In my recent post reflecting on Barack Obama's radically pro-abortion-rights agenda, which rejects any serious restrictions on abortion (even repugnant procedures such as partial-birth), promotes taxpayer subsidies for certain abortions, and specifies a litmus test for judicial nominees based on sustaining the crown jewel of judicial activism, Roe v. Wade, which invented a Constitutional right for a woman to abort her child, I took special note of Catholic Senators, including Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden, whom have sold out the moral teachings of the Church for political treasure. But I was reminded of other prominent pro-abortion-rights Catholics in Name Only (CINO) on this morning's Sunday weekly news programs, Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Meet the Press and former dark horse Veep candidate Kansas Governor Katheleen Sebelius on Face the Nation.
I am Franco-American, a great-grandson of French-Canadian immigrants (on both sides of the family) settling in the Fall River, MA area, raised Roman Catholic as the oldest of 7 children; my Dad was a career Air Force enlisted man and my mom a housewife. Dad's pay didn't go very far; soda pop and ice cream were rare treats reserved for things like birthdays, and we occasionally went to McDonald's in celebration of my or a sibling's First Communion or other special event. I'm old enough to remember John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic elected President and a Democrat. To a young Catholic boy, JFK was a role model, a symbol of what anyone, even a Catholic, could achieve, living the American dream.
I was very aware from the start that many non-Catholics are not accepting of and have misconceptions about Catholics; in particular, one could not help overhear comments about how if one came from a large family, he or she must be Catholic or Mormon, that Catholic women didn't know how to control themselves, etc. There is a complete misunderstanding of Catholics and their values. My fellow siblings in particular always wanted a dog; I will never forget the day that Mom rounded up the six of us kids and asked us, "What would you rather have--a dog or a new brother or sister?" To me, it was no choice; I enthusiastically wanted a new sibling. We don't see a baby in terms of a burden on the family budget; we consider a child a blessing from God. As the oldest, one within a few years of college, I was well aware that I couldn't count on financial support from my folks, and I had a vested interest in fewer vs. additional siblings. But never for a second have I regretted having 6 younger siblings; I think I'm a better person for having them in my life. And Vivian Renee was/is a beautiful gift from God.
I was lucky enough to land a paper route during my high school years which let me save up about $30/month towards college. While rolling up papers one day at the kitchen table, I noticed all this discussion of abortion in the paper and asked my Mom what an abortion was, and my Mom proceeded to give me a nonjudgmental, scientific explanation of the procedure. I was absolutely stunned and recall telling my Mom, "That's murder! What does the Church have to say about it? They can't possibly approve of this..." I did understand that having a baby is a decision that comes with obligations on one's time and resources. I once asked my sister Sharon how it felt being a real mom vs. playing with dolls as a girl, and she noted, "You can't put them away when you're tired of playing with them."
My own folks rarely talked politics, although my maternal grandfather, a mom-and-pop grocery owner, was one of those rare Massachusetts Republicans. I myself emerged as a liberal Democrat, working for the Carter campaign in 1976 and attending the Texas caucuses in 1980 in support of Ted Kennedy. (I leave it to a future post to describe my political migration since then.) But I could never understand the moral gymnastics it took to support a social justice agenda but to regard human life in the womb as unworthy of protection.
Fast forward to this morning's interview when moderator Tom Brokaw reviewed the infamous Barack Obama clip at the Saddleback Civic Forum when Obama was asked point-blank by Rev. Rick Warren at what point does the unborn child receive human rights as a person. Obama responds essentially, "I don't know, and in the absence of certainty, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the woman whom is faced with the burden of the pregnancy." This is rather like arguing in the holding of a suspected terrorist, "I don't know for sure whether he is a terrorist. But given ambiguous evidence regarding the charge, the benefit of the doubt has to go to his individual rights, even though there is a risk to society in releasing him."
Speaker Nancy Pelosi then goes on this "I'm a devout Catholic, mother, and grandmother, whom bakes cookies" kick and then attempts to claim she has personally studied the issue and that the Church's position in favor of human life at conception is a recent development in Catholicism, emerging only within the past 50 years or so. She goes on and particularly cites St. Augustine (and implicitly St. Thomas Aquinas) and those whom rely on Aristotelian concepts (of deferred ensoulment, whereby a boy is thought to be animated at 40 days and a girl at 90 days); that a feminist like Pelosi overlooks the obsolete, questionable basis for discriminating between gender in favor of trying to promote a viewpoint to retrofit a rationalization for her preexisting political support of unrestricted abortion is intellectually dishonest.
The Aristotelian theory of various stages of development of the fetus (vegetative soul/life, sensitive/animal soul, rational/human soul: a sort of evolution of life/souls) is, and has been, questioned by emerging science over the past few centuries. What Nancy Pelosi fails to tell listeners is that (1) Augustine's use of Aristotle did not influence the Church's pro-life stand during his lifetime and (2) Augustine never argued that abortion before ensoulment was morally acceptable; he simply argued it was a lesser sin. The Church has been consistently, repeatedly, throughout the history of the Church, regarded any elective abortion, past the moment of conception, as morally wrong. Period. Case closed. It's only varied in terms of when an abortion is considered murder, and only during certain periods when Aristotelian science influenced certain Catholic scholars and/or clergy. Elective abortion has never been accepted at any period, including the early Roman church, where abortion and infanticide were practiced. There is no support for the notion that early Christian women sought to rationalize abortion and infanticide to accommodate their acceptance in Roman society.
I use the term elective for a reason. There is a moral question that involves a situation when the mother and the child's lives are both materially at risk. (Note that pro-life forces are concerned that any such rare occurrences would be defined so loosely as to make any elective abortion restriction ineffective in practice.) Most of us who are pro-life would be willing to consider a legal exception for these circumstances where due diligence has been exhausted to save both lives and the mother is likely to survive with medical intervention.
The CINO's, however, are politically exploiting a reluctance of pro-lifers to accept a blank-check exception. They are being disingenuous, because they are uwilling to allow any real restrictions to a woman's right to abort her child. Do we allow abortion, because, say, the couple wants a boy and they're expecting a girl? Do we allow abortion so a young woman can continue to club at night and not be tied down by a kid? Do we allow abortion as a backstop because neither partner bothered to use contraception?
Nancy Pelosi, of course, trots out the tired argument of hypocrisy to pro-lifers resisting contraception. This is coming from a Catholic woman whom termed abstinence-only programs as "dangerous". Nancy, instead of using your position of influence to call on young people to engage in responsible sex within the context of marriage, something our shared Christian faith tells us to do, you decide that hey, kids are going to have sex regardless of what we say, and so let's spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize sex outside of marriage... (After all, kids can't afford condoms, the pill, etc. They can find ways to get booze, but not contraceptives.)
She then pays lip service about making abortion rare. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have used the same smokescreen script to soften their pro-abortion-rights view. It will be child's play to expose their hypocrisy; if they ever try to put up an abortion funding of any kind, see how they react if pro-lifers introduce an amendment to limit such funding only to those cases where the mother's life is in danger. They are posturing.
Joe Biden, like any Democrat in Congress with national aspirations, takes his voting instructions on abortion from NARAL, not his parish priest. The idea that Barack Obama thinks he can appeal to Catholic voters to make up his current polling deficit by nominating a Catholic in Name Only to the ticket is a pipedream.
