Mario slips through
Carlin, David R.
Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr. MARIO SLIPS THROUGH THE DEMOCRATS & THE ABORTION DILEMMA IN VIEW OF Geraldine Ferraro's unpleasant experience in the 1984 election, what is a Catholic...
...and as in the case of Prohibition, widespread contempt for the particular law would generate a creeping disrespect for law in general...
...In his celebrated Notre Dame adCommonweal: 392 dress of last fall, Cuomo opposed legislating against abortion on two grounds...
...Personally, I happen not to agree with it...
...Our disagreement has to do solely with means to that end...
...The candidate will also be the target of endless pro-life picketing and frequent Sunday sermons...
...Worst of all, the whole controversy will be the subject of enormous press attention, diverting voters from the non-abortion portions of the candidate's platform, and creating the impression of a candidate under siege by the very people who in some sense are his or her natural constituency — a man or woman who would like to lead the nation yet cannot even command the respect of his or her own religious communion...
...But the second of Cuomo's arguments, the one that says a legal ban on abortion is impractical, has considerably more merit...
...He has recently begun writing a regular column in these pages...
...On the other hand, any Catholic candidate for president who is pro-choice is likely to be verbally beaten up by Cardinal O'Connor and other members of the Catholic hierarchy...
...so it will be the case trom now on...
...it is the sort of position a reasonable person of good will might take...
...In the Commonweal interview Cuomo drops the first (that is, the weaker) of his Notre Dame arguments, while retaining and even elaborating on the second...
...Whatever the theoretical merits of Cuomo's position, it is a brilliant political stroke...
...I agree with them too when they say we can't just deplore abortion and then, Pilate-like, wash our hands of it...
...Appeasing the feminists and checkmating the bishops, Cuomo has slipped through the horns of the dilemma...
...Though feminists and liberals won't be perfectly happy with his position, since he eschews all talk about a woman's sacred right to abortion, his bottom line is nonetheless the same as theirs: No anti-abortion legislation, no repeal of Roe v. Wade...
...Instead of passing prohibitory laws which won't work anyway, create programs to make it easier for pregnant girls and women to have babies and then either keep the newborns or put them up for adoption...
...On the one hand it is nearly impossible to win the Democratic nomination for president without significant backing from liberals in the party and the press...
...we're obliged to work to reduce the frequency of abortion in America...
...So you see, the bishops and I are in accord about the end, about the fundamental principle at stake...
...He says in effect: Look, I agree with the bishops that abortion is morally wrong...
...And are you listening, Cardinal O'Connor...
...Neither, I take it, do the Catholic bishops...
...First, to do so would be contrary to the principle of religious tolerance which is required in our religiously pluralistic society...
...Second, even if a legal ban against abortion could be enacted, that ban, like the nation's earlier noble experiment in banning alcohol, would be unworkable...
...Either way their gooses will be cooked...
...As I read the nation's political and social scene, the negative route will prove counterproductive...
...but if they renege on their pro-choice stance, their liberal supporters will ditch them...
...The anti-abortion party, however, or at least the more polished among them, contend it is the latter, i.e., an act of reason, not an act of faith...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...But Cuomo's position is at least an arguable one...
...This is of course not a purely hypothetical question...
...It seems to me that an approach along the lines of the proposed Hatch Amendment, which would give the states the power to legislate regarding abortion, might well be workable, in the sense that it could significantly reduce the number of abortions in the nation while not significantly eroding respect for law...
...This may not always have been the case, but the Ferraro candidacy in 1984 appears to have been a watershed...
...he has also taught sociology and written frequently for Commonweal and other publications...
...Hence the dilemma: if Cuomo and Kennedy remain pro-choice, their fellow Catholics will embarrass the daylights out of them...
...Yet liberal support won't be forthcoming for any candidate unacceptable to feminists, since feminism is an essential ingredient of contemporary liberalism...
...and thus our final condition — abortion plus lawlessness — would be worse than our original state of abortion within the law...
...They can say of course that they disagree with his strategy...
...But I disagree when they say, speaking at the level of political prudence, that the best way to do this is the negative way of passing antiabortion legislation...
...Governor Cuomo is nothing if not intelligent...
...But that's a limp condemnation, especially in view of the fact that the bishops profess to be authorities on moral principles, not political strategies, while acknowledging that authority on questions of political strategy normally ought to reside with intelligent and experienced laypersons, of whom Governor Cuomo is palpably the type...
...A better anti-abortion strategy is the positive approach...
...How can they be unhappy about that...
...In short, to get the Democratic nomination for president one has to be pro-choice...
...The first of these two arguments is weak, since it assumes that belief in the immorality of abortion is an act of religious faith, not a moral insight arrived at pretty much the same way we arrive at other moral insights...
...MARIO SLIPS THROUGH THE DEMOCRATS & THE ABORTION DILEMMA IN VIEW OF Geraldine Ferraro's unpleasant experience in the 1984 election, what is a Catholic Democrat who aspires to high office — especially the highest office of all — to dp about the abortion issue...
...They face a dilemma...
...One way out of a dilemma is to pass through its horns, and this is what Mario Cuomo appears to be attempting in his recent Commonweal interview [May 31...
...David R. Carlin, Jr., is a senator and deputy majority leader in the Rhode Island state legislature...
...Are you listening, Teddy Kennedy...
...they can argue that he misreads the political situation...
...But to win feminist support one has to be pro-choice on abortion, this being the feminist acid test...
...It is a practical question confronting at least two prominent Americans: Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Governor Mario Cuomo of New York...
...As for the bishops, how loudly can they censure him, since their disagreement with him has to do not with a moral principle but with practical political strategies intended to translate that principle into practice...
Vol. 112 • July 1985 • No. 13
