Abortion in PA?

The Catholic blogsphere lit up over the announcement by the NRLC that the HHS has approved a plan that uses the new healthcare bill to fund abortions in a state plan in PA. Jill Stanek has more details as to why this is a concern.

Catholics of a more liberal persuasion accuse NRLC of dishonesty, citing an HHS statement issued about 12 hours after the story broke.

Given that the HHS, according to the PA Insurance Commissioner, approved the plan it would seem one of three things has occurred here:

a. HHS had no idea that this plan had abortion funding as broadly as specified in the PA plan. They issued a clarification that regardless of what the plan says aboriton won't be covered except for the provisions listed (rape, incest).

2. HHS tried to get the plan through and got caught. Now they are retracting.

d. The plan never had provisions for funding in the first place.

I find a. and 2. more likely (a being the front runner). It will be interesting to see if PA revises it's plan after this dustup.

Out of the Silent Continent

Comes a story about the pro-life movement in Brussels

The light of God shines even in the darkest of places.

On violence, war and abortion

My friend Matthew Carlin asked me the following question (his question reproduced here with his permission):

I have one question about the entire thing, and I ask this in all openness and
all seriousness, because it's been on my mind for almost a decade:At the rate
things are changing, will it ever be worth civil war to you?

This continues a long string of conversations we've had over the years regarding the state of the country. Given the anger felt by the majority of the people during the Iraq War and now this debate over healthcare, it only makes sense to ponder such questions.
Even more so is the pertinent question regarding abortion. If abortion is truly the heinous crime that pro-life advocates insist it is, why are the pro life groups not taking up arms in defense of the unborn? Shouldn't the call to arms be issued, like the Germans should have during the Holocaust?

Catholic teaching on the matter of just war are clear on the requirements necessary for a war to be just:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous
consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous
conditions of moral legitimacy.
At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than
the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very
heavily in evaluating this condition.

It is hard to imagine circumstances that would justify the conditions for a civil war given the above. Self defense is the only circumstance I can think of, and even then the justification for taking another's life in self defense against the government creates a host of issues to work through.

Regarding abortion it is even more difficult to justify using violence considering the situation. One only needs to look at the murder of George Tiller to see the problem.
1. The intent was to murder George Tiller. Defending the unborn was not at issue.
2. The death of Tiller would not end the abortions at his clinic. Someone has stepped in to take his place. Legitimate defense is not an option under these circumstances.
3. George Tiller's life is just as valuable as those he murdered in the womb. The witness of the truth of the dignity of every human being is undermined by using violence to attempt to stop the killing.

Because abortion is the front and center moral issue facing this country (as slavery was in the past) it is often at the forefront of any debate, from judicial nominees to health care. But we must be careful to distinguish between the moral and the political, even when they overlap as in health care. Purely political reasons do not justify violence, even when policies strike at the core of a country's founding principles. And even when the issue is moral, the bar for using violence is very high. So much so that right now it is impossible for me to see how violence would be justified. Though if one thing is certain, the evil of abortion could provide inspiration.

Single issue voters

For those of us who stand up for the rights of the unborn, we are often accused of being "single issue voters." This term is used in a derogatory fashion. It basically means that prolife folks are so focused on abortion to the exclusion of other social justice concerns.

I am therefore enamored by the extent to which the current health care bill proponents support and defend it with almost single-minded focus. Objections to the bill are dismissed as being tangential.

*Inadequate conscience rights - not important
*Funding of abortion through CHCs - irrelevant
*Constitutional concerns - pfft!
*Budget issues - poor people are dying!1!!1
*Rationing of care - "death panels.....sure"

Indeed the concerns that a variety of people have concerning the the current bill from a number of perspectives are dismissed if not denigrated as being uncaring about the poor.

As this is written proponents are undermining the validity of the "single issue voter problem" by promoting a bill that has a variety of problems, under the guise of being "too important" to be hampered by such trivialities as funding the murder of unborn children.

I guess it depends on which issue you "single out."

The Civil War really was about slavery (who knew?)

In my youth I learned that the Civil War was about slavery. That Abe Lincoln and the North fought to free the slaves from the South. It was a nice tale.

Then in my sophisticated youth (as sophisticated as a teenage boy can be anyway) I learned that the Civil War was about states' rights. That the North and South disputed the amount of sovereignty that the federal government had. Slavery was there, but on the peripheral.

I wonder how much of my sophisticated view is true though? As Catholics, we are called to see that this world is as much a struggle about good and evil as it is about practical things. Slavery was always an issue. It nearly cost us the country, and because of it this country faced the bloodiest war in American history.

As a political conservative I happen to believe in state sovereignty. The South did as well. But in its quest to hold on to a horrendous evil, the South used state sovereignty as a legal shield. They tried every means to hold on to this evil, and in the end lost everything. Their homes, their local authority, even the slavery that they fought to protect, their "pecurliar institution and cherished way of life."

I can't help but think of how the health care reform debate would have gone had not the main proponents had not insisted on the horrible evil that is abortion. The proponents of health care reform insisted on including abortion funding despite 76% of the country not wanting it. In what appears to be the end, the proponents have lost their super-majority, the debate, and even the abortion funding.

It is true that there were other factors contributing to the defeat of the health care bill, but I can't help but wonder if, just like in the Civil War with slavery, that abortion was ultimately the downfall of the bill. The Church's Social Justice teaching holds that any compromise on the right to life under the guise of "social justice" becomes a lie, and ultimately fails to further the cause of social justice. It appears to me that we have a very clear case that trying to advance "universal health care" by sacrificing the unborn has only served to undermine that goal.

This is not to say that this country doesn't need health care reform. But as the South did by using a real principle (states' rights) as a means to preserve a great evil, so too have the abortion advocates used the real need for health care financing reform as a means to advance a great evil. And in doing so accomplished neither.

Sotomayor Saga

The nomiation and installment of Sotomayor appears to be all but certain. Her confirmation hearings have pretty much followed normal, and aside from her having a complete meltdown it looks like she will become a Supreme Court justice.

The net effect basically is that she is replacing a liberal and abortion supporter on the court. Therefore in the numbers game the pro-life movement hasn't lost any ground. She may be more supportive of abortion than her predecessor, but this doesn't matter much in the long run I believe.

This is not to say that this isn't a travesty. Abortion is such an abhorent crime that I have trouble believing that we even have to have a discussion about why it should be illegal. My only point is that those who fight for the lives of the unborn seem to have resigned themselves and are saving for the next fight, which I think is wise.

A minor point. I have often heard Obama and Sotomayor referred to as "baby-killers." I think this is a mistake. Neither of them have actually forced the death of unborn children. They simply fight to allow mothers to slaughter their children. They are not the ones killing children. It is the average American citizen who is doing the killing. Call a spade a spade, but make sure the label applies.