Dems for Life
Dems for Life by Michael Sean Winters of National Catholic Reporter. My response: The term "pro-life" is so loaded with ambiguity nowadays that it is practically meaningless and its proponents unserious, acting mainly for electoral advantage among the uninformed. For this reasons, Democrats can call themselves pro-life, even though this violates the main priniciple of the National Right to Life Committee - which is that it is an electoral issue to support the Republican Party with money, volunteers and votes. If they pro-lifers want to be serious (in either party), they need to overcome the following issues:
First off, there are too many states (and indeed, to many liberals in the House) to ever make a Human Life Amendment a realistic option.
Second, Roe will never be overturned judicially, nor is doing so ever an electoral issue. Justices cannot be directed to vote in a certain way - even Catholic Justices by the Church. If access to Eucharist were threatened to any such Justice, all Catholic Justices would be honor bound to recuse themselves from the issue and it could never be heard. If the Bishops can't force a result, neither can a President, so the idea of using appointment to get there is absurd.
Also on Roe, overturning it on Originalist grounds also overturns much in the way of equal protection jurisprudence, including the decision that states that Hispanics are a separate group and not White People to whom equal protection does not apply. Supporting the gutting of the 14th Amendment is not a Catholic view, or should not be. Any effort to send the decision to the states would have the same effect and be as fractious as having slave and free states. Again, not acceptable (nor effective, because people could travel for an abortion - and still often have to for medically necessary procedures in the second trimester).
Again on Roe, overturning it by overturning privacy would likely make the bishops happy, since they like the idea of the state getting back into the control of sodomy and birth control - but that is more of a police state than I am willing to accept just now. Privacy does not mean simply making a matter non-public - but it is about the right to personal decision-making. It is essentially allowing the tyranny of the mob to intrude in the most personal matters. I do not accept the proposition that Catholicism means mob rule, even by a Christian mob.
This leaves to strategies. The first is an Act of Congress to use its enforcement powers under the 14th Amendment and its sovereign power as a national legislature to move legal personhood to some point earlier than birth. The Court has used its delegated authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to move it to viability - and reinforced the tie to the 14th Amendment by calling partial birth abortion the equivalent of infanticide and thus birth. How far Congress goes is limited by the principle of Equal Protection under law. If first trimester embryos (fetushood comes at the second trimester) are people, then killing them must be the same thing as killing a child or an adult. Going back to pre-Roe days where abortion was a crime all its own is not an option ever again. First trimester embryonic recognition also complicates miscarriage, since every such even would be liable for criminal investigation by the authorities s a legal person has died and to tort relief for the same reason.
Any legal exemption would give Planned Parenthood and other providers an out they can drive a truck through (for example, miscarriages would spike and could not be investigated if other miscarriages cannot be) and having no exemptions would simply end prenatal care until the second trimester, damaging women's health and the rights of other embryos to medical care. The alternative is to draw the line at 13 weeks of gestation (or 15 since the last period) and hope that people may one day see the start of the heartbeat at week six as a reasonable marker. The beginning of regulative development at gastrulation is a good marker to say the soul is present, but unless the complications having to do with equal protection are dealt with (and if you can, you are smarter than I and most in the pro-life movement), this is not going to happen. If you do come up with a bill that takes care of these exceptions that does not do violence to equal protection, Catholic politicians would be bound to support it. Without such a bill, however, there is no obligation to support ANYTHING criminalizing abortion.
The reason the pro-life movement is profoundly unserious is because it is unable to ever come up with such a bill or accept a second trimester dividing line, which would settle the issue and end their ability to use it for electoral purposes or fundraising. It would also likely lose the support of the hard care supporters who will not accept anything less than life being protected from the moment of conception (which is also an unserious belief because ensoulment cannot happen until gastrulation because of 1.twinning, 2. the ability of non-viable hybrids to develop until then - and there are no Dog-Boys in Heaven and 3. because only the mother's DNA is involved in development until that point - which must imply that her life force (or soul) is still controlling development as a part of her body).
Catholic Pro-Life Democrats have the added advantage of pushing for other ways to protect life that are profoundly serious - such as mandating health care for pregnancy on the public's dime and generally supporting social services and tax credits for growing families - although it could be more serious by joining the Center for Fiscal Equity in calling for a federal refundable Child Tax Cut of $500 per month, per child - paid through either personal income taxes (but with wages by changing withholding) or as an offset to a VAT-like Net Business Receipts Tax paid by employers and channeled directly to workers and their families with pay (thus cutting refund anticipation usury out of the system. Ending the lifetime limit on welfare benefits, switching TANF from work readiness to basic literacy and making it a path to real career (not just low wage job) training or even higher education and paying literacy trainees at a much higher minimum wage (say $12 an hour) would also be profoundly serious, seriously Catholic and very much in support of the seamless garment of the Gospel of Life.
First off, there are too many states (and indeed, to many liberals in the House) to ever make a Human Life Amendment a realistic option.
Second, Roe will never be overturned judicially, nor is doing so ever an electoral issue. Justices cannot be directed to vote in a certain way - even Catholic Justices by the Church. If access to Eucharist were threatened to any such Justice, all Catholic Justices would be honor bound to recuse themselves from the issue and it could never be heard. If the Bishops can't force a result, neither can a President, so the idea of using appointment to get there is absurd.
Also on Roe, overturning it on Originalist grounds also overturns much in the way of equal protection jurisprudence, including the decision that states that Hispanics are a separate group and not White People to whom equal protection does not apply. Supporting the gutting of the 14th Amendment is not a Catholic view, or should not be. Any effort to send the decision to the states would have the same effect and be as fractious as having slave and free states. Again, not acceptable (nor effective, because people could travel for an abortion - and still often have to for medically necessary procedures in the second trimester).
Again on Roe, overturning it by overturning privacy would likely make the bishops happy, since they like the idea of the state getting back into the control of sodomy and birth control - but that is more of a police state than I am willing to accept just now. Privacy does not mean simply making a matter non-public - but it is about the right to personal decision-making. It is essentially allowing the tyranny of the mob to intrude in the most personal matters. I do not accept the proposition that Catholicism means mob rule, even by a Christian mob.
This leaves to strategies. The first is an Act of Congress to use its enforcement powers under the 14th Amendment and its sovereign power as a national legislature to move legal personhood to some point earlier than birth. The Court has used its delegated authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to move it to viability - and reinforced the tie to the 14th Amendment by calling partial birth abortion the equivalent of infanticide and thus birth. How far Congress goes is limited by the principle of Equal Protection under law. If first trimester embryos (fetushood comes at the second trimester) are people, then killing them must be the same thing as killing a child or an adult. Going back to pre-Roe days where abortion was a crime all its own is not an option ever again. First trimester embryonic recognition also complicates miscarriage, since every such even would be liable for criminal investigation by the authorities s a legal person has died and to tort relief for the same reason.
Any legal exemption would give Planned Parenthood and other providers an out they can drive a truck through (for example, miscarriages would spike and could not be investigated if other miscarriages cannot be) and having no exemptions would simply end prenatal care until the second trimester, damaging women's health and the rights of other embryos to medical care. The alternative is to draw the line at 13 weeks of gestation (or 15 since the last period) and hope that people may one day see the start of the heartbeat at week six as a reasonable marker. The beginning of regulative development at gastrulation is a good marker to say the soul is present, but unless the complications having to do with equal protection are dealt with (and if you can, you are smarter than I and most in the pro-life movement), this is not going to happen. If you do come up with a bill that takes care of these exceptions that does not do violence to equal protection, Catholic politicians would be bound to support it. Without such a bill, however, there is no obligation to support ANYTHING criminalizing abortion.
The reason the pro-life movement is profoundly unserious is because it is unable to ever come up with such a bill or accept a second trimester dividing line, which would settle the issue and end their ability to use it for electoral purposes or fundraising. It would also likely lose the support of the hard care supporters who will not accept anything less than life being protected from the moment of conception (which is also an unserious belief because ensoulment cannot happen until gastrulation because of 1.twinning, 2. the ability of non-viable hybrids to develop until then - and there are no Dog-Boys in Heaven and 3. because only the mother's DNA is involved in development until that point - which must imply that her life force (or soul) is still controlling development as a part of her body).
Catholic Pro-Life Democrats have the added advantage of pushing for other ways to protect life that are profoundly serious - such as mandating health care for pregnancy on the public's dime and generally supporting social services and tax credits for growing families - although it could be more serious by joining the Center for Fiscal Equity in calling for a federal refundable Child Tax Cut of $500 per month, per child - paid through either personal income taxes (but with wages by changing withholding) or as an offset to a VAT-like Net Business Receipts Tax paid by employers and channeled directly to workers and their families with pay (thus cutting refund anticipation usury out of the system. Ending the lifetime limit on welfare benefits, switching TANF from work readiness to basic literacy and making it a path to real career (not just low wage job) training or even higher education and paying literacy trainees at a much higher minimum wage (say $12 an hour) would also be profoundly serious, seriously Catholic and very much in support of the seamless garment of the Gospel of Life.
posted by Michael Bindner at 6:00 PM
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