Can Catholics Vote For Pro-Choice Politicians?

For a practical example of when it might be acceptable to vote for a pro-choice candidate, we need look no further than the 2004 election. In that contest, well-funded partisan operatives succeeded in convincing millions of Catholics that a vote for pro-choice presidential candidate John Kerry was nothing short of sinful. Now, four years later, few still argue that President Bush was the right choice for Catholic voters. Many, in fact, now claim that the president’s reelection was an absolute disaster.

Although President Bush ran on a pro-life platform, his actual record on abortion and other life issues has turned out to be abysmal. The much-touted partial birth abortion ban – which only prohibited a certain extremely rare type of abortion procedure – was largely a symbolic victory with few practical implications. The appointment of conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court has so far failed to overturn Roe v. Wade – which, as we have seen, itself would prevent a relatively small amount of abortions anyway. And the sharp declines in the U.S. abortion rate that we witnessed during the economic boom of the 1990s have not been matched during the past eight years .

Meanwhile, under President Bush’s leadership the economy entered a crisis of epic proportions, an ill-conceived and unjust war killed thousands of Americans and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis, our nation lost its moral authority in the world, and Americans, many of them children, continue to go without adequate health care and education.

It doesn’t matter what the Bush Administration said it believed when it came to promoting and defending human life. Its real priorities were market deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and war in Iraq. Just look at where the money went: billions in giveaways for the well-off and to fight a war the public no longer supports, and very little for programs that could have prevented abortions, not the least of which was an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance program – a measure the president vetoed. History may one day prove otherwise, but at this point in time, we’re hard pressed to argue that anyone is better off because of the policies of current president.

The takeaway for Catholics, of course, is that a candidate’s stated position on an issue – even one as important as abortion – serves as a pretty poor litmus test for whether we should vote for or against that candidate. Quite the opposite, we have as Catholics a moral duty to see beyond the veneer of campaign rhetoric and challenge candidates to demonstrate results, as well as to see the bigger picture of how our vote will advance the common good.

Does this mean that Catholics who did vote for Bush put their own souls at risk? Of course not. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the president’s Catholic supporters truly believed that his agenda fit more squarely with Catholic moral principles than that of his opponent, and if they knew then what we know now, they may well have reconsidered that decision . But the experience of 2004 does illustrate the inherent danger in using the teachings of the Catholic Church to promote or oppose any candidate for public office. Let’s hope we learned our lesson.

With so much at stake in the present election, then, Catholics should be wary of any efforts to disqualify candidates from the Catholic vote. It’s up to us as voters to decide how best to cast our ballots, and we should do so only after considering all the important issues – with a clear understanding of the results we want to achieve.