Patchy garment
Carlin, David R. Jr.
it is an attempt to remind those liberals or progressives who are normally on the side of the angels when it comes to issues of social justice and world peace that they are guilty of a fatal...
...A will and our desire to survive and cooper- before giving them concrete reasons for friend of mine, devoted to nonviolence, ate...
...Like other influential Catholic political liberals, e.g., Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill, she's a disappointment to the anti-abortion cause...
...with, was seen aiming a flower at various innocent bystanders and shooting them with it...
...The seamless garment may lead the pack philosophically, but politically it's a nonstarter...
...We politicians, like almost everyone else in the world, normally believe sincerely in those positions which it is expedient for us to adopt...
...18, 1983] and many other articles in Com-monweal...
...It is of course not the job of bishops to supply a political constituency for the social doctrines they enunciate...
...It is also not hard to understand, whatever the problems of moral theology involved, that women feel they should have the right to abort in difficult cases, cases involving rape, incest, and probable serious birth defects, for example, especially when such abortions are done early in the preg- nancy...
...Ferraro, as the media have not ceased to remind us ever since her name was first floated as a vice-presidential possibil- ity, is both pro-choice on abortion and Roman Catholic -- and not just incidentally Catholic, but a graduate of Marymount College in Manhattan back in the days when Catholic colleges were thoroughly, sometimes oppressively, Catholic...
...But none of these considerations help us understand why anyone would favor abortion on demand, that is, the right to have an abortion at anytime, no matter how late in the pregnancy, and for any reason, no matter how trivial...
...The Ferraro phenomenon highlights the absence of anything resembling an effective constituency for the seamless garment point of view, and it demonstrates the need to begin the long-term political spadework and brainwork required to create that constituency...
...Jihad...
...Her pro-life garment displays a conspicuous pro-choice patch...
...David R. Carlin, Jr., a senator in the Rhode Island state legislature, is the author of "The Dilemma of an Anti-Abortion Democrat" [Nov...
...And the conservatives won't receive you, since no matter how right you may be on the abortion question, you're still wrong, from their point of view, on a hundred and one other questions...
...None of this is to suggest that there is anything insincere or merely expedient about Rep...
...Part of me finds selves must be pure,'or at least on the the odds between our propensity to do this objectionable: leave kids alone...
...You will, of course, be well thought of among many Catholic bishops, but there is little evidence to date that their prayers are efficacious in the way of delivering votes or campaign contributions...
...If you are a nationally Of several minds: John Garvey GUNS & BUTTER DR...
...The liber- als will disown you, since you can't be one of them without being a feminist, and you can't be a feminist without being pro-choice...
...Violence is something which is civilized out of us...
...But put philosophical considerations aside for the moment and consider the politics of abortion...
...I wonder how much our at- was recently perplexed when her son, Franciscan ads in which a child of five, tempt to make our children politically who does not have any toy guns to play asked what he most dearly longs for, 10 August 1984:423...
...It is often a losing battle, civilization involving both Chartres and the Crusades, the Sermon on the Mount and the...
...it is an attempt to remind those liberals or progressives who are normally on the side of the angels when it comes to issues of social justice and world peace that they are guilty of a fatal inconsistency if they are at the same time pro-choice or (to use the indelicate expression for the same thing) pro-abortion...
...Civilization has House, $6.95) which introduces have produced moral children we our- done a little (not nearly enough) to even children to the arms race...
...For those of us who are anti-abortion it is often difficult to understand how an intelligent person who has given serious thought to the issue can honestly support the abortion-on- demand position legitimized by the United States Supreme Court...
...SEUSS'S LIBERAL SENTIMENTALITY significant politician, or aspire to be one, and you'd like to be, h la Cardinal Bernardin, both liberal and anti-abortion, you'll find you have a microscopically small constituency...
...It backf'ues...
...Nothing is less realistic than those desperation...
...The simple fact is that if Geraldine Ferraro had elected to be an anti-abortion liberal there's not a chance in the world she would have attained her current ele- vated status...
...Ferraro's pro-choice stance...
...That adult women should wish to be free to determine their own sexual conduct is easy to understand, as is their desire to decide which medical/surgical procedures they will or will not submit to...
...But without a large and influential constituency, doctrines of public morality, no matter how sound, can be no more than interesting speculative propositions...
...Children are violent like the rest of us...
...How can anyone deny, we wonder, that in the last, say, two-thirds of the pregnancy, there is a significant degree of probability that the life to be terminated is that of a human being...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...let right track.., this, anyway, is a tempt- damage to anyone who contradicts our them get at least to their teenage years ing thought for a lot of us...
...Anyone who has watched babies play with one another knows that D R. SEUSS has just published a book, aware, politically correct, is in reality a if it weren't for civilization it would be all The Butter Battle (Random way of assuaging our own guilts...
...If we Crusades, all Jihad...
Vol. 111 • August 1984 • No. 14
