Recently in Abortion Category

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.

For a very different take from my own on this, see David Gibson's piece over on Politics Daily. David thinks that the pro-life folks did compromise by not standing in the way of contraceptive coverage and sex educution--which strikes me as de minimis. The key question, though, is whether the idea of segregating the funds was just an accounting fraud--as the Atlantic's Megan McArdle claims: 

The fact is, on a pooling basis--and that's the level at which the federal government operates--giving someone money to buy insurance that covers abortions is exactly the same thing as directly paying for their abortions. The original compromise, segregating the funds so that the federal subsidy wouldn't pay for the abortion part, was a transparently ineffective gimmick.

Maybe I'm a dope, but I don't see why that should be the case. Of course money's fungible. But what's the difference between segregating the funds as the compromise proposed or having the same insurance company deposit the dollars it receives from its abortion-covering and non-abortion-covering policies in the same bank account? A particular dollar from a no-abortion policyholder could end up going to pay for an abortion, if you choose to look at it that way. But the point is, once all the dollars go into the account, it's meaningless to ask whose they were. The relevant question, under the compromise, is whether there would be enough money in the segregated account--i.e. non-federal dollars--to pay for the number of abortions provided. And that's why God created actuaries.

In re: Gibson, it's perhaps worth noting that there are lot of liberal Catholics (viz. Michael Sean Winters) out there who are, in fact, pro-life (let's call them Common Good Catholics as opposed to Catholics for Choice). It's just that, unlike their conservative co-religionists, they have been prepared to support non-pro-life health care reform for the sake of what they take to be the greater good of (near) universal health coverage. But at the same time, it's very hard for them to oppose pro-life amendments once these make it into legislation.

Let me once again opine that it would have been not only politically smart but accurate for the House leadership to call the subsidies "health care vouchers." Voucherization has been the preferred conservative approach to laundering tax dollars in order, for example, to dispose of Establishment Clause problems. If a citizen's objection to paying for someone else's religious school is solved by turning her tax dollars into a school voucher, why isn't a citizen's objection to paying for someone's abortion solved by turning her  tax dollars into a health care voucher? Especially since using tax dollars to pay for religious schools directly is unconstitutional whereas using tax dollars to pay for abortions is not.

It was clever of Bart Stupak and his friends to claim that they were merely applying the Hyde Amendment to the health reform bill, as if all they wanted was to maintain the status quo with respect to federal abortion restrictions. In fact, they went a good deal further.

With respect to Medicaid, what Hyde does is to bar federal monies from being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment to the woman's life. But states are permitted to provide complete abortion coverage with their own funds, and 17 of them do. It has gone largely unnoticed that the Stupak amendment prohibits the use of state Medicaid matching funds to pay for abortion services--that is, it changes the way Medicaid currently functions for those additional women who would be covered by Medicaid under the legislation.

In addition, the amendment requires that, for those whose insurance is subsidized by the federal government, abortion can only be covered via a "separate supplemental policy"--on the grounds that merely limiting federal subsidies to non-abortion coverage in a given policy (with the individual providing the balance) is just an accounting trick. But if the underlying objection is that the subsidy would then make it possible for women to obtain abortion coverage thanks to federal support, the supplemental policy approach (which would presumably require the basic subsidized policy) would do the same--just at a much higher price. The object of the exercise is simply to make access to abortion more difficult, not to protect pro-life taxpayers from having to pay for abortions. As for the stipulation that insurance companies participating in the exchange program provide policies that do not cover abortions along with those that do, that has nothing to do with the federal funding restrictions of the Hyde Amendment.

How did Stupak & Co. manage to get their way? I go along with Amy Sullivan's judgment that the Democratic leadership was asleep at the switch. Rather than engage with pro-choice members--and the Catholic bishops conference--early on, Pelosi et al. acted as though this was nothing much to worry about. Over at TNR's Plank, Bill Galston claims that the result shows the continuing power of Catholicism in the Democratic Party, while Alan Wolfe argues that Catholicism is all over the lot and not the bogey some liberals are now making it out to be. But the point is that, when the fate of a bill hangs in the balance, a few votes one way or the other make the difference. Had the Catholic bishops been prepared to settle for half a loaf, so would Stupak.

Among the losers here must be mentioned the commongroundniks, including the good folks at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, who were supposed to be in business to help pro-choicers and pro-lifers find a middle way on abortion in order to achieve social benefits that both sides agreed on. In fact, when crunch time came in the House, the pro-lifers got everything they wanted. As liberals, the commongroundniks have had some success pushing pro-choicers to compromise. But it's not clear that they have any standing with the pro-life community to do the same. So it will fall to the enraged old-time pro-choice forces to provide push-back to Stupak in the Senate bill. Abortion business, in short, as usual.

Over on Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner cornered Jim Wallis on where he actually stands on abortion these days, and here's what he told her:

"I believe the best response to abortion is not to criminalize what, I believe, is often a tragic and desperate choice; but rather to find effective and proven solutions to reduce abortion. This is the common ground possible between pro-life and pro-choice views."

This is not a response calculated to make pro-choicers very happy, and Posner isn't. No question about it, Wallis doesn't like abortion; he might even (after a few beers) call himself pro-life. But saying that you don't want to criminalize it means that you think it should not be made illegal, because, duh, when you do something that's illegal it's a crime. And if it's not a crime, then doctors will be allowed to perform abortions and women will be able to, er, choose to have them.

So color Wallis reluctantly pro-choice. As for whether he supports current versions of health reform legislation, is there any evidence that he won't? Here's the key sentence in his "Faith Declaration for Health Care Reform":

While religious people don't all agree on all the issues of abortion, we should agree that it must not be allowed to derail the crucial need for comprehensive health care reform.

I'm saying he's on board.