On Catholics and Democrats: Replies

...There are, after all, Republican gays, and blacks, and even feminists opposed to abortion, working-class people who care deeply about sexual, cultural, and religious issues as well as economic ones and who are "real," despite not meeting Pollitt's standards...

...Our diverse traditions—including nonreligious ones—have varying views about when that human life should be protected...

...A A s FOR Katha Pollitt: always bracing...

...So yes, I do have a litmus test, but it is precisely that there not be a Democratic Party litmus test...

...that is, even though I clearly support most of their social welfare and economic critiques, my qualms about abortion make me set those aside...

...On the contrary, today's popular culture is sexsaturated and the lives of adolescent and preadolescents are radically affected by it...

...She and I have always agreed that inDISSENT / Winter 2000 n 87 ARGUMENTS sofar as social and economic conditions cause some women to seek abortions, then it is the responsibility of all of us to work to change those conditions...

...Most of these people are probably more prosperous than their parents and perhaps, as E.J...

...Peter Laarman and Rosalind Petchesky deflect my argument by stating that I am the one insisting on an abortion litmus test...

...she suspects that I do not find the outcomes of abortion wholly benign...

...I would guess that several of the editors disagree with most of my piece and almost all of them with some of it...

...That many Catholics do not share that exact understanding does not mean that we do not think that there are better and worse reasons in the decision to seek an abortion, and that some of those decisions will fail the test of moral seriousness...

...Yes, there are better and worse reasons for having an abortion...

...This operative litmus test deforms our political life while undermining our ability to organize around all of those economic and social issues that might reduce the conditions that lead at least some women to have abortions...

...If we were to work our way backward from this, I doubt that Petchesky really thinks that all abortions are freely chosen...

...Dionne says, more likely to vote Republican...

...And they often fail, in the minds of many people, Catholics and others, precisely because they seem to be wholly dismissive of the value of the human fetus...

...Is it possible that the self-determination of young women and girls (and young men as well) is better assured by helping them to resist the image in popular culture of women primarily as sexual, and as sexual objects, as well as the multiple pressures to premature sexual activity...

...On the other hand, the bad guys: white male ward heelers, union bosses, clergy, corrupt mayors, "imaginary" working-class voting blocs, people who evince little or no interest in progressive values or programs, and nostalgic authoritarians like me...

...and that the party was willing to recruit such candidates in districts where an equally anti-abortion Republican would otherwise win...

...Does it build the kind of self-regard and self-esteem that we both agree are critical ingredients for young women in making their life choices about education, work, and family...

...On the one hand, the good guys: "feminists, gays, civil libertarians, blacks, liberals," and, oh yes, "real" working-class people...

...How does abortion function in our society...

...88 n DISSENT / Winter 2000...

...Almost no credible social or medical scientists can examine the outcomes (or lack thereof) precisely because approval of abortion is a litmus test not only for the Democratic Party, but for the university research world and the major media as well...

...If my essay did nothing else, I had hoped it would introduce a few questions about dichotomies like these...

...I also don't expect to convince Pollitt that I am not working to bring back a Chicago that never existed except in her imagination...

...They run soup kitchens and shelters, they work on affordable housing and housing preservation, living-wage jobs, suburban sprawl, community development, debt forgiveness, and environmental justice...

...Dionne agrees that "making abortion a litmus test is a mistake for either party...

...The closer to birth, the greater the level of protection—that view is reflected in legal restrictions on thirdtrimester abortions and in criminal convictions in the maiming or death of near-term babies...

...This is a key point, one where a useful political discussion is possible and to Democrats, like me, urgent...

...Yes, these were the mostly white, "old European ethnics," as Katha Pollitt styles them, but among the crowd were a contingent of Latinos and probably smaller groups of new immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and Vietnam...

...Do I have to quote the fund-raising letters and pseudo-surveys mailed out from the Democratic National Committee to show just how much the prochoice position is taken for granted as the mark of party faithfulness...

...Fetal life is human life...

...Only E.J...

...In case no one's noticed, we no longer live in a sexually repressed culture...

...But my essay made it clear how much I was willing to co-exist as a minority in a party largely supportive of Roe v. Wade if there were some minimum acknowledgment of concerns like mine...

...My own church can be described as virtually absolutist on this question, believing as it does that an individual human life is present and to be protected from the moment of conception...

...F F INALLY AND obviously, I agree with Dionne that abortion raises morally seri ous questions...

...Looking over the sell-out crowd, I couldn't help but think of the childhood world I described in the fall issue of Dissent...

...certainly some of them feel more strongly than that...

...She is right...

...Even so, that does not reduce the moral value of fetal life to nothing...

...Well, naturally I would like the Democratic Party to agree with me about abortion, as about health insurance, capital punishment, redistribution of wealth and income, and all the other things on which my respondents needlessly lecture me...

...Finally, Pollitt should be assured that no social democratic conspiracy lies behind my essay or Dissent's decision to publish it...

...I don't know whether these people feel politically homeless—my personal lament—or not...

...Me too...

...Orthodox Jewish tradition places such a high value on fetal life that only a threat to the mother's life—valued even more—justifies (indeed requires) abortion...

...Any surprise then at the abusive language she and I both hear on the bus or on New York City streets...

...These people too had probably been baptized Catholic and Democrat...

...Presumably all the respondents would agree that coercing an abortion is bad...

...Is it mere coincidence that Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, and Jesse Jackson all held, in varying degrees, reservations about abortion until they became potential national candidates...

...they too had probably grown up in a thick culture of family, church, and community...

...Petchesky challenges my underdeveloped thought...

...How is it at a time that we are becoming more sensitive, and rightly so, to the protection of animal life and endangered species, we can treat the life that comes from our own bodies so indifferently...

...Yes, abortions are down, but for a variety of reasons...

...86 n DISSENT / Winter 2000 Let me enlarge my original point then: given the congruence of this group's social- justice interests with traditional Democratic Party issues and, indeed, with much of the left, why should they, or any of us, put up with the fact that abortion, not housing, not welfare, not health care, is the litmus test for the Democratic Party...

...Still, as the evening's reports and awards emphasized, they had not forgotten where they came from—from families who were poor, often vulnerable, and frequently discriminated against...

...The larger point here: there are many unintended and unexamined consequences to unrestricted abortion and its intersection with a sexually permissive popular culture...

...For one thing, it gives men license to have sex without taking responsibility for the consequences— whether that be a woman's hope for a loving relationship or her decision to carry a pregnancy to term or not...

...And there are liberals, loyal liberals—in the case of those like me, Catholic liberals—who are being forced to the sidelines because of the Democrats' abortion litmus test...

...maybe their fathers had been staunch union members...

...ARGUMENTS And there is a Democratic litmus test, certainly at the national level...

...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS is the editor of Commonweal...

...We are barred from having these conversations precisely because the prochoice view is an absolute litmus test in those worlds—media, politics, and university— where we should be discussing them...

...I I N FACT, Roz Petchesky would like to see fewer abortions among very young women because she is concerned about "women's self-determination and health...

...What I assume is at work here is an editorial policy that lives up to the magazine's name, for which I am grateful...

...Her closing apocalyptic nightmare of a patriarchal, racist tyranny sounds terrifying, but isn't it really consoling—at least rhetorically...

...The party may have its rogue prolifers, but I doubt that many readers will find her description of a beleaguered prochoice constituency within its ranks plausible...

...But they manifestly care about the Democratic Party's lapses on welfare, housing subsidies, capital punishment, medical care coverage, and so on...

...Does pregnancy prevention in itself assure self-determination and control...

...I agree...

...less traditional forms of Judaism have extended this to the mother's health or well-being...

...SOME FOUR hundred people gathered recently to celebrate the social-justice work being done in the Archdiocese of Hartford...

...This may free "women of all ages and social situations . .. from fear of pregnancy" as she says, but does it give women, especially young ones, "a clear sense of control over their decisions [to be sexually active...

...After all, she can always get an abortion...

...I am skeptical...

...As for the local level, in New York, city and state, when more-or-less liberal Democrats (the kind I would like to support) compete in primaries, they regularly strive to prove who has hewed most undeviatingly to the prochoice standard...

...Pace Katha Pollitt's distress that a full 12 percent of Democratic representatives received low grades in the prochoice ratings of NARAL (just think of it12 percent...

...It is much simpler to imagine a world so dramatically divided...

...Indeed, I wonder how many of the women that Peter Laarman counsels feel that, at least in some measure, they have no choice but to "choose" an abortion...

...The other respondents implicitly or explicitly confirm not only that there is an abortion litmus test, but insist that there ought to be one...

...And as Catholics, many probably feel at least as ambivalent about abortion as Dionne describes "most Americans"—"uneasy with it morally...

...Among those reasons is, I believe, a small but growing sense of what is at stake in choosing abortion...

...When adolescents are sexually active, they should have contraceptives available...

...Katha Pollitt claims that I want the Democratic Party to "cater" to my "anything but" moderate views on abortion and that Democratic politicians are actually a bunch of weak-kneed Nellies on the issue...

...Don't poverty, lack of housing, abandonment compel some women to "choose" abortion...

...in fact, it is unconscionable...

...I would never expect to convince Pollitt or Petchesky of these views, but I think I am rais ing questions worthy of serious intellectual and political scrutiny...

...Of course, I acknowledged the racial and sexist failure of the Daley machine, but she seems to think that politics is about the recycling of grievances and waxing indignant, not the broadening of the Democratic Party's appeal...