Religion & Law

Many thanks to John Breen for posting Mark Stricherz's reply to my defenses of Senator Casey.  It is gratifying to have agreement on the fundamental proposition that Senator Casey's motives did not deserve to be impugned. 

I do wish to correct a misimpression, however, that might be encouraged by Mr. Stricherz's reply, particularly given that the same misimpression seems to me to have been implicit in his original post.  That is the suggestion that, in refraining from threatening to filibuster the Senate bill unless it include the Nelson amendment, one must be either supportive of, or indifferent to, federal funding for abortion. 

As noted in my first post defending Senator Casey, there appears to be a consensus now among most pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike that the Stupak amendment to the House bill, and a fortiori the proposed Nelson amendment to the Senate bill, were not abortion-neutral.  That is to say, these amendments did not merely prevent the previous equilibrium-cum-stalemate from tipping in the direction of increasing the incidence of abortion, but in fact affirmatively tipped it the other way, a circumstance that was virtually guaranteed to fragment the coalition that had gathered, from multiple directions, in favor of a badly needed and independently morally compelling health insurance reform bill. 

How ever desirable the end promised by Stupak/Nelson would be in its own right from the pont of view of advocates of the unborn, insofar as it threatened to prevent passage of an independently morally compelling end by dint of its violation of the abortion-neutrality principle that had thitherto guided the crafting of the legislation, there could certainly be principled grounds for not threatening to filibuster the proposed legislation unless it included the Nelson amendment.  There could even be principled grounds for advocates of the unborn to oppose the amendments themselves.  For, provided that a veritably abortion-neutral amendment can in fact be crafted -- one that leaves the current regime of no federal funding for abortions in place without change in either direction -- there will be an alterntive to Stupak/Nelson that all can indeed demand without violating the neutrality principle.  If there is in fact such an alternative and Senator Casey does not support it, then perhap people will have some prima facie reason to be disillusioned.  At present, however, there seems to me to be no such reason. 

I suggest, then, that the real question we ought to be addressing, in considering what the best principled course of action for Senator Casey and others might be, is whether in fact some such neutral amendment can indeed be crafted.  Can it?

Many thanks,

Bob