In his much-anticipated commencement address at the University of Notre Dame yesterday, Barack Obama tried to take the middle ground in a debate where the opposing views are irreconcilable. He said so himself.
There’s no solution to the abortion debate; there are only ways of trying to take the heat out of the debate. Obama appealed to each side to respect those with differing views.
It’s a big ask. Every Saturday morning a dozen or more pro-life activists picket the local Planned Parenthood building down the street. They shout at the cars going in and out, pray fervently and try to be nice to passers-by.
“They are killing babies in there today”, one man said as we walked by. Another protester, now gone, preferred: “Mommy, Mommy, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me”.
By showing disrespect for the President those who interrupted Obama broke a powerful taboo. The three or four hecklers were vigorously shouted down by the huge crowd. They chanted “Yes we can”, even though most were probably pro-life. But trashing the President is not on.
Before the event a number of demonstrators were arrested, including Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff known as “Roe” in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. She is now an anti-abortion activist.
Winning over McCorvey was a victory for pro-lifers. In recent days they have had another. A Gallup poll found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans describe themselves as “pro-life” — 51% versus 42% who describe themselves as “pro-choice” — a big turnaround from a year ago when the numbers ran 44% to 51% the other way.
As most of those who have shifted are Republicans, the poll figures suggest taking a stronger stance against abortion is a way of protesting against Obama’s election victory.
Pro-lifers have an endless list of complaints against Obama, including appointing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. Both are unforgivably pro-choice, as are dozens of other appointments.
Former neo-con House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a recent convert to Catholicism, questioned Notre Dame’s Catholic credentials. For those who see the world this way, abortion is a marker of a wider cultural rift. A Vatican Archbishop objected to the university honouring a man “who is so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda”.
For American conservatives it is not possible to be both pro-choice and pro-family. Yet Barack and Michelle Obama are a model of the perfect modern family. They make monogamy and responsible parenthood look cool. That ought to translate into fewer abortions.
Thank you for a measured well written article clive.
“Former neo-con House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a recent convert to Catholicism…. ”
Ewww almost enough to turn me anglican!
I heard part of President Obama’s speech to Notre Dame on ABC radio this morning, he really is impressive, I also heard the enthusiastic response he got from the presumably Catholic audience, it seemed to me to be much more than polite applause.
While a surprising number of intelligent friends are Catholic converts, though not as many as those lapsed and more, I sense a desire amongst a lot of thinking Catholics, if not other pro-lifers, for an escape from the rigid abortion-is-murder view that the Church has been forcing down their throats all their lives as almost the last shibboleth designed to shore up the sheep (or is it the goats?) in an indefensibly archaic institution. So, how about this:
The reason for accepting the non-utilitarian moral position of the Church on abortion (and certainly on the extreme protection-of-the-micoscopic blastocyst line) is that the Church conveys the will of God. If God didn’t care there wouldn’t be a moral position to take on the issue: it would be as open to individual preference as whether to say g’day to your most disliked person. But the evidence is entirely in favour of God not caring at all about the subject. Is he not Omniscient and does He not care enough about us to give us guidance as in the 10 Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, if not Mahomet also and the Early Fathers amongst other contestable candidates? If you don’t believe that then you are clearly not a Christian and can hardly be expected to abide by the Pope’s rules – or those of the Bible as interpreted by anyone.
So, what evidence have we the Great Rational Creator Communicator (who loves us and cares what we do) cares any more about the about-to-be-aborted than he does about the millions which are spontaneously aborted, or at all? Nothing said to the Hebrews except to protect the patriarch’s property in his wives’ pregnancies against damage. Nothing said by Jesus. The most authoritative Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas relied on Aristotle’s errors of the 4th century BC to say that male foetuses “quickened” (i.e. received souls and thereby became human persons) 40 days after conception, femal foetuses after 90 days. This error persisted in the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 100 years ago.
It follows that God doesn’t care about the issue. If the Popes had it right then God’s rule would have to have been “you shall not destroy anything which, according to the scientific knowledge available to the Church from time to time, is fully equipped with what it takes to grow into a human being” which is obviously absurd. Hence, God simply doesn’t care, and, since we are all, no matter our ethnicity, equally part of God’s creation his failure to give clear instructions to Buddhists, Hindus, animists, Zoroastrians, people deprived of religion under Lenin and Mao etc. is also totally inconsistent with His caring about this issue which has been got up to rouse the passion for unity with others that requires obsessional defiance of reason.
Try that on a cerebrally capable Christian and see how he or she can wriggle out of it.
The hecklers’ issue has to be with Obama or with Notre Dame, not Obama at Notre Dame. As a 17 year old uni student I was part of a protest against Jeff Kennett speaking at my uni. We kept it outside for the time he was arriving and didn’t seek to disrupt the speech itself. People get passionate about issues, but when they seek to disrupt free speech they don’t deserve to be heard. Boycott, stage a protest away from the event, write up a ferocious web-page, there are ways to get your message across such that people listen to it and understand it. Disrupting a speech by an invited VIP makes you look like a clown. It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way on occasion myself.
It is not the abortion debate per se which is the oxygen which creates the heat in the abortion debate. It is the notion of the catholics, that not only is their view the word of God, it is there God given right and in fact obilgation to prosletise the Word and force their pernicious beliefs on to the rest of us. The most manifest demonstration of of such thinking was the Inquisition.
At the heart of all this is the rather unique idea that the interpretion of the Word can only be made by one man at the head of the church and that no other persons view can have any validity.
The power of the Pope parrallels the power of God. It would seem that it’s OK for God in his omnipotence to allow (or perhaps cause) spontaneous abortion, but it’s not OK for us humans. THAT is what the debate is really all about. Power. And of course only the Pope knows the mind of God.
It is not the people who either believe that abortion is OK or believe that whilst abortion is not for them, they will not impose their views on others who turn the debate into the unedifying spectacle that it has become.