Dear Democratic Catholics

Dear Democratic Catholics by MSW.  MGB: Those Catholics who were uncomfortable with racial justice have long ago left for the Republican Party.  They have not been Democrats for quite some time.

Abortion is an electoral issue, not a governmental issue.  Roe v. Wade took away most of the power state governments have on this issue and that is a good thing.  We need one national policy.  We do not need to repeat the antebellum mistake of abortion states and non-abortion states.  Talk of overturning Roe to allow that to happen is not helpful, because doing so would gut much in the way of equal protection and privacy protection - which although the bishops don't like those things either - the rest of us do.  The idea that the majority can criminalize birth control, adultery or sodomy is anathema to a free society.

There are two ways to extend civil rights to the unborn.  One is by constitutional amendment - which sounds like you are doing something but is really nothing but a bumper sticker because there are too many "pro-choice" states for such an amendment to ever pass.  The other is a federal statute to do so.  Most Democrats would welcome a second trimester ban with life and health objections (with health applying only to those cases where the fetus has not chance of surviving pregnancy), largely because it would end the issue.  A first trimester ban protecting embryos is much more complicated - because it would not simply make abortion a banned medical procedure but homicide.  That sounds good until you consider that it would also make those embryos doomed to miscarry legal persons as well.  Accommodations to exempt such cases from the law would either do violence to equal protection or would make any ban functionally useless.  The reason there is no such law is because in 39 years the brightest minds in the pro-life movement have not figured out how to word them and bring forth a real bill.  Until they do, Catholic politicians and Democratic voters are under no obligation to support it.

Oh, twinning is possible until gastrulation, which means birth control bans are not necessary and the whole Religious Freedom argument comes down to an opinion on the sexual morality of employees - not to life issues.  Zygotes need not be protected. Post-gastrulation embryos can be, morally - but again - the empowerment of the state to do so is problematic.  Do you really want to give society the police power to interview parents who have taken their daughter on vacation to Europe or Canada on the rumor that she was pregnant when she left but no longer is?

The answer is not merely to fund crisis pregnancies - or even to provide more support for Downs families.  It is to support a full on guaranteed income for families so that no child need even be adopted out by a pregnant teen.  Most teens would rather abort than give their children away.  While that is not rational, it does happen. Catholic infertile couples can use IVF like everyone else.  It does not kill embryos, just zygotes that are not yet individual lives.  Catholic family services has been seen by many as legalized kidnapping for a while.  We should do everything to stop that impression.  Entire families should be fostered and Catholic adopters should give up their infant fetish and adopt older kids who have been orphaned.  There are surely plenty of those.

It would actually be quite the challenge to get Catholic Democrats to buy into an economic justice agenda they should support anyway - a living family wage - irregardless of its impact on abortion.  The bishops should buy into that too - and lead by example by paying such a wage.  Until the do, there concern for the unborn rings hollow.  What matters is not purifying the law, but actually having results that reduce abortions, the need for birth control and even the need for Natural Family Planning - which is still a cop-out to the denial by modern society of the right to be as fertile as one is called to be by God, with economics never being a concern.