Abortion Arithmetic

Now that voting is behind us for a while, it won’t hurt to evaluate the difficult role played by our faith and our Catholic churches in our American Democracy.

There are many social problems concerning protection of life, and many different levels at which our government might address these problems. In our role of Faithful Citizenship, following the Way of Christ, we not only weigh the issues and values, but the effectiveness of different civic agencies in dealing with these issues. The combined effect of all our votes, from all our different perspectives, can be a powerful force for insight and change. The Spirit moves in us.

The Holy Father and the American Bishops recognize this. Political Activity Guidelines prohibit any staff member (certainly the homilist), from intervention in a political campaign in discussion of an election by promoting candidates or issues.

I expect that the majority of Catholic pastors followed the guidelines of the Church and managed to speak in ways that shed light on the issues, without endorsing any side or position.

Of course, as we all know, some parishes did not follow those guidelines. Those renegades did us all a real disservice. And they undoubtedly commandeered enough of the Catholic vote to determine the outcome of the election. Should they be pleased with themselves?

In hindsight, the immediate problem of the election was this:

In a sea of ugly sound bites, George Bush, the 9/11-anointed hero, claimed and was awarded the Pro-Life stance. John Kerry stated his position, “I personally oppose abortion,” and his bottom line to oppose anything that compromises the constitutional right of the mother to make the decision with her doctors. Those who know Kerry as a decent, process-oriented, even idealistic person, know that Kerry was stating his limits, saying we could work with the rest of it. But most people didn't hear that. They heard, "I will not (oppose abortion).”

Neither Kerry, nor Democrats, nor Catholics of social conscience found a way to effectively bridge the chasm at which we found ourselves.

Why aren’t we saying, "Abortion has always been with us, but in our responsibility to protect the vulnerable, there are things that we will do that will help reduce the number of abortions. We have to respect the mother and the unborn child. We have to work within our American justice system, or chaos will reign. No law yet devised would be able to eliminate abortion, but we can cut it by ??% in eight years if we do (fill in the blank)."

There are universally acceptable and desirable social programs that can do this for us. Who is developing them? Who is researching their real effect in the real world? This would give us a direction to move steadily toward the values we consider so vital.

As it was, unless they could see beyond those renegade self-styled "Pro-Life pastors” who flaunt the rules and the radio talk shows that blather endlessly on a dead-end street, Catholics were faced with a deceptively clear inequality to define their moral position:

152 Texas executions + 1000 American military dead + 100,000 Iraqi citizens dead comes to much less than 44 million murdered unborn babies.

Anyone can do that kind of math. So we voted.

And we’re left at the same brick wall that we were before, where our favorite anti- abortion strategies imperil the American Constitution and justice system. What we need are people who can do the work of charting new directions through this impasse.