Roe v. Wade, 45 years later: Debate continues amid surprises, stagnation

https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/distinctly-catholic/roe-v-wade-45-years-later-debate-continues-amid-surprises
MGB:_The March for Life is one of the reasons for stagnation in the right to life movement. Of course, there is no stagnation in Republican fundraising, get out the vote activities or in its relationship with a slim majority of Catholic bishops. They have the movement exactly where they want it, serving their interests so that they can continue to fight for the rich.

The movement itself is scherotic because it is based on the notion that Roe should be overturned and the issue returned to the states. That will never happen. The federal judiciary will never give up the power to review state legislation on due process and equal protection grounds, nor should it. While many Catholic conservatives don’t like what that means for gay rights, gay marriage and birth control, the days of Catholic power in public morality are gladly over BECAUSE of the right to privacy. No more Catholic mob rule.

State regulation would be convenient. The movement could mouth a right to life while punishing abortion as bad medical practice, rather than infanticide. Roe forces the right to life movement to accept the fact that punishing abortion as infanticide means women go to jail. That it won’t go there because of the optics shows the extent the movement is a sham.

The movement likes to pat itself on the back for what it does for women in crisis pregnancies, but the test of the movement is what it does once the pregnancy is over and people are faced with crisis childhoods because of poverty. It is here that a significant portion of the conservative men in the movement talk about being accountable for your own children and not picking their pockets to help fund the children of the poor, although popes from Leo XIII to Pius XI (who was very clear about it) to Benedict XVI that the state should do exactly that. Again, as long as movement men take that position, the movement is a sham.

Trump is just another Republican. He at least told the truth, before they caught him, about women going to jail if abortion were banned on personhood grounds. If Hillary had attacked the movement and his hypocricy rather than trying to justify partial birth abortion, which is illegal, she might not have done so poorly with the Catholic vote. Reactionaries are fine with their leaders ebracing the big lie and in looking the other way at his foibles, some of which may land him in jail. The movement has its share of reactionaries who like their King Donald, his madness and all.

While Archbishop Taylor’s commitment to a seemless garment is admirable, as well as his witness against a bloodthirsty Attorney General, his actions and remarks smack of sour grapes, which are unbecoming in any bishop but seem all too common of late. On capital punishment itself, if the alternative is solitary confinement for the rest of your life then the state is the cause of death for the convicted (and only dangerous sociopaths should ever get such a sentence). It matters not to me whether the state kills their sociopaths slowly or quickly, although prisoners like to get it over with.

Shame on the alderman who tried to use health care for the poor to pander to their bases. Sour grapes, even in response to sour grapes, is poor governance. The bad old days of Catholic hospitals excluding gay spouses are over and CHA is a force for good, especially in dealing with Bishops who pander.

I don’t oppose the unborn. I would give their families money, would ban all but induction abortions after the first trimester and all abortion save life and health at 25 weeks by having Congress declare them to be persons. I oppose the Republican party because they won’t do these things, largely because it would end the issue and ruin their fundraising and GOTV with the movement. I also oppose the Bishops who join their little game.

As a Democrat Catholic, this seems a strong position. I need not indulge the pro-life movement in their attempt to use the unborn in an argument about federalism just because it makes regulating abortion easier. If they wish to talk about the unborn people, they need to face the equal protection implications. Pick a date where abortion is infanticide and there is a willingness to apply the appropriate penalties, knowing that any time before that the unborn are not legal people and state regulation of abortions is interfering with women’s health care. There are better ways to protect life, just as there are better ways to help alcoholics and addicts than criminalizing drugs. That the pro-life movement is unwilling to dialogue on such ways is the extent of its irrelevance. It is not my job to save them from themselves, even though I have tried.