Abortion and the "Catholic Right"

Human Life Review, Spring 2007 by Hitchcock, James

IHS has published two books attacking neo-conservatives and containing essays by a variety of strange bedfellows-on one hand, Buchanan, Sobran, and Likoudis; on the other, the radical leftist Noam Chomsky. The book was endorsed by a radical left-wing historian, Howard Zinn, but also by Bishop Richard Williamson of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X ("Lefebvrists"), an ultra-traditionalist group that rejects the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. (Williamson, who holds extreme right-wing political views, is excommunicated because the circumstances of his appointment and consecration as a bishop were irregular.)

For over three decades the pro-life movement has defined itself as a "single issue" constituency, although the issue of abortion has inevitably metastasized into euthanasia and other practices. Some pro-lifers do not believe that political activity is the best way to fight for life, but such activity is imperative, because no society can be allowed to withhold legal protection from any category of persons, and because it is primarily through politics that abortion has been made an accepted social practice.

But involvement in political action necessarily brings with it the moral ambiguities inherent in all politics. Citizens cannot simply will into being a political movement that perfectly satisfies all their principles; of necessity, they must work with existing parties and groups. Except in totalitarian states (and sometimes even there), politics remains the art of the possible.

Abortion as a political issue brought the pro-life movement into a somewhat unexpected alliance with the Republican Party, an alliance that has made many formerly Democratic pro-lifers uncomfortable. Such an alliance necessarily places voters in the situation of in effect having to buy a whole political package. Public officials have to take positions on a wide range of issues, so that, in supporting Republicans, pro-lifers are implicated in everything that party does.

History seldom moves in a straight line. Plans are often upset by unforeseen events and, as it turned out, the pro-life movement was at least temporarily derailed in 2006 by the strong public backlash against the war in Iraq. By no means all pro-lifers support the war, but support for pro-life Republicans has in many cases amounted to a vote for the war, or is seen as such.

Abortion became legal (and thereby respectable) through judicial fiat, and most legislation to curtail the practice has been invalidated by judicial decree, while the related life issues also await judicial resolution. From the beginning pro-lifers have realized that the political fight must take place in the courts and that this means the appointment of pro-life judges, especially at the federal level. But the Republican defeats of 2006 now make it almost impossible that such judges can be appointed in the foreseeable future, probably forcing President Bush to name the kind of "moderates" who usually turn out to be pro-abortion. But amidst all the conservative Catholic criticism of Bush in 2006, the issue of the federal courts remained the elephant in the living room, something whose presence could not be candidly acknowledged. Not once during the campaign did any writer in The Wanderer explicitly remind readers of the crucial importance of judicial appointments, and some even implied the contrary.