Prof. Douglas Kmiec--a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Constitutional Law scholar who worked for President Reagan--has written a book about Barack Obama and the Catholic pro-life movement containing some very surprising, yet rational and compelling, conclusions that need to be shared with Catholic voters everywhere.
The book is called Can a Catholic Vote for Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama and it is available right now:
http://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Support-Asking-Questions-Barack/dp/159020204X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221139320&sr=8-1
To sum up, Prof. Kmiec believes that the legalistic approach to ending abortion--overturning Roe v Wade--isn't the most effective means for addressing the problem, because all it would accomplish is enabling individual states to decide the issue for themselves--and we know that many states would never ban abortions entirely (not that a ban would resolve the issue as a practical matter anyway).
Therefore, Prof. Kmiec thinks that pro-lifers should focus on ending the need for abortion--which is something that everyone, pro-life and pro-choice alike, can agree on. Supporting programs advocated by Barack Obama such as access to health care, education, living wage laws, etc. are the core of this much more effective, practical, and achievable approach.
Certainly this approach is one worth trying, especially against the larger backdrop of the far more Catholic-friendly environmental and social justice aspects of the Democratic Party platform. And it is long past time for people on both sides of the abortion issue to embrace this common ground in order to move forward.
I have quoted some of Prof. Kmiec's articles below, and at the end there are links to click on to read the articles in their entirety. These points are definitely something to consider for people who are troubled by the direction that Republicans are taking this country but who struggle with the abortion issue in the Democratic platform.
"To some of my fellow Catholics, Senator Obama's answers on abortion make him categorically unacceptable. I understand that view, respect it, but find it prudentially the second-best answer in 2008. Not because Senator Obama's position on abortion is mine; it is not. Not because I don't believe Senator Obama could improve the articulation of his position; he could, but because I believe that my faith calls upon me at this time to focus on new efforts and untried paths to reduce abortion practice in America. Senator Obama’s emphasis on personal responsibility, rather than legal bickering over potential Supreme Court nominations in my judgment, best moves this issue forward.
The Republican Party has had a better claim to be pro-life because of words in its platform supporting the overruling of Roe v. Wade. Roe is bad constitutional law, because it's not based on the Constitution or any tradition or custom implicit within its terms. Yet overturning the decision does little other than return the issue to the states. Conservative justice and fellow Catholic Antonin Scalia has pointed out that following Roe’s hypothetical demise, if the states want abortion thereafter all they have to do is pass a law in favor of it."
"If it’s a choice between giving a boost to the work of my fellow parishioners who week after week in thinly-funded, crisis pregnancy centers, open their minds and their hearts and often their homes to pregnant women (and Obama has spoken approvingly of faith-based efforts) and a Supreme Court Justice to be named later who may or may not toss the issue back to the states, I think I know which course is more effectively choosing life. As anyone who's ever had a conversation with a pregnant woman thinking about abortion knows, good, evenhanded information and genuine empathy and love save more children than hypothetical legal limits – which, as best as I can tell, have saved: well, zero."
http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=27820
http://www.slate.com/id/2184378/pagenum/all/
http://www.catholic.org/printer_friendly.php?id=27557§ion=Cathcom
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