Man Bites Blog

Coming from this discussion, here’s one way to think about voting and the election:

Supposed a bus route is proposed that would be a great help to some poor community.  The proposed bus route would also happen to go by an abortion clinic, making it much easier for many people to take advantage of its services, and it is a moral certainty that more people would do so.

What level of moral cooperation does someone who advocates for this bus route, with full knowledge of the incremental abortions, have for them?

As strange as it is to base it on external factors, I think a lot of it has to do with how it is proposed.  If it is named something like “The Planned Parenthood Express” and the inclusion of the abortion clinic is a prominent feature in almost every pitch for it, then it would be hard to justify supporting it.    If the emphasis is on getting folks to their jobs (at locations other than the abortion clinic), then not.

Of course, this opens the door to some mischief.  Advocates of embryonic research always stress the “cure” side of the proposition, not the embryo-destructive side.  Advocates for torture stress saving a major US city, not the infliction of pain.

The difference is that the the good part is dependent on the bad part.  I can’t get cures from embryonic research without destroying embryos.  I can’t save the city without terrorizing the captive.

But my proposed bus route could provide the hoped-for benefit even if nobody ever uses it to procure an abortion.  So I can will that the bus route be established and help folks get to work without willing that there be more abortions.  (Though if the economic viability of the route is dependent on people using it to get to the abortion clinic….)

Part of why I decided I could not vote for the Kerry/Edwards ticket is that they made embryonic research a main issue of their campaign — with Ron Reagan’s convention speech and the “Chris Reeve will walk” nonsense.  It was difficult not to see a vote for them as a vote for more embryo-destructive research.

It will be interesting to see how this campaign develops.

The pro-life’s political strategy is, and has been, as follows:

1. Elect pro-life (i.e. Republican) presidents.
2. Ensure those presidents appoint “strict constructionists” (wink, wink) to the Supreme Court.
3. Hope those justices will overturn Roe v. Wade

So far, this strategy has benefitted the Republican Party more than is has the unborn.  Which is not an indictment in and of itself, so long as it’s not at the expense of the unborn.

But my question is — is there any precedent, positive or negative, for those advocating a change concentrating on the makeup of the Supreme Court?

Other movements have successfully focussed on court battles — the current movement for same-sex marriage is an example; the civil rights movement is another.

But I’m not aware of any movement that had such a strong focus on the makeup of the court.  I don’t recall same sex marriage advocates making judicial appointments a big issue in gubernatorial races, for example.  Indeed, more than half of the justices who established same sex marriage in California and Massachusetts were appointed by Republicans.

What this says to me is that judicial opinions track more with elite opinion than they do with the politics of the person who made the appointments.  The current of elite, if not popular, opinion is in favor of same sex marriage.  In such an environment, it is inevitable that the courts will rule for it, no matter how much whining conservatives do about activist judges.

Some might say this isn’t inevitable.  There are some legal minds who will buck the current conventions, like Antonin Scalia.  Perhaps Republican presidents can find enough of these contrarian thinkers to populate the court and overturn Roe v. Wade.

Maybe.  But such a decision would face a difficult road to acceptance if elite opinion continues to favor a constitutional right to abortion.  Yes, all reversing Roe v. Wade would do is allow states to pass restrictions on abortion, but it wouldn’t be seen that way.

It also seems a bit unsavory.  It would be like the Boston Celtics focussing almost exclusively on influencing who the officials will be in their upcoming series against the Lakers, rather than working on their game and planning for their opponents. 

Yes, the judges play a large role here, and they may have taken a larger role than they should, but I fear that by focussing so much on the judges, we’re forgetting about making our case.

The reality of a Yale art student repeatedly impregnating herself, then using abortificient drugs to induce miscarriage is obviously repulsive and must be opposed.

But, like “Roe for men,” as a thought experiment, as Ross Douthat notes, it raises some troubling questions for the pro-choice movment:

• Is there anything wrong with what she is doing?
• Shoud it be illegal?
• If so, why is it worse than abortion and the use of abortificient drugs in general?
• Would you be willing to provide the artist the drugs to carry out her exhibit?  Should all pharmacists be legally required to do so, regardless of their views on this exhibit? 
• If the problem is creating embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them, how is this different from “theraputic” cloning?

Then there is the point that it puts the ugliness of abortion in full display.  This could play out like Super Size Me for abortion.

Again, the actual execution of such an exhibit would be an abomination because of the wanton destruction of life.  But in theory, there are worse things.

 UPDATE:  Then, of course, there is the idiocy of publishing a post with a typo in the title (since corrected).

Expanding on my post below, I think part of why I find Obama’s exteme but respectful position more appealing (or less repulsive) than a more moderate but intolerant position is that if Obama is elected, it would signal the end of, “you’re an extremist” being a winning argument.  It would be impossible to deny that Obama is an extremist on the pro-choice side, now we can have an honest argument over whether the fetus is a person, and whether it is worthy of protection.

That is a debate I believe the pro-life side can win.  I do not believe that the pro-life side can win an argument based on who is more moderate or less of an extremist.  

Again, I could be deluding myself, but I think the cultural landscape with Obama as president would be more receptive to the pro-life point of view than the current one.

Or I could be wrong, and with the pro-choice movement having a popular and articulate leader, more people move over to that camp.

As a pro-lifer, Obama’s votes and stated policies obviously give me pause.  His record is that of an extremist on the issue, voiting against things like the “born alive” act in Illinois, which passed in the US Senate by a 98-0 margin, criticizing the Supreme Court for not fining a constitutional right to partial-birth abortion, etc.  His position is much more extreme on this issue that politicians like John Kerry, the Carnahan family, or Claire McCaskill, whom I have rejected on the basis of the abortion issue, or his current opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Yet, if the election were held today, I would probably vote for Obama.  How could this be?

In part because in spite of his extreme position, Obama has not expressed contempt for the pro-life position.  This is in contrast to people like Andrew Sullivan, who have a more moderate position (if I’m not mistaken Sullivan favors banning second and third term abortions), but tags anyone to the right of him has a theocratic extremist.  It’s my opinion that the pro-life position has a greater chance to gain currency under the leadership of someone like Obama than someone who has drawn sharp lines.

Am I deluding myself?  What matters more — a candidate’s absolute position or attitude?  Part of the reason I would even consider voting for a Democrat is the Republicans’ lack of commitment to the unborn. 

In other words, there is more than one dimension to consider – there are the checkboxes of what policies a poltician favors and does not favor, but there is also the intensity and arguments the politician uses in support of that position.

What I’m struggling to figure out is the relative weights each of those dimensions should be assigned.

There seem to be a lot of people who don’t like that Bush Administration has opened a legal pathway to torture.   It seems to me that these people should therefore get behind the war on terror.  After all, torture is only necessary if we have enemies that want to destroy us.  Victory in the war on terror would eliminate the need for torture, and isn’t that what the anti-torture movement is all about?  If torture-opposers are really serious about reducing or eliminating torture, then they are morally obligated to support policies that would reduce the number of enemies the United States has.  To do otherwise would be the height of hypocrisy?

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

But why is that any more ridiculous than the notion that opposition to abortion morally obligates one to support making contraceptives more available?  The same logic applies — those opposed to a practice ought to support policies that would reduce its incidence, or else they’re hypocrites.

People might quiblle that supporting the war may backfire and produce more enemies.  But I think it is also far from clear that increasing the availability of contraceptives would reduce the absolute number of unplanned pregnancies.

There seems to be a serious disconnect, even among those who claim to oppose abortion.  A society that tolerates abortion is an unjust society, and changing that must be the first priority.  It sure sounds nice to support “common ground” policies like increasing contraception (though pro-choicers are rarely criticized for failing to support crisis pregnancy centers run by anyone other than Planned Parenthood), but they will not change that blot from our soul, any more than winning the War on Terror will absolve us of our toleration of torture.

At MOJ, Rick Garnett passes on this from Bill Stunts on whether criminalizing abortion is prudent:

That is the consistent lesson of American history, including the history of abortion and abortion law itself. Cultural change must either accompany or precede legal change for the latter to be effective. And, as to some subjects, if we get the order wrong, we actually retard cultural change rather than advancing it.

The puzzle, to my mind anyway, is not abortion but civil rights. Plainly, the civil rights movement shows that law CAN move the culture — as it did: those of us who grew up South of the Mason-Dixon line in the 1960s and 1970s saw it happen. I’m sure I don’t understand all the reasons why legal change sometimes promotes cultural change and sometimes doesn’t, but I do have a strong suspicion: my guess is, the most culturally productive kinds of law are the kinds that create human relationship and community rather than sundering those things. The civil rights movement created at least the makings of an integrated economy and an integrated political community; it was relationship-reinforcing. Criminal prohibitions, by contrast, are relationship-destroying. Maybe, if and when there is ever a genuinely pro-life political majority in the United States (as there clearly is not now), that majority should try to use government policies to promote enterprises like crisis pregnancy centers: means of encouraging and helping young women in distress, not hammering those who make bad choices.

I think this is a fairly sanitized recounting of the civil rights movement. Reading this, one would think the primary thrust of the cvil rights movement was promoting enterprises to help white bigots overcome their racism. It wasn’t. It was about both socially and criminally sanctioning discriminatory behavior. I don’t consider this a point against it — the behavior was worthy of sanction. But the idea that there were no losers (however worthy) of the civil rights struggle, people who were ostracized and made into criminals for behaviors that had been tolerated, is far too rosy a picture. Many people found themselves cut off from society, and died with the same racist attitudes they had, the civil rights legislation notwithstanding.

The primary motive of restricting abortion is to strengthen our relationships with the unborn.

It seems to me that in order to buy Prof. Stuntz’s argument that, on net, civil rights legislation was “relationship-reinforcing” while restrictions on abortion are relationship-destroying,” one must accept at least one of the following premises:

1. Relationships with the unborn are of less value than relationships with segregation-era blacks.
2. Relationships with abortionists and women inclined to procure abortions are more valuable than relationships with segregation-era bigots.
3. Abortion is less of a relationship destroyer than segregation.

The third premise is absurd; I think what animates this type of thinking is some combination of the first two premises.

It is easy to demonize segregation era racists today; perhaps a better way of putting it is that it can be difficult to see their humanity, while it may be easy to sympathize with women seeking abortions. There are many of those women with us today, whereas segregationists can be hard to find. But would our attitudes be different if the legal environment were different?

It seems to me this attitude can only stand if one believes that segregation, on both an individual and universal scale, was a greater affront to personal dignity than abortion. While this notion might find sympathy in our culture, it is not consistent with what we profess to believe as Catholics.

That criminalizing abortion would harm our relationship with those who carry out and procure abortions is no more an argument against it than the isolation of segregationists is an argument against civil rights legislation.

on the e-mail I quote below:

It opens with this:

The problem with the pro-life movement isn’t merely that it is prohibitionist, but that its fundamental position cannot be formulated in any fashion that is coherent to someone, except that they first accept some bit of magic that turns a few cells into the moral equivalent of a person.

I submit that it is the pro-choice, rather than the pro-life position that reqiures the acceptance of “some bit of magic that turns a few cells into the moral equivalent of a person.”

Think about it:

Pro-life:  You are a person from the moment of conception.

Pro-choice:  You became a person sometime between conception and now.

According the pro-choice position, there is some magical moment after conception where what was once a “mere cluster of cells” that need not be protected and indeed may be used and destroyed for our own purposes becomes a person  worthy of protection.

When exactly is that magical moment?  It depends on what is being advocated.  The e-mailer acknowledges that most pro-choice people would accept restrictions on late-term abortion.  Why?  What’s different?  Is it just because there a cute ultrasound pictures of late-term fetuses and not embryos?

Rather than grapple with that question, the e-mailer resorts to the intellectual shortcut of the burning building hypothetical.

This my second annoyance — the pro-choice movement will lean on crutches like this, and then adopt the pose as the scientific rational side while the pro-life movement is emotional and religious.

There’s an old heel wrestling trick, that I best remember being practiced by Randy “Macho Man” Savage. When the babyface, say Ricky Steamboat, started gaining momentum, and is about to stat puttin’ a hurtin’ on the Macho Man, savage would grab his beautiful valet, Miss Elizabeth, and put her between himself and his charging attacker as if to say, “you wouldn’t hurt a girl, would you?” to buy himself some time.

Anna Quindlen is playing a similar game with her “How much jail time?” Newsweek column challenging pro-lifers to name an appropriate criminal penalty for a woman who procures an abortion.

To its credit, National Review Onlline posted a symposium of good responses to Quindlen’s challenge.

I’d like to focus on something else — this is yet another illustration of how anti-woman the pro-choice movement is.

They recognize their on the ropes. Scientific advances are making it increasingly difficult to maintain that the object of abortion is not a human life. The Democratic party is taking steps to not be perceived as stridently in favor of unrestricted abortion. The balance of power in the Supreme Court has shifted.

So how does the abortion lobby respond? By challenging us to throw women in jail instead of abortionists, hoping that’ll put the pro-lifers on the defensive long enough for them to think of another strategy.

The abortion lobby will go to great lengths to defend the right of physicians to make money by removing unwanted fetuses. And don’t call them “abortion doctors,” either.

But women? They’re bargaining tools. In spite of the fact that none of the abortion laws that Roe v. Wade invalidated mandated a punishment for a woman who procured abortion, and pro-life people have literally not even considered punishing them, the abortion lobby wants to start a conversation about how much jail time they should do if they continue to lose ground. Isn’t that sweet?

But Quindlen and her friends take it a step further: if they lose, the other side must punish women who procure abortions. If they’re going to lose, they’re taking American women down with them. With friends like these…

When you watched the Mach Man, you always wondered why Miss Elizabeth stayed with a man who treated her so crappily. Perhaps American women should ask the same question of themselves and the abortion lobby.

—-

Throughout the piece, Quindlen says that to illegalize abortion but not punish women would be to accept an infantilized vision of women as helpless victims without a concept of responsibility or morality.

If this is the case, then the abortion lobby has done more to create this vision than anyone else. The narrative of the poor helpless woman who “finds herself pregnant.” That it’s unreasonable to expect them to make a link between sex and pregnancy. That anyone who says that people need to take care of the children they conceive are Puritanical brutes.

—-

In any case, I don’t think that raising this question will have the results Quindlen thinks it will. Sure, she may have fun seeing dumbfounded looks on pro-lifers’ faces, but it also undermines the narrative they want to create about pro-lifers — that we’re out to punish women. That we haven’t considered that criminal punishment reveals that — surprise! — we’re more about protecting unborn life than we are about punishing women.

So go ahead — keep asking that question, and keep smugly chuckling as pro-lifers struggle with the question. But don’t think you’re making your cause look more appealing to women, or the pro-life position less appealing.

Rob Vischer posts to MOJ a discussion of the proportional reasons for a pro-loife Catholic to support Fred Thompson:

Third, being wholeheartedly against the War in Iraq is not a proportionate reason for being pro-choice. As Archbishop Myers reminded us in the run up to the 2004 election, the Pope did not bind the conscience of Catholics to oppose the War in Iraq - he merely expressed his own prudential judgement on the question. Moreover, as the Archbishop points out, we must remember what we are balancing here - the lives of 1.3 million unborn children in America every year. Virtually no other modern policy issue - not taxes, welfare benefits, minimum wage, farm subsidies, the war - compares on that scale.

No sale this time.

6 years ago there were 1.3 million abortions a year. Twice we elected George W. Bush president and because of this issue, and now… there are 1.3 million abortions a year.

Changing this will require actual leadership, not just checking the right boxes. Thompson’s past, and his squirrelly statements about it, calls into question his commitment on this issue. Will he lead the country into a pro-life direction? I don’t see him being inclined to. It seems, like most politicians, he’d like to avoid the issue as much as possible. For me, that’s not enough.

And the president’s impact through his war and torture policies has been profound, and much greater than his impact on the abortion issue.

The Holy Father has not bound our consciences on the war in Iraq simply because he does not do so. But out moral judgement need not be limited to what the Holy Father binds our concsciences to. The Holy Father has also did not bind us to vote for Bush over Kerry in the last election.

The president’s impact on war and torture policy has been much greater than his impact on both abortion policy and its prevalence. Given that, it seems clear to me that the former represent a proportional reason to support a pro-choice candidate.

Matt Yglesias asks what’s so bad about nationalizing divisive cultural issues like abortion, gun control, and abortion.

Two terms of George W. Bush; that’s what.

Progressives may think they benefit by nationalizing these issues, because national opinion polls show they would win on these issues.

The problem is that when an issue like this is nationalized, social conservatives are very motivated to vote in national elections, because it is the only legal outlet to make their vote count.

In the current legal environment, for someone like me whose first priority is meaningfully changing abortion policy, the only election that matters is the presidential election. Because abortion policy cannot change if Roe v Wade is not overturned, and Roe v. Wade will not be overturned if John Kerry is nominating the next two or three Supreme Court Justices.

Thus, the argument that for presidential elections at least, social conservatives should base their vote entirely on abortion is plausible. And some of us did. And we have seen the results.

By nationalizing these issues, progressives have helped create a political environment where their candidates for national office start with 40% of the vote highly motivated against them. This leaves them virtually no margin for error.

If they could convince themselves it’s not such a big deal if some rectangular states ban partial birth abortion, they might be able to do some things that matter to people.

—–

While I’m here I must take issue with MY’s caricature of the social conservative position on same sex marriage. I don’t think anyone believes or believed that all families would break up the day after the first same sex couple got married.

Our position, which has not been refuted by experience, is that same sex marriage is another step in eroding what marriage means. These steps have included cultural acceptance of contraception, no-fault divorce, and many other things. That we got our back up about this particular step may reveal that opposition may be motivated partly by antipathy for gays, but does not invalidate the premise.

Right…

I know this is a tiresome game, but can you imagine the cries of Theocracy! Christianism! if a Catholic bishop “helped” a congressman draft legislation declaring a city “pro-life.”

Rich Lowry posts an e-mail from an apparent Giuliani supporter.

My response — maybe Giuliani’s “strategy” will help win the nomination, but it won’t help him win the election. Because we voters who are so fixated on abortion have been the GOP’s most reliable voters, providing Bush’s margin of victory in both elections. And to be honest, we have mixed feelings about it. We’re not crazy about the war. We don’t like torture. We may not even be convinced that lower taxes are the solution to every economic problem. But we abjhor the slaughter of 45 million unbron children that has taken place over the last 30 years, and have been willing to vote for anyone who gives the inclination that he might do something to stop it. Wihtout that, we have no reason to vote for you.

And if think you can get us to vote for you by calling your opponents soft on terrorism, think again.

This isn’t a matter of tactics or strategy. This is right and wrong. The front-loaded primary schedule doesn’t make killing the unborn all of a sudden right. It doesn’t turn Roe vs. Wade into a sound decision.

Giuliani is coming out explicitly in favor of abortion rights. So let there be no doubt — a vote for Giuliani is a vote for a candidate who facors unrestricted abortion.

Hopefully, this will be enough to derail his campaign. In anticipation of that, a meme is developing that it’s not Giuliani’s position on abortion that is costing him, but the clumsy way in which he has handled the issue.

This meme must be stopped. The Republican Party is interested in this, because they want to portray themselves as the “Big Tent” that includes people like Schwarzanegger, and that pro-choice views should not stop someone from winning the GOP nomination.

The problem with Giuliani’s position isn’t that he’s been incosistent, evasive, and squirrely about it. The problem is it’s wrong. Simple as that.

That the GOP can’t bring itself to say this clearly, and hide behind these technical excuses doesn’t give me much confidence in their ability to advocate for the unborn.

This is not the question we need to be asking ourselves, because our goal is to end abortion, not just maneuver the pieces such that there is a possibility that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned. And electing a president who sees no problem with the current legal regime on abortion is not going to make that happen.

But I sure do appreciate you taking the time to condescend to your “pro-life friends” to tell us what the single most important question we need to be asking ourselves is. As you know, we pro-lifers are simple folk who for some reason think that electing a president who wants to fund abortions might result in more abortions, and greater societal accpetance of abortion. Even moreso than electing a president who is friendly with pro-choice Senators. I’m sure glad we have smart friends like you to set us straight.

In that spirit, I will offer the single most important question Republican friends like you need to be asking yourselves — why the hell should pro-lifers vote for people who have such little respect for what we see as a moral crisis?

According to several voter’s guides that came out in 2004, including one from my own archbishop, when Catholics are determining which candidates to vote for, they shoujld first consider their views on non-negotiable issues. These included abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, embryonic research, and euthanasia. These are included, and not things like health care policy, welfare, immigration, war, and capital punishment, because they are intinsic evils, that is, wrong under all circumstances, whereas the latter list can be justifiable under certain (albeit narrow) circumstances.

This type of analysis, followed simply, would lead one to choose Bush over Kerry, which I in fact did. Kerry supported unrestricted abortion, and made support for embryonic research a theme of his campaign, whereas Bush opposed abortion and had placed some restrictions on embryonic research. In part because of voters motivated by this type of analysis (including myself), Bush won reelection.

I am unconvinced that Bush’s victory has been a victory for those who would be the victims of the non-negotiable evils. In fact, I believe Bush’s policy decisions as a prominent pro-lifer have set back the cause of respect for life. The evil of abortion will not be ended in this country by sneaking in enough Supreme Court justices to oveturn Roe v. Wade. It can only happen by transfroming this culture to one that respects life, and values it more than personal autonomy. In my opinon, this will not happen under the leadership like what this Administration has provided.

In order to win my checkmark for non-negotiable issues, it will be necessary for candidates to provide leadership on these issues, not merely that they know what they have to say to win their party’s nominations. Their positions on these issues should be part of a coherent respect for life (yes, the dreaded Seamless Garment). Americans, rightly, will not accept absolute advocacy for the unborn that comes packaged with enthusiasm for preemptive war and the death penalty.

From this perspective, observing how GOP candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been twisting themselves into pretzels to be considered pro-life is amusing. For Romney, we’re supposed to accept this late changing convesion that just so happens to be perfectly aligned with his politicial motivations. For Giuliani, we’re supposed to accept his personal position on abortion in exchange for the tacit promise that he would nominate judges and justices who would be inclined to oppose Roe vs. Wade. They want to be president first, and feigning concern for the unborn is a means to that end.

It’s going to take more than that to sell me; I’m not that cheap a date. It seems apparent to me that both these candidates are saying what they think they have to say to win the nomination. That’s fine. But will they sacrifice for the unborn? Will they invest political capital into working for them? Will the show up or just phone in to the Right To Life March? When we ask what they’ve done about abortion, will we get a list like this of nice but mostly symbolic and politically uncostly acts?

I don’t think the unborn will find the answers to those questions satisfactory. So, they do not earn a checkmark in the abortion column.

Which opens things up on a number of issues — like poverty, health care, immigration, war and peace, on which I would tend to side with the Democrats

—-

Andy McCarthy has a strong reproach tho those who think we should all just shut up and get behind a Winner for the Good of the Team.

I’ll phrase it more succinctly — if your team supports, or even tolerates, government funding of abortin, it ceases to be my team, and I don’t care if it loses every single election.

A Catholic pro-choice politician is interviewed, and trying to prop up his Catholic bona fides, mentions that he’s been asked to join the Kinghts of Malta, a lay Catholic organization (that I honestly don’t recall hearing about).

How should we react?

Well,this provides a great opportunity to add some fuel to our dislike of the bishops (who as far as I can tell have absolutely nothing to do with admission to the knights) and generally lament the fate of poor, orthodox Catholics.

Please.

First of all, the only evidence of McAuliffe’s admission is his boast on the Hewitt interview. That’s it. So, these complainers claim that McAuliffe has no moral qualms about slicing babies in half (or whatever graphic language they want to use to cow those who might think they’re overreacting) but would never lie or embellish the truth in order to build himself up. But as we heard last Sunday, “love hopes all things, believes all things,” so I suppose the same is true for the desire for righteous indignation.

Second, as mentioned, this is a lay organization. From their website, the only in put any ordained religious has in the process is a letter of recommendation from the pastor. So if this organization is about to honor someone like McAuliffe, shouldn’t it be an occasion for us, the laity to engage is a long, hard, look in the mirror rather than another stream of insults hurled at “the bishops.”

This is what ticks me off about the discourse on the Catholic blogs. On the one hand, outrage is ginned up over 3,500 babies being killed every day. Then we are asked to focus that outrage on bullshit issues like the possibilty that a Catholic lay organization might honor a poltician we don’t like.

And how many babies will this save?

Yes, yes, I know about “giving scandal.” I know about leading souls astray. Bullshit. Do you think anyone heard that interview and thought, “Well, I thought partial birth abortion was a terrible evil, but if Terry McAuliffe is going to be a Knight of Malta, then maybe I was mistaken?” Um, no.

But if someone opposed the Iraq war, and they spent most of their energy on say, preventing SMU from accepting the Bush Presidential Library, would you conclude that that person was really serious about opposing the war, or borrowing outrage from that for a personal vendetta.

So how do you think bullshit like this looks to an outside observer who doesn’t like abortion, but is a little spooked out by the media’s portrayal of the pro-life movement?

This stuff is worse than a waste of energy. It damages the cause of ending abortion. It leads people to think that we are motivated by hatred of our political opponenets rather than love of the unborn.

And it’s not going to save one unborn baby. And it’s not going to save one soul.

But it’ll make us feel better about ourselves as noble warriors trudging forward without the support (nay, with the active opposition) of Church leadership.

Hope we enjoy it.

I was reading the Sports Illustrated Year in Review edition (which thankfully did not name “you” as Sportsman of the Year), and in the college football section, they referred to this episode as “brilliant.” It may be brilliant, but it’s awful sportsmanship.

To recap, in an attempt to speed up the game, they put in a rule this year that on kick-offs, the clock starts when the ball is kicked rather than when the receiving team touches it. (I don’t recall many complaints that college football games took too long, or that logging the time when a kick-off is in flight would have that great an impact, but whatever…)

Anyway, in a game against Penn State, Wisoncsin scores a touchdown with 30 seconds left in the half, then purposely jumps offside twice on kickoffs to burn that time off the clock.

And for this, the Wisconsin coaches are lauded as “brilliant.”

But what does such a strategy have to do with determining who was the better football team that day?

I understand that strategy and gamesmanship are part of sports, and people exploit oddities in the rules all the time. The four corners offense, calling time-out when falling out of bounds (or throwing the ball off an opponents leg), or even fouling a player who an uncontested lay-up or giving an intentional walk to a great hitter are all ways of turning a contest from an athletic competition into a contest of who can use the rules to his greatest advantage. And, of course, the end of any close basketball game includes the trailing team commiting fouls when the opposing team has the ball to force them to make free throws.

But I wonder what impact the celebration of these “clever” strategies has on the culture.

For example, I am pro-life. Since Roe vs. Wade, the pro-life movement has had an almost single-minded obsession with overturning it. This entails electing presidents who would nominate judges inclined to overturn the decision, and get them confirmed by the Senate.

Since many Senators could not vote to confirm a justice they know would overturn the decision, this involves an odd dance where the nominees try to reveal as little as possible.

During the Harriet Miers debate, some conservative commentators thought she was a good “stealth” nominee. — she didn’t have a paper trail of opposition to Roe, so maybe she could be confirmed. (My thoughts at the time on that are here).

Then there was the “nuclear option” — it turns out we could change the rules of the Senate so that fillibusters could be ended with a simple majority vote. Why not do that to get some of these justices confirmed?

No and No.

I do not dispute the necessity of overturning Roe. In addition to the abortions themselves, I feel it has coarsened our culture, and poisoned our politics. It cannot end soon enough.

But it must be defeated squarely and fairly, not by sneaking through “stealth” nominees, or exploting undiscovered loopholes in the Senate rules. A victory won that way would not be a victory at all. It would not prove that we had the superior arguments, any more than if Wisonsin winning by their little stunt would prove they were the superior football team.

We need to commit to not take short-cuts, to do the hard work of persuasion and cultural transformation to win public debates, rather than think we can be more clever at manipulating the intricacies of the political system.

“STEALTH” NOMINEES
There’s a lot of commentary like this saying that pro-lifers shouldn’t be upset about nominees like Harriett Miers who don’t have a paper trail against Roe v. Wade since with the culture the way it is, that’s the only way things can change.

Bull.

I think there’s a tendency to see the pro-life movement as a chess game where the end is to overturn Roe v. Wade. So, even if we do it by being really sneaky and tiptoeing around the opponent’s defensive line, that’s fine, because we would have accomplished our goal.

But our goal is bigger than that. We need to change the culture so that abortion is not only illegal, but also unthinkable.

And overturning Roe v. Wade by sneaking in a couple justices who would overturn it isn’t going to be a part of the cultural change we need. Need I remind people that such a decision would not ban abortions, but only make it possible for states to make it illegal?

I know, I know — our opponents in the culture war are more than willing to run where the fields is open and use whatever the most advantageous court is to achieve their goals. That’s them.

We’re right. We don’t need to sneak around. Republicans have a 55-45 majority in the Senate, and a president who was elected on the margins by pro-lifers. If we can’t take on the pro-choice culture now, when will we?

I don’t want to see a nominee squirm and try to reveal as little as possible. I want someone who will look Diane Feinstien in the eye and tell her why Roe v. Wade is a bunch of crap. We have the soldiers for this fight. Are we willing to unleash them?

But, after last election being told in no uncertain terms that abortion is the only acceptable issue to determine one’s vote, and that things like torture and wars are not so important, I am not willing to accept squishy half-measures on this issue.

It is very telling what things this Administration is willing to fight for.