Abortion and the "Catholic Right"

Human Life Review, Spring 2007 by Hitchcock, James

Abortion, along with the legal and social status of homosexuality, is the issue that above all causes secular liberals to identify "the Religious Right" as dangerous to American freedom. But in 2006 cracks began to appear on the Catholic side of "the Right," something that cannot be explained in conventional journalistic categories but requires following a tangled and sometimes obscure thread.

During the 2006 election campaign, the syndicated journalist Joseph Sobran,1 a Catholic who considers himself one of the few remaining spokesmen for authentic conservatism, advised readers that "if you must vote, you should almost never vote for an incumbent," and characterized James Webb, the Democratic candidate for senator from Virginia and a former Republican, as someone "who commanded my immediate trust and respect" when they first met, adding only that "One hates to see him coming out in favor of abortion." Later in the campaign Sobran proposed that the recovery of the country from the "disasters" of the Bush administration "may mean enduring a period of Democratic dominance," although he judged that before long the Democrats too would discredit themselves.

What was most surprising about these opinions was that they were published (June 22, August 3, October 18), in the pages of the newspaper The Wanderer, one of the most conservative Catholic journals in the United States and a publication that is implacably anti-abortion.

During the campaign (October 18), Paul Likoudis, the news editor of the paper and someone whose byline appears on many of its articles, interviewed Howard Phillips, candidate for president on the Constitution Party ticket in 1992 and now head of the Conservative Caucus, which Likoudis described as a "nonpartisan nationwide grass-roots public policy advocacy group" that, among other things, opposes free trade and the income tax.

Worsening economic conditions, Phillips charged, are the result of deliberate government policies, and he cited liberal journalists to prove that the Bush administration acted surreptitiously and illegally in pursuing the Iraq War, actions that Phillips said were "in long Republican tradition, starting with Abraham Lincoln."

Although major pro-life groups claim otherwise, Phillips charged that Bush "has boosted the massive subsidies to Planned Parenthood and to population control programs overseas." But when asked by Likoudis what issues ought most to concern the citizens, Phillips ignored abortion and announced that "The Number One Issue" is that Bush "wants to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada. He doesn't want any borders.... Bush is a bigger danger to the Constitution of the United States than Saddam Hussein ever was."

Despite Phillips' obvious lack of interest in the abortion issue, Sobran has often endorsed the Constitution Party, which he says is the only reliably prolife party in America, and after the election (November 16) he found it impossible to distinguish between two "factions" pretending to be two different political parties, but he expressed great satisfaction that Webb's opponent, the "arrogant" Senator George Allen (who happened to be anti-abortion), had been defeated; then he declared (December 21) that Bush was a worse president than William J. Clinton (who happened to be by far the most zealously pro-abortion president ever to occupy the White House). Even later (January 18), Sobran judged that "I do not think Bush has been the worst American president ever. But he may prove to be one of the hardest to clean up after" and complained that the new Democratic Congress appeared unwilling to do anything about him.

After a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court upheld a federal law regulating partial-birth abortions, Sobran (May 3) acknowledged that a Republican defeat in 2008 would be bad for the pro-life movement, but he blamed that likely outcome primarily on the President himself. A week later he praised the pro-abortion Democratic Senator Joseph Biden as "someone who takes his faith very seriously" and announced that, although the office of the presidency "ought not to exist," he found Biden to be a trustworthy candidate.

Likoudis (November 16) surveyed the electoral disaster suffered by the Republicans, including significant defeats for the pro-life cause, and attributed much of it to Catholic "swing voters," while Christopher Manion, an occasional contributor, also described at length (January 18) how the cause was imperiled. Neither writer recalled that, in turning so many pro-life legislators out of office in 2006, the voters had in effect followed Sobran's advice in The Wanderer-vote against incumbents.

The defeat of Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was one such serious loss, and Likoudis attributed that defeat-at the hands of a pro-life Democrat, Robert casey Jr.-to anger on the part of pro-lifers at Santorum's past support of Pennsylvania's other Republican senator, the pro-abortion Arlen Specter. Such anger was arguably justifiable, but Likoudis immediately introduced other issues, claiming that Santorum's defeat was also due to his support for the Iraq War and for his having "accepted dictation" from "neo-conservatives"-people whom Likoudis called Santorum's "tenders," appointed by the Bush administration to ensure his "proper behavior" on the issues. A Wanderer reader asserted (November 16) that Santorum's real offense was not his support of Specter but the fact that he had departed from "Catholic teaching" concerning the state of Israel, and another reader (January 18) dismissed abortion as an issue and said Santorum had been defeated because of his "ungodly voting record on economic justice issues."