Abortion and the "Catholic Right"

Human Life Review, Spring 2007 by Hitchcock, James

Senator Webb of Virginia is probably a reliable new vote against pro-life nominees to the courts. Sobran justified his admiration for Webb partly on the grounds that Bush betrayed the pro-life cause in giving priority to the Iraq War, as though a president cannot and ought not to take simultaneous responsibility for both foreign and domestic matters. Notably, Bush's pursuit of the war did not prevent him from successfully nominating John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, appointments that brought the pro-life movement to within one vote of having a reliable majority. But when Roberts was nominated Sobran did not welcome the appointment, saying (August 15, 2005) that he would withhold judgment until "my bellwether, Howard Phillips," had spoken and that Phillips had not made up his mind.

After accusing the Republicans of betraying the pro-life cause, Sobran later judged (March 8) that "Abortion seems to be dwindling to an intramural Republican issue," a judgment that seemed to recognize that the future of the pro-life movement depends on pro-life Republicans continuing in office.

A month after the election (December 7), Sobran lamented that "just when many were hoping for relief as the Age of Bush begins to wind down," Democrats were talking about reintroducing the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress. After having said practically nothing on the subject during the campaign, Sobran at last acknowledged that "the Democrats will now have more to say about the direction of the federal judiciary," as though that had not occurred to him before.

However, he later (March 15) proclaimed that "We face a government essentially and practically hostile to the Church, and nearly all candidates threaten to make it worse if they can." (Presumably President Bush, as head of the government, is among those hostile to the Church.) Sobran mentioned none of the Republican presidential candidates who have announced themselves as pro-life but instead speculated that the 2008 contest would be between Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton and judged that of the two Senators Clinton would do "less damage."

In sounding the alarm over the civil-liberties implications of the Military Commission Act, Likoudis cited an analyst who predicted that the law in question will eventually come before the Supreme Court, where Roberts, Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas can be expected to uphold it. Since this is precisely the group of justices most favorable to the pro-life cause, readers might reasonably conclude from Likoudis' s warning that, just as liberals claim, it is a judicial bloc that is dangerous to liberty-whereas a Democratic president would appoint justices who, even if pro-abortion, would have a proper concern for the nation's freedoms.

During the 2006 campaign (October 18) The Wanderer published an article about the New Hampshire election explicitly suggesting that it was probably best to vote Democratic, and during the campaign its only explicit warning against doing so (November 2) did not have to do with abortion; rather, Likoudis's complaint was that the Democrats are not reliable opponents of the Iraq War.