Black and White
Sep. 21st, 2004 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynThis 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.
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.
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Covenant breakers...
Date: 2004-09-22 01:55 am (UTC)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.