Religion & Law

Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec acknowledge that Obama isn?t ?the perfect pro-life candidate.? In this they display a rare talent for understatement. Still, they insist that he is genuinely ?pro-life? in a meaningful and ?real world? way in that he wants to reduce the frequency of abortion. On what basis are we to believe that Senator Obama is truly committed to this goal? It certainly cannot be gleaned from his record in public life.

Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec say that Obama sees abortion as a ?tragic moral choice,? and indeed during the campaign Obama has himself said that the entity developing in the womb carries ?moral weight.? But this ?moral weight? and the ?tragedy? of the choice for abortion have counted for all of nothing in Obama?s public record. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec can point to no legislative action on Obama?s part ? either in the Illinois legislature or the U.S. Senate ? in which he has worked to protect the life of the unborn child. Indeed, he has opposed even the most modest restrictions on abortion ? such as laws involving parental notice and restrictions regarding the transportation of minors across state lines ? at every turn. Moreover, the only measure he has acted on to reduce abortions has been to vote in favor of more public funding for contraceptive use ? an abortion reduction strategy that seems intuitively sound but which has proven to be of dubious value in practice. (I should add that this is wholly apart from whatever moral problems that promotion of contraception may pose in its own right).

Many rightly believe that we should support programs that provide more generous social assistance to women in crisis pregnancies. Indeed, a number of commentators on MOJ, myself included, have written in support of such efforts. At the same time many writers, including Weigel and several commentators on MOJ (myself included), have raised serious doubts about how effective such policies will be in reducing the frequency of abortion. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec?s flippant response to these arguments (i.e. ?the U.S. isn?t Sweden?) reflects the superficial response of political pundits, not the thoughtful response one has come to expect from these legal scholars.

Moreover, given Obama?s record, recounted above, one would hope that Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec would understand if pro-lifers greet the eleventh-hour additions to the Democratic platform and Obama?s expressed interest in reducing the incidence of abortion with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Beyond his obvious and oft-repeated support for the abortion license, and the doubts surrounding the ability of social programs to greatly reduce the incidence of abortion, there are other reasons to question Obama?s sincerity with respect to abortion. The reasons why abortion is ?a tragic moral choice? and why the entity in the womb carries ?moral weight? is the ground that the pro-choice lobby most fears for the public to tread. And this is the place where Senator Obama has not dared to go. Indeed, the pro-choice lobby, who can barely stomach the description of abortion as ?tragic,? becomes positively apoplectic when the reasons why this is an apt description of abortion are explored.

What they most fear is that an intellectually honest discussion of the matter would lead many to confront the humanity of the unborn child. Not daring to venture into this hazardous territory of honest discussion, Obama has been content with the rhetoric of ?tragic moral choice,? confident that this will convince most Americans that he is as moderate and restrained on the issue as his calm and easy manner suggests. Obama's pro-choice supporters have tolerated this otherwise unmentionable description, knowing that, as a substantive matter, he subscribes to their views with unfailing devotion. Cafardi, Kaveny and Kmiec have been complicit in this deception by failing to acknowledge let alone criticize Obama for the radical positions he in fact espouses.