Sunday, March 12th, 2006...10:44 am
I’m Ready to Make a Cynical Deal
It’s taken me a while to comment on this. A couple of weeks ago, Espresso Pundit had a short item on three of the Catholic Bishops who have responsibility over Arizona issuing a statement supporting the so-called Protect Marriage Arizona ammendment. He thinks that this is a watershed moment where we will someday look back on this and say that this is the day that Catholics started becoming an overwhelmingly Republican voting bloc.
This seems to be a misunderstanding of the way Catholics think and vote in this country. It also is probably a healthy dose of wishful thinking, since the fastest growing voting group in this country is Hispanics, who are largely Catholic and Republicans keep making one-step-forward-two-steps-back inroads into the Latino community.
I won’t try to guess what Greg “Espresso Pundit” Patterson’s denomination is, but given that he is married with kids, I’m guessing that it isn’t Shaker. Something that I have noticed is that when a person tries to give me a lecture about how some liberal stance I have taken is in conflict with the church, or tries to tell me that a “good Catholic” (none of us are “good Catholics,” that’s what confession is for) should vote Republican, chances are that person is not a Catholic, only a conservative assuming that Catholic social teaching is confined to opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
(The worst of this is George Bush using the term “culture of life,” only thinking it applies to abortion and stem cell research. Doesn’t he see it as ridiculous given his policies in Iraq and his love of the death penalty?)
Many Catholics, “good” Catholics who attend mass regularly, disagree with the stances of the Church. This is something not just confined to liberals either, conservative parishioners suffer from the same sort of “Cafeteria Catholicism.” Unfortunately, and this doesn’t just apply to Catholics, many of us look to religion as a way to confirm whatever prejudices and lifestyle choices we were inclined to have anyway.
So, I propose a deal on behalf of my fellow liberal Catholics. We will swallow your views of abortion and gay marriage, if conservatives adopt church views about the death penalty, war, poverty, conservation, rights of labor and the rights of migrants. Think we can work that out?
14 Comments
March 12th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Nicely put…this is true with most religions I would bet.
I just can’t imagine how those petitions will be circulated within church walls. Im not familiar with how politics works inside church walls. The Bishops gave permission to allow it to be circulated in the Parish if the priest allows it.
So that puts a thought in my mind…an immagination…of people bringing the petitions around to parishioners asking to support the Protect Marriage Act. It makes me reflect on what that would be like to be approached and how a person might react.
It makes me imagine some not wanting to sign it feeling like…”should I oppose this actively and tell others not to sign it?” or another reaction “should I just say ‘not interested’?”
Up to the person and up to the voter I guess…but just seems unseemly in church walls.
March 12th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
And what happens when the kid chooses to sit out the school Prayer.
March 12th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Tedski, I honestly like your idea. Why don’t you ask your brother to introduce a bill banning abortion except for the life of the mother while also ending all capital punishment? I promise I will call every Republican legislator in favor or the bill. I would gladly do away with the death penalty in exchange for an end to abortion.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:10 am
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March 13th, 2006 at 1:13 am
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March 13th, 2006 at 1:17 am
phx kid:
Apparently you didn’t read Ted’s whole post. Would you also be willing to include more spending on anti-poverty programs (especially since poor women are much more likely to have abortions than rich women). Further, 61% of women having an abortion have previously had a live birth, so clearly, as one of the conclusions of the linked study indicates, economics plays a key role. As such, it is hard to suggest otherwise than that Republican economics that reduce funding for child care and ignore rising health care costs play a role (hint: cost of a birth, even if there are no complications, for a person with no health insurance: $3,000 minimum at most hospitals, cost of abortion: $500.)
If you are a woman, married or not, with kids, and don’t have health insurance, the decision to get an abortion may boil down to simple economics. If your financial situation isn’t very good, and you have a choice between $500 now and thousands in a few months, what do you suggest?
Now, here is my deal on a bill: A universal healthcare system for Arizona. And I’m willing to concede this: Put abortion clinics outside the purview of the system, so that birth only costs the copay cost for the hospital (say, $100?) while the abortion still costs $500 as it does now.
March 13th, 2006 at 4:18 am
eli - you make a well-reasoned case except for one flaw. You attach a price to the value of a human life. I do not understand how someone who is for legalized abortion can talk about social justice. Where is the justice in taking an innocent human life? If a person cares about social compassion he/she would want to save lives AND have access to medical care, not keep killing the unborn until there is a health care system that he/she deems acceptable.
If it is about economics, the woman can go to one of the pro-life pregnancy centers in the state. She can tell them she would like to give her child up for adoption and have her medial costs covered or she will abort. I am pretty sure the center will help her out in order to save a life.
March 13th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Phx Kid, Eli is correct. Most women do get an abortion for the economic reason. If you (and I do mean you not a nonspecific you) want to truly reduce abortions, help raise the minimum wage, help raise the chances of a child support being paid (one of my former Qwest co-workers got a wage garnished child support check of $26-28 a month since her ex husband deliberately got a low paying job in the service industry where he did not have his tips garnished which apparently was a lot harder. She did not persue this because she was scared of what he would do to the children. I saw the scars, I do not blame her.) Also help get a single payer system created for the state/country, and of course making sure that child care is availible for working mothers (another co-worker of mine had to pay huge amounts because her two kids had been born too closely together for the state to consider them separate.) Work to make sure students also have access to comprehensive sex education that explains to them everything they need to know for when they become adults. Work for Plan B to be availible OTC.
If you truly, deep down inside, want to reduce the number of abortions, demanding it be illegal will do nothing to reduce them. And in fact will do little more then harm women and the children many will be leaving behind.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
elizabeth – if it just an economic issue then just put the child up for adoption, no need to kill it. If there is still an issue of the expense of pre-natal and delivery then maybe it would be a good idea for the government to pay for those things only.
Are you listing to the argument you are making? A woman would really think, raise my minimum wage, provide childcare, and free healthcare and I won’t kill my unborn child.
As to comprehensive sex education, what is the big secret that we are keeping from our young people? Do you really think that there are kids who do not know what a condom is? Is the pill being hidden? I see adds on TV for different versions of the pill, how can it be more obvious. Most young people are on the internet and can easily got to the Planned Parenthood website and get more than enough information on birth control. They have plenty of information now. I don’t see how sex education would change anything.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
phx kid:
You are assuming that I would agree with you that abortion is a social injustice. In fact, if a child is not brought into the world in the first place, then it is hard to see how there is any injustice done– there is nothing, just oblivion. The net result is no different than if, for example, the parents had gone out bowling that night instead of spending the night cuddled in bed. On the other hand, I do see a real and measurable social injustice done to someone who is forced to be pregnant (i.e. sick, in pain, and in some danger) if you make them remain that way for months. As for adoption, I agree that if someone wants to adopt, that this has the benefit of providing a child to someone who otherwise might not have one, but forcing someone to be pregnant and then telling them that if they sign over their child then you will pay their bill raises its own ethical questions.
And I’m not against working to reduce the number of abortions, it’s just that the successes we have had in this regard over the past decade (the number of abortions have dropped since the early 1990’s), via sex education, birth control and family planning, have been opposed by conservatives.
And I do see an economic problem with generationally unbalancing our population (for example, military recruiters are now having a tough time because there are a million less 18-24 year olds than there were in 2000, and we all know about Social Security) but my answer which certainly serves social justice well is this: instead of solving this problem by forcing women who don’t way children to have them anyway, let’s 1: do what I said, so that those who want but can’t afford them, will have them, and 2: increase legal immigration quotas so that we fill up America with people who want to come here.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
phx kid:
Sex ed has changed things, already. We really began pushing it in schools in the early 1990’s, and even anti-abortion websites will acknowlege that abortions are down by a quarter since reaching their peak about 1992, and that has been led by a decline in teen pregnancy.
I would just argue that if the sex ed that we’ve had, has worked, then why not have more of it (the same argument that Republicans are always using about tax cuts, even though from my point of view about all the Bush tax cuts have done is create a big deficit while companies have invested all their tax cut money in building factories and hiring workers in Asia– but that is an argument for another day.)
March 13th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
eli
You said as a result of an abortion “there is nothing.” That is incorrect; there is a dead, unborn baby. That is something.
Stopping abortion does not force a person to be pregnant. Having sex causes that. Outlawing abortion stops a woman from having her unborn child killed by a ‘doctor.’
The number of abortions may have declined some since 1990’s but still is about 1,000,000 a year. Go back to 1972 and see if the rate has declined since then.
Solution 2, more immigration, is a valid idea but how do you know that an unborn baby does not also want to come and live in America?
If you look at the numbers from 1906 to 2006 it is quite correct sex ed has changed everything, unwed pregnancies are higher and there are more abortions.
March 13th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Damn…I am pro-choice, but all I was asking for was a little tolerance for my LGBT friends who would like to have a legal marriage.
We could fight tooth and nail on abortion, but I would hope that my position would be a little easier. I hope that as a state me might show some tolerance and fight the Protect Marriage Act. I also hope we might go further one day and even allow the marriage of same sex partners.
March 13th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Phx Kid-
Actually I said most not all are the result of economics. Is there a problem with reading what I said?
Here is a study done by the CDC in 2003. Read it and you can see why we said economics are such a factor.
Also it is not ‘doctor’ it is doctor. Any doctor puts the needs of the woman above her fetus because she is the patient.
The way you talk it seems that you would do well to remember there is a woman in all of this. A woman who has to take the enormous risk to her health to have a child. Not all women are able to do it. She should have all medical treatment availible to her up to and including an abortion if she feels it is necessary.
This is the last I am going to say on the matter on this blog. Go to mine if you insist on talking of it further.