Abortion and the Catholic Vote

A couple of weeks back I wrote a letter to the editor in the Diocese of Green Bay newspaper, The Compass regarding the issue of abortion in this election year. Here is the letter:

I am not a single-issue voter. That is, I do consider more than one issue when evaluating a candidate. However, there are single issues that are so fiendish that, in my mind, they disqualify a candidate from getting my vote. For instance, if a candidate were to favor the legalization of race-based slavery, I obviously couldn't vote for him. If a candidate favored the legalization of domestic abuse, no vote from me. If a candidate favored the legalization of something outlandish like kitten-torture-for-fun, I simply couldn't vote for him. It doesn't matter what his other policies are, or even how likely it is that this odd-ball policy would be enacted. It doesn't even matter if I agree with that candidate on every other issue. Other issues don't really matter at that point. His position on any one of the above mentioned issues (and hundreds of others we could imagine) would disqualify him from holding office. I think many people would find this line of thinking very reasonable. Many of these examples are only hypothetical or even imaginary (like kitten-torture-for-fun). But if a candidate and his party platform supported the legal killing of unborn human beings, that should clearly qualify as one of these unspeakably heinous disqualifying factors. It doesn't matter what one's position is on the economy, foreign policy, immigration, or anything else. If you and your party celebrate abortion on demand, you won't get my vote. It baffles me that faithful Catholics could think otherwise.

I'd note that my position seems at least consistent with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (#42):

As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate's position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter's support. Yet if a candidate's position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.

I say that my letter is "consistent" with the USCCB guidelines, since those guidelines don't say that a Catholic "must" or even "should" disqualify a candidate based on a single issue concerning an intrinsic evil.  They merely state that that one "may legitimately" do so.  Admittedly, my position is a bit stronger, but I think my argument justifies this.

At the risk of repeating what I wrote in the letter to the editor, I will summarize my argument succinctly as follows:

1. (General Principle)  There are certain single issues that are so crucial, that a faulty stance on that one issue ought to disqualify a candidate from consideration by any voter of good will.
2. (Specific Application)  Abortion is such an issue.

In the following issue of the Compass, Sr. Ruth Battaglia CSA, who works as a Pastoral Associate at Holy Family Parish in Brillion, wrote the following response.  I offer my response and comments to her letter in purple:

It would be nice if deciding who to vote for was as simple as Mike Brummond suggests in the March 11 issue of the Compass. (I'm not sure what aspect of what I wrote suggested to Sister that this is a simple matter.  I proposed one criteria, not an entire voters' guide.  Even if one were to accept this one criteria, there would still be others to apply.  As I said at the opening of my letter, "I am not a single-issue voter."  Calling my position "simple" seems to be just a case of ad hominem.)   From my perspective it does matter what parties' and candidates' policies are beyond abortion, as weighty as that it.  (First off, a candidate's policies do matter to me beyond the issue of abortion, so long as we are speaking of the pool of candidates who oppose the legalized murder of unborn children.  So it seems to me Sister must be denying #2 of my basic argument.  She must not think that abortion is the kind of issue that should disqualify a candidate from consideration.  I have to think she agrees with #1.  For instance, I'd be willing to bet a box of donuts that Sister Ruth would not support a candidate who lined up with her on every issue she mentions below, yet supports the legalization of race-based slavery.  Or religious genocide.  So here's the rub:  Why doesn't abortion qualify for Sister and so many other Catholics as a disqualifying issue?  Certainly some "Catholics" simply dissent from Church teaching on abortion and are actually pro-choice.  I want to give Sister the benefit of the doubt, and assume she wishes Roe v. Wade to be overturned, and to see an end to abortion in our country.  So, again, why would abortion not be a disqualifying issue?  I'd like to suggest it is because we have become desensitized to the reality of abortion.  We either no longer avert our minds to the fact that abortion is the murder of innocent unborn human beings, or that concept has become so sanitized to us that in no longer produces in us the appropriate response.  I think I can illustrate this point.  Instead of abortion, imagine we were speaking of infanticide.  Imagine a candidate or party whose platform supported the legalization of a parent's right to euthanize their child up to three months after birth.  Would Sister Ruth's last sentence make any sense if we made this substitution?  Imagine her saying "From my perspective it does matter what parties' and candidates' policies are beyond infanticide as weighty as that it."  Of course not!  That sounds ludicrous to us because we still  instinctively recognize the gravity of the crime of murdering born children.  But we have lost that same sense of gravity when it comes to the unborn.  My challenge to Sister Ruth would be this: explain how something like legalized infanticide could be a disqualifying factor for a candidate (I'm assuming she would say so), but abortion is not.  Ultimately she has to concede one of the following: 1) Infanticide would also not be a disqualifying issue (a monstrous thought), 2) The unborn are less human or less deserving of legal protection than a born child (denying Catholic teaching), or 3) The unborn are just as human, but she is being inconsistent.)

I do not want my vote to support abortion (I certainly hope not, or that would be formal cooperation in a grave intrinsic evil, which would itself be a mortal sin), but I also do not want my vote to support actions of war, torture, violence, racism, sexism, building walls, mass deportations, refusal to raise the minimum wage, ignoring the poor, or favoring corporations and industry to the detriment of Earth and its inhabitants now and in the future, to name some of my additional concerns. (First off, some of the things she states are just misleading or ingenuous, like "ignoring the poor."  There isn't a party platform or candidate who is running that supports "ignoring the poor."  Perhaps sister disagrees with the means by which a candidate or party proposes to deal with the poor, but simply tagging it as "ignoring the poor" is an example of what she criticizes below, a "social media sound bite."   But more to the point, what Sister fails to mention to the reader is that not all these issues are of the same gravity.   Our Catholic Tradition recognizes some things as intrinsic evils.  While there are some matters that good, well-informed Catholics may disagree on, there are other things that are always wrong in every situation.  While there are some issues that Catholics can argue about regarding how to prudentially act, there are some issues where there is no argument; they are simply, unequivocally wrong.  Abortion - the intentional killing of an innocent human being in the womb - is one such issue.  As far as I can tell, the only other intrinsic evil Sister Ruth mentions in her litany is torture, and perhaps racism and sexism, depending on what exactly she means by those things.  As the US Bishops have said in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the Church's defense of life is distorted by "a moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity. The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed.")

These complex issues bear some weight on the scale of life issues that I care about. (I agree with Sister here that these issues bear some weight.  But certainly not all to the same degree.  I do think that once one has disqualified candidates that support the legalized murder of unborn children, these issues all need to be weighed.  But I'm left wondering which of these issues Sister thinks are proportionately grave so as to balance the 54 million abortions in the U.S. since 1973.) Therefore, it is vital that I learn more about the candidates and their policies than from social media sound bites, that I have basic understanding of the issues facing our state and our nation, and that I pray and discern over the ballots that I will cast.