“They don’t vote as a block anymore.” These words were recently spoken by Monsignor Joseph Rebman about Catholic voters. Once a powerful demographic, Catholics today are bitterly divided over whether it is acceptable to vote for pro-choice politicians. Many Catholics are proudly progressive, but others insist that abortion is non-negotiable. What are the spiritual implications of a Catholic vote?
Perhaps the key deficiency in the conservative argument is the obsessive focus on criminalization, which may at some point in the distant future restrict someone's access to abortion in some states somewhere. Passive acknowledgements, like that of Dr Garnett, that "of course" we have to enact measures that support women and children for purposes of abortion reduction, are unconvincing—when the record shows that conservatives often actively oppose such measures. President Bush twice vetoed an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which would have gone a long way to insuring the 12 million children currently lacking health insurance. And he vetoed the Ryan-deLauro abortion reduction legislation in October 2007, citing a need for "fiscal responsibility" as the reason he rejected the whole Health and Human Services appropriation in which the legislation was contained.
The conciliatory Democratic approach of abortion reduction now, versus the polarizing Republican approach of criminalizing some aspect of abortion somewhere at some point in the future, represent an increasingly clear moral choice for Catholic and other voters. But I think at the least, the Democratic position merits the same respect as the more traditional argument that focuses on Roe-v-Wade and punishment-focused legislation.
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