has a bizarre cover story (not online yet) in which Elizabeth Thecla Mauro worries that Roe v. Wade may be overturned prematurely. Or something. It’s hard to make heads or tails of her essay. So I’ll skip over the many disgressions and concentrate on what seem to be the main points.
She seems to be worried about two prospects. First, that the end of Roe “could actually lead to a full-blown schism” within the Catholic church, with parishes breaking away, battles over property ownership. “Such an event could be ruinous for the fiscal health of the Roman Church.” Her second worry is that the end of Roe, and the resulting political battles in the states over abortion policy, would “have family members, parishes, and ultimately whole communities choosing sides and growing in distrust and dislike.” She continues, “Internationally, pro-life red-staters may find travel and business dealings difficult among Europeans. . . . Domestically, resourceful, blue, pro-abortion states could do serious economic damage to landlocked and less monied pro-life red ones.” (“Some of what I’m saying,” she writes, “must surely sound over-the-top.” Well, yes.)
So instead of overturning Roe, Catholics should instead have their church spread a new message “emphasizing not law and legalism and duty, but mercy and tenderness and love,” and explaining that abortion is “the Destroyer of Love.”
This is pious nonsense.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the Catholic church doesn’t own the pro-life issue. Are evangelicals supposed to accept the killing of unborn human beings for as long as ending it would inconvenience that church’s accountants? Is Nat Hentoff supposed to as well? And why should Catholics hold these priorities? They’re supposed to believe that their Church has a guarantee of eventual triumph.
Second: It’s a mistake to view changing the law and changing the culture as wholly separate enterprises. Our government teaches that abortion is a right guaranteed by our fundamental law. Overturning Roe is a step toward changing the culture by ending that teaching.
Third: Once Roe went, we’d be fighting not just over “abortion rights” in the abstract but over particular policies that Roe now bars: tighter parental-consent laws, bans on late-term abortion, etc. Why should those fights be any more divisive than the fight over the Supreme Court?
Fourth, there’s the matter of the Constitution. Do we really have to wait for the Catholic bishops to get their communications strategy in order before we’re allowed to get it back?