Father Kleppner - January 23rd 2005
On the 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision legalizing abortion-on-demand, many from our local area as well as throughout our country will participate in the March for Life on January 24, 2005. In light of that, I thought the following editorial from this week’s Our Sunday Visitor might be worthy of our thoughtful attention.
On the 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision legalizing abortion-on-demand, it is time for pro-lifers to take stock of their successes and failures and to look to the future. While some Catholic pro-lifers may have mixed feelings about the Bush administration’s positions on the death penalty, the war and other topics, the president’s re-election ensured there would be no legislative or administrative rollback of pro-life gains for four years. The partial-birth-abortion ban may meet defeat in the courts, but hundreds of little-noticed actions throughout the bureaucracy regarding funding and other nuts-and-bolt issues will continue to tilt pro-life. The euphoria of some pro-life legislators, however, over their electoral victories at the state and federal levels has provoked some unrealistic goals for 2005, including the political fantasy that abortion can be outlawed. Clarke Forsythe, a leading pro-life activist and legal scholar with Americans United for Life, writes this week that unrealistic legislation enriches “pro-choice” legal teams while risking precedents that could make abortion more difficult to restrict in the future. Forsythe is in pro-life movement’s incrementalist wing, recognizing that this will be a long campaign, with little steps having a greater impact than showboat legislation that has no chance of success. Realism is often in short supply in the great cultural battles of our day, and realists are often attacked as weak or uncommitted when in fact they are strongly dedicated to what they know will be a long struggle. Pro-life show-offs may do a great job raising funds and getting their bases excited with extravagant claims, but the realists are the ones who win the important battles in the legislatures and the courts. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”), Pope John Paul II stresses the intrinsic evil of abortion, but also notes that incremental change may be all that is possible: “When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well-known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.” Also this week, Mary DeTurris Poust examines a potential political sea change: a Democratic Party that may allow a legitimate pro-life voice to be heard. Right now, there is a significant debate going on in the Democratic Party regarding values. For more than a decade, the party has not let its own pro-life voices have any presence in its national conventions, and it has not actively supported national politicians who take pro-life positions. It is now having second thoughts. The loss of Catholics and other Christians who might otherwise be attracted to Democratic positions on other issues has cost the party the last two presidential elections. Whether the changes that are allowed will be more window dressing remains to be seen, but the fact that the party is having the debate is a welcome sign. Pro-lifers will have more leverage if both parties have a strong pro-life voice. On the other hand, the current political polarization means that each party uses the issue to agitate its base and propel its fund raising without having to deliver much in the way of real legislative victories. |
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