I can't back Clinton A labor union leader protests the president's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Bill Yet, in conscience, he cannot support candidate Bob Dole He writes, "If we cannot reverse the current pressures threatening the absolute value of human life, we cannot ultimately succeed in the struggle for human rights and worker rights"
Joyce, John T
John T. Joyce I CAN'T BACK CLINTON A union leader consults his conscience For the first time in my life as a trade unionist, my personal convictions place me in conflict with the immediate...
...When there can be no reasonable doubt that the life of an unborn human being is at stake, we must draw a line—or else we lose our moral authority to act to protect human life, and the quality of that life, when it is threatened elsewhere...
...Another alternative might be for the president and the Democrats who support him to introduce their own bill— one which bars abortion after the first trimester and narrowly limits the exceptions to those situations where the risk to the mother's life is raised to unacceptable levels or where there is a sound medical determination that the child in the mother's womb cannot survive...
...To be fair, I don't see any evidence to support such a charge...
...The feminist vote was not likely to shift to Dole...
...Yet, many who profess to be opposed to abortion are also opposed to funding alternatives to abortion and to measures that would reduce the economic pressures pushing many women to seek abortions...
...If I am correct in concluding that the president followed his conscience on this issue, then he set a good example for the rest of us regardless of where we stand on this difficult question...
...An exception for "health," of course, is another way of permitting abortion-on-demand...
...I said at the outset that for the first time in my life I find myself in a position where my personal convictions lead to a conflict with the interests of the working people I represent...
...If the veto stands, which is likely, and if the Democrats and the White House don't come up with an adequate bill of their own, then I continue as a person without a party...
...John T. Joyce I CAN'T BACK CLINTON A union leader consults his conscience For the first time in my life as a trade unionist, my personal convictions place me in conflict with the immediate economic needs of workers and the near-term institutional needs of unions...
...Against that reality, the arguments supporting abortion based on the notion that only independently viable life should be protected by law are chilling sophistries, and the argument based on "choice" is inane drivel...
...If the presidential race should close up, the hired guns of the Dole campaign and like-minded "independent" political action groups will have no trouble blowing the president out of the sky on this veto...
...I realize that abortion is a philosophically subtle issue...
...If not now, when...
...With a Republican in the White House there will be no one to veto that legislation...
...Furthermore, as an integral part of the presidential and congressional campaigns, the Republican party has already launched a major and vicious attack on trade unions in the guise of attacking trade union leaders...
...The society that says it's "O.K...
...Indeed, many who share my views on abortion will nonetheless conclude that Bill Clinton is the "lesser of the evils...
...For the first time in my political life, I am a person without a candidate...
...I have therefore been opposed to criminalizing abortions in the early stages of pregnancy...
...The ban on partial-birth abortions would have outlawed a particularly gruesome procedure customarily performed late in pregnancy...
...Because this issue is so highly charged, some have accused the president of vetoing the bill for "political reasons" as part of his reelection strategy...
...But that's true only at the most superficial level, for the struggle against abortion and against economic exploitation is really the same struggle...
...Human life" doesn't happen at a specific moment, but rather is something that develops and evolves—the fetus becomes increasingly human during the early stages of pregnancy...
...In any event, throwing the issue back to Congress simply isn't good enough—it looks and feels like a way of ducking the moral question...
...While I do not know exactly where that line should be, the abortions permitted by the president's veto are well beyond it...
...to dump workers on the economic trash heap by importing goods made by exploited labor abroad...
...It seems true to me that there is no sure way to know exactly when embryonic life becomes specifically human...
...For me, the question is "If not here, where...
...It is more likely that some who were solid supporters of the president, and a lot of people who were tilting toward him, will now either shift to Dole or sit on their hands in November...
...While I respect this conclusion, it is not one I can share...
...In short, the veto was a very high-risk, very low-gain gamble...
...A Republican victory, I fear, will result in a further polarization along racial and economic lines of an already dangerously split society...
...Clinton has violated that tenet...
...He has made it clear that protection of the mother's ability to bear children in the future is one of his concerns...
...I accept the large element of uncertainty built into this view, yet because we are dealing with human life, I think the only prudent conclusion is to act on the presumption that human life begins at conception...
...Furthermore, if those of us in trade unions are right on occupational safety and health concerns, on the need for full employment, a living wage, and adequate health care, then opposition to these measures raises questions of life and death, and of the nature of the life that we live in this society, in much the way that abortion does...
...My dilemma begins with Clinton's April veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Bill...
...However, if I support someone who does not take every step humanly possible to prevent abortions, I practically condone such actions, and, to some degree, become complicit in the act of killing unborn human beings...
...But surely we can draw a line somewhere...
...In short, I can no longer support President Bill Clinton's bid for reelection...
...to kill unborn humans because they are handicapped or inconvenient, the society that euthanizes the old because they are uneconomical, is the same society that says it's "O.K...
...Despite the mawkish and manipulative White House veto ceremony, despite the intellectually vapid rationale offered for the veto, the president deserves credit for the courage of his convictions, such as they are...
...Second, Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Bill permits an unborn child to be killed even though the mother's life is not at risk...
...Indeed, on the face of it, the veto is a net loser for the president...
...The courts have already ruled that "health" includes such conditions as emotional stress...
...In my view, the president had the "right reasons"—in the sense that they were reasons of conscience rather than political expediency—for doing the wrong thing...
...A former fighter pilot once told me that the most important principle drummed into him during his training was "Never allow yourself to get into a position from which you cannot recover...
...At the same time, I also recognize that pervasive and persistent pressures for abortion come from a consumer culture which places the highest apparent value on self-gratification, a culture increasingly desensitized to violence, a culture more and more disposed to favor economic considerations over human considerations—in short, a culture deeply hostile to traditional religious belief...
...In such a culture moral confusion abounds, and it is easy for me to believe that a woman in the early stages of pregnancy can arrive at a morally correct decision for her to abort an unborn infant...
...It says in one place that the president opposes abortion-on-demand, and in another place that the decision is up to the mother, her doctor, and God...
...Dole has promised his an-tiunion backers that he would introduce a national "Right to Work" law in this session of Congress, and he and most of his Republican colleagues are trying to repeal the Davis-Bacon law, even as they try to bring back company unions through the "Team Act...
...This would eliminate the "risk to life" standard set by the current bill and render the bill meaningless...
...In other words, according to the press release the president supports all sides of the argument...
...It seems to me that a religious or morally responsible person might leave judgments on those acts to God...
...If the Republicans retain control of Congress, they will pass antiunion legislation that will make the Taft-Hartley Act look like the Magna Carta...
...The bill allowed the procedure to be used if needed to save the life of the mother, but Clinton insisted that that exception be broadened to include the mother's health...
...John T. Joyce is the president of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsworkers and a vice-president of the AFL-CIO Executive Council...
...At the most fundamental level, the future depends on the value that society places on every human person...
...The president responds that he means "serious" threats to the mother's health, but given the inherent risks in pregnancy—despite advances in medical science and practice— what "serious" threats does he have in mind that would not place the mother's life at risk...
...An issue this complicated and this emotional is too volatile to predict politically, and the president was bound to be hurt no matter what he did...
...There is no question that human life is taken in the abortions banned by the Partial-Birth Abortion Bill.The medical testimony before Congress outlining in devastating detail the body contortions and expressions of pain on the face of the partially delivered baby as it is killed by the doctor make that fact hauntingly evident...
...But just as I cannot in conscience support the president, neither could I support Bob Dole...
...Considering what is at stake in the forthcoming election, the reasons for doing nothing and saying nothing about Clinton's abortion policy are many and obvious, but none of them squares with my conscience, or my sense of why I do what I've been doing over the years...
...to cut real wages or safety conditions to save a couple of pennies on a shirt, or a couple of bucks on a car or a house—or to make a small number of incredibly rich people even richer...
...That same society is even close to saying that working people are not entitled to band together to secure a voice in determining their wages, hours, and the conditions under which they will work...
...This, however, gives us the moral absurdity of killing one child in order for the mother to bear another...
...If we cannot reverse the current pressures threatening the absolute value of human life, we cannot ultimately succeed in the struggle for human rights and worker rights...
...Protecting workers' rights in this country and abroad is really just a part—in my view the most vital part, but nonetheless just a part—of the larger struggle to advance human rights generally...
...The president has thus far indicated only that he would "work" with Congress if the legislature came up with a bill that permitted partial-birth abortions necessary to protect the mother's health...
...A Republican sweep—with the subsequent appointment of Republican federal policy makers, regulators, and judges— will continue the erosion in real earnings of working people, further the deterioration of job and safety conditions, and damage the already imperiled collective bargaining process...
...This perception is reinforced by the White House press release on the president's veto...
...So I see no reason to challenge the president's sincerity on this issue...
...I've already resigned as co-chairman of the Labor Advisory Council to the Democratic National Committee...
...As a consequence, the kindest political service his fellow Democrats in Congress can now perform for the president is to override his veto...
...In the aftermath of Clinton's veto, two things are clear to me as someone who has spent his life in the union movement: First, the election of Bob Dole as president and the return of a Republican Congress will be ruinous for working people...
...That same society increasingly says it's "O.K...
...I have reached this decision not because I agree with the Supreme Court's reasons for its Roe v. Wade ruling, but because I simply do not believe our criminal justice system is capable of making the very fine moral distinctions involved in so many early-term abortions...
...The president knew that in vetoing the bill he was creating some new enemies for himself and giving enemies old and new an issue with enormous potential for energizing a chunk of swing voters against him in key states, especially among Catholic ethnics...
...The first conclusion demands that I vigorously work for the reelection of Clinton and Vice-President Albert Gore, along with the election of senators and representatives—whether Republican or Democrat—who are not simply flunkies of business interests...
Vol. 123 • July 1996 • No. 13
