Archbishop Chaput made an interesting offensive statement, “… even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty, and inflexibility of the pro-choice lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.”

With extremist pro-life groups that threaten doctors and their patients, and with less extreme pro-life groups that are “one-issue” voters, it seems to me that the terms “belligerence, dishonesty, and inflexibility” apply equally well to the “pro-life” lobby.

I want to thank Sherry for posting this link. It is certainly not the usual story on Roman Catholics and politics. I know many Catholic lay people who think that being “pro life” means something broader and more complicated than being narrowly “anti abortion,” but they don’t always find room for nuanced discussion in the Church, let alone in the media. I remember the days when Catholics were just assumed to be Democrats; now many assume they must all be Republicans. It’s good to be reminded in a substantive way that things just aren’t that simple, if they ever were.

As a life-long Protestant, normally I do not care what any Archbishop of the RCCA might say, since their office seems to more administrative than spiritual.

I do find it curious when Catholic authorities boil their whole faith down to this one issue. I had wrongfully assumed that the catholic church had more to it.

I’m not sure it’s at all accurate to say that the work of the bishops of the Roman Catholic church is more administrative than spiritual. All large denominations have a huge amount of administrative work that needs to be done, and it isn’t always easy to separate out the administrative from the spiritual (bishops are shepherds, and shepherds lead, and leading can involve paperwork!). I also think that the substance of this post, if you follow the link included, shows that the Catholic faith clearly DOES have more to it than the one issue of abortion. I know that the public discourse on Catholicism sometimes gets boiled down that way, but that is precisely the misapprehension that this post addresses.

I would like to ask two questions of the Catholic (and other) voters that vote Republican because of “pro-life”/anti-abortion issues:

1. Since Roe v. Wade, we have had 24 years of Republican “pro-life” presidents, 14 years of Republican “pro-life” House leadership, and 4 years where the Republican “pro-life”ers held the presidency, the House, and the Senate. What do you have to show for that?

2. Which is the better way to lower the number of abortions in this country: To make abortion illegal? Or, to make contraception universally and easily accessable and to ensure that every mother has all the means necessary to care for every child by providing universal health care, universal child care, and real welfare assistance?

I would question which party and which politicians are actually pro-life.

Ms Dolan -
I did read Archbishop Chaput’s statement. I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about the breadth of Catholicism’s teaching, as my favorite aunt was so devout she wound up marrying her parish priest. Uncle Father (yes, that is what we called him, much to his great humor) had been a priest for over 25 years when he married my aunt. I learned, by listening to him, the breadth of his spiritual life and practice was immense. (Oh, by-the-way, they had petitioned the Vatican and had waited 2 years waiting for a response.)

I have also associated with Catholics who are social activists who also have an active spiritual life.

What I will continue to question the anti-choice movement, including the RCCA and other groups as to why is this the only issue that counts? Especially when talking about the vote. But since that seems to be this Archbishop’s and Archbishop Burke’s stance, they deserve to be called on it.

Why are they not talking about the social justice issues? Where is the passionate defense of the rights of the living to health, food, shelter and to be secure from harm?

Thank you to all who commented on the Archbishop Chaput post, in particular Spyguy who raised some points and questions that will surely be echoed publicly as the presidential election gets closer. Spyguy’s questions are so good, I’d like to comment on them only a bit now — and sans links — with the promise of delving much deeper in future weeks, providing lots of links to accompany my comments which I will put into a post.

First, though, to P. Dolan and R. Harnack: The abortion issue is not a”boil[ing] down to this one issue.” Nor is it “narrow”. Nor is it “the only issue that counts.”

The abortion issue is foundational. Big difference. This is the one issue upon which all the others rest. I will get back to this in future weeks while pursuing Spyguy’s points.

Spyguy raised two points, one of which I’ll comment on today. He said, “Which is the better way to lower the number of abortions in this country: To make abortion illegal? Or, to make contraception universally and easily acccessible to ensure that every mother has all the means necessary to care for every child by providing universal health care, universal child care, and real welfare assistance?”

I remember life before Roe v. Wade; I was approaching my 30th birthday on January 22, 1973. Also, for the past 25 years I have been deeply involved in the pro-life movement. And I have known a good many women who have had abortions.

When abortion became legal nationally, abortion supporters claimed thousands and thousands of illegal abortions in the U.S., mainly quoting statistics provided by one Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Dr. Nathanson later stopped supporting the abortion/choice movement and admitted he had fabricated those statistics.

What we can look at with some degree of certainty are the abortion stats that came after Roe. At first there were fairly few abortions per year, then the rate started to rise….and rise….and rise. This despite the promises made earlier that legalized abortions would be used only for the “hard cases.”

We are at a point now that according to the Planned Parenthood website 2008 — and I have no reason to doubt this — “More than 1 in 3 women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.” This statement could have — should have — been further refined to say that very nearly 50% of those women who have had an abortion by 45 have had MORE than one abortion. Both sets of statistics are from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood.

From everything I have read in the past 25 years, from PP and other sources, the inescapable conclusion is that legalized abortion has raised the number of abortions.

Now, about contraception: We will be hearing ad nauseam, from now to November, that what we need is contraception “universally and easily accessible”.

Here are the facts: Year after year, Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights organizations ask the young women requesting their abortion services, “Were you using contraception the month you became pregnant?” Every year, year after year after year, the results come in approximately the same: a full 50% of the women report they WERE using birth control the month they fell pregnant.

How can this be? Some, surely, think that’s the politically correct answer. How many? I’m not sure we can ever know. What we do know is that when you factor in “method unreliability” and “user unreliability” you wind up with a lot of pregnant women.

Great Britain just released a study paralleling the U.S. statistics: 50% of British women say they were using contraception the month they became pregnant.

Let me give you one tiny example of method unreliability. The “pill” is commonly touted as one of the most effective means of birth control. I happen to know two women who took the pill precisely as they were meant to. Both became pregnant. One, who was between husbands, procured an abortion and became a volunteer for Planned Parenthood. The other, married, threw the pill packet at her doctor and carried her unborn child to term.

Why did they become pregnant? (Other than the obvious.) They both came down with the flu and lost body fluids….

Other birth control methods are less reliable than the pill. Stats on these methods are routinely suppressed by the MSM until a presumably more reliable method is found and then a cursory mention is made of the unreliability of the previous methods.

This is true, too, of user reliability. It is commonly known among the cognoscenti that teens are less likely than other age groups to use birth control effectively and routinely. That fact is rarely mentioned in the media, however, until a seeming breakthrough is made (Norplant comes to mind). Then, when it’s found that a shot that lasts for months is more dangerous for the woman than other methods, the media clams up again about teen unreliability.

The last part of Spyguy’s question is about health care, child care and meaningful welfare assistance. A couple of organizations can give us food for thought here. One is Birthright and another is Feminists for Life, both national groups. There are many other sources of information and help out there and I will deal with those in the post I promised.

Watch this space.

Ms Tyree -
“The abortion issue is foundational.”

Strange you should frame it that way. I would have thought the more appropriate framing of the issue would have been the “right to life”.

Here is my difficulty with the anti-choice movement.

Because of the improvements in medical technology it possible for fetuses to survive, which in earlier days would never made it to term. Consequently, the idea of “when life begins” has now been pushed back to the moment of fertilization of the ovum by the sperm. Yet in earlier times a child was not a “person” until after christening.

The RCCA and other organizations continue to use the argument that because of this medical technology we can now keep these embryos alive, even in a petrie dish, we should.

I do not see the need, however, to make this compulsory. The choice movement simply wants the individuals involved to have the opportunity to make their own decision. I realize the RCCA will never adopt this position, however, neither should it try to make its’ stance the only acceptable one for all of society.

Ms Tyree,

Thank you for your kind words. First, and you are probably aware, you did not address the other question, namely, what have “pro-life” voters received from their votes for Republicans (other than war, death penalty, income disparity, etc)? But, to return to your comments, I will concede that if abortion had always remained illegal, the number of abortions today would not be as high. I would also concede that making abortion illegal would lower the number of abortions from the rate today. Those were not my points. Are they the BEST ways to lower the number/rate of abortions?

As far as your story of the two ladies who became pregnant while on the pill, from your own description, that sounds like a problem with the one other part of the equation that I left out of my first comment, namely education. Comprehensive sex education that teaches the limitations and abilities of contraception is a public health imperative.

But, to get back to the point of the original post, that being, “How does a Catholic (or anyone else) vote to consistently promote the value of Life?” I just do not see from either their promises or their results how Republicans fit that description.

Mr. Harnack finds strange my sentence that “the abortion issue is foundational”. He wondered why I hadn’t said “right-to-life.” In recent decades “right-to-life” has come to be an umbrella term that includes end-of-life dilemmas as well as abortion. Perhaps I should have said “right-to-life” from conception. Andy by the way, I don’t mean implantation, I mean conception.