Unborn Between Barack and a Hard Place

You've likely heard already, but soon-to-be Senior Class President Obama will be wasting no time in advancing his number one prioritysoda machines in the cafeteria!… I mean… keeping the world safe from the Unborn Menace! Sheila Liaugminas (a font of chewy, red-meat news bites) outlines the story at her InForum blog.

Beware
the Unborn Menace! They are coming! Coming to take our precious
disposable income and big-screen televisions, coming to rob our young
of higher education and cool clothes. In these tough economic times,
the Unborn Menace threatens to undermine the vacuous, materialistic
lifestyle Americans have fought so hard to establish over the last 50
years.

This is why we must fight them on their own ground… in the womb!… so we won't have to fight them here.

Our
Fearless Leader Elect is readying his most reliable fountain pen, and
is limbering-up his bony wrist, preparing to clear away by executive
fiat all the narrow-minded restrictions that have so unfairly hampered
progress against this most insidious of enemies. Indeed, what good will
it do if, having sealed our borders against illegal immigration, we
should be overrun with a wave of progeny! They are a drain on the
economy, they contribute to overcrowded classrooms and account for a
huge portion of health care costs. Their diapers clog the landfills.

(In fact, by exporting abortion and encouraging its use among our – er – more pigment-rich
neighbors, we can significantly reduce unwanted immigration, as well!
They can't sneak across the border if we nab them early, one at a time,
in a sterile clinical setting.)

Aren't they human beings, you may
ask? But now, I submit, is not the time for such moral fastidiousness.
As other great leaders have recently and so wisely noted, sometimes, in
order to get things done, we have to work the dark side.
If you could save New York City by allowing just one abortion, wouldn't
you do it? What if twenty ninjas were threatening to punish your
daughter with a baby? We can't afford to be squeamish.

The unborn don't play by our rules. They don't care
if you die of cancer, and would probably withhold their valuable stem
cells if we asked them for permission, all nice and proper-like. What
do these high-minded "pro-lifers" want us to do, send the unborn an
engraved invitation to invade our homes and communities? Throw them a
tea party?

Fret not. Our new Decider-In-Chief is ready to decide for all of us, so we don't have to.*

*Face
it, most of us have problems making big decisions. It's tough… unless
you are a frightened, pregnant thirteen year old… then it's best to
have as little input and advice as possible, especially from your
parents. You'll be comforted to know that in a couple of months – no
matter where you are in this great country of ours – should your
boyfriend (or your uncle, or a school teacher) leave you pregnant, your
parents need never know. Because we're looking out for you.

(Visit Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)

P.S. – The poignancy of this post appearing right above SDG's blessed and happy news (below) has not escaped my attention. Hearty congratulations again, Steven.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

28 thoughts on “Unborn Between Barack and a Hard Place”

  1. Tim,
    Is it just me, or does there seem to be a schism forming within the American Catholic Church consisting of those of us (like certain Bishops and notable Catholic priests, teachers and theologians) who believe that the USCCB’s Faithful Citizenship document was directly responsible for giving Catholics permission to vote for a pro-abortion candidate (aka Obama) and those who think that the Document is truly in line with Catholic moral teaching (like my parish priest, Archbishop, and other notable Catholic theologians).
    Is it truly in-line with Catholic moral teaching, or is it purposefully vague? I am so very confused!

  2. “Never give up. It ain’t over till it’s over.”
    And “(n)othing is over until we say it’s over.”

  3. Ironically, illegal immigration is likely the answer to a vacuum in the job market. When you kill 50 million future employees, you need someone to do the jobs that so many Americans are too dead to do.

  4. Tim…
    So yes to in-line with Catholic moral teaching, or yes to purposefully vague, or yes to both and if yes to both then what you’re saying is that Catholic moral teaching is purposefully vague on the subject?
    Well, that stinks! If ours is a Church that is supposed to be unequivocably pro-life, no wonder it’s not succeeding in its attempt to combat abortion! Get some cojones, Church! (Can I say that???)

  5. Dear Emmiebear,
    I was going to, originally, write a post that defended the Faithful Citizenship document (FC) as not a purposely vague document, but rather one that might be easily misunderstood. After reading the document, I have come to the conclusion, sadly, that it is easily able to be mis-interpreted to say something other than it actually means, especially by people who are not used to doing document analysis.
    The document quotes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith article, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, no. 4,
    It must be noted also that a well-formed Christian conscience
    does not permit one to vote for a political program or an
    individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents
    of faith and morals. The Christian faith is an integral unity,
    and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to
    the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political
    commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social
    doctrine
    [that the politician holds – note, it must be a positive aspect
    in accord with Church teaching, my comment]
    does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good.
    [Bolding is mine]
    What this paragraph says is that one may not vote for a program espoused by a candidate that goes against Church teaching (such as Obama’s support of FOCA), but if one votes for a program of a candidate that is in support of a Church teaching, one cannot make this the only criteria for voting for that candidate. It can be made to look like one cannot only use abortion as a criteria for selecting candidates. The confusion comes in the bracketed part, above. Such long clauses can easily cause the reader to loose track of what the paragraph is saying and think it says something it does not. Experienced document readers (which most voters are not) would be less likely to make this mistake.
    They restate the same case in no more clear terms. later:
    34. Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. [This should start a new paragraph, comment mine] At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.
    The money quote for misunderstanding is this one:
    35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil. [Bolding, mine]
    Notice, that the document does not define what a morally grave reason is. This is the real failure of the document. Employment, economy, or racial equality, are not morally grave reasons on the order of abortion, and this document should have said so – using these things as a basis for voting for Obama is precisely to ignore a fundamental moral evil, abortion. Skilled readers and theologians should have been able to understand this and passed an annotated version of the document on to their readers. As it is, this paragraph can be made to sound like, even though Obama supports an intrinsic moral evil, it is alright to vote for him because the other goods he promises are, in total, of equal moral value.
    They are not and forgive me for saying it, but this constitutes a genuine failure of this document to properly inform the consciences of the readers.
    They do rebound a little later:
    42. As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.
    This is waffling. A candidate who supports an intrinsic evil may not be voted for, unless the law of double effect can be brought into play, which in the case of the current election, is not possible for Obama (and, perhaps, as Zippy argues, not even for McCain), because abortion is in a different moral magnitude than any other good he espouses.
    I don’t know what to say about the document. In my opinion, it has done more harm than good. It is too vague about some issues it should have given clearer teaching about, such as proportionality and double effect. In fact, they as much said that the document was only a minor aspect of conscience formation:
    8. During election years, there may be many handouts and voter guides that are produced and distributed. We encourage Catholics to seek those resources that are authorized by their own bishops, their state Catholic conferences, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This statement is intended to reflect and complement, not substitute for, the ongoing teaching of bishops in our own dioceses and states. In light of these reflections and those of local bishops, we encourage Catholics throughout the United States to be active in the political process, particularly in these challenging times.
    All I can say is that the Bishop’s conference has been known to issue really bad guidelines, before, such as, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, in 1977, which ruined a generation of church architecture in the United States, although FC, unlike, Environment and Art…, was, apparently, voted on by the entire USCCB.
    Given what the FC says, even about itself, I think Bishop Martino was absolutely within his bounds to say what he did: “The USCCB doesn’t speak for me…There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable…”
    Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, stated as much (the full quote is in the blog post linked to):
    “We must not forget that episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church, as willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated; they have only a practical, concrete function …. The collective, therefore, does not substitute for the persons of the bishops, who are the authentic teachers and instructors of the faith for the faithful entrusted to their care …. No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission; its documents have no weight of their own save that given to them by individual bishops ….
    I hope this answers your question, Emmiebear (at least as far as I can see, tonight). The document was not particularly helpful, in my opinion and did, possibly, contribute to misunderstanding among some Catholic voters.
    Let’s not get too carried away, however. Since today is the feast day of Pope St. Leo the Great, it is important to remember that things have been worse – at one point in the Church’s history (as a poster mentioned in another thread), fully 2/3 of the Church were Arians. We aren’t there, yet, but we need the same kind of bishops who were willing to stand for clear and sound teaching back then, today.
    The Chicken

  6. Dear Emmiebear,
    Tim J. was not saying that Catholic teaching on the subject, itself, is vague, only that the document is vague, even though it is correct. See my comments, above, for fleshing this out.
    The Chicken

  7. From the article in SL’s link:
    “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”
    Maybe that’s code for “they are opprotunities to grab power and oppress freedom.”

  8. Chicken is, as usual, correct, and expressed and amplified my view better than I could (even if I had the time).
    The document is correct and – as far as it goes – does hold to Catholic teaching, but it is also very vague and too easily misinterpreted.
    In other words, it accomplished, I’m afraid, exactly what it was designed to accomplish, which is not much. Just when it begins to carve out a really solid position, it pops up with an “on the other hand…” sort of qualifier with a couple of bracketed cautionary provisos of its own, and the whole thing dissolves into a watery version of “You be careful out among them English”.
    Yes… thanks. We’ll do that.

  9. Help me out here. I still don’t understand how it’s objectively permissible for Catholics to vote for one imperfect candidate (McCain) but not for another (Obama.) If it’s permissible to vote for a candidate that would permit abortion, then both candidates are still on the table. If not, then they’re both off. If it’s a matter of voting for what one judges to be the least harmful, then it’s a matter of personal judgment that has to do with a myriad of issues, right?
    Also, this is not the first time the teaching magisterium has left us with a document that leaves us scratching our heads.

  10. Sleeping Beastly:
    The USCCB document, by be so precisely vague, describes the Canadian situation: The courts, having struck down all laws regarding abortion as a medical practice, have created a situation where none of the political parties are willing to touch it with a ten foor pole.
    The citizen’s best abortion related choices during an election are to support minor tinkering and limitations in funding, and restricting the proabortion social agenda. (Obama’s FOCA would entrench even that.)
    Catholic voters might rationalize their choice for parties whose platforms include enhanced abortion access, by emphasizing the social gospel thing, ignoring the essential emptiness of the promises.
    IMHO they are Purposefully Pranked by Party Platforms that Pander to Popular Predelictions by Proclaiming a Pure Purpose.
    without the ‘P’: they rationalized the evil of the prochoice vote by the subjective value they give to the candidate’s good intentions.
    They finnesse the moral law. They think God will be stumped or impressed by their cleverness.
    God cannot be fooled or stumped. I pray that He will be merciful.

  11. This post was wonderfully sarcastic. Thanks!
    I think the bishops need to establish a new standard of involvement in politics through moral teaching. They been too squeamish for too long and too afraid of touching issues that directly align with political ideologies.
    I think it comes down to a horrible lack of leadership. These are not leaders. They are hiding behind vague, easily misinterpreted statements that just go ALMOST far enough to change anyone’s mind. That’s not leadership. Further, we need leaders that are willing to create a vision for Catholics in America and lead us to it. We need somebody to articulate a plan and strategy for Catholics for the next 4-40 years…not just react to one election each time as if they occur within a bubble. We should be talking about what we can do this election to shape the elections to come. I posted about this idea in my blog today: http://tinyurl.com/6olksg

  12. Regarding the O.P.,: Obama’s plans to promote Population control, abortion and sexual experimentation in 3rd world countries… might I suggest that americans approach the One, reminding him how this imperialistic bullying is perceived by the victim cultures, how his name and reputation could be sullied by this racist, classist and imperialistic exploitation of the weak by the powerful. (It might be oversteping it to remind him that Planned Parenthood was started by a white racist, so leave that part off)

  13. Chicken,
    Thank you so very much for clarifying this for me, it was extremely helpful. I understand what you are saying – it is really up to individual bishops to clarify this, and unfortunately, some of them absolutely prohibited any clarification such as the bishop here in my archdiocese. The fact that some of these bishops refused to clarify such an obviously flawed document is suspicious to me – while one could never prove they wanted Obama to win, and should give them the benefit of the doubt always, it is very suspicious indeed. I would say that it helped Obama get elected at any rate.
    Does the Vatican typically get involved in these matters? In the future, what can faithful Catholics do other than to vote and pray? How can we combat the effects of these things?
    Thanks Chicken!!

  14. Obama’s plans to promote Population control, abortion and sexual experimentation in 3rd world countries… might I suggest that americans approach the One, reminding him how this imperialistic bullying is perceived by the victim cultures, how his name and reputation could be sullied by this racist, classist and imperialistic exploitation of the weak by the powerful.

    Dear Lioren
    And we had to endure the (non-)argument from the Obama Catholics useful idiots that he would bring the US to a new era of worldwide understanding and admiration. Of course no one has to be a third world dweller like me to know that such an idea is absolutely preposterous.

  15. The Act of Informing the One is a prophetic act because the obamadministration must be informed that what they are doing is contrary to what they say they want to do… even in their terms of reference.
    The man is constantly self-referential and self-observsing without ever examining himself.
    Why shouldn’t we remind him and the obamabots that the Obamagenda is anti-life, racist, imperialistic, and exploitive of those in other nations?

  16. Chicken,
    Catholic voters … rationalized the evil of the prochoice vote by the subjective value they give to the candidate’s good intentions.
    While this is no doubt true of some Catholic voters (such as the ones who voted no on Amendment 48 in Colorado) I’m not sure you can say this about every Catholic who voted for Obama. Voters had to weigh a number of factors in this decision. It’s not as if McCain pledged to end abortion, or even to give it his best shot. The main arguments against voting for Obama that I heard were:
    1) He promised to sign the FOCA.
    and
    2) He will likely appoint pro-abortion Supreme Court justices.
    McCain never promised to veto the FOCA or appoint anti-abortion justices, although his backers hoped he would, and assumed he would based on his (rather weak) claim to be “pro-life.”
    The actual difference between the two candidates, in terms of babies protected, is difficult to determine, and not likely to be very large in any case. Some Catholic voters may have decided that:
    A) The election of either candidate is really not likely to change the status quo (abortion on demand with some restrictions in some places.)
    and
    B) McCain is likely to kill more people in wars of aggression.
    You can disagree with them, but to say they’re rationalizing a vote for abortion is a bit much. This election was not a clear choice for or against abortion, and there were plenty of other serious issues at stake as well.
    It’s weird to me that so many faithful Catholics take a hard anti-abortion line with Democrats and a soft one with Republicans. Is it a non-negotiable issue or not?

  17. Beastly, between you and me, I can’t say with certainty that I did the right thing in voting for McCain. Had I voted third party, I would likely be similarly uncertain. I can’t say that would have been THE right thing, either.
    I did what I thought best with the information I had.
    But I don’t buy for a second the twisted reasoning that says the best way to reduce and eliminate abortion is by aggressively liberalizing it here and around the world.
    That’s nuts, frankly.
    In addition, I wouldn’t at all count on Obama pulling back militarily. We just *might* be more likely to end up in Darfur, Sudan and Somalia rather than Iran.

  18. Tim,
    I know what you mean about not being certain you did the right thing. We all just did what we thought best. I don’t regret my vote for Alan Keyes at all, although I can’t say how I would feel about it had Colorado gone to Obama by a much slimmer margin.
    But I don’t buy for a second the twisted reasoning that says the best way to reduce and eliminate abortion is by aggressively liberalizing it here and around the world.
    Agreed; you have to be a mental gymnast on the order of our friend CT to think something like that. But I don’t think that that’s the reasoning all Catholic Obama voters adopted.
    In addition, I wouldn’t at all count on Obama pulling back militarily. We just *might* be more likely to end up in Darfur, Sudan and Somalia rather than Iran.
    I agree here wholeheartedly, except about Iran. While campaigning in Israel and Europe (!) Obama made it quite clear that he would not mind war with Iran one little bit.

  19. It’s weird to me that so many faithful Catholics take a hard anti-abortion line with Democrats and a soft one with Republicans. Is it a non-negotiable issue or not?
    It is because that it is non-negotiable (except as against other issues of equivalent magnitude, of course) that the hard line must be taken against the person who is relatively worse on the issue. By comparison, Obama was clearly worse in his advocacy, even if neither was likely to do much (although I emphatically disagree with that conclusion as well; I think this was a swing election for the Supreme Court and numerous anti-abortion executive policies). Even advocacy on abortion issues is a grave evil, so there was a proportionate reason for selecting McCain as against Obama (i.e., McCain’s advocacy was better) and a proportionate reason to vote in the first place (i.e., the civic obligation to exercise what influence one has over the government in favor of the common good).
    A) The election of either candidate is really not likely to change the status quo (abortion on demand with some restrictions in some places.)
    and
    B) McCain is likely to kill more people in wars of aggression.

    The problem is that every death by abortion is unjust, and the government is responsible for all of them because it hasn’t criminalized abortion. It simply isn’t rational to accept either complete inaction or greater complicity with the government’s responsibility for millions of deaths in exchange for saving some lives from military action when the number of people killed by wars for which the government is responsible could not even approach that number. Someone would have to be advocating nuclear warfare on a global scale for there to be any rational basis for deciding the other way.
    What people don’t understand is that the government is responsible for abortions it doesn’t criminalize. In terms of moral responsibility, it is just as bad as if the government were rounding up the infants and exterminating them. If the government were taking unwanted children by the millions and shooting them in the head, no one would give two hoots about some skirmish in another country, except perhaps to ask why the troops weren’t stopping the evil at home. But they don’t get that the government is responsible for all abortions that it doesn’t criminalize, a core tenet of Evangelium Vitae. Reducing the actual number of abortions by some trivial percentage isn’t a rational tradeoff for the responsibility borne for all of the others.

  20. CHICKEN,
    I was wondering if you’d be able to email me at jmmf1@hotmail.com? I would love to get your opinion regarding a statement that was made about the USCCB’s FC document – as to whether that particular statement is theologically correct, but it’s posted on a YouTube video and so I don’t know whether it’s appropriate to post that link on here. I’m looking for an accurate perspective and you seem to know what you’re talking about.
    Thanks so much for any help you can give!

  21. Dear Emmiebear,
    I would suggest posting the link in the combox, here, for several reasons:
    1. It would give other people a chance to comment
    2. I only have dial-up at home and it would take a very long time to watch the video, that way, not to mention very choppy
    3. I use Linux and only one of my systems has flash installed (which I think is the default program for YouTube (or is it MP2?) and I would not be able to easily use it, because the system that does have flash installed is running from a live CD from RAM and has limited memory resources
    4. I might be able to watch it from work, since the college system is much faster
    5. If I e-mailed you, I would either: a) have to send it via my real name, b) hack the system to keep it from storing my e-mail name to mime (a definite look at jail time), or c) set up a separate e-mail account for all of my Chicken business (and try to explain to my ISP why Masked Chicken is my real name).
    So, I would love to help and I will, if I can, but I doubt that my opinion is any better than anyone else’s who posts here, regularly. Chances are, if the people in the YouTube video made a theological mistake, it has been hashed out in the discussion on this site.
    Let’s give posting the YouTube link a try, first, if that does not violate any of Da Rulz? Tim J., what do you think?

  22. …I doubt that my opinion is any better than anyone else’s who posts here…

    Dear TMC
    I’m mesmerized by how humble you are, man…

  23. The left rail against Bush for infringing on civil liberties.
    Then they go ahead and go beyond what they think Bush did.
    They are prejudiced against the unborn, they utterly hate the most defenseless, the most helpless members of our society.
    Then they go and claim they have a heart. Right. A cold one if at all.

  24. What?! First of all, people. they haven’t done anything with “stem cell reasearch” but spend billions of dollars, and second of all, my argument to people who think that abortion is okay, guess what? What if your parents had made the above argument when your mother found out she was pregnant. Yea, you wouldn’t exist! Picture everything in your life and then wipe it out. that’s the kind of decision you are making for someone else that you don’t even know yet when you choose to have an abortion. Abortion should be made illegal except for ectopic pregnancies, but the baby wouldn’t even live then.

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