Rejecting the grim euphemisms of the Democrats’ platform
In 1974, not long after the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion legal in all three trimesters of pregnancy, William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, wrote a column titled “How to Argue about Abortion.” He cautioned against the use of “blood-curdling clichés” on both sides of the abortion debate. He said it would be a tragedy if Americans tuned out the debate because of them.
I thought of this during the recent vice-presidential debate. We’ve seen blood-curdling clichés of the kind that do indeed give people fatigue about the issue on the campaign trail this year, on both sides of the aisle. The mind and heart of Mike Pence are not with the top of the Republican ticket, as Mike Pence was reminded during the recent vice-presidential debate when Tim Kaine brought up Donald Trump’s previous unfamiliarity with the fact that most people who oppose abortion are motivated by love of women and their children, not a desire to put women behind bars.
Blood-curdling clichés abound in the Democratic platform, which promises not just the status quo but expansion of abortion. It promises to oppose the long-standing prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion and to overturn other state and federal laws that restrict abortion (and that in some cases, frankly, protect women). This is all euphemistically couched, of course, in terms of women’s health care and equal rights, and Tim Kaine faithfully kept to script. The problem with the script — and what should irk all Americans, who would like to think of themselves as a generous and loving people — is that it is a lie that covers up what is really going on. Further, as Catholic cover on what is a human-rights issue — a matter of common-good morality and science — he robs us of the rich guidance his Church offers, which could make him an agent of healing instead of immiserating politics.
“We support the constitutional right of American women to consult their own conscience, their own supportive partner, their own minister, but then make their own decision about pregnancy,” Kaine said. “That’s something we trust American women to do that.”
In 1995, John Paul II wrote in The Gospel of Life: “There are situations of acute poverty, anxiety or frustration in which the struggle to make ends meet, the presence of unbearable pain, or instances of violence, especially against women, make the choice to defend and promote life so demanding as sometimes to reach the point of heroism.”
A cliché about trusting American women is certainly of no help to the unborn children who are being ignored by the sound bite, and it is of no help to a woman who feels she has no other choice than to have an abortion.
John Paul praised the “daily heroism” of “the silent but effective and eloquent witness” of all the “brave mothers who devote themselves to their own family without reserve, who suffer in giving birth to their children and who are ready to make any effort, to face any sacrifice, in order to pass on to them the best of themselves.” He noted that these heroines “do not always find support in the world around them. On the contrary, the cultural models frequently promoted and broadcast by the media do not encourage motherhood.”
Add to that Catholic Democratic vice-presidential candidates (including the sitting vice president) on this front. John Paul continues:
In the name of progress and modernity the values of fidelity, chastity, sacrifice, to which a host of Christian wives and mothers have borne and continue to bear outstanding witness, are presented as obsolete. . . . We thank you, heroic mothers, for your invincible love! We thank you for your intrepid trust in God and in his love. We thank you for the sacrifice of your life.
That from a man who not only trusted women but loved them and was inspired by them. Later in the letter, he writes directly, with deep respect and compassion, for women who have had abortions.
That Buckley column was based on a pamphlet of the same title by philosophy professor John Noonan, who wrote:
Perception of fetuses is possible with no substantially greater effort than that required to pierce the physical or psychological barriers to recognizing other human beings. The main difficulty is everyone’s reluctance to accept the extra burdens of care imposed by an expansion of the numbers in whom humanity is recognized. It is generally more convenient to have to consider only one’s kin, one’s peers, one’s country, one’s race. Seeing requires personal attention and personal response. The emotion generated by identification with a human form is necessary to overcome the inertia which is protected by a vision restricted to a convenient group.
It’s long past time to put to rest the bad arguments propping up and increasingly expanding abortion. Americans do not prefer abortion, but politicians can increasingly tend to sound like they do. If you want a better politics and culture, work to protect and celebrate the most natural love there is.