only gone to great lengths to recruit such candidates, it has also provided them significant financial backing, underscoring a new pragmatism within the party, said Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life, an anti-abortion group. “This is the year that pro-life Democrats have received the most support from the party in Washington,” said Mrs. Day…
[quoting The American Prospect:]… this year, Democratic political operatives have been surprised by the success they’ve had in deploying pro-choice messages. Congressional campaigns from New Jersey to Nevada have picked up on the trend, and outside groups spreading the word are not just usual suspects like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, but also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
I agree with Rick that the issue of school choice has been largely missing from discussions surrounding the “Catholic vote” in the upcoming election.With respect this subject, let me share with you a brief conversation that I had with one of the presidential candidates several years ago.
Like many institutions, Loyola University Chicago School of Law sponsors an annual Martin Luther King, Jr. lecture in honor of the slain civil rights leader.A few years ago, when he was serving in the Illinois Senate, we invited Barack Obama to deliver the lecture.He gave what was by all accounts a superb address in which he stressed the importance of education as the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream.Education is, after all, not only the key to better jobs and higher levels of employment and income, but it is one of the primary means of personal development and discovery about the world.
After the lecture, Obama met with those in attendance and responded to some questions.I introduced myself – his wife Michelle and I were law school classmates, and we also worked as associates in the same Chicago law firm.I then asked him why, given his obvious appreciation for the importance of education, the meaning it can have in the life of an individual, and the need to make decent education available to all young people in order to fulfill Dr. King’s dream, why wouldn’t he support vouchers?
His initial response was that we shouldn’t give up on public schools (a point with which I agreed) and that we needed to provide additional funding to these schools in order to help them succeed.I then reminded him of the fact that many private schools spend far less on their students than do public schools with much better results.He said that those results were skewed because private schools could be selective in the students they admitted.I said that while that was undoubtedly true of some private schools, it wasn’t true of the Catholic parochial schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago, many of which are located in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the City.And I have to say, I was struck by the fact that he really didn’t have a response to this.He simply returned to the point that we shouldn’t give up on the public schools.
My impression from the lecture and this brief encounter was that Obama was a very able speaker with a commanding presence.My impression – not based on what he said but on what he didn’t say – was that this was a man who couldn’t speak his mind on education because he was beholden to the teachers’ unions.Sadly, this appears to be a feature of his political identity (see the article here) that seems not to have changed over time.
There's a very interesting article in the Washington Post about the profound effect Sarah Palin is having on "traditional" feminism. The article points out that: "As Election Day nears, it's clear that gender was not a disqualifying factor for either Clinton or Palin. Voters who turned against them did so for other reasons, just as they do with male candidates. Women from both parties also perceive with satisfaction a heightened emphasis on their issues in this year's race."
Most interesting (and encouraging) for some of us Catholic "new feminists", though, is this description of how her witness as a pro-life woman is affecting "traditional" feminists.
The unexpected recognition of a conservative as a role model for women has forced some traditional feminists to reconsider the movement's mission. "It's going to take us a while to find our bearings," said Sarah Stoesz, who runs the Planned Parenthood office that oversees Minnesota and the Dakotas. "As feminists, we've always thought that a core aspect of women's equality is about being in control of our reproductive lives. But Sarah Palin is throwing the calculus out the window and demonstrating a view that some people would call feminism: I can be governor, I can have five children, I can shoot and field-dress a moose, and I don't need access to abortion.
"There's a big debate inside the leadership of the women's movement about how much abortion should be a key political issue."
. . .
The next big issue for women, Bernard surmised, is to determine whether both sides of the ideological spectrum can find common ground. "Is there a big enough tent -- can we all find the common ground in the push for women's rights regardless of women's position on abortion?" she asks.
In recent years, vocal groups such as IWF and Feminists for Life have stepped forward to fight the perception that only liberal women can be in favor of equality and independence. By calling herself a feminist -- once considered a dirty word by the religious right -- Palin proclaimed that feminism is no longer synonymous with liberalism but something that could be shared and celebrated by all women.
. . .
"It's just nonsense to say you can't be a feminist and be against abortion," says former Clinton fundraiser and supporter Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who now backs McCain. "Democrats use [abortion] as a noose around your neck," says de Rothschild, who is in favor of abortion rights. "Sarah Palin," she says, "rocks all the stereotypes of feminism and can only enhance progress for women. "
With respect to Eduardo's most recent post on the matter . . . He writes that "the question is whether deciding in advance not to pursue for criminal sanctions the person who has procured the intentional killing of the unborn (when the state vigorously pursues that person in every other category of homicide, at least when dealing with those who have been born) does not reproduce, within the legal prohibition, the same dignitary/equal-protection type harm that the legal prohibition was designed to remedy." This is -- we agree -- an important question but, as I suggested earlier, I think the answer is "no, such a decision does not reproduce the same harm that the legal prohibition was designed to remedy."
Nor, in my view, does it attack the agency or dignity of women to suggest that women procuring abortions and those who perform them could be treated differently, for purposes of punishment and regulation. Many women who procure abortions will not know all the relevant facts about abortion, fetal development, adoption-options, etc. -- and, I fear, this problem will be exacerbated by efforts in Congress to roll back informed-consent laws, etc. The entire culture of legal abortion, and the messages that attend it, serve to obscure the truth about abortion. Those who perform abortions, on the other hand, know exactly what they are doing and it is fair for the law to hold them to an obligation to know what they are doing.
Eduardo then concludes with the suggestion that "an obvious alternative [to an excuse regime] would be to say that, although human beings, the unborn are entitled to less than the born in terms of legal protection (which is not the same as saying no protection)." I do not believe this alternative is attractive; one can construct a legal regime that responds to some homicides in different ways than it responds to others without endoring or communicating, in the law, the unsettling notion that some human persons are less entitled to be protected against lethal violence than are other human persons. "Different" protection-strategies, it seems to me, are fine; but the basic entitlement to the right-to-life, and to effective protection from lethal violence, needs to be the same.
Questions about whom and how to punish are, no doubt, complicated. Still, there is a basic human right to equal protection which, I believe, requires at least this much: the law should acknowledge the dignity and worth of every human person by forbidding elective abortion and by taking those steps reasonably calculated to effective deter abortion. Lots of legal steps (including steps that do not involve "murder" liability for women who undergo abortions) are consistent with this bedrock starting point; but, our currrent regime, like any regime in which it is not unlawful (and is, indeed, publicly subsidized) strikes me as extremely difficult to reconcile with what we believe, and the Church teaches, about the dignity of all human persons.
Over the years, some of the posts here at MOJ, by Rick Garnett and others, have concerned constitutional controversies (e.g., capital punishment) and the proper role of the courts--especially the proper role of SCOTUS--is resolving such controversies. I recently posted a paper at SSRN that addresses, among other, related issues, the question what it means, or should mean, to "interpret" the constitutional text. Some MOJ readers may be interested. Here's the SSRN link, where the paper can be downloaded: Perry Paper.
And here's the abstract:
Entrenching, Interpreting, and Specifying Human Rights: Some Comments on the U.S. Constitution and Judicial Review
Michael J. Perry Emory University School of Law; University of San Diego - School of Law
Abstract:
This essay is my contribution to a symposium on originalism, to be held
at the University of Western Ontario in October 2008. In the essay, I
address the question What does it mean - or, at least, what should it
mean - to 'interpret' the constitutional text? I then explain that
one's answer to that question - even if one's answer is originalist -
does not entail any particular answer to two further, distinct
questions:
(1)
How large a role, or how small, should the U.S. Supreme Court play in
specifying - in rendering more determinate - a constitutional norm that
is implicated by, but underdeterminate in the context of, one or
another constitutional controversy?
(2) In resolving
constitutional controversies, should the U.S. Supreme Court always
proceed, at least in part, on the basis of what it believes to be the
correct interpretation of the constitutional text?
I conclude
this essay with a question I have addressed elsewhere, and to which I
will eventually return: In specifying entrenched but contextually
underdeterminate human rights norms, should the U.S. Supreme Court take
the path of Thayerian deference?
Canadian commentator David Warren gives expression to the concerns that many of people of faith have about the man likely to become the next President. Herewith an excerpt (full editorial here):
Obama has presented himself from the start as a messianic, “transformational” leader — and thus played deceitfully with ideas that belong to religion and not politics. That he has done this so successfully is a mark of the degree to which the U.S. itself, like the rest of the western world, has lost its purchase on the Christian religion. Powerful religious impulses have been spilt, secularized.
In this climate, people tend to be maniacally opposed to the sin to which they are not tempted: to giving Christ control over the things that are Caesar’s. But they are blind to the sin to which they are hugely tempted: giving Caesar control over the things that are Christ’s.
“Faith, hope, and charity” are Christ’s things. They apply, properly, outside time — to a “futurity” that is not of this world. They must not be applied to any earthly utopia. A Caesar who appropriates otherworldly virtues, is riding upon very dangerous illusions. Follow him into dreamland, and you’ll be lucky to wake up.
A few days ago, E.J. Dionne discussed with his (I admit) wider-than-MOJ readership what MOJ readers already know, i.e., Catholics are not "one issue" voters and are divided with respect to the upcoming election. (To be clear -- no one thinks that Catholics are or should be "one issue" voters; some of us do think, though, that the abortion problem is more than just "one issue" among many.) He concludes with the prediction that "this election could hang on the struggle of Catholic voters with their priorities and their consciences."
I was sorry to see that no where in his piece -- or in the statements of Bishop Gabino Zavala, which Dionne discussed -- did the matter of education-reform / school-choice / religious freedom / Catholic schools come up. It seems to me that this really has been the "missing issue" in the great "how should Catholics vote" debate. And, as our own Greg Sisk has explained (here and here), this is unfortunate, both because the issue is foundationally important and because the Church's Social Teaching speaks quite clearly in this context. (It is likely, for example -- and deeply regrettable -- that Washington, D.C.'s school-choice program will be terminated by the next Congress, with President Obama's acquiescence, once President Bush is no longer there to veto a repeal-attempt.)
This
is interesting. It seems to me that, with the exception of Kmeic, what
the “Obamacons” all have in common is that they are not members of the
Religious Right. It suggests the collapse of the Republican
Coalition. In light of this exodus, it’s interesting that many in the
Church’s leadership have decided to double down on the Republican
nominee. If Obama hangs on and wins, exactly how much influence do the
Catholic Bishops expect to have in an Obama administration? HT Cass Sunstein:
Charles Fried, a professor at
Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important
conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he
served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United
States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several
Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom
he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by
absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to
the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the
several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter,
he said that chief among the reasons for his decision “is the choice of
Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis.”
I think it follows from Eduardo"s excellent posts
that the citizenry believes that human organisms in the first trimester should
be entitled to less protection than babies (if abortion were thought to be murder, women would be prosecuted and abortions for mental health reasons (just as an example) would be uniformly condemned). To be sure, most citizens
believe that first trimester abortions raise serious moral issues. Few would
maintain that having an abortion is no more morally serious than having a
haircut. But most citizens believe that the moral gravity of having an abortion
increases with fetal development. They believe that killing the born is murder.
And they do not believe that first trimester abortions are acts of murder.
Why would this be the case? I think part of the intuition is
that organisms in the first trimester have not developed a central nervous
system or a brain. I think most citizens believe that the moral seriousness of
killing increases significantly when a human organism has a central nervous
system and a brain. Accordingly, most citizens will think that the abortion murder
rhetoric is out of place and they will think that the abortion issue (significant
as it is) should not be politically privileged over issues such as the killings
of civilians in war or allowing children to starve or other issues of
significant moral consequence.
