I want to raise some other issues as well.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I spent a considerable time working to allow humanitarian aid to several countries, including Iraq, including with a bishop with whom I marched. We were trying to raise money and awareness of the plight of Iraqis who, caught between the pincers of (A) the Hussein regime and (B) the UN sanctions, were dying of diseases that their failing water infrastructure no longer was able to remove and which were facing all number of public health crises from starvation (in some cases) to rolling blackouts affecting their hospitals as their power plants couldn’t be properly repaired under the sanctions.
After 9/11, as the Bush regime beat the drums of war and started talking about WMD being linked with Al-Qaeda, I was able to rely on my somewhat extensive understanding of Iraqi infrastructure to cast an extremely skeptical eye on the justification the Bush administration put forward. I participated in peace vigils, wrote letters to the president, Congress, and the newspapers, but of course, it didn’t make a lick of difference. I warned about the humanitarian crisis that would unfold if we went to war over what seemed to me to be a wholly synthetic case for war, sold by Colin Powell to the UN and the public at large with cartoons. I’d been looking at photos of Iraqi infrastructure for years. What the Bush administration presented to me was a PR campaign, playing on American fears of Al-Qaeda in the most cynical and deceitful way possible.
Although it wasn’t until 2005 that Iraq really started to get bad, the 2004 election presented a very clear case about voting. During this time, while I was listening to my local Catholic radio station, one prominent pro-life advocate, possibly Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, argue that while abortion was a “non-negotiable” issue in Catholic moral theology, Just War Doctrine allowed the prudential use of military force in a situation like Iraq. To me that was shameful at best, and illustrated to me how blind the pro-life movement had become – one of their prominent spokespeople was parroting the Bush administration’s lies. That’s when I lost nearly all respect for the argument about “non-negotiables.”
To me, the Bush-led invasion of Iraq was unmitigated evil, one that was plunging the country into civil war (which didn’t even get bad until after the 2004 election). It was deception of the public on a mass scale, and the use of might-makes-right to justify the hegemonic projection of overwhelming military force. That year, I was disgusted by the hard push by devout Catholics to vote for Bush (trumped up behind “non-negotiables”), because in his war in Iraq, I saw an utter disregard for human life.
The 2004 “Ratzinger Memo” included a footnote that, to me, justified my voting for a presidential candidate who opposed the war in Iraq:
To me, I had “proportionate reasons.” I sincerely believed, and felt with my conscience, that a vote for Bush in 2004 was a vote for death.
Beyond that election, the “non-negotiables” argument had become a hollow shell. When I mentioned the “footnote” to other Catholics, they argued to me that abortion was such an enormous holocaust of humanity, killing 1,000,000 unborn babies every year, that it outweighed any concern about the war in Iraq or any other issue. By citing numbers, it seemed to me that these Catholics had made what amounts to a utilitarian argument.
Since then, I have felt the need to really evaluate the claims by those who tell me that abortion, and the electoral strategy of overturning Roe v. Wade and erecting more state-level restrictions on abortion, should trump all other issues. As a Catholic and a scientist trying to live with integrity, I have looked at as much of the science of abortion, contraception, childbearing, and related behavioral economics, and come to the conclusion that the electoral strategy of “non-negotiables” is simply wrong.
I am no great lover of Democrats. But I feel that this hyper-partisan split among Catholics is destroying the Church. All culture reduce to your voting patterns. “Culture of life” equals “voting Republican.” Evangelism is ignored. Science is ignored. Data is viewed as “good” or “bad,” depending on whether it supports the policy position of the pro-life movement.
I am pro-life. I believe that abortion is murder in all cases. But I don’t buy into this shallow version of political theology.
