Man Bites Blog

I try to understand.

I understand that Commonweal thinks that abortion is used too often as a dividing issue, and that they are generally supportive of President Obama and health care reform. I don’t even know that they are altogether incorrect about those positions.

Still, I would kind of expect a magazine with a Catholic identity to occasionally let it slip that the current culture around abortion is not a good thing. But you won’t find it in the current editorial on health care reform and abortion, which refers to abortion opponents as if they were odd aliens from another culture. It refers to the US as “a nation where access to abortion is a constitutional right” without pausing to consider whether it should be considered as such. It acknowledges that, “Any direct funding of abortion by the federal government would be a catastrophic political mistake,” but leaves unsaid whether that is because it would be harmful on its face, or because it would give the GOP a talking point.

All in all, if you took away the masthead, this editorial could have probably been published by Planned Parenthood without much protest from their membership.. Some Commonweal readers might see this as a positive sign of common ground; I see it as the salt losing its flavor.

I also have to take issue with the conclusion:

If those on either side of this conflict insist on using health-care reform to further their own agenda-either to expand access to abortion or to further restrict it-they will not only damage the health of the nation as a whole, they will discredit their own cause as well.

Reading this, one would think that pro-lifers were waiting in the shadows and thought, “Aha! — we’ll use health care reform to further our agenda.” Also, I thought that this was what Commonweal Catholics thought the pro-life should be doing — simultaneously expanding access to necessary government services, and curtailing the culture’s abortion license. To Commonweal, are there any circumstances under which it is appropriate to move to restrict abortion?

That the editorial goes for a false balance is bad enough, but the wording — “either to expand access to abortion or to further restrict it” — gives the idea that there already quite enough restrictions on abortion, thank you very much, and heaven knows we don’t need more, especially in the midst of a health care debate!

Commonweal has been know to express grave concern that bishops’ statements about abortion might lead some to conclude they are supporting the GOP. In that same spirit, I express concern that if Commonweal continues to write articles in which they distance themselves from those opposed to the current abortion regime and are indistinguishable from a Planned Parenthood press release, some might draw the conclusion that the don’t give a damn about the unborn.

For an example of how one can support President Obama, health care reform, and the unborn, see Micheal Sean Winters here.

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