A political challenge to the prolife movement
Kelly, James R.
A POLITICAL CHALLENGE TO THE PROLIFE MOVEMENT TOWARD A POST-'WEBSTER' AGENDA JAMES R. KELLY It is tough for anyone to talk about abortion, but Catholics ran up against a particular difficulty...
...Several anti-Webster briefs explicitly denied that prolife organizations and activists truly mean what they say...
...There is in contemporary Catholic teaching an increasing recognition of the link between personal and social morality, although more development is clearly needed...
...However, certain emphases are worth noting...
...I would like to provide one example of the type of abortion legislation a post-Webster Catholic presence might encourage...
...Nor were the anti-Webster briefs distinguished by any great confidence in democracy...
...Louis stands out...
...The Education Fund of JUSTLIFE, a political action committee formed in 1986 as a Catholic-Protestant coalition to work for a consistent life ethic, has published a package of eight model bills that together suggest the beginnings of a persuasive prolife approach in the post-Webster era...
...The anti-Webster briefs often did not defend A legal abortion but argued in favor of stare decisis (the legal doctrine of abiding by rules laid do wn in previous judicial decisions) by predicting dire consequences if Roe were eventually overturned...
...These briefs show how little parity there is in the organizational and cultural strength of each side in the controversy...
...But in terms of an ongoing cultural presence, it is the Catholic church that stands out from all other groups and organizations opposing legal elective abortion...
...In contrast, the anti-Webster briefs were agnostic about the moral status of the fetus and evaded the question about when the adjective "human" could legitimately be applied to the offspring of human parents...
...Even within some Catholic circles a close identification with the prolife movement is viewed with reserve and suspicion...
...After all, fetuses have more "potential" life than many of the enfeebled old...
...They reported that most divorced or separated mothers do not get child-support payments...
...JUSTLIFE's model bills include familiar restrictions such as "informed consent" requirements, viability testing, and prohibition of use of public funds and facilities for abortion...
...While this and other briefs lack confidence that ordinary women and men can decide wisely about their state's abortion laws, the anti-Webster briefs were fully confident that court-protected elective abortion represents an advance in moral progress, and characterized opposition to abortion as impeding the good society...
...Pro-Webster briefs include far fewer professional groups, no women-studies academics or ad hoc women's groups, and, except for the legal scholarship represented by groups such as the Southern Center for Law and Ethics and the Association for Public Justice, no coalitions of scientists, law and medical school deans, or academicians...
...The eight are congruent with the judgment that justice for the unborn must be explicitly linked with justice for women...
...The "consistent ethic" approach first associated with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's December 6,1983 address must evolve still further so that the church's teaching on abortion is explicitly linked with its critique of contemporary economic structures...
...Although not prominent, the themes of justice and women's equality were not absent in pro-Webster briefs...
...The church, needless to say, cannot draft the nation's abortion law...
...None is radical...
...I have rarely seen a rendering of the American Catholic church's position on abortion that does justice to its wedding of principle and complex moral analysis...
...The pro-Webster briefs were more successful dealing with the past than with the future...
...Yet such "pastoral consistency" does not take the place of needed efforts to alter those American economic and legal institutions which in subtle ways influence women to abort...
...Perhaps even more troubling than the bias in the national media was the almost unanimous decision by regional and local media to use the term "prochoice" for supporters of legal abortion while using the phrase "anti-abortion" to describe those who call themselves "prolife...
...The anti-Webster briefs also dismissed the motivations of prolife activists...
...An inability to terminate an unwanted pregnancy," the legislators continued, "has posed a barrier to their [women's] full participation in American life...
...The failure of the pro-Webster briefs to confront abortion in terms of the claims linking justice and equality gives at least a superficial credibility to the hostile charge, made not only by NOW and NARAL but by some ethi-cians, theologians, and historians as well as women's advocacy groups, that prolife activists are not defending unborn children but the traditional subordination of women...
...Louis has an especially attractive brochure which invites women from all faiths or no faith at all to seek archdiocesan help when abortion seems the only alternative...
...There is more room in the prolife movement for the complexity of the Catholic approach to legal abortion...
...Birthright characterized abortion as "a financially cheap way for society to brush troubled women out of the way while claiming to have done them a service...
...The noticeable imbalance among the briefs falls under the heading of "professional" groups and ad hoc coalitions...
...They critically observed that women who work full time and year round earn only 61 percent of what men earn...
...It stated that most women who abort "feel abandoned by a family or a society which has no or little patience for a problem unique to women-an unplanned pregnancy...
...Extending the right to legal abortion even further than Roe takes it, many briefs considered abortion a fundamental right necessary to achieve greater justice for women...
...A brief signed by seven state attorneys general predicted a return to back-alley abortions and the overburdening of state health and criminal justice agencies...
...Only in this way can an authentic prolife position on abortion be seen in terms of its full dimensions and demonstrate its moral attractiveness...
...Nor was religious opposition to Webster absent...
...But life-affirming bills such as those proposed by JUSTLIFE would be congruent with a creative post-Webster Roman Catholic role...
...All are familiar...
...Moreover, legal and philosophical critiques of Roe have been made by those outside the prolife movement...
...The brief of minority women's organizations asserts that "hostility to abortion is fueled not simply by beliefs about the sacredness of the fetus, but also by anger at abortion as a symbol of women's taking some control over their lives-their decision to be sexual, to reject or defer childbearing, or to chart a life course that does not submit to the traditional notion of women's role...
...If most Americans knew the prolife movement only through the media, they would conclude that no one of stature opposes legal abortion and that those who do care about fetuses do not care about women...
...Moreover, those professional groups signing pro-Webster briefs were more likely to have formed in opposition to legal abortion and, unlike the professional groups that signed anti-Webster briefs, to have few general goals apart from the abortion controversy...
...Or vice versa...
...The right-to-life movement today is far different than it was before Roe, when it could not have survived without leaning on Catholic institutional props...
...The briefs submitted by various branches of local and national government balanced each other out and mirrored the division over abortion among the general public...
...Those who sought to remove all restrictions on abortion, found it easy to use a "Catholic strategy" in which the opposition to abortion-because it was said to be directed by the bishops-was described as "hostile to human freedom...
...Finally, the "Adoption Subsidies" bill would provide finan cial subsidies and medical support to persons willing to adopt traditionally "hard-to-place" children, typically minority and older children with some physical, mental, or emotional handicap...
...Included among the thirty groups who signed one of the anti-Webster briefs were: the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Fertility Society...
...Normal employ ment benefits, such as life and health insurance, would continue during the leave...
...Another example of the enormous institutional and cultural support for elective legal abortion in this country is the breakdown ofamici curiae briefs filed in Webster...
...The church's evolving teachings on questions of sexual equality and social justice show that only in the context of an increasingly critical appraisal of Western economic systems does the church's teaching about abortion achieve its fullest moral sense...
...The presidents of NOW (Molly Yard) and NARAL (Kate Michelman) were far more likely to be quoted than any prolife leader...
...Professional organizations and women's groups are more highly represented in anti-Webster than pro-Webster briefs...
...But a feminism that thinks it has nothing to learn from the prolife movement, eyen about equality, is not likely to achieve the liberation of the human spirit we all seek...
...Organizations such as Birthright and Alternatives to Abortion, International would certainly welcome more support for their help to women and the unborn...
...The "Parental Leave from Work" bill would provide that either the mother or father working for an employer of twenty or more workers shall have the right to up to twenty-six work weeks off after the birth or adoption of a child...
...The 1989 edition of the Encyclopedia of Associations lists information from sixty-one distinct anti-abortion groups...
...and even if passed, such legislation would not stop most abortions...
...There were twelve distinct briefs submitted by prochoice professional entities or coalitions, including ones from the National Association of Public Hospitals, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, the American Nurses Association, and American Law Professionals...
...The "Inclusion of Unborn Children in the Aid to Families of Dependent Children and Medicaid Programs" bill would permit a needy expectant mother to qualify for AFDC benefits or addi tional benefits, including medicaid, which not all states permit...
...A brief signed by state legislators warned that "hundreds of thousands of women would be subject to criminal sanctions...
...Many prolife activists report a lack of support from Catholic universities and only passive help from local clergy...
...The movement opposing abortion cannot simply reflect moral fidelity to the past but like all morally successful social movements, must persuade others that it represents not merely the values of the past but the best promise for a more human future...
...But to meet the challenge of the anti-Webster briefs to draw the links between laws protecting the unborn and the future good society, pro-Webster briefs would have had to expand this emphasis beyond a footnote and place discussion of it prominently in the body of their text...
...criticized the social and gender discrimination that is "one of the causes for high rates of joblessness and low pay among racial minorities and women...
...have no connection whatsoever to a growing nihilism and disrespect for human life in American society would be a willed naivete...
...Less associated with the prolife movement are the following proposed bills which JUSTLIFE recommends be sought conjointly with the statutes mentioned above: The "Coordination of Services for Pregnant Women" bill would create a state-wide office for coordination of services to pregnant women by acting as a clearinghouse for information about abortion-alternative programs...
...On the other hand, to seek a law prohibiting all abortions when most Americans feel that this would force women to obtain illegal and less safe abortions, is also naive...
...Most of the nonlegal arguments made in the anti-Webster briefs involved questions of justice...
...While President George Bush recently vetoed such legislation, that veto may come to haunt him in the future...
...The prolife movement has much to learn from the women's movement...
...But not their linkage...
...Groups concerned about federalism and judicial activism have also joined in opposition to Roe...
...but, JUSTLIFE says, "until that day comes, we offer these bills as responsible, defensible steps in the direction of protecting and honoring human life...
...In their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, the bishops of the U.S...
...Other dioceses provide similar resources but in terms of a widespread dissemination of an eye-catching pamphlet, St...
...The brochure describes a "Lifeline Coalition" comprised of seven hospitals offering reduced or free ob-gyn services, two residences, hundreds of families ("shepherding homes"), Birthright Centers, and employment help...
...I was able to obtain twenty-eight pro-Webster amid briefs representing at least forty-one distinct groups and twenty-two anti-Webster briefs, representing more than a hundred groups and ad hoc committees...
...Any other basis for equality is dangerously fragile and sure to break under the weight of the demands for even more privilege by the already privileged...
...In 1967 the late Bishop William Curtis, an advisor to the Family Life Bureau, advised that prolife activists ought to cooperate "with our welfare institutions that provide shelter, education, counseling, and future opportunity for the unwed mother...
...They successfully argued the point that pre-Roe state laws restricting abortion, dating from the nineteenth century, had as a primary purpose the defense of fetal life which doctors even then knew should be considered a continuum that began not at quickening but at conception...
...An all-male hierarchy and historic resistance to democratic revolutions have made the Catholic church, and especially the bishops, a central component of the deep and divisive conflict over legal abortion...
...To be sure, women's service groups were also represented on pro-Webster briefs, but they too owe their existence to the abortion controversy...
...Prolife arguments rarely receive a respectful hearing in those circles...
...Others might use it as a model...
...and she is offered the easy way out, the quick-fix cover-up abortion...
...A major cultural responsibility is to keep vital for future generations the core principle that the good society protects all humans, not because they meet changing criteria of merit or worth, but simply because they, like us, are human beings...
...This bill would reduce those abortions motivated by severe eco nomic hardship and would provide the prenatal medical care and nutrition that needy pregnant women need...
...Indeed, of the more than forty groups who signed briefs supporting Webster, fewer than 20 percent were prolife groups cited in the Encyclopedia...
...This suggests the need for still further evolution in the prolife movement and the role of the American Catholic church...
...For example, the American Academy of Medical Ethics, the American Association of Prolife Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Association of Pro-Life Pediatricians all exist to dissent from the prochoice positions of larger professional organizations...
...Many also know the church's reasons are based on its conviction that fetal life is human life, and that any direct attack on it is intrinsically evil...
...Such a development might in time bring prolife placards to the poorest parts of American cities protesting the closing of hospitals and cuts in the WIC program, which provides food vouchers to expectant and new mothers and young children who are at high risk for malnutrition...
...The Birthright brief, for example, explained that "Birthright has always viewed abortion on demand not as an act of 'choice,' but as an act of despair on the part of women...
...Birthright, Feminists for Life of America, Women Exploited by Abortion, the National Association of Prolife Nurses, and Carol Everett's "Let Me Live," all signed pro-Webster briefs...
...Thus, the most lethal post-Webster challenge for the prolife movement is to resist the cultural acceptance of such an assumption...
...The church can only join others and offer wise suggestions that might lead toward protecting the dignity of all humans, including the unborn...
...The briefs clearly show that opposition to Roe is by no means limited to Roman Catholicism...
...The Feminists for Life brief argued that "the killing of preborn children on demand cannot logically be promoted by those insisting on equality for themselves...
...If the prolife movement is not to be painted into a corner by its opponents as mainly an antiwoman, anti-abortion movement-and I think making clear that the movement to restrict abortion is prolife is a primary post-Webster role for the church-the church must succeed in making better known, first to Catholics and then to the wider public, that support of the unborn is linked to the support of justice for women...
...Not surprisingly, about thirty population and family-planning organizations signed anti-Webster briefs, including the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, the Pathfinder Fund, the Population Council, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America...
...The linkage between the rights of the unborn and women's rights would be rejected for different reasons by many liberal and conservative politicians...
...An amicus curiae brief was signed by, among others, the American Jewish Congress, the Board of Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A...
...Pro-Webster briefs were submitted or cosigned by Agudath Israel, the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, Presbyterians Prolife, American Baptists Friends of Life, Southern Baptists for Life, Moravians for Life, United Church of Christ Friends for Life, the Task Force of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality, and the Christian Action Council...
...Most American elites do not regard legal abortion as a sign of moral decline, but of moral progress...
...The brief of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence warned that "for many battered women, the right to an abortion means the difference between being trapped permanently in a violent and abusive situation that victimizes herself and her children and having a chance to begin a new life...
...As does the Catholic tradition, the JUSTLIFE Education Fund itself prefers that states would be free to ban all abortions save those rare ones needed to save the life of the mother...
...In effect, the pro-Webster briefs argued about the past while anti-Webster briefs argued about the future...
...It would also stimulate new programs in areas without alternative services and provide state funds to match locally raised money for support programs for pregnant women...
...They might even represent the rough sort of social policy consensus on abortion that a pluralistic society.might now legitimately strive for, while keeping alive for better days the principle that each human life, including the unborn, possesses a singular worth...
...Thousands of volunteers contribute hundreds of thousands of hours of help and counseling...
...The Archdiocese of St...
...The brief submitted by Alabama Lawyers for the Unborn noted that by 1868 twenty-three states and six territories referred to the preborn child as a "child" in their statutes...
...Although it was probably not possible in the formative stages of the right-to-life movement, I think that now all Catholic prolife efforts should be linked with social justice ministries...
...the General Board of Church and Society-the United Methodist Church, the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, St...
...It is instructive to contrast these "anti-Webster" professional groups and ad hoc coalitions with the organizations and coalitions that signed briefs supporting Webster...
...More than a few also share the moral intuition that the use of abortion as a means of birth control weakens the notion throughout society that every human life is valuable simply because it is, not because it is wanted by someone else...
...A central feature of these briefs was an "ad hominem" argument against all those who seek some restrictions on legal abortion...
...A review in Media Monitor (October 1989) of coverage by the major TV networks, the New York Times, and the Washington Post of the period before the Supreme Court's decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (July 3,1989) showed few in-depth treatments of the controversy and a 5:3 bias in favor of quoting prochoice activists...
...They noted that more than one-third of all female-headed families are poor and that the poverty rate among female-headed minority famines is 50 percent...
...Unlike participation in the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement, participation in the prolife movement promises little applause from America's cultural elites...
...The evolving role of the institutional church has to be analyzed in light of this broadened opposition to Roe and the organizational autonomy of many prolife groups...
...The Planned Parenthood brief, for example, cautioned that "there is no promise and there should be no expectation that leaving abortion to the states will result in some acceptable 'compromise' of the conflict...
...In effect, many would like to retain a prolife morality and a prochoice law...
...From the beginning of the controversy over abortion, American Catholicism clearly acknowledged that women with unwanted pregnancies were more likely to forgo abortions if they received help before and after the birth of their child...
...A brief signed by seventy-seven Organizations Committed to Women's Equality expresses "great skepticism" about prolife sincerity because the prolife position requires "resurrecting archaic stereotypes about women...
...But to pretend that 1.6 million abortions a year in the U.S...
...Groups identified with advocacy for minority women also signed briefs opposing Webster...
...Almost everyone knows that the church teaches that all directly intended abortions are immoral...
...It is easy to see why many who are morally uneasy about abortion distance themselves from prolife activists-they seem out of step with American society...
...Dominant cultural institutions-academia, the arts, mainline religious groups, and the press-regard the prolife movement, at best, as an example of moral fundamentalism and, at worst, religious intolerance...
...Seventy-seven distinct women's groups entered briefs opposing the Missouri statutes at stake in Webster...
...Moreover, Catholic support for restrictive abortion laws has always been linked with support for more social justice for parents...
...In this respect, the Catholic church, with others, has a significant post-Webster cultural role to play...
...Friend of the court [amicus curiae] briefs allow groups not party to a case to offer legal opinions and arguments...
...A brief signed by congresswomen and men argues that "denying a right creates no broader horizon of personal freedom, no promise of a better way of life...
...By the 1980s, many Catholic dioceses had publicly declared that any woman who feels compelled to abort because of financial necessity or social isolation should call on diocesan resources for help...
...In fact, the church has not criticized abortion laws that did not explicitly deny the humanity of the fetus and which at least contained the possibility of evolving toward greater protection for the unborn...
...Essentially a pro-Webster stance urged the Court to return to the individual states the right to restrict abortion...
...Pro-abortion activist groups would contest the linkage...
...It should be noted that each anti-Webster brief assumed that equality for women could not be achieved without abortion...
...A POLITICAL CHALLENGE TO THE PROLIFE MOVEMENT TOWARD A POST-'WEBSTER' AGENDA JAMES R. KELLY It is tough for anyone to talk about abortion, but Catholics ran up against a particular difficulty that combines suspicion of their motives and bigotry toward the church...
...The archdiocese, through contributions to the "Lifeline Coalition" and Catholic Charities, provides over $1 million a year toward helping women who feel their only choice is abortion...
...They were joined by environmentalist groups such as the Sierra Club, WorldWatch, and Population-Environment Balance...
...Polls show public support for all these restrictions...
...The movement has developed its own leadership, its own finances, and even its own internal divisions...
...In a footnote, the brief of Alabama Lawyers for Unborn Children acknowledged that a restrictive abortion law "admittedly imposes a heavier immediate burden upon women than it imposes upon men...
...But apart from a Covenant House brief, the briefs contain no signatures from advocacy groups for minority women...
...An exhaustive survey of all the arguments made in each of the briefs is not possible...
...Louis Catholics for Choice, and five Episcopal bishops...
...Bills such as these would encourage women to bring their unwanted pregnancies to term rather than to abort them...
...an anti-Webster stance urged the Court to uphold Roe v. Wade, which has allowed easy access to abortion...
...The National Council of Negro Women, the National Urban League, the American Indian Health Care Association, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, and the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, among others...
...I think the vast majority of Americans, perhaps even most of those who support abortion, would be pleased to have the prolife movement keep alive the fundamental principle of the decent society-that all forms of human life possess intrinsic value-as long as it did not threaten the legality of abortion...
...Needless to say, an explicit linkage of the rights of women and the unborn in public policy and economic life raises questions about justice toward women in the church...
Vol. 117 • November 1990 • No. 20
