Hi All
We were at my in-laws for Thanksgiving and conversation started up about the upcoming election. Much to surprise my in-laws are staunch Democrats. They both are going to vote for someone who is “Pro Choice”. I ask them as a Catholics how can they vote for someone who is pro choice? He told me that you have to separate politics from religion. This totally blew me away. My question is, should Catholics vote for someone who is pro choice?
Why not ?
It’s one thing to be against abortion - that is in principle reasonably easy to justify. Things get much more complicated when principles that in themselves are relatively straightforward are applied to (in this case) decisions about voting - it is because principles & their application are not the same thing, that people who hold the same principles, apply them
differently.
Which is why in turn there is no one right answer to your question - there is no absolute & unvarying answer to that fits all cases, even though the principle of opposition is, by itself, perfectly clear.
Another reason there is no single right answer is, that even if someone is “pro choice”, that may apply to any position from not being committed to favouring abortion, to being vigorously in favour - & that can cover a very wide variety of views.
Besides, whatever a political candidate’s own desires or priorities, the things he or she considers important are not going to be the only issues that need attention - even the most fervent advocate of abortion is going to have “other business” to attend to.
For that reason, it’s not clear that this issue can be regarded as so important that one can use it alone as a test for a candidate or for deciding how to vote. It’s very important - but that does not mean that nothing else is to be regarded as important. Practicality matters too - not voting for a candidate because he or she is not sufficiently anti-abortion for one’s liking seems odd, if there is no immediate prospect of getting rid of abortion; if that is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future, I don’t see a problem in voting for someone who is not opposed to it. If there a were realistic likelihood of a change in the foreseeable future, that would be a different matter. If someone is as acceptable as could be had, apart from not being strongly opposed to abortion, I would in principle have no problem in voting for such a person.
BTW - there is a wide difference between
- voting for someone despite the position adopted on the issue;
and
- voting for someone because of that position
The moral difference is very great - so it confuses matters to treat politicians as having the same policies on this issue (or any other) when they don’t. It’s also dishonest to ignore that kind of difference.
If it were wrong to vote for a candidate whose position was not wholly satisfactory to some group or other, one might well end not voting for anyone. That could be very irresponsible, even self-defeating. We cannot always have the candidates we might like, so we should do the best with the ones we are given. Otherwise, we risk being entirely ineffective on all issues. And what good does that do ?
