Recently in Abortion Category

Daniel Schultz, Streetprophets' quondam Pastordan now blogging under his own name at Religion Dispatches, makes a strong if slightly musty case against the "common ground" initiatives embraced by a number of centrist religious operations to garner support for Obamaite domestic policy over the past year. It's slightly musty because, in the current Tea Party moment, we haven't heard much of late about commongroundism.

Schultz's case in point is abortion and, as usual, his principal bête noire is Jim Wallis, who was rather more disposed to blame those on the left for refusing to compromise than those on the right. Any fair reading of health care reform, however, shows that when push came to shove, it was the other way around. Most importantly, it became clear that the pro-life forces were unprepared to compromise because they wanted health care reform to fail--that is, for them abortion was, at the end of the day, a pretext.

No doubt the most hard-faced pro-lifers will argue that the best thing for the cause is to get the GOP back in power by whatever means necessary--and that would include rejecting even the whole loaf on abortion in Obamacare. But for that very reason, it's incumbent on the commongroundniks to face up to what happened, and to own up the limits of their philosophy. They will say, no doubt, that the common ground strategy must go forward, just on those issues where common ground is possible--immigration, climate change, financial reform. Fair enough, but abortion was always the big enchilada, and on abortion, the thing didn't work.

In its latest poll on abortion, Gallup headlines its conclusion that the "new normal" is that more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice. This is the second poll that confirms the reversal of pro-life and pro-choice positions that Gallup first revealed a year ago. In fact, the current preference, by two percentage points, is not statistically significant. The new normal is actually that Americans are equally divided between pro-life and pro-choice.

That's exactly where we were a decade ago. In the interim, pro-life trended down and up; pro-choice, up and down. One way of interpreting the data is as a countervailing process whereby pro-choice identification increases when the GOP is in power, pro-life when it's the Democrats. During the Democratic ascendancy of the past few years, the shift has occurred entirely among Republicans and those Independents who lean Republican. This helps explain why a libertarian like Rand Paul has evolved into a pro-lifer in running for the GOP senatorial nomination in Kentucky. (Meanwhile, the percentage of pro-life Democrats has modestly declined.)

In spite of the modest pro-life shift of the past few years, Gallup notes with some puzzlement that attitudes on the morality of abortion are "unchanged." Actually, over the past year the gap between Americans who think abortion is morally wrong and morally acceptable has shrunk, from 20 percentage points (56-36) to 12 percentage points (50-38). The current numbers are exactly average for the past decade. Bottom line: Since the dawn of the millennium, Americans' views of abortion have not changed in the aggregate, but they have become more divided along party lines.

Expanding health coverage reduces abortions. That's what T.R. Reid argues in today's WaPo, and it's a powerful argument. Look at our peer countries in the developed world. All have universal health coverage and most include abortion in that coverage and all have lower rates of abortion than we do. Why? On the front end, women have access to contraceptive services; on the back end, they know there will be health coverage for them and their babies if they carry to term. So, says Reid:

For various reasons, then, expanding health-care coverage reduces the rate of abortion. All the other industrialized democracies figured that out years ago. The failure to recognize this plain statistical truth may explain why American churches have played such a small role in our national debate on health care. Searching for ways to limit abortions, our faith leaders have managed to overlook a proven approach that's on offer now: expanding health-care coverage.

The only thing wrong with that paragraph is that it assumes that the pro-life faith leaders he's talking about are focused on reducing the number of abortions. That's the same mistake, I'm afraid, that the Obamaite "common ground" folks also make. But what's become clear over the past year is that the pro-lifers who oppose HCR not merely as a pretext are concerned with principle and personal purity, not abortion reduction. That is to say, they want to push the principle of "no public funding for abortions" as far as they can because 1) it helps establish the idea that abortion is disapproved of by the government; and 2) it permits them to believe that none of "their" taxpayer dollars are going to pay for abortions.

They will no doubt claim that if their efforts bear fruit in the long run, abortion will be banned and the abortion rate will go down big time. In fact, however, there is little correlation between abortion rates and the legal status of abortion. The strong correlation is between abortion legality and abortion safety. Where abortion is legal, abortions are safe; where it's not, women die. What's important to recognize is that that's a price a lot of hard-line pro-lifers are prepared to pay.

If ever anyone planned and carried out the killing of another human being, Scott Roeder's testimony at his trial yesterday made clear that he did. He described taking his pistol to George Tiller's church two times prior to when he actually got to the doctor, pressing the muzzle against his head and pulling the trigger. The killing had been something he'd been meditating, he said, since 1993. The Kansas City Star, has the story and the chilling video.

The real news was not Roeder's admissions, but Judge Warren Wilbert's ruling that he would not permit jurors to consider a verdict of voluntary manslaughter--something he had left open as a possibility. A defense of voluntary manslaughter is only permissible if the accused acted to stop the imminent use of unlawful force.

"There's no imminence of danger on a Sunday morning in the back of a church," Wilbert said, "let alone unlawful conduct. In the state of Kansas, abortions are legal."

Under the circumstances, classic civil disobedience theory would suggest that Roeder go ahead and plead guilty, contending that he had acted in order to protest an unjust law and throwing himself on the mercy of the court. Perhaps he'll do so. But anti-abortion radicals seem to have a difficult time admitting that abortion is actually legal in America. Acknowledging that they are law-breakers seems more than they can manage.

Update: Guilty.

According to David Gibson, the Catholic bishops have been shocked and dismayed at the rapidity with which health care reform has gone from near sure thing to near death. So they've written yet another letter to Congress, urging passage of a comprehensive bill despite the changed "political contexts." Color me not so impressed.

Had the bishops not insisted on their whole package of pro-life measures, health care reform would have been enacted by now. Not only does the letter not acknowledge that, but it continues to insist that all they want is to maintain the status quo, which is simply not the case. Under current law, federal funds do help pay for health plans that include abortion services--in those states that supplement federal coverage under Medicaid with their own funds to cover those services. The Senate bill simply lets individuals do what states can do now. But without the absolute prohibition provided in the House version of the bill, the bishops place themselves in the opposition.

None of this is to deny that the USCCB would like their kind of government-sponsored health care reform to pass. That puts them at odds with those conservative Catholics (including a few bishops) who have been happy to press the abortion issue not only for its own sake but pragmatically as a tool for taking down reform altogether. These include Princeton's Robert George and his pals, whom Michael Sean Winters outed yesterday. The question is whether the USCCB is prepared to support any sort of compromise to advance the cause, or whether by sticking to its guns, it effectively sides with Georgites. If the former, there's no public sign of it. 

Anyone who imagines that the Catholic bishops will end up supporting health care reform should go over to On Faith and take a look at this post by their spokeswoman, Sr. Mary Ann Walsh. Insisting that her bosses have supported reform "for decades," Walsh goes on to complain that

the present state of affairs is enough to make you sick. The gamesmanship in Congress relates more to politics than health and has created serious problems.

As things stand, Walsh claims, "health care reform it is not." There follows a litany of what has the the bishops worried: abortion and "conscience rights"; a failure to provide for immigrants, legal and illegal; and too high costs for ordinary citizens. The bottom line:

We need health care reform in America and we're close to attaining it, but if decent health care becomes a matter of politics over the public good, we'll all lose. That's enough to make you sick.

Whatever one's views of the individual pieces, the critique as a whole is disingenuous nonsense. For example, on abortion, according to Walsh, the bishops want reform to include the current Hyde Amendment standard but insist on the Stupak provision of the House bill, which (as pro-lifer Michael Sean Winters points out) goes beyond Hyde in making it "impossible for women, with their own money, to purchase health insurance that covers abortions." At the same time, the Senate bill is criticized as unfair because it "does not allow undocumented persons to buy insurance with their own money."

Beyond such deception and inconsistency, the refusal to acknowledge the signal accomplishments of the reform bills as they stand--the expanded coverage, above all--is striking. Health care reform "it is not"? Give me a break.

But worst of all is the claim that somehow what's happened so far is "politics" undermining "the public good." If anything is clear from this whole process, it's that the bishops have been up to their eyeballs in lobbying for their positions on the life issues. And that their effective politicking has made it more difficult for progressives to advance the other items on the agenda that the bishops say they want--and has led to some unlovely compromises and concessions.

Like anyone else, the bishops are entitled to play the game as hard as they want. But not to acknowledge that they're doing so is simple dishonesty. It's enough to make you sick.

Over at America's In All Things blog, Michael Sean Winters slams his co-religionist pro-life zealots for demonizing Sen. Bob Casey's effort to devise an abortion compromise in the health care bill. As Winters points out, the folks at National Right to Life are opposed to health care reform altogether, so their anti-abortion zealotry needs to be taken as pretextual as well as principled.

The same cannot be said for the Catholic bishops, who continue to pound the pavement for Stupak and its progeny even as they claim to support the rest of the bill. (They would like immigrants included too.) What's at best disingenuous, however, is their continual recourse to the Hyde Amendment as the sacred text of federal health coverage.

The point to bear in mind is that the federal subsidies (I wish they'd make them vouchers) that are designed to help those of modest means buy health insurance are something new under America's health care sun. When it comes to "federal funding of abortion on demand," at the end of the day they are really no different from a pregnant woman on public assistance (TANF or Food Stamps or whatever) using "her own funds" to procure an abortion. The public support makes it easier for her to afford the procedure. In terms of identifiable dollars, she could well use a federal check to pay for it. And (as Winters points out) that's to say nothing about the way Medicaid permits states to cover abortion on demand with their own additions to the federal subsidy.

Helping subsidize the cost of living for pregnant women in any way makes it easier for them to get abortions. For some in the pro-life community, that would seem to be reason enough not to help them out at all, ever.

The Manhattan Declaration released a couple of weeks ago caused a bit of a flurry by threatening civil disobedience if the signatories (Christian leaders of various denominational stripes) were legally obliged to do things that violated their consciences with respect to abortion or same-sex marriage. The question in this space was what kind of civil disobedience they had in mind. The Los Angeles Times chastised them for "going too far when they declare they will break laws."

Now comes an answer from the Declaration's prime mover, Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. In response to a query from NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez on the appropriate time for and expression of civil disobedience, George, after declaring that "gravely unjust laws...do not bind in conscience," allowed as how medical professionals should "abandon their careers" rather than participate in abortion and Catholic hospitals should likewise "go out of business."

Whatever one thinks of such injunctions, they have nothing to do with civil disobedience. No law would be broken or even challenged by a medical professional or institution that followed them. Indeed, what's being recommended is no more than the position taken by John F. Kennedy in his 1960 speech to the Houston ministers that Catholic conservatives these days find so inadequate:

But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

Perhaps Professor George should re-read his Thoreau. Or stop talking about civil disobedience.

Jim Wallis' endless apologia pro Stupakia sua on Huffpost is an awe-inspiring exercise in injured innocence. According to him, the collapse of a compromise on abortion in the House health care bill was all the fault of the House leadership (which disrespected pro-life moderates) and pro-choice activists (who just couldn't see past their zealotry). Were there partisans on the other side to be named and blamed? Not so far as Wallis is concerned.

Now as Sarah Posner's fine blow-by-blow on Religion Dispatches makes clear, the abortion issue was badly handled by the pro-choice forces. But as usual, Wallis portrays himself, Rodney King-like, as just trying help people get along. No, in fact they can't all get along. If you're going to be for compromise in order to get health care passed, you've got to take a stand, and tell your interlocutors what to rally around.

To its credit, Third Way has done just that, criticizing the Stupak-Pitts Amendment (as it is now called) for violating the principles of abortion neutrality embraced in word by many, and backing the failed (but perhaps to be revived in the Senate) Ellsworth Amendment. (See memo, after jump) Michael Sean Winters, vigorous pro-lifer that he is, recognizes that Stupak-Pitts went too far, and supports dialing it back for the greater good. Does Sojourners do the same? Tell us, Jim. And while you're at it, how about shouldering a little responsibility for what happened, O Prophet of the Common Ground?

By way of a footnote to the last post, consider the following items. First, there's today's column by E.J. Dionne, foremost example of a Common Good Catholic in the pundit biz. Dionne makes the case for embracing pro-life Dems, contends that the Stupak Amendment is no biggie, and challenges his bishops to step up to the plate now on health care reform.

Then there's Rep. Tom Perriello, co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and the only freshman congressman representing a district that voted for McCain last year to vote for the health care bill. As Walter Shapiro points out in an appreciative (and slightly aghast) profile over on Politics Daily, Perriello, whose district includes Virginia's very conservative Southside, also voted for the president's stimulus package and cap-and-trade. But he was one of 64 Democrats to vote for Stupak.

Yes, Dionne hints that it might be a good idea to allow abortion coverage into the public option (which Stupak prohibits). And Perriello would seem to be a dependable vote for whatever health care bill emerges from an eventual House-Senate conference committee. But pro-choicers need to realize that there are pro-lifers of conscience even among the staunchest liberal Democrats.