Black and White

[rowyn]

This article bills itself as "A Voter's Guide". It can be summed up as "Abortion and embryonic research are the worst evils facing America today and any Catholic who votes for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life candidate is in violation of his faith and is unworthy to present himself for communion."

This article bothered me. At first, I thought it might be the "these things are the worst evil" stance. But that's not it: even though I don't agree with Archbishop Myer's stance, it's not an illogical one. If you believe that a fertilized egg is a human being with the same rights as an adult human, then abortion and the potential for embryonic research is the worst thing that's happening in America today. I may not buy the underlying assumption, but I cannot quibble with the conclusion. (Note: I am not particularly interested in arguing this point, and the rest of this entry will not deal with the rightness or wrongness of abortion.)

No, what bothers me is his implication that the stance of any given politician will actually have an effect, one way or another.

He doesn't come right out and say "You can't vote for Kerry because he's pro-abortion; you must vote for Bush because he's against it." But his whole tone suggests that's the right conclusion.

The presumption here is that, if Bush is re-elected, he will make sure embryonic research remains illegal and he will outlaw abortions, while if Kerry is elected embryonic research will be legalized and abortions will continue in ever-growing numbers. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I don't actually know the current status of embryo research in the US. I know that many fertility treatments have the undesired side effect of resulting in non-viable fertilized eggs, but are legal anyway. I don't know if it's legal or not to fertilize an egg with the specific intent that the blastomere/embryo will not be permitted to develop into a baby. I'm thinking the latter is currently illegal, and that this is a law Bush pushed for, but I'm not sure.

But what I do know is that Bush has done virtually nothing, in four years of office, to make abortions illegal.

So why should a Catholic, in good conscience, feel that he has to vote for Bush to stop these 1.3 million annual abortions, when he's got no good reason to think Bush is going to do anything about it next term, either? (This isn't even to address the next problem, which is "how many abortions will be prevented by making it illegal?" Because you can sure bet that number wouldn't be close to "all of them".) Kerry and Bush may not "be in favor of embryo killing on roughly an equal scale" but in practice I think it's quite likely that they'd each have the same effect on the law.

And this, I think, gets us closer to Cardinal Retzinger's "proportionate reasons". If someone who is strongly opposed to abortion believes that Candidate A, pro-choice, has a 50% chance of, let's say, preventing hundreds of thousands from dying of starvation in Africa, while Candidate B, pro-life, has a 0.01% chance of doing anything about abortion in America .... well, I think it's pretty fair to go with the guy who might make a difference on something that matters to you.

Of course, there are arguments to be made on the other side: maybe Candidate B won't make a difference this year. But perhaps your devotion now to this single issue will someday bear fruit. It's similar to my reasoning in voting for Libertarians even when I know they won't win the current election.

But not all rational people agree with me that voting Libertarian now helps to make the Libertarian Party more credible, and I don't think everyone would agree that making anti-abortion your top priority in picking a candidate will necessarily make a difference in abortion policy down the road.

I'm not impressed by John Kerry, I'll admit. But even if I opposed abortion, I can't see making that a reason to vote for George Bush.

Comments

[rafn.livejournal.com]

Personally I tend to feel that both parties focus far to heavily on the 'hot' issues that draw the public in and which neither will do much about no mater their public stance. It would be nice to see a discussion of how their policies will really impact the public at large outside of forums like Bill Moyer's show.

[garyamort.livejournal.com]

But that's not it: even though I don't agree with Archbishop Myer's stance, it's not an illogical one. If you believe that a fertilized egg is a human being with the same rights as an adult human, then abortion and the potential for embryonic research is the worst thing that's happening in America today.

Actually, I would say that is an illogical conclusion.

If you beleive that a fertilized egg is a human being with the same rights as an adult human being, than it is a tossup between which is worst:
Abortion - the destruction of those human beings
Miscarriages due to environmental factors - same destruction, different cause
Miscarriages due to health - People who attempt to have children, who can reach the fertilization stage, but something keeps happening to prevent full cycle pregnancy
Fertility Clinics - where multiple fertilized eggs are created and the unused ones disposed of

To have a coherent world view, it seems to me that all of the above have to be condemned. Otherwise, the person is performing judgements on which are ok and which are not.

But I don't think miscarriage rates, or fertility clinic fertilized egg destructions are actually tracked. So to assert any one of them is the "worst" is merely jumping to conclusions.

But it does lead to an interesting ethical question regarding the presidential candidates: if you have a consistent beleif that the destruction of fertilized eggs is wrong than do you vote for a Candidate who supports giving others the choice, but has not utilized this choice himself or do you vote for a Candidate that supports restricting some of the choices, but has utilized the choice himself?

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you want to follow that all the way, the logical conclusion would be that menstruation is the worst thing happening in America today. Thus, the only moral course of action would be a mass sterilization campaign, which frankly I am all for, but you know "avoiding as many deaths as possible" isn't the real motive of the pro-life movement, it's "making as many babies as possible."

Why, oh why am I letting myself get sucked into this?

[krud42.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are those who would argue against the ethics of a fertility clinic; after all, it's not as though there's a people shortage.

As for unintentional miscarriages, I would think those would be equated with "death by natural causes", which nobody* has an issue with. Dying does not = murder. Though in recent years it seems more and more people are blaming various sources for increasing the rate at which they die "of natural causes". Is the dairy industry guilty of murder if someone has a heart attack from drinking one too many pints of buttermilk?

----

* - (there are exceptions, I realize. There are always exceptions, even to this sentence...)

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

I don't believe there is a "Christian candidate" in the race at all, in the sense of a clear morally-imperative choice.

Probably hasn't been in any race, certainly not lately.

Covenant breakers...

[ex-strangess744.livejournal.com]

I think the abortion issue (like many other hot button issues, like gay rights, rights of labor, equal opportunity by gender, race, and class...) shows how the day to day excecution of the office of president has degenerated into the realm of pure "optics".

Now, of course it's arguable how much the president _should_ be doing, and arguable whether or not the problems that the office claims are ones that can be solved, much less solved by the measures a given administration proposes....

BUT this pales before the fact that political survival means doing as _little as possible_ while trying to make whatever _is done_ appear as +dramatic a course of action as possible+ . Even look at Bush. Take the Iraq invasion/occupation aside, and what highly nuanced and thorough programs of action has he taken ?

(I say take the invasion aside because frankly that was a personal decision that his patrons underwrote because they liked the idea of setting an example to show that no one should even _Think_ of so much as _annoying_ an American president...there's little sign the shadowy figures would have pressed so hard and so fast for an invasion on their own agenda...)

For example, he cut taxes, but he hasn't even _talked_ about issues like medicare liabilities...in fact he's _fired_ people for _trying_ to talk about them. And he's _escalated_ the trend of robbing the social security account to pay for current expenses. Not exactly the actions of someone deeply concerned with the wealth of the nation, but he still has worked hard to be seen as "the no nonsense, business smart manager of America". (again, it's debatable if any president should even be aspiring to that, given the minimal effect of central fiscal policy on the economic cycle...(at least, effect for the better).)

And yet I can't say that Bush is necessarily much worse than Kerry or Brand Bleh. Would they break the formula ? Try to lead with substance, own up to their failures, and not oversell every little thing. No. Kerry is positively allergic to admitting he was ever, in any way, to any degree, not right or totally accurate for the time.

And people remember the optics. I mean, most people can't even understand how Kerry has made a consistent (regarding this intervention) stand on how he could vote for military force against Iraq but intend it to be a threat, not a 100% promise. The record is clear that bar one occasion, he's had a single opinion. But a lot of people don't understand a point this "complex" and so he looks like a fool or a liar to large parts of the population.

So I suppose my overall reply is "of course the candidates manipulate us by our hopes for substantive changes in the status quo, when they're not likely to deliver anything like that. Because we've come to reward them for such behaviour with election."

Sigh.

Let the battle be joined

[ex-strangess744.livejournal.com]

But you have a good point. People should stop pretending some differences can be reconciled, and return to federalism. Some states will make their citizens live by terrible laws...but as long as we offer something to make sure no one is _trapped_ in such a state against their will, this is for the best. With such a heterogenous whole, we should stop searching for a false unity that will never represent a peaceful consensus.

Re: Let the battle be joined

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Would it be fair to say that the US is itself a state by such a definition?

===|==============/ Level Head

Well, no

[rowyn]

I think the appeal of leaving more laws in the hands ot the states, in the US, is that it is so easy to move to and from states. If abortion were illegal in Missouri but legal in Kansas, it'd make it inconvenient for a Missouri native to get an abortion -- but only by the cost and time of a bus ticket.

But what I'm thinking is less "you can end-run around the law" and more that it would be easy to move out of a state if you didn't like the state's laws, just like Prester Scott doesn't have to live in a state with strict gun control laws.

By contrast, leaving the US for to take up residence in another first-world country (say, Britain, Australia, Canada, to pick English-speaking ones) requires a lot more effort, planning, luck, and talent. A homeless person can move from NY to Montana -- no authority is going to stop him. But if I want to move to Canada, I've got to do battle with their immigration laws first.

I hate immigration laws.

Re: Well, no

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the same changes that would allow state laws to get further apart would also result in an immigration process between states being set up.

For example, a state that has strict gun banning laws would be displeased with people simply being able to drive into the state on the Interstate with a load of weapons in the trunk or even guns in their pockets. Thus, checkpoints, IDs and such would be likely to come to pass.

Hard to say, obviously, but it seems likely to me. The clauses that require interstate reciprocality also depend to a large extend on Federal law trumping State law, it seems to me.

===|==============/ Level Head

Re: Well, no

[rowyn]

I don't know. NYC already has draconian gun-control laws, and yet there's no "immigration" set up to and from there.

I think that as long as the Constitution maintained its clauses on "no barrier to the free movement of people and goods", you could hand back a lot of other power to the states. For that matter, before Roe vs Wade, abortion was a matter of individual state law, if I recall correctly.

Even Canada/US customs is quite lax -- the difficulty isn't so much moving goods across the border as it is in preventing people from taking up residency in one country or the other.

Where I think you'll get into "immigration" problems is if one state chooses to set up atypically generous social programs. State-sponsored healthcare, for instance, or allowing longer stays or giving more money to people on unemployment or welfare. Tax-supported social programs are likely to attract, even if not actual leeches, the appearance of leeches. The people who are natives to the state will not want to share "their" social programs with those who "just got here". It's much the same resentment that people in the USA feel towards legal and illegal aliens who have their kids in public schools, or are receiving food stamps, or whathaveyou. All newcomers become suspected of being mooches -- and get treated as such.

This is one of the reasons I prefer extreme capitalism to extreme communism/socialism. It's much harder to "break" a capitalist system, because those who don't contribute to it also don't get anything out of it. Socialist and communist systems support people who do not contribute, so if they wind up with too many non-contributors, the system collapses. (And since they don't reward contributors over non-contributors, there's comparatively little incentive to be one of the former, either.)

In an extreme capitalist country, there shouldn't be a need for immigration controls, because there's nothing for the immigrant to "mooch" off of. That doesn't mean that extreme capitalism is the best system, but it would solve one problem.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that the President's role is leadership and vision. He may be working with a vast administration that often doesn't cooperate with him - he's the head of the Executive branch, not the Legislative branch - but he sets a direction for the country and tries to talk people into following him that way. He inspires the country, because people relate better to a single person speaking about what he wants for the country, than they do over the idea that our country's laws are formed by a consensus of legislators.

At least in an ideal world, that's how it would be. Today's world leans toward a somewhat more marketing- and re-election-driven strategy, it seems, every four years, and between those years it's 'milk it all you can' time.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I would agree -- that issue is not a very good basis for a vote decision. Particularly with its history, and other issues facing voters.

There is a fairly widespread perception that Mr. Bush is a religious fanatic, and is under the control of the religious right wing extremists. But considering the track record, it appears in stead that he is willing to give them lip service, make compatible-sounding noises, but do little for them except taking their money.

There are similar extremists on the left.

We should be glad that their influence is not larger than it is.

===|==============/ Level Head