Why Would A Catholic Vote For A ProChoice Canidate?

[IvanKaramozov]

That’s the problem with emoticons, is it the calling me a “liar” without foundation that you applaud

No, I think you have been very honest and have made very clear consistant arguments.

or the idea that I support wholly voting my faith (as defined by the Magesterium) that is objectionable to you?

I was saying it was odd he objected to fervently to a Church teaching, the wistle, like juggling is more because I like them, they are silly and I enjoy looking at them, also I tend to get annoyed viewing some of the threads, and the silly faces cheer me up a bit and serve as a reminder not to get to serious about a forum.

 

[IvanKaramozov]

Sorry, in context, I agree with your point. Ideas are best tested by reason and evidence, not grammar.

That is fine

 

[Ridgerunner]

Consider that you cannot be a Dem officeholder without renouncing a key position of your religion and, indeed, self-excommunicating.
(Continued)

I now see how I somehow caused someone to think or represent that I said voting for a pro-abortion candidate automatically causes that person to be excommunicated. I didn’t say that, but perhaps some did not read carefully. The above is the closest I came.

I will also admit that it’s too broad. An officeholder (note the word “officeholder”, not “voter” who philosophically favors abortion on demand but never does anything to promote it would not, according to any Church position I have ever read, automatically incur excommunication. Nor, have I ever read that the Church holds that anyone who merely votes for a pro-abortion candidate automatically incurs excommunication. Nor, again, did I say that. Frankly, however, it is difficult for me to imagine a pro-abortion officeholder with any real power, not having occasion to actively promote it.

However, in a clear cut situation, in which candidate A will almost certainly promote abortion and candidate B almost certainly will not, I personally see no difference between my using what little political power I have (my vote) and an officeholder using, say, his committee chairmanship to hold up likely prolife judicial candidates in order to protect abortion. The only difference between him and me is the amount of power each of us has. That’s my own opinion, and I made it clear that’s what it is. No one has yet come up with a definitive Church statement that I’m wrong. But in the absence of a clear statement one way or the other, my opinion is not clearly wrong and it certainly is consistent with the statements of Abp Burke cited herein.

In case “abortion on demand” is still fuzzy in anyone’s thinking. One would have to read Roe and its progeny to discern what the Supreme Court really intended to enshrine as “part of our Constitutional rights”. Roe itself is confused and confusing, and well-credentialled judicial commentators have acknowledeged that. However, when the cases are examined, it is without doubt at all that the ability of states to impose restrictions in the last three months of pregnancy, is meaningless in fact, because the Supreme Court also decided that the “Constitutional Right” forbade any restrictions that could threaten the “life or health” of the mother. “Health” includes “emotional health”, which renders the whole restriction meaningless in fact. It’s really “abortion on demand” and everybody knows that. In the “partial birth abortion ban” case, it was, indeed, decided on that basis. The Court determined (as did Congress in passing it after considerable fact-finding) that there is never a physical or emotional health issue involved in partial birth abortion in particular. Since Anthony Kennedy has, himself voted to uphold a pretty wide application of the rule in Roe, his joining with the prolife minority in this limited application, was remarkable, but not altogether inconsistent with his previous positions. Ruth Bader Ginzburg, of course, called the decision “alarming”, and a threat to “a woman’s right to choose”. Planned Parenthood echoed that same sentiment. Since the decision only applied to a procedure in which the only “emotional” impact possible would be the impact of realizing one could not kill a totally viable, almost entirely born child, when one desired its death, it hardly “threatened abortion rights” as defined under previous decisions. Even then, it was only a 5-4 decision.

The next appointment to the Supreme Court will likely determine whether Roe stands indefinitely, or does not. Since Ruth Bader Ginzburg was appointed under the administration of “Candidate A”, who declares supportive of the rule under Roe and its progeny, but opposed the “partial birth abortion ban” one can be pretty certain what future appointments will be like under Candidate “A”.

With Candidate “B”, who has declared against abortion on demand, but has compromised on embryonic stem cell research, one only needs to do the math to consider Candidate “B” the “lesser evil”.

 

[rpp]

I was saying it was odd he objected to fervently to a Church teaching, the wistle, like juggling is more because I like them, they are silly and I enjoy looking at them, also I tend to get annoyed viewing some of the threads, and the silly faces cheer me up a bit and serve as a reminder not to get to serious about a forum.

The text in bold is a bald-faced lie.

 

[mary_bobo]

So how do you feel about the termination of ectopic pregnancies in Catholic hospitals? Theologians are fiercely divided and the Church has declined to weigh in, referring inquires to the 1902 answer from the Tribunal of the Holy Office.

I take the declaration at face value, but many self described “pro life” Catholics here disagree, arguing that “double effect” inarguably applies.

I believe that the CC considers an ectopic pregnancy as a pathological condition and that part of a fallopian tube may be removed to correct that condition. The intention is not to abort a pregnancy. I do see where it could be a problem reconciling this situation.

 

[mapleoak]

I believe that the CC considers an ectopic pregnancy as a pathological condition and that part of a fallopian tube may be removed to correct that condition. The intention is not to abort a pregnancy. I do see where it could be a problem reconciling this situation.

Actually the CC does not consider an ectopic pregnancy a pathological condition, nor is an ectopic pregnancy medically a pathologic condition. It is possible for pathology to develop as a result of the circumstances of the ectopic condition, but in and of itself it is not pathologic. Treating it (killing the embryo) as a preventative measure to prevent a possible future pathologic condition is abortion.

 

[rpp]

Actually the CC does not consider an ectopic pregnancy a pathological condition, nor is an ectopic pregnancy medically a pathologic condition. It is possible for pathology to develop as a result of the circumstances of the ectopic condition, but in and of itself it is not pathologic. Treating it (killing the embryo) as a preventative measure to prevent a possible future pathologic condition is abortion.

Correct. A treatment of an ectopic pregnancy which would involve the death the child can only be undertaken if the condition becomes life-threatening for the mother. It is only then does the principal od double-effect enter the picture.

 

[vinessa]

Case in point, there was much rejoicing and self congradulation when a report was recently released showing that abortion rates have hit 30 year lows. But that would seem to be a superficial reading of the data at best. Rates fell faster during a supposedly ‘abortion friendly’ party national rule, and state by state the results are equally illuminating. For example, California outperformed the national average in reducing abortion rates, despite its reputation as ‘liberal’. Oregon’s reduction was second highest in the nation - despite just being labeled the most ‘pro abortion’ state in the union by Americans United for Life.

Further, much of the data used came from a WHO funded study which concluded that the impact of secular law on abortion rates is nominal at best.

This is really interesting SoCal, thank you for sharing it. I’m going to investigate further.

By the way, it looks like the claim against Ruth Bader Ginsberg supporting unencumbered homosexual activity for minors as young as age 12 is a willful distortion. I googled it and all the results, for the first 4-5-6 pages, were seriously right-wing… which had me suspicious. There were no neutral our authoritative sources in the top list. So I tried finding the document that she authored instead, and found this interesting article, quote:

“Ginsburg’s 1974 paper praises [for its gender neutral language] and then quotes a draft Senate bill that never became law. The proposed law has, she writes, “a definition of rape that, in substance, conforms to the equality principle.” She then quotes the bill’s language…”

The draft bill did propose a lowering of the age of consent, but Ginsberg’s task was ONLY to look at the gender language, not to rule or comment on the bill’s contents.

Furthermore, references are made to comments regarding this lowered age of consent, in specific paragraphs on specific pages in her book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code – but which don’t really exist.

Now, it’s true that this author also may be biased! But it’s worth considering that 1) just because a rumor has strong legs doesn’t make it true. When no primary, neutral, or authoritative sources can be found, it’s worth suspecting a hoax. And 2) It would be very hard to believe that none of the watchdogs surrounding a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, especially post-Bork, would have failed to discover a “fact” like this and made it an issue at the time.

It seems more likely to me that people simply swallow what they want to believe, without checking primary sources or discovering for themselves.

Source:
slate.com/id/2126491/

 

[SoCalRC]

I believe that the CC considers an ectopic pregnancy as a pathological condition and that part of a fallopian tube may be removed to correct that condition. The intention is not to abort a pregnancy. I do see where it could be a problem reconciling this situation.

I am in agreement with Mapleoak and rpp, as far as I can tell, the Church makes no such teaching. From the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Abortion:

The teachings of the Catholic Church admit of no doubt on the subject. Such moral questions, when they are submitted, are decided by the Tribunal of the Holy Office. Now this authority decreed, 28 May, 1884, and again, 18 August, 1889, that “it cannot be safely taught in Catholic schools that it is lawful to perform . . . any surgical operation which is directly destructive of the life of the fetus or the mother.” Abortion was condemned by name, 24 July, 1895, in answer to the question whether when the mother is in immediate danger of death and there is no other means of saving her life, a physician can with a safe conscience cause abortion not by destroying the child in the womb (which was explicitly condemned in the former decree), but by giving it a chance to be born alive, though not being yet viable, it would soon expire. The answer was that he cannot. After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: “Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?” The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: “No; according to the decree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the life of the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for”. Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.

I asked because most Catholic hospitals in the US will preventively treat detected ectopic pregnancies (no tubal rupture or actual life threatening condition required). This is not the case in Latin American nations with high Catholic populations. But many pro-life Catholics here are adamant that these preventive abortions are licid.

It is these sorts of very difficult margin cases (and we are talking about 100,000+ and climbing in the US alone), combined with the poor track record of prohibition in general and attempting to lower abortions with secular law in particular, that make me question the wisdom of not just elevating abortion to special status as a pro-life issue, but doing so in a vary narrow way.

 

[SoCalRC]

By the way, it looks like the claim against Ruth Bader Ginsberg supporting unencumbered homosexual activity for minors as young as age 12 is a willful distortion.

A byproduct of relentless demonization of one’s opponents. Something I found interesting with the Gonzales v. Carhart decision from the supreme court was that two opinions contained criticisms of Roe, the concurring opinion by Scalia and the dissenting opinion by Ginsburg. Yet, somehow an opinion that upheld a law effecting about 2000 abortions each year, on the grounds that it was compliant with Casey and Roe and would, per the opinion, not stop any of the 2000 abortions was hailed as a great victory.

Ginsburg’s point in the dissent, about the possible dangers of allowing politicians, not medical doctors to determine rather or not something is of ‘medical necessity’, is dismissed solely on the basis of the source. That her basic facts about the position of different medical groups is deemed of no importance.

If you label your opponents as agents of Satan, this makes sense. Cover your ears, lest you be seduced by a deceptively appealing tongue… But if you view them as fellow children of God who simply have different ideas about how best to serve the common good, you start to have some obligation to at least give their thoughts fair hearing.

 

[BamaRider]

For SoCal- so you think Ginsburg was a good choice for the Supreme Court?

 

[vinessa]

I do think, though, that a society’s laws can either be edifying or cause a creeping corruption of soul in its citizens. Unfortunately, many tend to assume that anything “legal” is also “right”, and have no greater underpinning of their moral concepts than that. It’s a sad commentary, but it’s so.

I agree.

There were those, largely laughed at, who argued the “slippery slope” argument, and perhaps the slope is not as slippery as they maintained. But who would have ever thought society would so readily then follow on with cloning and using fetuses as “parts factories”? Who would have thought euthanasia would be so widely accepted? It’s hard for me to believe that someday euthanasia will become mandatory for, e.g., the severely disabled. But neither would I have believed what has come to pass in the last 30 years either.

Agreed.

I am going to share with you, Vinessa, that I have an autistic daughter. Mostly, I don’t think she will ever be in danger of being declared “unfit”, or her life “useless” and quietly euthanized, but sometimes I worry a great deal about it. I think her siblings will protect her when my wife and I are gone, but will they even know? Will they be deemed competent to make a decision for her continued life? Or will it be determined by some judicial decision? There seems to be a certain hardness of heart forming in our society; a certain excess of utilitarianism

I’m sorry, Ridge, and I agree with you on all this.

then *perhaps the law is all there will be *standing in the way of the worst instincts of that society.

Perhaps. But I sometimes wonder if this kind of thinking doesn’t add up to making gods of ourselves, as if the laws we promulgate, because there is no other way…, can hold back evil or sin. Do we trust God or not? Or are we so afraid of the injustices we may suffer in this life, that we have to force our view of justice on others?

And how “loving” is it really to infantilize people and take their responsibility away? I can work very hard to hide all the alcoholic’s liquor bottles, so that he doesn’t do harm to himself. But in setting myself above him, and removing his consequences, am I really being loving?

“Judgement is mine sayeth the Lord”. Which is not to say we shouldn’t speak out, or take care in how we vote. But the real power is in our loving, giving, revealing, and sacrificing connections with others, one-to one, or family to family. It’s in the demonstration of our care, person to person.

Institutional solutions by nature are flawed, and they also carry the risk of “disconnection” because once in place, we go back to our complacent ways, thinking everything’s covered… What works well on the outside may also be very rotten on the inside – and the inside is what Christ cares about.

Notice too that Jesus railed against the Pharisees, and broke laws when necessary, but he didn’t say anything about making collective action to change those laws. He said love ONE ANOTHER. That’s where the power is.

By the way, mary bobo, to answer your questions:

1. The NRA relates to abortion because how can you be “pro life” and condemn abortion while at the same time supporting widespread gun ownership, including handguns.
2. I’m not sure where your idea that there are no giant armament manufacturers in this country comes from. We don’t buy our bullets or bombs from China – they are made here. We also sell our weapons abroad.
3. I may have class envy, I would admit that. It was hard to grow up alone, without the kind of loving family, guidance, or community support you probably had. I did spend many years thinking, why me? Why do all these other people have love in their lives and people to support them? And why don’t I? Anyway, I’m 51 now and reconciled to the fact that my story is my story, for whatever reason, and that I still can serve a purpose. I can’t change the sum of what brought me here, but I’m glad I’m here now. And the main thing that sustains me is that externals aren’t important, and that it’s foolhardy to pin any hopes on them. The only thing that matters is the condition of my heart and staying in Christ’s arms. I also can’t “earn” my way to heaven by manipulating circumstances in this world. I can only do the best I can, being who I am, from where I came, and given reality. Plus I know that God is always inching me along…

In any event, I appreciate the personal story, Ridge. Person to person, with our stories, is really what counts. Thank you for sharing and touching my heart. No amount of legislation could ever have done that. Law is not the way to change people’s hearts.

 

[SoCalRC]

For SoCal- so you think Ginsburg was a good choice for the Supreme Court?

Actually, I’m fairly ambivilent about her. Some of her opinions have been quite good. For example, the majority opinion in Exxon v. Saudi BIC. Similarly much of her dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore now seems almost prophetic.

Others, like the majority opinion in US v. Virginia, trouble me (in that case, I agree with the basic finding of the court, but am troubled by some of the language and lack of boundaries in the opinion).

I’m most troubled by the so-called “Ginsburg Doctrine”. Frankly I think that people applying for a permanent gig on the highest court should be willing to be put under some scrutiny. But I can’t really pin that on her. That is on the Judiciary committee that let her through and the Senate that confirmed her 96-3.

 

[Toten]

I am curious, why would a Catholic vote for a prochoice canidate? Do they not see abortion as evil?
:

There could be numerous reasons. Some are aimiable while others are less than that.
Rudy Guilianni, who is pro-chioce so a degree, while in mayor a New York managed bring the abortion rates down and increase adoptions. A pro-lifer could look at this as a small step in the right direction. If not so many people are having abortions not so many people would be offended by being told how evil it is (how many people like being told what they have done is such an evil) and if it isn’t veiwed as such a large part American Life it might be easier to push through pro-life legislation (in the book Party of Death the author suggests an incremental path of getting rid of abortion.
One could also look at the candidates other positions or virtues. Rudy Guilianni brought down the non-abortion murder rate down significantly which is something to think highly of.
I know that Rudy is out of the race but, I think he is still a good example of the whole thought process of someone who might vote for a pro-choice person while being pro-life.

 

[SoCalRC]

I am going to share with you, Vinessa, that I have an autistic daughter.

As an aside, you have my deepest understanding. Our son is severely autistic. Unfortunately, he was born in a time when there was a strong baseless stigma for the disorder and a great resistance to home-based/community based care.

It was a tremendous battle, but I am happy to say he completed many firsts, including being one of the first few developmentally disabled children to receive the Sacrament of Communion in our Archdiocese. And he remains one of the sweetest and most honest people I know.

But one worry we do not have is his ongoing care. In this we have been blessed. Most families are not in a position to make the sorts of financial arrangements we have made. However, that does not make me immune to concern. Having spent many years working on housing, community based services, job creation, etc., the disabled remain a largely disenfranchised segment of society. This is one of the reasons that I am so adament about accepting our Catholic teachings in their entirety. When we elevate abortion to special status at the expense of other compromises, like euthanasia, and even issues of social justice for the weak, I cannot help but think that the unstated message is that, somehow, zygotes with their 50/50 chance of a live birth are being given higher value than my son, and the many wonderful human beings like him.

 

[vinessa]

When we elevate abortion to special status at the expense of other compromises, like euthanasia, and even issues of social justice for the weak, I cannot help but think that the unstated message is that, somehow, zygotes with their 50/50 chance of a live birth are being given higher value than my son, and the many wonderful human beings like him.

Thank you for this, SoCal. I am still not convinced that secular legal solutions to moral matters is the best approach. But underneath everything I agree with you that abortion should not be separate or isolated from all the other issues related to life, its support, and how we care for one another.

Your previous posting, about how abortion rates dropped during the last Democratic administration, despite the party itself being “pro abortion” was very interesting. If we took the time (or had the interest?), we could learn a lot from that. What made the numbers drop? And how can we enhance and contribute to that trajectory?

Certainly the legality (or illegality) of abortion did not play a role – nothing about abortion’s legality had changed. So was it that the economy was healthy, the budget balanced, and social support programs were functioning? Maybe. Or was it that people of conscience were becoming more personally involved with the people seeking abortion, showing up, caring, and relieving their isolation? Maybe.

How can we leverage that downward thrust and do more to make abortion rare, if not unfathomable? That’s a more interesting and potentially more fruitful question to consider, than the easy out of hanging the threat of prison over pregnant women’s heads.

 

[Ridgerunner]

After reading the entire (wearying, 222 page ) Ginsberg article, I am not sure her apologists have made a persuasive case.

The ostensible purpose of the article is to remove gender specific language from federal statutes. Sometimes the substitution of gender-neutral terms is superfluous and tedious. Sometimes it makes a substantive difference in the law, as in her advocating the making of females eligible for the draft and placing women in combat of every kind. She doesn’t hesitate to do that. It isn’t just changing terms, it’s changing the law. She also advocates combining males and females in prisons and juvenile facilities, doing away with same-sex facilities of that kind. Some of her recommendations don’t really have anything to do with gender terminology, or even gender-related policy, as in her advocating the decriminalization of prostitution. Some are just ideological, as in her recommendation that “Mothers’ Day” and “Fathers’ Day” be done away with. She frequently goes off into recommendations that are policy matters totally unrelated to gender terminology, such as stripping all reference to “fault” in divorce in federal statutes, because she felt “fault” in divorces is an outmoded concept. She simply advocated doing away with some of the intricacies of the tax “marriage penalty” gratuitously. She even took issue with the old Ute Removal Law, commenting that removal of Utes is unlikely in this day and age. She is enormously detailed, and picks laws apart microscopically.

She does not hesitate to critique laws for their content, not just their terminology. She did praise, without reservations, a bill that never became law that read as follows:

“A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person, not his spouse, and: (1) compels the other person to participate: (A) by force; or (B) by threatening or placing the other person in fear that any person will imminently be subjected to death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping; (2) has substantially impaired the other person’s power to appraise or control the conduct by administering or employing a drug or intoxicant without the knowledge or against the will of such other person, or by other means; or (3) the other person is, in fact, less than twelve years old.”

Notwithstanding that she critiques the content of many statutes and proposed changes in the law, not just their terminology, often in considerable detail, she does not critique that one at all, but praises it without reservation.

In the Roberts hearings, Sen. Lindsay Graham brought that up in response to the nitpicking of Roberts by Dem legislators. It was a “we never argued about that, so why are you…” kind of comment on his part. That was the context of its being brought up in the Roberts hearings. Nobody said he was wrong in what he said, least of all Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

So, did Ruth Bader Ginsberg say “I am all for consensual sex at age 12” in that article? No, she didn’t. Did she praise the bill? Yes she did. Did she advocate for laws and changes in laws and proposed laws in her article in ways that had nothing to do with gender terminology? Absolutely. Is her attention to detail meticulous? Without question. Did she comment adversely on the proposal to change the age of consent to 12 notwithstanding that she commented gratuitously on things she just didn’t favor on matters of far less import?. No she didn’t. Her only comment was unalloyed praise. And never did she go back and qualify her praise for that bill.

So, decide for yourself what she believes in.

 

[SoCalRC]

In the Roberts hearings, Sen. Lindsay Graham brought that up in response to the nitpicking of Roberts by Dem legislators. It was a “we never argued about that, so why are you…” kind of comment on his part. That was the context of its being brought up in the Roberts hearings. Nobody said he was wrong in what he said, least of all Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Well, I’m not sure why Ginsburg would be required to defend herself against comments she never made. If she responded to every attack on her from the right, she would not have time to hear cases and write opinions.

What I find interesting is that, in this one regard, Graham is embraced as an authority. Normally he is held in considerable disdain by the right because of his strong objection to torture, resistance to opting out of the Geneva convetions, and seeming support for some form of ‘amnesty’ in illegal immigration.

I’ve never been much of a fan because of his voting record on things like IDEA, which have a huge and direct impact on children like your daughter or my son. But he does not represent me so I never gave it that much thought. Besides, his rhetoric on various aspects of Catholic pro-life teaching never really seemed to equate to much direct action. Complaining about torture and putting one’s political career on the line to stop it are two different things.

But I find it strange that the same folks that openly mock him, at say the National Review, are suddenly quick to embrace his obscure, seemingly baseless, commments as undisputable truth when it fits a larger narative.

 

[Valke2]

The reason why some people can vote pro choice is becuase they do not see an unborn infant as “fully” human.

I have a sister who votes for pro-choice candidates almost always. She also says abortion is wrong. She insists that abortion should be the deciding issue. I asked her, " what if aldoph Hitler was against the death penalty for criminals and passionate about feeding the poor and meek. What if he still gassed the jews but otherwise had an unbelievable desire for free healthcare and an effective plan at stomping out poverty? what if he was compassionate about human rights? (except for the jews)

Of course she said that the gassing of the Jews was a horrible deed and no way could she vote for him etc. etc. I said but that is only one issue.

What do people think? Hitlers absolute atrocity resulted in the extermination of millions. Abortion rights has resulted in the exterminations of tens of millions.

I am not calling presidential candidates Hitler but it is clear to me that the unborn are not viewed to some as “wholly” human.

Is there some sort of scientific explanation as to who two christians can’t get together to discuss abortion without comparing it to hitler and the genocide of Jews?

 

[SoCalRC]

Is there some sort of scientific explanation as to who two christians can’t get together to discuss abortion without comparing it to hitler and the genocide of Jews?

I don’t know, but I always find it disturbing. The comparison itself devalues human life. Once attrocities reach a scope beyond true human comprehension, simple arithmetic proves nothing besides a lack of understanding of the tragic loss of each individual human life. How can we claim to understand that we are each a unique creation of God, who can and does love us infinitely, if we insist on making inane arguments like ‘killing 1,000,000 x infinity for 30 years is worse than the lose of 45,000,000 x infinity over 4 years’ (global WW-II related losses)?