Tag Archives: pro-life

John Roberts’, Catholicism, and Abortion

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Rob Carr of Unspace has some questions for his Catholic friends in the blogosphere.

"Hypothetical situation: Let�s assume, for the sake of the argument, that the Constitution had a line in it that said 'Abortion shall be available to all.' It doesn�t � this is a hypothetical question, a 'gedanken experiment.' That�s German for 'thought experiment.'"

"If Roberts were a Supreme Court justice and he were asked to rule on the constitutionality of a law that totally banned all abortions (remember, folks – 'gedanken'). The law is clearly unconstitutional under our hypothetical gedanken experiment. "

"As a Roman Catholic, would he be permitted to rule that the Constitution says the law is unconstitutional? Or would he, because of his faith, be required to rule that the law is constitutional?"

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Being Open to Life: An Uphill Battle

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Today is the 37th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. This encyclical reinforced the Church's constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent the transmission of human life. Additionally, it continued the Church's constant teaching against abortion and sterilization.

"Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation�whether as an end or as a means."

-Humanae Vitae 14

Unfortunately, statistics show that 97% of Catholics use artificial contraception. If you are one of the 3% who is trying to live Church teaching and trying to find a doctor who shares your values, it can be an uphill battle. In Allegheny county, which is 69.8% Catholic, there are only 4 doctors (that I have found) who do not prescribe, perform, or refer for contraception, sterilization, abortion, or in vitro fertilization. That's right, there are only 4 physicians who live out the Church teaching on sexuality and life issues in a county that is almost 70% Catholic. That seems a little ridiculous to me. Of those 4, 2 are pediatricians, 1 is an otolaryngologist (ear, nose, and throat doctor), and 1 specializes in occupational/preventive medicine. None of them do gynecology work, not even the preventive medicine doctor. I called and asked. So, if you are a practicing Catholic woman in Allegheny county, you need to go elsewhere to find a gynecologist who shares your values.

The bulk of the reason for this lies in the lack of demand for these doctors among Catholics. Why, though, are there so few Catholics practicing this tenant of the faith? Part of the problem lies in misinformation supplied by doctors. My gynecologist told me that "Natural Family Planning is an ineffective method of contraception." However, when used properly (the same standard used to measure artificial methods of spacing children), natural family planning is 99% effective in spacing children. She wasn't talking about the rhythym method either. She spoke of the indicators and charting. However, I think the root cause is more than misinformation from doctors. If people were really interested, they could go to books to get the right information about effectiveness. The root causes are people don't know what the Church teaches, why She teaches what She does, or just don't care.

The first two problems are related; they are caused by poor catechesis, priests who lack a spine and don't want to "drive people away", and bishops who don't shepherd the flock. Personally, although I grew up Catholic, I didn't understand the Church's teaching until college. I remember learning there was a Church rule against birth control. I didn't have the impression that that the rule was still followed or "enforced". I never even knew that natural family planning existed, nor did I know that there were requirements for its use to be just. I think I had a pretty typical experience in this regard. I grew up in your average parish, attended Mass on Sunday and all Holy Days of Obligation, went to Catholic school and CCD during public high school. It was only through an orthodox Newman center that is very effective at catechesis that I learned the Church's teaching on sexuality and Her reason for it. Why didn't my parents, who are supposed to be my primary catechists, mention it? Why did I not learn this in catechism class? Why had I never heard about it in a homily? The first time I ever heard the Church's teaching on contraception mentioned in a homily, I was in Denver and Mass was being celebrated by Archbishop Chaput. He is very much the exception to the rule, though. In my experience, there are very few priests who have the spine to talk about such a controversial issue in a Sunday homily. Where are the bishops? Why are more bishops not talking about it? Why are the bishops not encouraging their priests to talk about the issue?

The causes of the third problem, apathy, are different, but related. We live in a society of materialism and relativism. BMW's are more important than babies, profits more important than people. There is a lack of respect for Truth. "Whatever you want to believe is good enough for you as long as it doesn't affect me." seems to be the prevalent attitude. How can we progress to a society where people are more important than things if we don't have a standard, if we don't respect Truth? It is as Chesterton said in Orthodoxy:

"Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, for instance, 'What is right in one age is wrong in another.' This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?"

Now that we see the darkness of our society, it is time for each of us to be the "light of the world". (cf. Matthew 5:14) It is time for each of us to confront these problems, to raise awareness and understanding of Church teaching which will lead to demand for pro-life doctors. Each of us can aid in the solution of these problems. After learning the Church teaching ourselves, we can catechize our friends and family and dispel the misconceptions among those we meet. Parents can take responsibility for catechesis of their children. We can also support those who are open to life and have larger than average families who get criticized by society at large. Additionally, it is important for us to encourage our priests to speak out about the issue. Many times, unfortunately, the Sunday homily is the average Catholic's only catechesis for the week. It is important that moral issues which affect daily life, such as this one, are covered. We can also confront our bishops and ask them to shepherd their flock, both by speaking out about Church teaching themselves and encouraging their priests to do the same. I'm not talking about lip service, heresy, or wishy washy statements, either, but real catechesis and real Truth. We can live in such a way that shows we live the value that people are more important than things by sharing our time, talent, and treasure with those less fortunate than ourselves. We need to walk the walk AND talk the talk. Our lives and our lips need to speak the unadulterated, uncompromising Truth. The Truth, which this world is starving for, is the only answer to these problems. As Pope John Paul II said:

"If you want peace, work for justice; if you want justice, defend life; if you want life, embrace the Truth, the Truth revealed by God."

[BTW, July 24-30 is Natural Family PLanning Awareness Week. – Funky]

95-10 Initiative

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I’ve been doing some thinking about Democrats for Life’s 95-10 Initiative. The short explanation (for those who don’t know) is that it seeks to reduce the number of abortions by 95% in 10 years.

  • Why doesn’t it seem to be getting much press? Is it because it doesn’t fit neatly into red vs. blue, right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal boilerplates?
  • Why doesn’t it seem popular among pro-life Republicans? If it’s just petty party politics, I might retch.
  • Why aren’t more pro-lifers (regardless of party) excited about it? A ban would be nice, but isn’t a drastic reduction better than status quo?
  • Why don’t more pro-choicers support it? What ever happened to "safe, legal and rare"?

Ask the Right Questions

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Aristotle taught us to ask the right questions, and I fear that many advocates for Terri, of whom I am one, have been asking entirely the wrong questions. The May 2005 issue of First Things has an excellent article by Robert T. Miller called "The Legal Death of Terri Schiavo". In the introduction, he states:

"Despite all the public outrage at the horror of an innocent woman being starved to death, despite the desperate and pathetic pleas of her parents, despite even a special act of Congress requiring the federal courts to intervene, those courts have let stand an order that Terri Schiavo die – or so many usually informed commentators have said. Once again, judges have ignored the plain meaning of democratically enacted laws in order to enforce their own moral values – or so we have been told."

"Unfortunately,it isn’t true. The simple fact is that Terri Schiavo’s legal rights were never once violated. The result in the case was so unjust not because the courts ignored the law but because they followed it. The laws of Florida, like those of most states, specifically allow that, in cases like Schiavo’s, some people may decide that others ought to die."

Prof. Miller goes on to demonstrate how Terri’s parents, the Schindlers, were fighting a battle regarding federal law, which held no water, and that while what Mr. Schiavo and Judge Greer did was immoral, it was not illegal.

While I’m often asked about medical and bioethical issues by friends, I often steered clear of Terri Schiavo’s medical status. It’s a mess, with "he said, she said" finger-pointing, shifting opinions, and convenient "memories" about what Terri thought about end-of-life issues. She evidently had a rough marriage, and the whole nation got to see a family train wreck with bad judgment on both sides.

In avoiding the morass of Terri’s diagnoses, one clear issue remains: due process. Mr. Schiavo did promise to provide a certain level of medical care to Terri upon getting the malpractice awards, but did not follow up on that promise, which included neurological diagnostics that may have shed light on what exactly was going wrong with her and what her odds of rehabilitation would be. Much ink and webpage-space has been expended on this, but we still don’t know much because Mr. Schiavo stonewalled us.

Perhaps Terri was incurable, but the media did quote some dissenters in the neurology community, and without the modicum of care that Mr. Schiavo should have provided but did not, we cannot say whether those dissenters were right or not.

If there was a convicted serial rapist on death row, and some experts disputed that some forensic tests were not performed, and could bear on the convict’s guilt, would that not raise a stink in the media? I do not want to say what Terri or Mr. Schiavo really thought or meant to do, I just want an assurance of due process, and while I’d see the ACLU fighting for the right of a serial killer to live, a sick woman who cannot speak for herself is starved out of hand when her caretaker did not do the things he promised to do for her, and in the face of dissent amongst experts in the field.

I’m not saying that those dissenters, had they examined her, would have found any hope for Terri’s recovery, but that gap in care worries me.

I hope that the debate will shift from finger-pointing and chattering about autopsies to the more fundamental issues of protecting the rights and lives of patients. This debate as been cast in the media’s favorite "red vs. blue" die, but what about the disability rights advocates who argued for Terri, like Not Dead Yet?

What of the voices from Judaism that opposed pulling Terri’s feeding tube (e.g., here)? I attended a lecture last semester by a professor at Duquesne University who wrote a book comparing Catholic and Jewish bioethical tradition (he’s Jewish, by the way), and he cited Judaism’s very strict protection of dying patients, an interest that has been only intensified by experiences such as the Holocaust and the preceding T4 Program.

In short, there are many voices that objected to Terri’s treatment. In part, these voices have been silenced by the usualbiases of many reporters (as soon as Santorum and Bush weighed in on the issue, it became another right-vs.-left story).

However, much of the problem has been with Terri’s advocates, who have not hit the real issues of due process and protections of rights while muddying the waters with contradictory medical evidence, accounts of what Terri "would have wanted", and so forth. In doing so, we have also snuffed out perspectives from the disabled, the vulnerable ones in our country, and also from Jewish leaders, who are anything but Republican Christians, and who have very acute memories about where "quality of life" discussions may take us if we do not look out for our most vulnerable brethren.