More proof that Progressives use theology to be able to vote as they please. Pick outcome than theologize to get there.
M. Cathleen Kaveny essay in America magazine.
We cannot simply set 1.5 million annual abortions on the negative side of the equation as if they are entirely caused by one vote. A single vote for a pro-choice politician is not likely to make any significant difference to any particular woman’s decision for or against abortion, given that abortion is currently a constitutionally protected right in this country. In fact, we might well judge that voting for a candidate who supports a large safety net for mothers and dependent children would be a better way to increase the number of children brought to term, especially at the state level.
As if this safety net will protect those children who have doctors coming at them with scalpels, chemicals, and suction equipment. Plus government is so effective at reducing what they aim at – at least in regards to our wallets. There is of course the fact that a politician who votes for the slaughtering of the innocent will have the moral insight to create such an effective safety net – yeah that is someone who knows how to make wise choices and should be trusted with your vote.
50,000,000 plus killed here in the U.S. and we are talking about safety nets – give me a break.
The Cardinal Newman Society points out that she was part of Obama’s Catholic Outreach Program and:
She goes on to cast doubt on the usefulness of the traditional Catholic moral theology system of determining cooperation with evil, and suggests it is necessary to “develop new ways of analyzing the involvement of individuals in systemic structures of complicity.”
Yes, develop new ways to excuse voting that allows the continued murder of the child in the womb.
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I may be forgetting my high school government class–please point out where I’m wrong, if I am–but I don’t remember provisions allowed or created by SCOTUS decisions actually counting as “constitutionally protected rights.” Plenty of other things invoke the intent of various amendments and other clauses, but they don’t rise to the same level as the Bill of Rights.
So, if I’m not wrong: sloppy thinking, or wishful thinking?
I wonder if the leftists would be going through the same acrobatics to justify voting for pro-abort politicians if the issue were slavery (or killing homosexuals) instead of abortion. Think not.
Yes, I can see where M. Cathleen Kaveney would think it necessary
to “develop new ways of analyzing the involvement of individuals in
systemic structures of complicity”. Because the Church’s existing ways
of analysis would seem to make Ms. Kaveney a bit, well, complicit.
Obviously proportionalism has not disappeared from the scene.
Every election cycle, it seems like these folks come out of the woodwork, and – like some demon perching on the shoulder – attempt to whisper into your ear that it’s ok — even beneficial! — to vote for death because of the good that will come out of it.
Problem is, even the whole “a strong economy under liberals will actually reduce abortions!” line won’t work this time around due to the state of the economy (and truthfully, should never work, as liberals mean increased regulation which means decreased economic growth), so it must, must be the Church’s theology which needs re-examination.
It’s all goofiness. Let’s just hope more people side with the straight-forward teaching of the Church/USCCB instead of playing a round of intellectual limbo with people trying to justify how they’re going to vote.
A single vote for a pro-choice politician is not likely to make any significant difference to any particular woman’s decision for or against abortion, given that abortion is currently a constitutionally protected right in this country.
She just gave the lion’s share of the argument away. If a vote is so miniscule (which it is) then the “proportionate reason” disappears weighed next to the substantial damage to your soul by turning into someone who votes for candidates who support killing innocent humans.
Keep UP the good words and works Children of God’s Narrow Gate.
God Bless Peace
I have to question Ms. Kaveny’s assertion that a “safety net” helps reduce abortions. If one reviews statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, all of the states with abortion rates above 300 for every 1000 live births are in the Northeast. (By contrast, states such as Kentucky and Utah have rates below 70 per 1000 live births.) I have to assume these states, given their progressive political traditions, also have the best “safety nets”. Thus, abortion rates seem to have much more to do with social acceptance, rather than assistance resources.
Thus, abortion rates seem to have much more to do with social acceptance, rather than assistance resources.
Good catch Bryan. They are operating on the old “poverty causes abortions” dogma. Again, this is giving up the argument because basically they are saying that women get abortions because they are poor, scared, or desperate. What’s it called when someone advocates an evil solution knowing someone in a weakened state will be more likely to take it? Oh yeah, exploitation.
Is she referring to the same politicians in Montgomery County, MD who voted to undermine the work of crisis pregnancy center and who want to shut them down?
Scott expressed my second thought on the matter before I had it. I’m having trouble imagining anything that’s proportional to one and a half million innocent people deliberately killed every year.
I think abortion in the short run might be an effective part of a longer-term population control plan. If we trim back the excess middle third of humanity (or the poorest 75%, or whatever), there just won’t be that many people left to have abortions. I wonder how PP would expect to make up the lost revenue.
In places where abortion is illegal, poor women just carry the children to term and their families provide whatever safety net that they are capable of providing. Poverty doesn’t cause abortions, educated “apostles of death” offering abortion and changing the laws to allow abortion, cause abortion because they offer it to the ignorant and uneducated poor. These “educated people”, go out, dupe the poor women by abusing the “knowledge is power” strategy, dogmatically teaching the poor women that it is better to kill their children than to bring them to term, thus denying their families the opportunity to demonstrate their love, compassion, and support as they would ignorantly do if left alone to their instinctsy. Would that these well meaning(?) “apostles of death” could instead provide the help and care, the food and clothing, the heath care and counselling to women that wouldn’t jeopardize with the increased risk of cancer and other dysfunction the very parts of their bodies designed by God to help the newly conceived and newly born children in poverty.
Yes, Fr. Don Malin! Poverty is not a root cause of abortion. What was the abortion rate in the Dustbowl era? The root cause of abortion is its being legal and encouraged.