The Pro-Life Movement On The Left

Most Americans who are pro-life don't experience it from the left side of the political spectrum. Without a doubt, it is terribly difficult to be pro-life on the political left. The current political landscape in America presents a dire problem for "pro-life progressives," even more so if they're Catholic and observe the Church's teachings. Pro-life progressivism is a growing, still voiceless, movement in the Democratic Party. There is a sense of alienation from pro-choice Democrats in regard to "women's issues" (abortion) and "life-saving scientific research" (embryonic stem cell research) as well a sense of being out of place amongst conservative Republicans whom we might agree with on a few issues, but disagree with on a host of others and perhaps fundamentally on political philosophy. This movement (I think) is really reflective of many American youth, who not only oppose abortion and euthanasia, but would like to see "life issues" extend to the 30,000 children who die globally each day from poverty and preventable disease, issues of genocide in places like Darfur, human trafficking, healthcare, foreign policy issues of war and peace, and even to environmental stewardship. Many Catholic Democrats see this as what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin coined as the "consistent life ethic."

While I personally hold this view, I think there are two fundamental tendencies of this approach to politics ("the consistent life ethic") that presents a profound challenge, particularly to Catholics. The first is the prevailing tendency to make all political issues morally equal, i.e. fighting abortion is morally equal to providing universal healthcare. This is a tragic intellectual mistake. In the current election season this sort of thinking hasn't gone unnoticed with the wave of pro-life Americans voting for Sen. Barack Obama despite his radical abortion stance because "there are other issues." Indeed, I'm not one to deny that there are other issues that I care deeply about, but not even a monolithic committment to all these other issues in a "pro-life" way can draw attention away from the insurmountable horror of Barack Obama's hyper-liberal abortion agenda.

The second tendency of this group (this is just modern "progressivism" in general) actually causes the first. This tendency is toward moral relativism; the absence of an objective standard of good and evil easily allows for a pro-life individual to see reforming the American healthcare system as "more pressing" than stopping the genocide of 1.2 million unborn children every year. And the tendency toward this kind of thinking is more deep-seated than we like to realize. The American political tradition (and therefore the thinking of American citizens) is deeply rooted in legal positivism, which as a philosophy sees a disconnect between law and morality. This theory fundamentally presupposes moral relativism because allegedly the only way to maintain order in a secular society is not to affirm moral truths, which in itself establishes a false sense of peace, which begins to dissipate into what Princeton law professor Robert P. George calls the "clash of orthodoxies," i.e. secular humanist-moral relativists vs. Judeo-Christian moral conservatives.

It's safe to say then the fundamental problem is our moral thinking. Consider what C.S. Lewis coined as the "abolition of man." If God created us and endowed us with our human nature, then we can be assured that our nature is in harmony with His good purposes. Given that we have a nature, certain things go against it, won't fulfill us, and this is what we Christians call sin. But what if we could alter our nature? We live in a society where we create life in laboratories, can alter genetics, and implant embryos. This invokes to my mind a looming possibility of Huxley's Brave New World. The fundamental question is: is this in accord with our nature? Are humans meant to be created in this way? Whether or not a person believes in God will profoundly shape their conclusion to this question. There is no natural law without God and the fundamental notion that follows the absence of God is that our humanity is not a creation and therefore, there is no reason why we should not create embryos in laboratories for medical research nor for mothers who want a baby as if it were a consumer product.

How is this relevant to "pro-life progressives?" This group sees why abortion is a repugnant evil, which is wonderful. This movement may be key in ending the horror of abortion in America if they are successful in reversing the Democratic Platform and align themselves with pro-life conservatives. However, the mordern notion of "progress" may inevitably be their (and everyone else's) downfall.

In a recent political debate with a friend of mine, who like me, is a pro-life Democrat, except I'm Catholic, the fundamental difference is just as I described. He is voting for Obama and I'm voting for McCain. My friend sees it this way: American healthcare reform, namely universal healthcare is a "pro-life" issue, McCain won't do anything about abortion, and healthcare will help reduce the abortion rate. Perhaps he's right. But what about the fact that Barack Obama said that his worse choice in his senatorial career was his vote to save Terry Schiavo (he doesn't oppose euthanasia) and his expression at the "Compassion Forum" that he thinks people should have the choice to end their lives and their suffering if they choose to (physician-assisted suicide)? Or what of his remarks about funding abortion through his healthcare plan undermining the Hyde Amendment?

It doesn't matter. For my friend, healthcare reform is a pivotal issue that we cannot miss this time around. "Love your neighbor," he cited as his reasoning for voting Obama. But modern, hyper-liberal, pro-sexual revolution thinking doesn't really include God. The notion of the natural law is godless (because we have to include the atheists) because we cannot affirm the existence of God and without God, we cannot recognize our neighbors, whom we're supposed to love, for what they are. To be a person, according to the natural law, is to be a proper subject of absolute regard—a "neighbor"—it is persons whom I must not kill, must not steal from, etc. What is a person? A person is a creature made in the image and likeness of God.

The problem with losing sight of God is this: we don't lose sight of killing our neighbor as wrong, more than we don't recognize our neighbor when we see them (e.g. the unborn). In contemporary secular ethics, the ruling tendency is to concede that there are such things as persons, but to define them in terms of their functions or capacities—not by what they are, the image of God, but by what they can do. Therefore "personhood" is defined in terms of consciousness, reasoning, self–motivated activity, the capacity to communicate about indefinitely many topics, and conceptual self–awareness. If you can do all those things, you're a person; if you can't, you're not. The functional approach to personhood seems plausible at first, just because—at a certain stage of development, and barring misfortune—most persons do have these functions. But to think that they are their functions blows the core right out of the moral code.

This is often used as a justification for abortion. The slogan of pro-choicers is heard loud and clear: "every child a wanted child." But, by this logic, an unwanted child is not a child…so kill it? Obviously, unborn babies are not capable of reasoning, complex communication, and so on. If they cannot perform these functions, then by definition they aren't persons, and if they aren't persons, they have no inherent right to life. The real question is a philosophical one and it's undoubtedly moral. One might say, "surely a collection of tiny cells don't constitute personhood in such a way that trumps a woman's right to personal autonomy."

That's the mindset. But it cannot end with abortion. If unborn babies may be killed because they lack these functions, then a great many other individuals may also be killed for the same reasons—for example the asleep, unconscious, demented, addicted, infants, toddlers, someone in a coma on life-support (euthanasia), not to mention sundry other cases, such as deaf–mutes who have not been taught sign language. In such language, none of these are persons; in theological language, this is clear denial of the human person coming from God.

The cure for such blindness is not to tinker with the list of functions by which we define persons, but to stop confusing what persons are with what they can typically do. Functional definitions are appropriate for things which have no inherent nature, things whose identity is dependent on our own purposes and interests.

If I am a person then I am by nature a rights–bearer, by nature a proper subject of absolute regard—not because of what I can do, but because of what I am. Of course this presupposes that I have a nature, a "what–I–am," which is distinct from my present condition or stage of development, distinct from my abilities in that condition or stage of development, and distinct from how this condition, stage of development, or set of abilities might happen to be valued by other people. In short, a person is by nature someone whom it is wrong to view merely as a means. If you regard me as a person only because I am able to exercise certain capacities that interest you, then you are saying that I am not a person. And so the functional definition of personhood does not even rise to the dignity of being mistaken, it is just irrational and incoherent. With each different criterion of personhood, a different set of beings is welcomed through the gates of others' regard. This is the same rule of all oppression. Those who supported slavery were free and those who support abortion are born. Personhood is defined at our convenience.

It is clear then that moral principles are more important than policies. Moral principles gives us the capacity to priortize our political agendas accordingly and with a sense of how policies should be shaped, i.e. why abortion is a paramount issue. Much more can be said of this, but given the broad set of political issues, the pro-life movement (this is especially true of Catholics) has constantly faced a fundamental question often heatedly debated that I'm not at liberty to answer authoratatively. I have my convictions about if or when a pro-life Catholic could ever (if possible) vote for a pro-choice candidate, but I believe people of good will may disagree with me and I place no judgment on them. Honest disagreement can only lead to a healthy debate.

But we cannot avoid the question that often divides us: Can someone who is pro-life and Catholic vote for candidates who are not only pro-choice, but who promote policies such as universal healthcare that is accompanied by an unquestionably flawed approach to bioethics, which inevitably creates more problems? That is, can we argue "proportionate reasons" when the principles of one side is based on a terribly flawed view of the human person and society? It is striking to me that many pro-life Americans, even Catholics, go to great lengths to defend or qualify a pro-choice candidate's position, or even worse make them out to be more "pro-life" than the person who opposes abortion (Doug Kmiec).

I understand their argument and in all truthfulness, I don't disagree with them entirely, but I do think it gets so casual that one may vote consistently for pro-choice candidates without discerning the issue of abortion. Moreover, I don't think any of these same people would vote for a racist candidate no matter what that candidate said or how good, say, their economic plans are. No one would vote for Hitler because he supported universal healthcare (he did; Germany was the first nation in the world to have it) despite the fact he supported the genocide of 6 million Jews as well as nearly 6 million others who died along side them. Genocide would disqualify him from receiving our votes, period.

Yet when a candidate supports the systematic, public funded genocide of 1.2 million unborn children in America as well as subsidizing abortions overseas (e.g. not giving foreign aid unless they provided abortion facilities as was done under the Clinton administration) and below the border in Mexico, contributing to the over 45 million abortions that occur within 365 days worldwide, there are suddenly "other issues." Sometimes it is argued that overturning Roe v. Wade will not do anything, so we should leave abortion legal. Should we have left slavery legal and only sought to reduce the number of slaves? Such argument is incoherent. It's even argued that social programs will lead to less abortions. I think this is true to an extent, but on some level we (all) should agree that citing evidence from Europe is not convincing because Europeans are contracepting themselves to death and don't have nearly as many children to be carried by the safety net of social programs, hence, less abortions.

I won't objectively say a pro-life American, Catholic or otherwise, cannot (ever) vote for pro-choice candidates. Should they? That's another question and I think good Catholics may come down on both sides. Pro-life progressives, particularly Catholics ones, need to stop accomodating pro-choice candidates. Why should the Democratic Party feel any need to change its position on abortion, if they realize they will receive our uncritical support anyway, even while we disagree?

Christian Ethics and American Law

The American political debate is a heated landscape—a landscape that is not at all lacking in general presuppositions, that are undeniably philosophical in nature, that are scarcely brought to intellectual scrutiny. One might declare that some law is ‘unjust,’ or that this law in favor of the ‘common good.’ Another person may say certain public policies violate basic ‘human rights.’ Each of these claims presupposes that there is some universal norm by using words such as 'justice' and 'common good' that everyone is aware of, that has moral implications, and that we all have an obligation to uphold.

What is most concerning is the post-modern tendency to say that moral principles and the law should not be connected. Morality should not be legislated. This is a common American notion. While this problematic assertion can be approached in many ways, I think the most fundamental question that should be asked is, what is law?

It seems to me that the common American idea of law is a set of rules set forth by the State that are enforced by a credible threat of force and punishment. There is something undoubtedly true about that proposition, but does it fully capture the essence of the law? Are we prepared to accept that the law is merely a matter of obedience and control? Sure, obedience and control have something to do with effective laws, but do they adequately define the nature of the law? If so, what distinguishes the ‘just’ laws from ‘unjust’ laws? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps all laws are simply expressions of the will-to-power of an individual or a group. But if this is so, what are we really saying when we complain about ‘unjust’ laws? Is it merely anger because our self-interests have failed to win over the self-interests of others?

That may be so, but it would be undeniably strange. Why? Because the human experience has shown us that there is a difference between asserting our own wants and true ‘justice’—whatever that is. Children and adolescents commonly accuse their parents of being ‘unfair’ for not giving them something they want. But is that the same as, say, Martin Luther King saying that it was ‘unfair’ for the State of Alabama to refuse to allow African Americans to enroll in its universities? Both statements involve a claim on others. It seems safe to say that we are fooling ourselves if we think that there is no substantial difference between the two.

When parents deny children something they want, there is no universal moral reason as to why a child must have, say, a particular toy. The only reason a child may have to claim ‘unfairness’ against their parents is their own desires. Martin Luther King in his Letter From Birmingham Jail argued that rights due to him by virtue of the natural law, by virtue of his humanity were unjustly denied him and any laws protecting this injustice are not laws at all.

It is clear that Dr. King believed that laws are designed to protect justice. He also presupposes a natural moral order that we humans can know and must conform ourselves to. Is he right? I think so. What if he isn’t? What would that mean? Consider this. Adolf Hitler legalized every action he made while in power in Nazi Germany. Does legal status, morally qualify his actions, particularly the 6 million Jews that perished at his command? Did the legal status of slavery make it morally acceptable? It strikes me that most Americans would agree that Hitler did immoral deeds and slavery is immoral. But that same majority of Americans accepts the horror of abortion as the status quo and often cites that it won’t be illegal anytime soon. Or, they claim that the legality of abortion won’t stop women from seeking abortions. So why stop it?

The problem is abortion is murder. Take for instance the act of murder. Why is murder against the law? There are two reasons. One, to allow citizens to kill one another would produce anarchy and is against the interest of the State. Two, murder is an objective moral evil that is contrary to human nature. It is self-evident that the second reason has more bearing than the first. The convenience of outlawing murder for the State to maintain order is a by-product of the reality that the act of killing innocents is contrary to the moral order of the universe and that the endorsement of the action itself cannot yield any good or productivity for any human society.

One might ask, what does it all matter? It matters because it affects each and every individual in society. Why might we say that African Americans have a right to liberty over slavery? One might argue that slavery—free labor—is beneficial to the American economy and thus, the ‘common good.’ So why not allow slavery? Are there really any inviolable human rights that cannot be gone against no matter what profit or convenience doing so may yield? I certainly think there are.

We live in a society of ‘rights.’ We all have a right to something and we’ll be damned if anyone takes those rights away. But where do rights come from? In the modern, agnostic, morally relative world of scientific materialism all we are, is a collection of atoms no different in substance than that of a desk or a television. The universe in itself has no meaning and no purpose, which logically means that there is no meaning or purpose to our lives. If that’s true, what are ‘rights’ especially if we arguably have no meaning, and therefore, no dignity?

The notion of ‘natural rights’ was developed in the Catholic intellectual tradition in contribution to the philosophy of law. A fundamental concern for America is whether or not it is possible to preserve the notion of ‘natural rights’ without the Judeo-Christian understanding of the human person and of human nature which the notion of the natural law has been traditionally based. Can the idea of a natural law stand if we’re nothing but a random assortment of matter on a tiny dot that we call earth in a vast and meaningless cosmos? The short answer is no.

These questions are pressing. Western society is dominated by moral relativism, which leads ultimately to moral decay. We have come to idolize the biblical figure Cain in not wanting to be our brother’s keeper. America is in dire need of a strong, vibrant Christian presence to transform this debate and give it moral clarity. It is an imperative that there is an awareness of the origin of laws and a proper understanding of the moral and intellectual principles of interest in the American legal system—inalienable rights, civil liberties, federalism, separation of powers, etc.

This is why it upsets me that some Christians pull their children out of the public schooling system—still leaving millions of other children to go through the broken system—and refuse to be at the front of the campaign for American education reform so that Christian moral principles are not disregarded or given merely lip service. We need to return philosophy to our education system and instill moral values.

More importantly, Christians must be more than a force to illegalize abortion in the public square. It is vital that we are able to articulate our Christian moral perspective through rational and philosophical discourse because this vital tool (philosophy)—has been virtually eliminated and trivialized in western society—is the only way we may help America rediscover those human and moral truths that are written into the nature of the human person.