Editorial
CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 13 Correspondence: 2 Editorial: 3 Notebook: Patrick Jordan 4 Reconceiving a nation: Brian K. Smith 5 The drug war is a crime: Peter J. Riga 6 From Bed-Sty to...
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...That is the simplest--and some might say the most simpleminded--argument against including abortion procedures in the health-care package that will make its way through Congress this fall...
...only 23 percent favor covering abortion as part of President Bill Clinton's basic health plan (New York Times/CBS Poll, March 1993...
...Mainstreaming" abortion by mandating it as part of a national health-care package would mean that none of us would be free of moral complicity in a matter over which none of us has a right to intervene or intercede...
...This view now prevails at the federal level...
...47-52) is not only useful but superior to that of Humanae vitae...
...by law it must be performed by a physician...
...Most Americans recognize this, and when asked in public opinion polls, most do not approve of abortions chosen for economic and social reasons, or for solely personal reasons...
...And so it has been...
...Yes, some would say that this is not "protectable" human life...
...I wasn't entirely clear on either the best way to try to live the gospel, or whether I was a fit candidate for a life of celibacy...
...The United States Catholic Conference is one friend...
...For me--and this has a lot more to do with intuition than with logic--Paul VI got the explanations and the details wrong, but he got the heart of the matter--about the sacredness, responsibility for, and beauty of sexuality--right...
...Furthermore, most Americans do not think that tax dollars should be used to pay for abortions...
...the Catholic Health Association, representing some 1600 hospitals, is another...
...This exclusion rests on the conviction that taxpayers should not be asked to pay for abortions that a great many of them believe to be morally wrong...
...I remember, with atypical clarity, the day the encyclical was published in 1968...
...If this isn't a species of "health care," what is...
...and it routinely takes place in medical settings with the requisite tools, standards of hygiene, and after-care...
...NOTEBOOK WRESTLING STILL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS & COUNTING 'ithout doubt, the papal encyclical that has had the most effect on my life is Paul VI's Humanae vitae...
...It was only later, as a husband, that the real wrestling began...
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...J.Bryan Hehir, in a speech to the Catholic Health Association, captures the current problem exactly: Including abortion in health-care legislation, he says, is "to take the broadest social policy initiative we've had in forty years and to join it with the most controversial public policy issue we've had in twenty years...
...The rejoinders are obvious: abortion saves the lives of some women...
...In the issue at hand, these objections are beside the point...
...still others would continue to call abortion a fundamental right...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...Portland, Me...
...It was not that we lived on a diet of papal bulls...
...Still, Humanae vitae is not without a degree of beauty and substance, and not without some power to challenge and move con4:16 July 1993 Commonweal...
...CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 13 Correspondence: 2 Editorial: 3 Notebook: Patrick Jordan 4 Reconceiving a nation: Brian K. Smith 5 The drug war is a crime: Peter J. Riga 6 From Bed-Sty to Israel: Abigail McCarthy 7 Which abortion bill?: Liz Leibold McCloskey 9 Cramming for your finals: Daniel Callahan 11 My father's left hand: Geraldine Gorman 16 Poetry: Richard E. McMullen 18 E. B. de Vito 20 Stage: Gerald Weales 18 Screen: Richard Alleva 20 BOOKS Death and Dignity: Patrick Jordan 22 The Dork of Cork: Clare Collins 23 Being Catholic: George G. Higgins 24 Religion and Radical Politics/No Longer Exiles/Church, State, Morality, and Law: Clarke E. Cochran 25 The Son of Laughter: Irving Malin 27 Dear James: Joseph Hynes 28 STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Business Manager: Richard Haas Design: Emil Antonucci Screen: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Nonetheless, it was on first reading the encyclical that I knew t probably could not continue on to ordination because I could not officially represent such a teaching...
...It was a hot July day in New York, and as I read the Times account and then excerpts from the encyclical itself, I felt as if I were being caught hold of by something akin to Jacob's angel...
...And then there is still the almost embarrassing but inescapable conclusion that those who had formalized the encyclical were hardly rabbis with wives...
...most are elective procedures, elected often for reasons that have nothing to do with the health of the mother--even broadly defined...
...The country desperately needs health-care reform and a reform bill desperately needs every friend it can muster...
...For while my wife, Kathleen, and I didn't and don't subscribe to the encyclical' s reasoning on the immorality of artificial birth control, over the last twenty years we have tried, in faith, to abide by the papal teaching...
...I knew instinctively that I had come up against something mysterious, something that was going to prove as intrusive, unrelenting, and, I feared rightly, ultimately maiming as Jacob's nemesis...
...I say "in faith" because I don't think there is any other logic for explaining why we try to live by a teaching we cannot otherwise adequately explain or defend...
...For my part, I think the teaching of Vatican II (see, Gaudium et spes, nos...
...That the other "pastors" of the church--not to mention a legion of conscientious moral theologians--were divided (and still are) on the morality of artificial birth control is, for me, a convincing argument that a less rigorous interpretation of the encyclical's moral prohibitions is entirely legitimate...
...We were not unfamiliar with civil disobedience, questioned the pope's explanations of biology, were aware of pressing demographic and feminist concerns, and both had some measure of theological schooling...
...Though we have never been persuaded by the constitutional reasoning that located this decision in a right to privacy, that line of reasoning currently stands as the law of the land...
...The most critical pragmatic argument against inclusion, implied by Hehir's comment, is that the health-care bill faces fierce opposition if abortion is included, indeed may fail to pass...
...Including abortion as part of a healthCommonweal 16 July 1993:3care package would sanction a practice that means the taking of human life...
...not an inkling as to what constitutes what might be called the "eucharistic" elements of marriage...
...COMMONWEAL l~p~r~mmr~"r~" Health reform at risk bortion is not health care...
...But even though we felt the encyclical's logic was faulty, we came to sense a trust for its teachings rather than those of our peripatetic priest...
...Leaving the seminary a year later proved to be the easy part...
...At the time, I had just completed my tenth year in the seminary and had three more to go before ordination...
...And this, rather than the arguments they put forward, is why you are bound to such obedience" (italics added...
...But we soon found that his nonchalance didn't really fit our own questions...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...The pope had made a telling point in writing that "the pastors of the church enjoy a special light of the Holy Spirit in teaching the truth...
...To insist on its inclusion imposes on the body politic a levy that will further erode the common good, encourage ever greater contempt for government, and inevitably invite a movement for conscientious tax objection...
...In striking down state laws against abortion, Roe v. Wade drew the "right" to abortion from the penumbra of privacy and argued that the state had no interest in fetal life before viability...
...When we were going through marriage preparations, the priest--who, it turned out, left the priesthood not long afterward to marry--dismissed the encyclical and instructed us that it was entirely up to us and to our consciences to determine the moral weight Humanae vitae would have in our lives...
...And as long as it stands, it brings with it a compelling argument against tax-supported subsidies for abortions which would force everyone to pay for them through the government's taxing power...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Over the next several months, many arguments--pro and con, pragmatic and principledwill be advanced on this issue...
...But consider: only a minuscule number of abortions are performed to save the life of the mother...
...He has proven to be prophetic, and tragically so, concerning respect for life and the desacralization of sex...
...The pope and his secretaries didn't have a clue as to what it is actually like to sleep with one's spouse each night...
...others would agree with the Supreme Court that this is a matter best left to the choice of the woman...
...New York, N.Y...
...Quite apart from whether one believes that all, most, some, or no abortions are morally tolerable, we are convinced that there is more to be said against requiring all of us through our taxes to pay for abortions...
...current legislation prohibits the use of Medicaid funds for abortion except to save the life of the mother (a provision that may be broadened in the current budget to include rape and incest...
...10038...
...Still, if a prophet, he was a Cassandra whose warnings only helped make the final state of matters worse than they had been before...
...04106 (207) 7994387, classified advertising correspondence to I5 Dutch St...
...If the decision rests with the individual, so should the cost...
...I am inclined to agree with the rabbinic concept that "restrictions imposed upon the populace that the majority cannot endure are not to be levied...
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...We should emphasize it and go on...
...Both have long supported a national health-care policy, both are opposed to including abortion, Many people, including some Catholics, will dismiss this opposition as another regrettable example of Catholic intransigence on abortion, even though, as the polls show, large numbers of nonCatholics also oppose including abortion...
...In the end, it was these personal questions, not Humanae vitae, that led to my leaving the seminary...
...It wasn't as if ordination were a foregone conclusion, however...
...I wish it weren't so...
...72 percent say that an abortion should be paid for by the woman who wants it...
Vol. 120 • July 1993 • No. 13
