Changing Hearts & Minds--Updated
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 10:00 PM
I’ve been watching the discussion of abortion politics on Arwen’s excellent recent post with interest.
The debate there isn’t so much about abortion itself, but about the role of law and politics in shaping culture. To really understand that matter, I can’t recommend Archbishop Chaput’s new book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life
highly enough. It’s clear, enlightening --and a brisk read.
In the mean time, readers may be interested in this clear statement from Patterson Bishop Arthur Seratelli. After a brief introduction, he gets our attention:
Recently, a politician made a promise. Politicians usually do. If this politician fulfills his promise, not only will many of our freedoms as Americans be taken from us, but the innocent and vulnerable will spill their blood.
Those who argue that abortion won’t disappear with the repeal of Roe v. Wade are certainly correct. The repeal of Roe will simply return us to status quo ante, with each state free to create its own abortion laws. Some will be permissive; others not.
It’s also manifestly true that abortion won’t end until hearts and minds are won. That’s why the vast majority of pro-life activists are not lobbyists or political activists, but volunteers at crisis pregnancy centers, Project Rachel, Project Gabriel, houses for unwed mothers and adoption centers. It’s not NARAL & Planned Parenthood reaching out to women and children in crisis, it’s the pro-life movement.
And we --pro-lifers of all stripes taking a multi-pronged approach of charitable outreach, voter education and political activism-- have been winning, as Bishop Seratelli explains:
For thirty-five years, Americans have been wrestling with The Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade. Most Americans now favor some kind of a ban on abortion. Most who allow abortion would do so only in very rare cases. In fact, in January, 2008, the Guttmacher Institute published its 14th census of abortion providers in the country. Its statistics showed that the abortion rate continues to decline. Abortions have reached their lowest level since 1974. There is truly a deep sensitivity to life in the soul of America.
We have changed and are changing hearts.
We mustn’t lose sight, however, of the fact that the law is an expression of where our hearts and minds are as a people. We didn’t get the 14th amendment protecting the rights of black citizens until there were enough votes to secure it. And those votes came because hearts and minds changed about the personhood of the former slaves.
I don’t really know what it would mean to change a heart and mind without changing votes at the same time. The changed law is the sign of the changed minds.
Political debate is an important means of winning hearts and minds, because laws and referendums are public questions. They are the means, in a democracy, that we ask ourselves, “What do we think about this?” So when we give up on law and politics, what we’re really giving up on is precisely the debate by which hearts and minds can be won.
There’s something else to think about in this election, however, and Bishop Seratelli explains it well. The quotation is lengthy, but well worth reading:
The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)… would dismantle the freedom of choice to do all that is necessary to respect and protect human life at its most vulnerable stage. FOCA goes far beyond guaranteeing the right to an abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy. It arrogantly prohibits any law or policy interfering with that right. While advocates trumpet this law as the triumph of the freedom of choice, they hide the dark reality that the law would actually inhibit choice.
Laws protecting the rights of nurses, doctors and hospitals with moral objections to abortion would no longer stand. Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics would also vanish. Gone the freedom of health care professionals to be faithful to the Hippocratic Oath “to prescribe regimens for the good of …patients…and never do harm to anyone, to please no one [by prescribing] a deadly drug nor [by giving] advice which may cause his death.” Gone the freedom of conscience so essential for a civil society!
If a minority of avid abortionists succeed to impose this law because of the ignorance or apathy of the majority, the law would force taxpayers to fund abortions. Gone the freedom of taxation with representation!
In its 1992 Casey decision, The Supreme Court ruled as constitutional state laws requiring that women and young girls who seek an abortion receive information on the development of the child in the womb as well as alternatives to abortion. The ruling also determined that a period of waiting, usually 24 or 48 hours before making a decision about an abortion is not an undue burden. The Freedom of Choice Act would nullify these laws immediately. Gone the freedom of women and young girls to have all the information they need to make their own choices!
In about half of the States, there are parental notification or consent laws in effect for minors seeking an abortion. The Supreme Court has ruled that these laws are permitted under Roe v. Wade. With the stroke of a pen, these laws would be abolished. Gone the freedom of parents to care for and protect their children and grandchildren!
Advocates of FOCA redefine a woman’s “health” so as to expressly permit post-viability abortions. Thus, a child who survives an abortion can be left to die for the health of the mother. No politically correct word can mask this reality for what it is. This is infanticide. Gone the freedom for a baby, once born, to live!
Science does not dispute that the child in the womb already has all the characteristics that he or she will develop after birth. Notwithstanding, abortionists obstinately refuse the right of the child within the womb to live as a fundamental human right. They are not happy that Americans have not swallowed their distorted propaganda that denies the dignity of the human person from the first moment of conception.
Pro-abortion advocates close their eyes to the fact that abortion even hurts women as it undermines the very fabric of our society. Their zeal for the Freedom of Choice Act sounds the alarm for decent Americans to wake up! The more the right to life is denied, the more we lose our freedoms. The “pro-choice” movement is not pro-choice. It stands against the freedom to choose what is right according to the truth of the human person.
The good bishop could have added that also wending its way through Congress awaiting a different President’s signature is a bill aimed at shutting down crisis pregnancy centers.
So the question is, if the Freedom of Choice Act is signed --and one of the two presidential candidates has promised that signing it will be his first act as President-- will we have the right and freedom to keep working for a culture of life?
Update: I should have waited a day to post! Princeton’s Prof. Robert George here takes up all the issues that came up in comments on my original post (#1-10). Including: S-Chip, whether it’s appropriate to refer to someone as “pro-abortion,” and Prof. Douglas Kmiec’s reasoning on the coming election. As the article is being muched discussed on the blogs and in the political world today, I thought you’d like to see it.