EDITORIAL
POLITICS AND ABORTION As we feared, abortion has become an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign in a manner that, in the long run, will add little substance and considerable bitterness to the...
...But it is also the church's failure...
...We do not approve of abortion on demand...
...Look at the effect of the pro-life warpath strategy so far...
...Abortion is a personal and social evil...
...There are few men in public life better informed on medical ethics and more dedicated to protecting and improving the quality of human life than Sargent Shriver...
...Abortion is failure: the parents failure, often because of circumstances out of their control, to assume responsibility for the new life they have begun...
...But we do not believe that this kind of fight for an amendment to the Constitution will correct this complex of wrongs, particularly in a society where ecumenical grass-roots opposition to abortion is neither broad nor deep, and the amendment would be certain of defeat...
...It is hard to resist the impression that the church leadership imagines that here is an issue that might restore some of that old healthy "ghetto vigor" that once characterized the Latin mass-going, no-meat-on-Friday, yes-father, bloc-voting Catholic community...
...Failure to understand a generation ago that family planning and artificial birth control differed radically from abortion and were not necessarily forms of sexual immorality but potentially positive means of both preserving married love and enhancing respect for life...
...As far as possible abortion should be strictly regulated by state law within the unfortunate limits of the Supreme Court decision...
...Abortion should not be "easy"-as if it were of no more moral consequence than a flu shot or bad tooth...
...And the bishops should try to educate the American public on the evils of abortion, as part of a broader campaign for human rights, prison reform, woman's rights, welfare reform, free lifetime medical care and full employment...
...Focused as it is on whether or not a candidate supports the so-called right-to-life amendment to the Constitution, this debate will: damage the liberal candidates with otherwise good social-justice records who, in spite of personal moral reservations on abortion, feel they cannot support a constitutional amendment...
...If so, they are mistaken...
...make those candidates who support the amendment, Wallace and Reagan, the "church's" candidates (even though Reagan signed 'California's easy abortion law...
...dissipate the political influence of the Catholic hierarchy who have had the poor judgment to make this issue the issue to test Catholic solidarity and political clout...
...But it seems, to us that there is so strong a national consensus supporting the woman's "right" to abortion during the early stages of pregnancy that those Catholics who are absolutely opposed to abortion will have to learn to live with some of the evil that has followed from the Supreme Court decision as part of the cost of living in a pluralistic and-secular state...
...It is more likely that this single-minded shoving will simply distract both Catholics and the candidates from the broader social-justice crises, and further isolate the church from its proper role in American public life...
...Yet, because Shriver recognized that we have to live with the Supreme Court decision, Iowa, pro-life Catholics found Shriver not-Catholic-enough and dumped him for smooth-talking Jimmy Carter who managed to give the impression to pro-lifers that he was one of them...
...POLITICS AND ABORTION As we feared, abortion has become an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign in a manner that, in the long run, will add little substance and considerable bitterness to the discussion of one of the most critical moral problems of our time...
...With a few exceptions-like treatment of a rape victim soon after the attack or the removal of an already gravely damaged fetus (in this case anticipating nature's tendency to abort) -it is difficult to imagine abortions that do not involve varying degrees of moral guilt, personal tragedy and violence to the real or potential dignity of the human person...
...society's failure to provide the moral and cultural environment in which each new life would be welcomed, nourished, preserved...
Vol. 103 • February 1976 • No. 5
