[revised 3/27/2009]
President Obama will be the honored commencement speaker at the University of Notre Dame (my alma mater, class of 1990). His presence is causing a stir among the more conservative, pro-life Catholics, because Obama has a clear record of being pro-choice. How, ask the conservatives, can Obama be sponsored by a Catholic university, while also being awarded an honorary doctorate of laws degree when he clearly does not agree with basic Catholic doctrine about abortion? Is Notre Dame no longer a Catholic institution?
The conservatives’ pro-life rhetoric goes like this, from Wall Street Journal commentator William McGurn:
In our public life, it has brought us to a day where the most prominent Catholics in America – from Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to virtually every well-known Irish Catholic in the Senate – now defend the snuffing out of tens of millions of innocent human lives as the exercise of a fundamental right.
That’s a loaded statement rich with emotives. But the Catholic Church has a long-standing position against abortion, under the church’s larger premise that life is sacred. It does, on the surface, appear that there’s a conflict of ideologies when Catholics support Obama. At least one bishop thinks so, Bishop John D’Arcy whose diocese includes Notre Dame is boycotting Obama’s speech, according to CNN he also extends his disagreement with the president’s positions:
“President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred,” D’Arcy said. “While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.”
Well there’s the wedge right there: either you agree that life is sacred and are against abortion and stem cell research etc., or, you’re not an ethical scientist. Probable you’re going to hell for killing the innocents. [I can hear Monty Python now, singing 'every sperm is sacred...'] Still, Catholics have been excommunicated for lesser sins than abortion, which is categorized as a definitive mortal sin.
Can Notre Dame continue to be a truly Catholic institution while supporting Obama as it’s commencement speaker? Let’s not make it sound like the university and the church are the same thing. While the university is a catholic school, it is also its own institution that makes its own decisions. It’s not run by the Pope and does not answer to the Pope’s every whim. Notre Dame is routinely considered to be among the most liberal Catholic institutions, its theology programs include professors who are well known not to agree with papal doctrine, and many of its students are not Catholic. The university can be Catholic without being the kind of conservative Catholic making this complaint about Obama (see links at bottom for some Catholics who aren’t upset). Thus the idea that Obama’s pro-choice position is necessarily supported by the university, a university which ought to follow the Vatican’s priorities, is as specious and even ridiculous as asserting that although George Bush is pro-life he shouldn’t speak at Notre Dame because he isn’t a baptized Catholic. He’s never been absolved of Original Sin! The complaint that Obama shouldn’t speak is that severe. Only baptized catholics can speak. Only pro-life politicians can speak. Only. Only. Only. Do you get the point? The denial is narrow-minded, and short-sighted, overly general. It’s a false either-or dilemma (either you’re with Catholic doctrine, or you’re evil and shouldn’t be present at Catholic events), paired with a false hierarchy (the university must follow the Vatican). Unfortunately, as with many religions, Catholics routinely profess every Sunday that they are the one true faith, and that everyone else isn’t.
And that exclusivity brings up the topic of whether or not the Catholic Church is correct to position abortion as a dire evil.
As an atheist I agree with Catholicism that life is so valuably important that we should protect it and understand it. From my view, and the view of many who hold non-supernatural worldviews, life’s rarity is enough reason to seek its protection. As of yet we have no clear evidence that life such as ours exists anywhere in the cosmos. To the atheist it also appears that each individual exists, and then, upon death ceases to exist. For that rarity, for that improbable unrepeatable occurrence, life is precious. Individual life, and the sheer magnitude of experiences that each individual uniquely has and can share with others is also rare and therefore worth preserving. I’d argue that the more life experience then the more rare and more valuable, such that it is a far greater crime to murder an octogenarian than it would be to kill an unconscious zygote. To arrive at this viewpoint the atheist’s evidential reasoning is fundamentally different than the Catholic’s assumptions, which come from religious story and all of its attendant supernatural special-pleading. Nevertheless, the conclusion is the same: life, at its core, is fundamentally valuable and our most basic ethics should reflect this recognition.
But the extension of this view, as a defense against all abortions, at any time during a pregnancy, and in favor of a legal argument that is intended to prevent all abortions, is profoundly flawed mainly because current federal policy actually reduces abortions.
If you listen to the alarmist rhetoric of the conservative right, you’d think there’s a massive and growing social problem that’s out of control, as McGurn has stated that ‘tens of millions’ of innocents will die. In fact the opposite is true: billions upon billions will live, and abortion rates are going down, way down. According to US News & World Report, since 1974 in the US abortion rates are down by 33%. And, this year’s abortion rate is the lowest in 30 years. That’s right: since Roe v. Wade (1973) there’s less abortions annually than before. From such historical evidence we can conclude that the combination of legal policy plus the availability of affordable birth control has had a huge effect on countering unwanted pregnancies, thereby preventing the entire life/death/abortion dilemma in the first place. A set of federal policies that actively and effectively reduce abortion should be encouraged and upheld by the Catholic church – surely they ought not work to cancel such policies, which would run the risk of increasing the abortion rate in the U.S.
Unfortunately, Catholic Pope Benedict has once again advocated against affordable birth control, arguing among other things that condoms don’t prevent the spread of the HIV virus in Africa. Yet there’s clear historical evidence that those African countries that have implemented safe sex strategies have greatly reduced the incidence of AIDS whereas that those that haven’t have increased the epidemic! In other words, what the Pope suggests doesn’t save lives, indeed, it worsens them by increasing the incidence of HIV. Ignorance never really helps people. At the same time a wide variety of Africans who would benefit from affordable birth control are not Catholics and have no reason to act on the Pope’s calls for sexual abstinence. Probably they think he’s just some old guy who dresses funny and knows nothing about sex. In fact the same is true in the US, where religious attitudes are quite diverse. Catholicism becomes increasingly narrow and disenfranchised the more its leaders ignore the facts, the more they seem out of touch with most people.
Contrary to Catholic doctrine, abortion is a peripheral problem rather than a central one. While fewer unborn children are at risk of being aborted, the vast human species is also not at risk because of the remaining few abortions. Among the debates for and against abortion, we are working at a scale of more than 6.7 billion humans already living worldwide. Even if alarmists like McGurn are correct that ‘tens of millions’ of abortions would be performed (his statement is a prediction, not a fact – the fact is a bit over one million, not ten, abortions are performed in the US annually, about 40 million annually worldwide), we would be talking about a number that is so few compared to the whole population of Billions as to be statistically meaningless. Surely every individual is profoundly valuable and therefore worth saving at a local scale. Abortion is certainly a problem of great difficulty. But from a worldwide global scale with abortion we are nowhere near talking about the destruction of the human species. Worldwide, experts estimate that there’s ~137 million births per year and ~56 million deaths per year – even with this number of deaths we’re still gaining more than 60-80 million new individuals per year, increasing to an expanded population totalling around 9 billion in the next thirty years [see the US Census Bureau for an updated World Population Clock]. The human species is thriving. Births far outpace deaths. And the vast majority of deaths (~54.7 million compared to ~1.3 million abortions) are not caused by the comparatively small sum of abortions, but rather by cancer, heart disease, automobile accidents, as well as natural causes. Even if you increased the number of abortions worldwide by a factor of ten – which would be a heinous thing indeed – you still would not come close to harming the human species as a whole, whose growth rate would still gain billions over the next century. Thus abortion should be positioned as a peripheral issue rather than a central one that would impede culture and human life as a whole – this is quite contrary to the far-right’s attempts to make abortion a central problem. Nonetheless the basic fact is that the impact of abortion on culture as a whole is negligible, so much so that there’s no reason to believe that abortion policy is critical to humanity’s wellbeing.
Yet nothing makes people more irate and more willing to kill and harm each other than abortion and the imagined potential that they believe the unborn have. We all know of incidents of pro-life activists murdering and attempting to murder abortion doctors. In one of my area’s local papers, there’s a tragic story today about a woman who’s son’s girlfriend was considering getting an abortion. She beat up the girlfriend, at the hospital. That was, of course, a truly stupid thing to do (if you’re goal is to preserve life, then beating up pregnant women doesn’t help). These tragedies are inexplicable except for the deep emotional connections that most people feel in the presence of real babies, an instinct so powerful that it applies to imagined babies who don’t yet exist and about whose lives and choices we know next to nothing.
Is there any clearer illustration than abortion that humanity does not, and sometimes cannot, act on statistical reasoning but prefers its desires and beliefs instead? We are prone to imagine a better future and good potential for every unborn child – perhaps we must imagine it so. But doing so is by no means all that we could imagine. For every time we imagine that an unborn child could be the next Einstein or Mozart, or could even be a child of less-than-mediocre talents who happens to bring real joy to her parents and friends, we must also recognize that the unborn could also be the next deluded cult-leader, murderous dictator, or below-average parasite sucking life away from one’s family. We just don’t know how the kids are going to turn out. We hope. We dream. We work to help build good lives. But our efforts don’t always work. The idea that we must defend all kinds of human life in all cases, as if all human actions were good ones, smacks of a kind of idealism that paints the world too prettily, ignoring the messiness of reality and real people, ignoring the sheer diversity of kinds and types of human beings, while conveniently ignoring our ignorance about future events. Idealism of the sort engendered by the most far-right Catholics is an extension of a blind hope, rather than one tuned by observation and evidence and the larger range of human potential which includes both good and bad actions, a much wider range of potential. Here’s the problem: some abortions may, on balance, help more people more reliably than they harm. Absolute laws don’t work, but balances and seeking out situations where the most good can be done does work – this is ultimately why the age-old image of justice is a blindfolded woman holding a balancing scale. It’s the balance that matters, the compromises, not any one absolute rule.
At Notre Dame probably those in a position to hire commencement speakers made a balanced decision, knowing that there’s no such thing as a perfect President, politician, or celebrity who would speak at a commencement and who would not at some level have made policy or life decisions that someone finds protest-worthy. Alternatives to Obama could be hired to speak. Consider what would happen if they hired Sarah Palin, who is arguably a leading Republican voice. She is pro-life, but then, she does advocate the gassing of wolf cubs in their dens. She’s against abortion, but she finds that hunting and murdering some of the most social and intelligent animals to be perfectly okay. I bet a lot of environmental protestors would sign petitions if she were the commencement speaker. Another hire could be former president George Bush. He’s pro-life, but then, he did advocate sending thousands of our youth to death and injury, and condemned thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians to death at the same time due to the inherently violent and messy machines of war. So apparently for Republicans it’s not okay to kill babies but it is quite alright to kill conscious, sentient adults. That is a position that I find hypocritical and disgusting. So was George Bush’s willingness to support the death penalty. Were pro-life Catholics outraged by that policy? Should they have been if they weren’t?
If you’re against abortion or more generally are pro-life, it would be consistent to argue in favor of birth control, in favor of allowing women and their doctors to make their own decisions about their pregnancies keeping lawyers and politicians out of such personal decisions, and also be in favor of keen understandings of modern healthcare. In each of those three cases, on balance we save significantly more lives than we lose, while reducing the frequency of abortions. In other words, in this case liberal social policy is doing a great deal to save lives. There’s less abortions annually now than there were 30 years ago. As such, it’s possible, and even preferable, to be both pro-life and pro-choice at the same time. Understanding that current federal policies save lives and reduce abortions is fundamentally more compassionate and more realistic than the dogmatic denials of the current Pope and Catholicism’s stricter doctrines, which deny women (especially non-Catholic ones) the ability to make up their own minds.
As a former Catholic, from my view the conservative Catholic’s complaints against Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame is an all-too clear strategy: find a point of division and exploit it to strengthen a group of believers against a perceived (not real) threat. Doing so provides an illusion of strengthening the church, an opportunity to prove once and for all that you’re a real Catholic (and not one of those damned liberal ones, and certainly not worse like an atheist), thus firming up the congregations with fiercer rhetoric and increasingly elite clubs of true believers. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that the Catholic Church is monolithic, or that it’s members all agree with one another. But without encouraging such divisiveness, Catholic leaders might recognize that plenty of non-catholics are working to reduce pain and suffering in the world every day. It’s sad that Bishop D’Arcy, having ‘prayed,’ learned only that more divisiveness was advisable: that’s the way to create a war, not a peace or utilitarian compromise. Having had his imaginary prayer-chat with his imaginary friend in his head, he’s ready for all-out boycotts and he’s clearly not interested in any real dialogue with real people. Tough luck for D’Arcy, who probably now won’t have a chance to meet the President and no chance to bring his own congregation’s concerns to the attention of the President.
To the University of Notre Dame’s credit, it’s president Fr. Jenkins has stated to CNN that
“We will honor Mr. Obama as an inspiring leader who faces many challenges” … On abortion and stem-cell research, Jenkins said he views the invitation as “a basis for further positive engagement.”
Now that’s why I’m still proud to have graduated from Notre Dame; how the university taught engagement and dialog rather than encouraging divisiveness and warmaking.
[Update: if you think I've overplayed the active imaginations of the most radical pro-lifers, consider this series of horrors as retold by PZ Myers. No doubt moderate Catholics do not feel the same way, but the harsher the Catholic response to abortion, the more room Catholics leave for this kind of heartless extremism.]
[Update: here's a link to an editorial piece from the Economist, Sex and Sensibility, regarding the Pope's recent announcements that condoms and safe sex practices don't actually help prevent the spread of HIV in Africa. The pope is wrong on the facts. Here also is the tragic story of a south american 9-year-old, who was raped and then received an abortion, only to be excommunicated while her rapist was not punished by the church. The Catholic church's actions were merciless, and their priorities are mistaken.]
[Update: Here is a link to the latest article from the 4/05/2009 NYTimes, "Invitation to Obama Stirs Up Notre Dame' Interesting that 97% of ND seniors who wrote in to the school paper overwhelmingly support the Obama visit, whereas alumni don't. The times quotes most of the well-knowns, and some students -- a good article.]
[Update: Not all Catholics are the same. Here is a link from the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, from Fr. Thomas Reese, a Catholic, who argues that Notre Dame's position is defensible according to catholic's law. And here is another link, about just exactly which fundamentalist Catholic organization is behind stirring up this scandal.]
Meanwhile, Obama is announcing worldwide collaborations to reduce and remove nuclear weapons — a world without the spectre of nuclear war — a proposal that could literally save BILLIONS of lives, compared the the millions lost due to abortions. That’s the way to prioritize, on the basis of greatest good.
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