Religion & Law

Jody Bottum's essay, "The Signpost at the Crossroads", is in the new print issue of First Things (count me as someone who, so far, likes the re-design), and is also available here.  The core proposal of the piece is straightforward:  "Even now, abortion remains what it has been for more than thirty years: the signpost at the intersection of religion and American public life."

To be clear, Bottum's point is not (obviously) that there are not many other important and morally significant "issues" that make an appearance at this "intersection."  (His essay, actually, is a critique of Gov. Mitch Daniels' suggestion that a "truce" might be warranted on "social issues", at least until things fiscal are straightened out.)  Of course there are.  Immigration policy is a moral issue, and it appears at this intersection.  So do our excessively long prison sentences for drug-related offenses, our unconscionable failure to stand up to the teacher-unions and provide children with decent educational opportunities, our decisions about going to war and then waging the wars to which we go, the extent to which we either support or undermine the family through public policy and regulation . . . and on and on.

Still, I have long been inclined to think that we cannot really hope to get "it" right unless we get this right.  Tax policies and the like might move a bit in (what we regard as) the more moral direction, we might find ways to better (more efficiently, more effectively, etc.) support those in need, but if -- at the end of the day -- our regime is one that constitutionalizes an effectively unlimited (and increasingly public subsidized) license to end the lives of other, vulnerable human beings, then it seems (to me, anyway) that we are getting it all wrong. 

In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that it is wrong -- until we get abortion-policy right -- to work for change in the right direction on education, immigration, or poverty-response.  Of course it isn't.  (I'm sure I've spend more of my time and energy on school choice than I have on overturning Roe.)  I do not even mean to wade back into the whole "can you ever vote for a pro-abortion-rights candidate?" debate.  I just think -- this is, I know, a sad thought -- that any "win" on these other issues will always be (and should always be) bittersweet, so long as the Mystery Passage constrains our ability to protect all persons through law.