Editorial
ABORTION: A SEVERE TESTING "ABORTION," writes theologian Richard A. McCormick, S. J., " is a matter that is morally problematic, pastorally delicate, legislatively thorny, onstitutionally insecure,...
...In short, most of us know someone who has had an abortion...
...Abortion, therefore, is a severe testing ground for moral reflection.'' In addition, writes Father McCormick, it is "probably a paradigm of the way we will face other problems in the future...
...This is one of the reasons the subject is so bone-wearying...
...Though such an amendment would not ban abortion without further action, NCCB president Archbishop John R. Roach called it the best "achievable solution...
...We hope this issue does too.too...
...As this special issue on abortion was going to press, the Catholic bishops repeated their condemnation of abortion and endorsed a constitutional amendment that would return the issue to Congress and the state legislatures...
...Many of us are bone-weary of the subject, but we cannot afford to indulge this fatigue...
...One and a half million abortions are performed in the U.S...
...or we have shared the thoughts of others contemplating the possibility, even if the choice was not made or finally not posed...
...Denouncing the inconsistencies of one or both sides of activists, resigning oneself to whatever the Supreme Court has decided, reducing the question to one of "choice" abstracted from the problem of what is being chosen, feeling the tragedy of the fetus but not of the mother, insisting on the rights of women who are born but not on any rights for the unborn, whether female or male, pretending that abortion is opposed only by a small group of Americans, pretending that abortion is sought or defended only by selfish individuals - these are all ways of evading the burden of authentic moral judgment...
...one out of every nine women of reproductive age has obtained one...
...It demands a most extraordinary discipline of moral thought, one that is penetrating without being impenetrable, humanly compassionate without being morally compromising, legally realistic without being legally positivistic, instructed by cognate disciplines without being determined by them, informed by tradition without being enslaved by it...
...The bishops' decision, in effect, recognizes the complexities in relating morality to law and in seeking the common good in a pluralistic society...
...Capital punishment, this side of Iran, takes a limited number of lives...
...It is easy to retreat from this weariness by either shunning the issue altogether or by single-mindedly concentrating on one aspect of it while blanking out all the complicating realities...
...yearly...
...ABORTION: A SEVERE TESTING "ABORTION," writes theologian Richard A. McCormick, S. J., " is a matter that is morally problematic, pastorally delicate, legislatively thorny, onstitutionally insecure, ecumenically divisive, medically normless, humanly anguishing, racially provocative, journalistically abused, personally biased, and widely performed...
...Famine occurs in the Horn of Africa or Southeast Asia...
...Nuclear war could abort the whole human race, but that is in some awful tomorrow...
...But abortion is next door...
...Unlike other life-and-death issues, abortion is very, very close to us...
Vol. 108 • November 1981 • No. 21
