Tuesday, August 19, 2008
When Senator Barack Obama addressed the question of human life and abortion back during the presidential primaries at the Compassion Forum in April, he said that there is “a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down.” Those Catholics who wanted to support the Obama candidacy viewed this language in hopeful terms as signaling a new openness to the message of life, in contrast with the rigidly pro-abortion substance and style of past Democratic presidential campaigns. Please be assured, we were told, despite his unwavering pro-choice record as a state legislator and United States Senator, Obama was not your typical abortion rights extremist. He is someone who will not ignore or despise our witness for life.
During the past week, however, three episodes have unfolded that have begun to clear the air on the sanctity of human life question, as well as cast a more penetrating light on Senator Obama’s commitment to unfettered abortion rights and his genuine attitude toward the pro-life movement. When Obama is pulled away from the glittering generalities of his campaign for “change” and his studied rhetoric in large public forums, he inadvertently may have shown a disdain for the pro-life movement and a lack of candor about his own public record on abortion. Most importantly, we have learned that when Obama was in a position of power and making official decisions, well before he had moved into campaign mode, he had gravitated toward the most extreme position on abortion.
First, over this past weekend, the presumptive presidential nominees appeared right after one another on the same stage at the Saddleback Church Forum. In that exchange, we saw the clearest of differences between the candidates on the question of human rights for infants and abortion.
Senator McCain was direct, did not waffle, and made no attempt to play both sides of the fence. When asked “at what point is a baby entitled to human rights,” McCain said forthrightly “at the moment of conception.” McCain pointed to his pro-life voting record and concluded: “And as President of the United States, I will be a pro life president and this presidency will have pro life policies. That’s my commitment. That’s my commitment to you.” As moderator Rick Warren aptly responded, “Okay, we don’t have to go longer on that one.”
By contrast, Obama responded to the same question by saying that “one thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue I think is not paying attention.” Obama had said almost exactly the same thing back in April at the Compassion Forum. In the ensuing months has there really been anyone who has publicly tried “to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue?” (Even NARAL and Planned Parenthood have been pulled back publicly on this point.) To whom is Obama supposed to be responding? What is this statement supposed to mean? What difference would it make in the policy-making councils of an Obama administration? Any hint by this language that Obama is genuinely open to the witness for unborn human life was negated only seconds later when Obama proclaimed “I am pro-choice” and “I believe in Roe v. Wade.”
Most troubling was the manner in which Obama began his answer at the Saddleback Forum. The question encompassed not only abortion but was framed as when “does a baby get human rights?” On this pretty simple question about when the newest members of our society are to be treated as human beings and entitled to human rights, Obama could only offer that “answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.” What! The man who asks us to trust him with the highest political job in the world cannot give us a straightforward answer to the question of when “a baby gets human rights”! And if he truly is unable to answer the question, shouldn't he logically be doing everything he can to extend full protection to those babies both born and unborn so that we do not commit the atrocity of deliberately taking an innocent human life?
When Obama made a nearly identical nod to the “moral dimension to abortion” at the Compassion Forum back in April, I offered the following comment here at Mirror of Justice: “Given Obama’s unwillingness to affirm that human life is literally at stake, the nature of this ‘moral dimension’ was less than clear. Beyond words, what exactly does this recognition of a moral element mean to someone like Obama who is asking to lead our nation? Is there any evidence that this ‘moral dimension’ to abortion or this ‘moral weight’ to ‘potential life’ has any consequence for Obama’s approach to public policy on the question?”
The next episode followed soon after the first, when Senator Obama was interviewed right after the Saddleback Forum by the Christian Broadcasting Network (the full interview on video is available on the CBN web site). During the interview, Senator Obama let slip the mask of congenial respect for his opponents on the abortion issue and blasted pro-life groups for supposedly “lying” about his abortion record: “They have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.” Obama was addressing nagging questions about his startling opposition as an Illinois state senator to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which was designed to ensure medical treatment to babies who survived an abortion procedure. As he repeated again in this interview, Obama now claims he would have fully supported the federal version of this law and that he only opposed the state version because “what that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade.” For anyone to say otherwise, Obama insisted this week, “it defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive.”
Yes, it does indeed defy common sense and defy the imagination that Senator Obama would take such an extreme position. But, once the public record of his legislative actions was unearthed, it turns out this is just what he did. As the New York Sun put it by way of considerable under-statement (here), rather than the pro-life movement having “lied” about Obama’s legislative record, Obama was the one who, well, “appeared to misstate his position” in the interview. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said.
Which brings us to the third episode, which in turn takes us back in time several years to an incident that became the subject of focused attention this week. This episode is the most revealing and consequential of all. Rather than having to parse his words, we see how Obama makes an actual decision about human rights for the most vulnerable. We have an opportunity to look at his attitude about the sanctity of human life from a time before he was appealing to a wider audience while campaigning for the presidency. In 2003, then-state senator Obama took a more extreme position on abortion than any member of the United States Congress and surpassed even the National Abortion Rights Action League in his promotion of abortion rights. The United States Congress unanimously approved the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Even such pro-choice Senators as Kerry, Clinton, and Boxer cast “yes” votes on this legislation. But when the same legislation came before the Illinois legislature, Obama used his position as chair of a committee to kill it.
Confronted with that outrageous conduct, Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would happily have supported the federal version. He swears that he only opposed the state version because it did not contain a clause stating that it would not overturn existing abortion access laws. And for that reason, Obama says, the pro-life movement is “lying” about his record.
Unfortunately for Obama, the 2003 legislative records have been unearthed and tell a very different story. Multiple versions of the Born Alive Infant Protection legislation came up for consideration before the state legislative subcommittee that Obama chaired. One of those versions was identical to the federal version, containing the very clause that Obama now says would have secured his satisfied approval. And Obama still voted against it as a state senator. (The state bill that was identical to the federal version and which Obama still opposed is available here.)
On the campaign trail, Obama likes to say that “words matter.” But deeds matter even more. For an eyewitness account of Senator Obama’s repeated efforts to defeat the state legislation to protect babies born alive during an abortion, juxtaposed with Obama’s unsettling endorsement of the abortion rights industry at a live appearance before Planned Parenthood, I refer you to a video viewed hundreds of thousands of times at YouTube.
Greg Sisk
One MOJ reader has this to say about the question I posed with respect to Merton's quote about the level of the Christian commitment to the peace movement:
"In your MOJ post today, you pose the question - Is it right that even Christians have come to accept the idea of war? No, but that 'battle' appears to have been lost at the Synod of Arles in 314. The gradual deadening of conscience noted by Merton was more an early effect of the 'just war' than the 'cold war.' Ambrose, Augustine and Aquinas have always trumped Martin of Tours, the patron of soldiers."
I sincerely thank Michael P. for posting Dr. John Marshall’s letter to The Tablet regarding his experience as a member of the Papal Commission on Birth Control. I did not know Jesuit Fr. Stanislas de Lestapis to whom Dr. Marshall refers. But I did know Jesuit Fr. John Ford, who like Fr. De Lestapis, was involved with the drafting of the “minority report” which became a harbinger of the encyclical Humanae Vitae upon which several of us have recently commented.
A quarter century ago when I was a Jesuit novice assigned to work in the New England Province Infirmary, I got to meet Fr. Ford who was then living in the infirmary during his last years in this life. One of my duties was to accompany him for his “daily” walks when his health permitted. He was a moral theologian who studied civil law in his later years; I was a civil law lawyer who had a great interest in moral theology and the social doctrine of the Church. We had some good conversations about matters of mutual interest. I learned much from him and his views on the Papal Commission’s work. I came across a recent publication on the Pro-Life Philippines website [HERE] that reminded me of some of Fr. Ford’s reflections. So, with thanks to Fr. Dick Cremins, S.J., I offer the thoughts of Fr. de Lestapis as reported by Fr. Cremins:
by Fr. Dick Cremins, S.J.
Fr. Stanislas de Lestapis, a French Jesuit, died in 1999 at the age of 94. He had been a member of the Papal Commission on Birth Control and was one of the signatories of its minority report. He had published a book, Birth Control, of which the third edition appeared in 1962, before Humanae Vitae (1968).
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In chapter 7, “The Contraceptive Civilization”, he made the following bold prophecies:
• “We do not hesitate to say that the acceptance of contraception will produce profound changes in our civilization, these changes are already taking place in countries that have officially endorsed contraception for one or two generations.”
• “Voluntary numerous families will progressively disappear, and the large family will tend to appear as a monstrosity.”
• “Populations and families which have deliberately become less creative will experience spiritual ageing and premature sclerosis.”
• “The idea and the ideal of family happiness will be downgraded in terms of a so-called right to happiness and of what people think are the ‘techniques’ of achieving it.”
• Morality among the young will deteriorate. The unmarried will be more licentious. The sexuality of women will lose its connection with marriage.”
• “There will be a grave change in the bond of love, due to the reversal of sexual function. It will remain fixed at an ‘adolescent’ stage. Society as a whole will slip into this ‘transitory’ stage.”
• “The maternal instinct will become sterile, due to the repression of the desire for children which is innate in women. There will be a silent hostility toward life and its first manifestations: pregnancy, childbirth and even sometimes towards dolls and babies.”
• “A new concept of sex, now essentially defined as ‘the capacity for erotic play for the sake of the couple,’ all reference to procreation now being only accidental.”
• “A growing tolerance of homosexual behavior, as erotic play that succeeds in expressing personal intimacy between friends or lovers.”
• “Finally, contraception will raise hopes which it cannot fulfill, and will give rise to frustrations and deep dissatisfactions, which will contribute to:
- The crisis of divorce and instability of modern marriages.
- The deterioration of mental health, and lack of sexual desire in women.
- The abdication of parents confronted by their task as educators.
- The ennui secreted by a civilization that is entirely centered on a comfortable way of life and sexual satisfaction.”
• “We may be accused of drawing a rather somber picture. No one will reproach us for not being frank. It only remains to justify these predictions.”
Fr. Lestapis goes on for twenty pages to justify separately each of his predictions, some very clearly, others less so, given the intangible nature of his subject.
However, a simple observation of our contemporary world will tell us that many, if not all of them, have come to pass. Is this just coincidence or is it because “the acceptance of contraception” actually has “produced profound changes in our civilization”?
If that is so, we can hardly treat the assertion of Humanae Vitae that “every use of marriage should be open to the transmission of life” as an open question.
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RJA sj
I thought it worth reprinting something from a letter Thomas Merten once wrote:
"It is sometimes discouraging to see how small the Christian peace movement is, and especially here in America where it is most necessary. But we have to remember that this is the usual pattern, and the Bible has led us to expect it. Spiritual work is done with disproportionately small and feeble instruments. And now above all when everything is so utterly complex, and when people collapse under the burden of confusions and cease to think at all, it is natural that few may want to take on the burden
of trying to effect something in the moral and spiritual way, in political action. Yet this is precisely what has to be done.
"... [T]he great danger is that under the pressure of anxiety and fear, the alternation of crisis and relaxation and new crisis, the people of the world will come to accept gradually the idea of war, the idea of submission to total power, and the abdication of reason, spirit and individual conscience. The great peril of the cold war is the progressive deadening of conscience."
Is it right that even Christians have come to accept the idea of war?
[source: Thomas Merton, letter to Jean and Hildegard Goss-Mayer; The Hidden Ground of Love
William H. Shannon. editor; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985]
Monday, August 18, 2008
Here is the opinion in the North Coast Women's Medical Care Group case. According to Bill Duncan, of the Marriage Law Foundation,
The California Supreme Court has just issued a unanimous opinion that a doctor who refused, because of religious objections, to provide a specific artificial insemination procedure for a woman in a same-sex couple (he referred her to another physician) cannot claim a constitutional religious exemption to the state statute banning discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation." The court said that even under the highest level of protection of religious liberty, the doctor would lose because the state has a "compelling interest in ensuring full and equal access to medical treatment irrespective of sexual orientation, and there are no less restrictive means for the state to achieve that goal." One justice said that interest includes ensuring "a right to full medical assistance in establishing a pregnancy."
(HT: Kathryn Lopez)
So, does the state's "compelling interest in ensuring full and equal access to medical treatment irrespective of [sex]" override a medical professional's religiously based objection to performing an abortion?
Check out this conference announcement:
THE LEGAL SCHOLAR’S CALLING
October 10 - 11, 2009
Hyatt Regency Washington on Capital Hill
Washington, D.C.
Professors from around the world will gather at the Sixth Annual Christian Legal Scholars’ Symposium to discuss what it means to be a Christian legal scholar and to examine the implications that a Christian worldview has on the teaching and practice of law.
The Symposium will begin Friday, October 10 at noon with a luncheon address on “The Christian Vocation of the Legal Scholar.” After lunch, a panel of international law professors will share stories about the intersection of their faith and their academic and legal careers, illustrating the depth and breadth of God’s global work in and through the law. The remainder of Friday afternoon and a full session Saturday morning will be devoted to Christian jurisprudence, beginning with an address by renowned political philosopher J. Budziszewski, followed by panels on the implications of jurisprudence for religious freedom issues and the culture of life.
The Christian Scholars’ Symposium is a part of the Christian Legal Society Global Convocation (October 9-12).
Here's a new paper, with a very long title, on SSRN, written by Kristin Fortin, a former student of mine, that should be up the alley of many MOJ-ers:
The Servant Leader Where the Modern Lawyer Should Be and How the Modern Lawyer Can Get There: How the Professionalism Paradigm Fueled by a Lawyer's Ethical Obligation to Inform Clients about Alternative Dispute Resolution Can Revive the Lawyer's Sense of Self, Sense of Vocation, and Sense of Service
Abstract:
Lawyers need a particular ideal that embodies their skills, qualities, and aspirations - a model to emulate, a standard for judging professional development, and a source of pride in being a lawyer. To accomplish this, the legal profession must function within the professionalism paradigm and re-create the lawyer of practical wisdom who serves clients by informing them of all their options in resolving disputes. The most important step in this movement is to recognize that every lawyer ought to have an ethical obligation to counsel clients about alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as an alternative to adversarial proceedings. By enacting this ethical obligation, lawyers will reacquaint themselves and the law with the professional ideal of putting the client first in a meaningful way. . . .
