Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number 2 ~176 " " . - , , l i l l l l l 9 . I . . . ' ~ ~. I I . 9 9 9 ; ,';l.:l.' .P .9- I h"p'" 9 . - . . I I III F Correspondence 34 Editorials 35 Sick, sick,...
...Neier calls "an act of faith," it can be, and is widely, debated in terms accessible to any rational person...
...Woods's testimony represent, in anything but a formal sense, the wills of 60 million Protestants and Jews, most of whom couldn't tell McRae from McGillicuddy and wouldn't know the difference between Leo Pfeffer and Jules Feiffer...
...Perhaps it is the fact mentioned recently by a friend of mine, a psychologist: we have psychoiogized all our experience, as if a description were the same thing as an explanation...
...This figure compares with the findings of a poll of 9,000 voters leaving voting places last November...
...Neither morality, nor law, nor constitutionality can be determined by public opinion poll...
...That argument, we said, produced an inflated notion of religion irrelevant to the First Amendment and, should it prevail, having dangerous implications for the First Amendment rights of all believers, Catholics and non-Catholics, and for American political life generally...
...Jacob Needleman, in The New Religions (Doubleday, 1970...
...it involves "essentially a religious question," "a controversy over religious doctrine...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number 2 ~176 " " . - , , l i l l l l l 9 . I . . . ' ~ ~. I I . 9 9 9 ; ,';l.:l.' .P .9- I h"p'" 9 . - . . I I III F Correspondence 34 Editorials 35 Sick, sick, sick--or evil: John Garvey 38 On kill!rig a deer...
...There is no evidence for the theme that runs throughout the plaintiffs' case: that a narrow or particular theology is being "imposed" on the mass of citizens...
...We understand the reasoning of the right-to-life movement that it must take a stand against abortion wherever it can...
...We could do what they did...
...Neier sees it, it is a view "exclusively rooted in theology and supportable only by an act of faith" and which therefore"lacks a valid secular purpose...
...Or as Mr...
...We don't think they have pursued this unfortunate course because of any conscious wish to infringe the rights of believers and put up obstacles to the exercise of Americans' deepest values in the political arena, but because their zeal for the immediate cause has blinded their larger vision...
...4. Human life begins only at birth...
...We know better now...
...3. If Commonweal's editorial is correct, then these 60 million Ameri-' cans must be bigots, in fact "the conclusion is inescapable that we are a nation of bigots...
...it is hardly a choice...
...If anything, the "scientific consensus" has been the other way...
...Despite the claims to the contrary by our correspondents, we do not think our editorial "'distorts" or "misrepresented" their position...
...It makes them other...
...Others say that i t begins only when the woman first feels movement inside her (what is sometimes called quickening), and still others say that human life has begun when the unborn baby could probably survive if it were born prematurely...
...Like the correspondents in this issue, he feels that the first of these points is the critical one in McRae...
...While all these faiths reach similar conclusions about abortion, moreover, they do so by a variety of theological routes9 All of this suggests that the concern for protecting fetal life, like the concern for racial equality or lbr aiding the poor, ought to be treated as a general question of human justice, quite apart from the particular theological rationales that have been presented to support it...
...ABORTION, RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE T WO MONTHS ago, when Commonweal warned that the First Amendment fights of Catholics and other believers were threatened by the arguments advanced in a class action against the Hyde Amendment, a headline on the magazine's cover asked, "Are the ACLU and Planned Parenthood Listening...
...The table at the top of the next page sums up the responses...
...To conclude that society must therefore abstain from judgment on these questions is nothing less than disastrous...
...The left becomes utterly careless in its language about the issue of abortion, using terms like "coercion" or "compulsion" (as in "compulsory pregnancy") whether referring to the flat prohibition of abortions or (a distinguishable matter) the refusing of public funds for them...
...The Witnesses' belief, based on their special understanding of divine revelation in scripture, is like the Catholics' belief in the Real Presence--a distinctly theological issue...
...Forty-three percent of the men and fifty-eight percent of the women believed that human life began at conception--far more than chose any other moment...
...Of course not...
...the implications of the McRae challenge are vast...
...Ah, but this is mental illness, a very mysterious thing . . . . I want to suggest this heresy: Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and all their company are creatures like us...
...Assume with me for a moment that a fetus is nothing more than a fish...
...Thomas Powers Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck...
...There is a kind of moral reasoning, informed by science, informed by philosophy and political thought, informed by religious traditions, that can legitimately be the basis for majority decisions in a pluralistic society...
...Frank Getlein...
...Raymond A. Schroth Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Columnists: John Garvey...
...No, he answered, he isn't...
...If they were brought to the dreadful places in which they made their fame by anything involving choice, we're all in trouble...
...Manson, Hitler, Idi Amin, mass murderers, cooperators in mass murder, Calley, the Shah's torturers-- all are either ' 'products of the system" (so choice isn't involved), or they are "sick," part of a class which includes people who get migraines, flu, colds and measles...
...Our real complaint against the plaintiffs in McRae, then, is essentially our complaint against the bishops and so many right-to-lifers...
...I wonder about that...
...4. Therefore Commonweal's editorial is in error...
...Paul is taken seriously (what if the congressman had said, "The essential question is the equal humanity of blacks...
...American newsmen asked if he thought Idi Amin was insane...
...Having found a few clear patterns we think we have all the answer we need...
...They must be-- right...
...Why cite these statistics...
...On the contrary, Congress has enacted valid legislation to protect not only whales but snail darters...
...Throughout history, there has been no" scientific consensus" that individuals, or races, are fundamentally equal...
...Is it grounded exclusively in the theological doctrines of one or several religious denominations...
...Mr...
...He finds that no valid secular purpose can be discovered behind the Hyde Amendment unless one accepts "those theologies that teach that actual human life exists from the moment of conception9'' A rather fanciful exchange between Mr...
...This is gratifying...
...It is not a question of distortion, then, but of disagreement...
...I. Human life begins at conception9 2. Human life begins at quickening9 3. Human life begins when the unborn baby could probably survive on the outside if it were born prematurely...
...Pfeffer is too astute a lawyer not to know that this argument is malarkey through and through...
...Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be considered or returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Without that impulse the left itself is bankrupt...
...If anything, the distortion--or perhaps it is only a misreading--is theirs...
...is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...In their single-mindedness about one concern, they are running rough-shod over numerous other values to which they owe responsibility...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...Abigail McCarthy...
...Consider Mr...
...11 Of several minds: John Garvey I SICK, SICK, SICK--OR EVIL 'BUT DELIVER US FROM A POOR SELF-IMAGE, AMEN' " I ~ ODERN SCIENCE has painted a iq picture of the universe which is humbling to the human ego...
...Our correspondents have not answered this question...
...The left has every reason to be solicitous about the roots of the moral impulse in politics...
...It was added to their case only after the Supreme Court appeared to reject their other grounds for the Hyde Amendment's unconstitutionality...
...We outlined their position very much the way they have outlined it here...
...It is noteworthy that the First Amendment argument which these letters treat as so obvious did not figure in their original legal action...
...The Hyde Amendment may be an unwise or unjust measure even though a clear majority supports it...
...But Mr...
...To which Mr...
...We are repelled, fascinated and numbed as we read about events like these...
...Neier helpfully expanded: "Plainly, mere concurrence with a religious code does not render governmental action improper else much.of our criminal law would be invalid because it agrees with, and may even be derived from, religious principles . . . . What principles can guide us in determining whether a governmental action violates the First Amendment's proscription of all laws respecting an establishment of religion...
...2. The plaintiffs' briefs plus Dr...
...In this, it nowise differs from debates about basic human equality, warfare, torture, capital punishment and a host of other public issues...
...He knows precisely what he is Commonweal: 38...
...I remember an interview with a refugee from Uganda, a man who had been prominent in the government there...
...But to invoke the word "religious" is not enough, a point upon which Mr...
...First there was Jonestown, the pathetic story of people who called Jim Jones "daddy," and then a couple of weeks later police in a Chicago suburb were digging up bodies under the home of a man who dressed up as a clown to enterlain children...
...But the sentiments it represents are obviously widely held throughout American society...
...Of course, the left already sees the anti-abortion movement that way, It makes little effort to understand the position of abortion opponents, writing them off as "absolutist," a curious adjective that one never finds applied to those who will brook no anti-Semitism, no sext~al inequality, or no corporate bribery...
...The recent action of the National Right to Life Committee in choosing a 1980 "hit list" consisting almost entirely of liberal Congressmen, as well as the movement's performance in the recent election, raises the question whether "right-to-life" will become nothing more than "life-to-theright," a manipulative adjunct to the new right-wing politics...
...There are plenty of "managers" and "experts" from everywhere, and from nowhere, on the political spectrum willing and able to oil the wheels of the status quo more efficiently than the left can...
...In 1975 Gallup also asked its cross-section whether they were for or against providing abortions at government expense9 Fifty-seven percent were against, 35 percent in favor...
...The plaintiffs are fond of an analogy with the Jehovah Witnesses' belief about blood transfusions, but they cannot point to any comparable literature about the morality of blood transfusions...
...we would even be likely to, under conditions which brought us to the moments at which they made their worst choices...
...Woods's testimony represent the will of 60 million Americans...
...We do not pretend that anything about the abortion debate sits comfortably with us...
...It is a way of telling your mate something, telling yourself something, a response to deprivation, whatever--but it isn't wrong...
...Single copy, $I...
...Only 44 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans favored government funding for abortion...
...And these letters, like Mr...
...But it is more than slightly troubling that the most notable case of its effectively taking a stand should bear, not on the well-off, but on precisely those whom life has already burdened and who have, again and again, been the objects of society's disdain and neglect...
...It is even more troubling when the right-to-life movement aligns itself so thoroughly with those forces which have been most recalcitrant about social welfare...
...Apartheid . . . is the calculated oppression and exploitation of innocent, inconvenient human beings...
...We did go on to disagree with their position, which is a different matter...
...The correspondence in this issue, as well as a thoughtful reply by Aryeh Neier, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in the December 30, 1978 Nation, indicate that they are...
...While abortion can be debated in strictly theological terms that demand what Mr...
...For these correspondents, the Hyde Amendment's suspension of Medicaid funding for abortion expresses "a basically religious point of view," "the religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception...
...10016...
...Does that mean that Congress could not constitutionally legislate to protect it...
...The plaintiffs in McRae considerably confuse this matter by pointing out that there is no "scientific consensus" on the value of fetal life and suggesting that the only alternative to a"scientific consensus" is a "religious consensus...
...Our problem is not with the sincerity and depth of the plaintiffs' 2 February 1979:35 intentions but with the actual argument they advance and with its possible consequences...
...and we are tempted to complain that though our correspondents are listening, they are not listening ,'ell...
...Neier's response, do make clear exactly where the disagreement lies...
...The word "sick" is being stretched very thin these days...
...What are the limitations of knowledge that man's ordinary state of consciousness places upon him...
...In fact, a reading of these letters persuades us that the difficulty goes deeper than that...
...To say that they are "sick" allows us to avoid this possibility...
...There is no shrugging off the tragic choices to which our correspondents refer, tragic choices that in the instances affected by the Hyde Amendment are intertwined with a poverty that is unwarrantable in the first place...
...The left has not attended much to this fact, partly due to the'historical conflict between the Enlightenment and the churches, partly due to the left's concentration on problems of physical deprivation, often and unfortunately to the neglect of questions of meaning, identity and integrity...
...What is, to begin with, a dispute over the wisdom of a legal tactic in a Brooklyn District Court, finally leads us to some much larger questions about abortion, religion, and the future of American politics...
...4. But, by implication and by the fact that the Baptists, in another case, have supported the Catholic bishop of Chicago, this cannot be the case...
...Our usual response is to say that such people must be sick...
...In addition, both belief in the "humanness" of early fetal life and opposition to government funding of abortion appear to be increasing, not declining...
...He knows, for example, that neither his briefs nor Dr...
...Hamette Balsky Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...The left repeatedly insists that those opposed to abortions are free to have them or not, which is to miss the whole point of the conflict, namely their belief that the life of another party is at stake...
...But first the immediate issue...
...In 1975, for example, the Gallup Poll asked the following question: It is sometimes said that the morality of abortion rests on the question of when one thinks human life begins...
...Neier, like the plaintiffs' brief and like our editorial, considered three principles: that the law have a valid secular purpose, that it not have a primary effect advancing or inhibiting a religion, and that it avoid excessive entanglement between church and state...
...But science simply does not provide any answers at all to many of the deepest human questions...
...David S. Toolan 48 Loaves and fishes: Raymond A. Schroth 49 Collective vision & collective bargaining: Dennis O'Brien 50 Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The difference of viewpoint subsists nonetheless...
...That argument, we said, rested on poor legal reasoning and adduced a mass of material irrelevant to the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment...
...Neier replied, as law professors will, "Assume the existence of a religious society, Porgyism, which venerates fish and which secures the passage of an anti-abortion law in order to preserve the fetus in its fish stage9 9 .. If that view is not generally shared and it is discovered to be grounded exclusively in the doctrines of Porgyism, the law should be susceptible to attack as a violation of the First Amendment . . . . " (Our emphasis9 This is to travel far from the tragic dilemmas that are at the root of the controversy over abortion and especially over the Hyde Amendment9 But at least it clarifies something about the kind of "religious" belief that the First Amendment prohibits from translation into civil law...
...There are volumes upon volumes written on abortion, pro and con, which do not draw upon theologies "supportable only by an act of faith" but on science, philosophy, and legal and ethical traditions...
...52 Books America in Vietnam: Robert F. Drinan 54 Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice Isidore Silver 56 Audacity to Believe: Brian A. Haggerty 58 Christ and the Media: John B. Sheerin 60 In Solitary Witness: John Cutter 60 Staff Editor: James O'Gara Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels Associate Editor...
...If the example of a supposedly improper "religious reference" made by Congressman Hyde and cited in the letter from Ms...
...Special two-year rate: $35...
...Finally, there are those who hold that human life begins only with the actual birth of a baby...
...Pfeffer's real mistake--or "distortion," if you will--is his starting point...
...Thomas Powers 39 Reviving the connected view: Bernard Murchland 42 Knowing good and evil: David Riesman 46 A great educator...
...W E ARE now squarely up against the larger issues signalled in the McRae case...
...This reader, a professor of law, a supporter of abortion, and an opponent of the Hyde Amendment, found Mr...
...Poetry: John Fandel Correspondents: Brian Wicker (Great Britain), Desmond Fisher (Dublin), Alain Woodrow (Paris) Staff: Linda F. Kayler...
...Since there is no "religious consensus" either, for society to take any position at all on the question is to prefer one religious view over another...
...This seems never to be a question for the modern temper...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...When in our ordinary experience moral choice is so reduced, we are really at a loss when we bump into something spectacu-larly hideous...
...A majority, or a plurality, does not settle a profound moral question...
...But let us go directly to the question at hand...
...Pfeffer's letter...
...We have no reason to doubt the sincere attachment to the First Amendment stated so emphatically by the other correspondents...
...I wonder about our inability to use the word "evil...
...There are experts in something called "values clarification" whose role is to help us "find out what our values are," as if values lay deep in our psyches, to be uncovered like buried treasure...
...Now Mr...
...Presumably, however, if there were a "religious consensus," that would be equally illegitimate in their reading of the First Amendment...
...It is equally dubious that the bishops' right-to-life effort represents the wills of American Catholics...
...Which of these alternatives best expresses your views...
...Such an impression is reinforced when one looks at actual public belief in the United States about fetal life and government funding of abortions...
...For example, some people believe that it begins at conception, that is, when sperm and egg first meet...
...It takes the form of a classic reductio ad absurdum, as follows: 1. Commonweal's editorial made the assumption, or more properly the accusation, that the plaintiffs in McRae "seek to deny to Catholics their constitutional rights...
...And in many times and places--colonial America, Nazi Germany, South Africa today--there has been no "religious consensus" either...
...One of the roots of the moral impulse, if not the tap root, is religion...
...Is the desire to protect fetal life, even by withdrawing government funds for abortion, not generally shared...
...T HE FIRST problem that the plaintiffs' argument must confront is that not one but three major religious groups-Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and Mormons--are stringently opposed to abortion, and that they are joined in this outlook by a sizable number of Protestants...
...and Canada, $20;, foreign, $22...
...He argued that one by no means had to consider fetal life equivalent to human life to find that its protection was a valid secular enterprise...
...For pro-lifers the proper analogy with the Jehovah Witnesses is not the adult Witness who conscientiously refuses a blood transfu2 February: 37 sion for himself or herself but the Witness parent who conscientiously refuses a blood transfusion for a minor child--a choice the courts have consistently not allowed...
...T HIS BRINGS uS to another critical point...
...Neier's conclusion "not just wrong, but absurd...
...Neier and a Nation reader further defines the issue at hand...
...They caught some special virus, some weird bug that makes them not like us--and that's what counts...
...Adultery, for example, isn't evil anymore...
...The morality of abortion, like the morality of capital punishment or of the Vietnam war, is not in the same category...
...But while destroying astronomical geocentrism, it has assumed what might be called a psychological geocentrism...
...We do not question, let alone "caricature," the depth of the Methodist Board of Global Ministries' "faith stance" and "faith commitment...
...Commonweal did not assume that the plaintiff~ were seeking to infringe on the constitutional rights of Catholics and other believers...
...There is no evidence that they are held "exclusively" on the basis of the theological doctrines of one or several "Porgyisms...
...In our original editorial, we asked why the First Amendment argument against McRae would not equally apply to various other struggles, honored or supported by the left, in which religion and organized religious groups have taken leading roles...
...To somehow place this kind of reasoning--and the politics that, in rough and ready form, accompany it--under the ban of the First Amendment's no-establishment clause would be to abandon much of our political and moral heritage and to reduce political life to technocratic engineering...
...Commonweal: 36 Men Time Life Begins Catholic Non-Catholic Women Total Catholic Non-Catholic Total At conception 52 41 At quickening 17 14 At viability ! 5 14 At birth 13 22 Don't know/other 5 9 43 75 52 58 15 13 17 16 14 4 13 11 20 7 11 10 8 i 7 5 The wording of polls can always be faulted...
...foreign, $39...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 2
