Editorial by Scott Klusendorf (Life Training Institute): Is Covenant News Intellectually Honest?

Here’s the headline from it’s site:

“Georgia Senate Committee OKs Murdering Babies After Ultrasound Pictures Are Taken–The Nazis also took pictures before killing Jews.”

I think the headline is a disgrace.

First, Covenant News forgets that morality cannot be reduced to behavior. Stealing and borrowing look the same (so do surgery and mugging), but the intentions and motivations of the actor determine their rightness or wrongness. To cite another example, a teenager who tackles an old woman might incite our rage until we learn she was about to step in front of an oncoming bus.

The same is true with SB-429. When a Nazi gaurd photographed Jews prior to executing them, he did so to further exploit his victims. His intent was harm, not help. Meanwhile, the intent of the Georgia bill is to photograph unborn humans so they can be saved, not harmed. Hence, the proposed legislation has no moral parallel with Nazi practices whatsoever and to suggest that it does is shameful.

Second, how does it follow that because Georgia lawmakers can’t save all unborn humans they shouldn’t try to save some with SB-429? I agree that requiring ultrasound procedures won’t stop all abortions, but we have good evidence it will stop some [http://www.atcmag.com/v3n2/article7.asp]. Let’s face it: Pro-lifers don’t have the votes on the federal courts to sustain a stronger abortion ban. So what exactly does Covenant News want Georgia lawmakers to do, foolishly pass a bill they know will get struck down instead of passing one they know will save some lives right now?

Seriously, Georgia lawmakers have the same moral duty we do–to limit evil and promote the good insofar as possible given the circumstances. Their support for ultrasound legislation is not moral compromise. It is not settling for the lesser of two evils. It’s not a cowardly sell-out. It does not concede the legitimacy of any abortion. It merely recognizes current legal and political obstacles and acts within them to save as many lives as possible. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict VI) explains this principle further:

[A]ccording to the principles of Catholic morality, an action can be considered licit whose object and proximate effect consists in limiting an evil insofar as possible. Thus, when one intervenes in a situation judged evil in order to correct it for the better, and when the action is not evil in itself, such an action should be considered not as the voluntary acceptance of the lesser evil but rather the improvement of the existing situation, even though one remains aware that not all evil present is able to be eliminated for the moment. (Emphasis mine–Cited in Fr. Peter West, Voting for Imperfect Candidates)

Pope John Paul II stated clearly the moral principle on which this approach is based in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. He begins: “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.” In the next paragraph, however, the pontiff makes clear what does not fall within that prohibition:

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. . . . In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. (Emphasis mine–cited in Clark Forsythe, Doing What can be Done.)

Five years later, on the publication anniversary of Evangelium Vitae, the Pope reiterated his call for Christians to limit evil:

No effort should be spared to eliminate legalized crime or at least to limit the damage caused by these laws, but with the vivid awareness of the radical duty to respect every human being’s right to life from conception until natural death, including the life of the lowliest and the least gifted.

It seems to me that JPII’s language here is quite clear. His words apply precisely to the context of SB-429 where many pro-life lawmakers would like to end abortion once and for all, but find themselves in a situation where, given current legal constraints, they cannot pass such a bill. Hence, for the moment, they work to limit the evil of abortion “insofar is possible” while continuing to strategize toward the ultimate goal of protecting all children.

Had “pro-life” critics of SB-429 lived during the 1800’s, they would have been forced to condemn the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist crusades of William Wilberforce. Initially, neither of these men tried to ban slavery outright. Nor could they. Lincoln, you will remember, did not promise to outlaw slavery, but to preserve the Union by limiting it. Only after the Battle of Antietam (1862) did Lincoln transform the Civil War into a moral campaign against slavery by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. That proclamation, by the way, did not declare all slaves free, only those south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Lincoln may have wanted to free all slaves, but he recognized the constraints of the moment and did what he could to limit the evil. Wilberforce, the great English abolitionist, took similar incremental steps in his quest to rid the British Empire of slavery. Working as a Member of Parliament, his first move was not to end slavery outright—a goal he simply could not achieve given pro-slavery sentiments in the House of Lords—but to end state-sponsored slave trade in Great Britain. Wilberforce’s bill went down to defeat in 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800, and 1801. Then, with the onset of war with France, talk of slavery was shelved until 1805, when the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to abolish slave trade. However, victory was short-lived, as the House of Lords rejected the bill. In 1806, the House of Commons followed suit, reversing its earlier vote against slave trade. Many of Wilberforce’s colleagues in the Parliament thought his efforts a failed political exercise and urged him to attend to more important matters. In 1807, Wilberforce’s bill to end slave trade finally passed the House of Lords and the House of Commons. He then worked another 18 years to end slavery outright. In 1833, three days before his death, slavery was finally abolished in Great Britain.

Was William Wilberforce no different than pro-slavery leaders in the House of Lords bcause he supported incremental steps which banned some forms of slavery but allowed others? Or, should we celebrate him as a moral hero who did what he could to limit evil insofar as was possible at that time? If he is a moral hero, how is he any different from pro-life politicians in Georgia (and elsewhere) who also work to limit evil, albeit incrementally?

Covenant News should retract its shameful headline immediately.

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