{"id":608,"date":"2012-10-13T19:05:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T23:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=608"},"modified":"2012-10-13T19:05:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T23:05:04","slug":"joe-biden-and-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/10\/joe-biden-and-abortion.html","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden and Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the close of the Vice Presidential debate in Kentucky on Wednesday night, moderator Martha Raddatz asked Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan about the relationship between their faith and their politics.<\/p>\n

What she really wanted to know about, though, is their respective views on abortion.<\/p>\n

Biden and Ryan are both self-avowed Roman Catholics.\u00a0 As such, one would expect that the Church\u2019s 2,000 year-old prohibition of abortion would count for something by their lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, to hear them both tell it, it does indeed.<\/p>\n

Biden and<\/em> Ryan insisted that, along with Catholics past and present, they reject abortion.\u00a0 Biden\u2019s answer was particularly interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith regard to\u2014with regard to abortion, I accept my church\u2019s position on abortion as a\u2014what we call de fide.\u00a0 Life begins at conception.\u00a0 That\u2019s the church\u2019s judgment.\u00a0 I accept it in my personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

To judge just from these remarks, the Vice President\u2019s position on this issue appears unequivocal: he accepts the Catholic Church\u2019s view that abortion is an intrinsically immoral act.\u00a0 However, not unlike every other prominent contemporary Catholic Democrat, Biden is quick to qualify his stance with the assurance that, unlike his opponent, he would never attempt to \u201cimpose\u201d it upon others.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and\u2014I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, Biden adds, \u201cI do not believe that\u2014that we have a right to tell other people,\u201d particularly women, that \u201cthey\u2014they can\u2019t control their body.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an age when moral inconsistency is the rule of the day, it takes some doing to distinguish oneself as the moral idiot par excellence.\u00a0 Yet this is just what Biden succeeded in doing here.<\/p>\n

Biden claims that he agrees with the Church\u2019s judgment that a human life comes into existence at conception. And he claims to agree with it that abortion is an evil. But the Church judges abortion as an evil simply and solely because it consists in the unjustified destruction of that innocent life that began at conception.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abortion, that is, is evil for the same reason that it is immoral to unjustifiably destroy any human being\u2014regardless of whether he is in the womb or outside of it.<\/p>\n

In other words, if Biden is sincere about agreeing with the teaching of his Church on abortion, then he has just as much an obligation to do what he can to prevent the destruction of unborn human beings as he has an obligation to prevent the destruction of those human beings who have already been born.<\/p>\n

However, Biden maintains that he hasn\u2019t \u201cthe right\u201d to proscribe women from pursuing an abortion.\u00a0 This, evidently, means that he holds that it is immoral for him or any other champion of the sanctity of human life to \u201cimpose\u201d their belief upon others.<\/p>\n

This is a most peculiar line of reasoning\u2014especially as it is coming from a man who just finished informing a national audience that his \u201creligion defines who I am.\u201d \u00a0What in your faith, we may ask Vice President Biden, which teaching of the Church, prevents you from \u201cimposing\u201d this <\/em>view of yours on abortion upon others?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biden says that it is his faith\u2014\u201cCatholic social doctrine\u201d specifically\u2014that motivates him to care for those \u201cwho can\u2019t take care of themselves, people who need help.\u201d\u00a0 It is on the basis of this religious belief of his that he supports a robust welfare state. Democratic politicians from John Kerry to Barack Obama, Charley Rangel to Andrew Cuomo, Nancy Pelosi to, now, Joe Biden, routinely seek to justify their leviathan of redistributionist policies in terms of Christianity\u2019s teachings on helping the poor.<\/p>\n

That is, Biden certainly has no reservations about \u201cimposing\u201d this view of his upon those who either reject Catholic teaching in this respect or Biden\u2019s interpretation of it.<\/p>\n

To put this in perspective, Biden, for some reason that remains unclear, thinks that it is wrong\u2014a violation his faith?\u2014to \u201cimpose\u201d upon those who don\u2019t share his belief that abortion is unwarranted homicide, yet he does not think it is wrong for him to coerce his fellow Americans to part with their hard earned resources in order that others may take possession of them.<\/p>\n

So, it is ok for Biden to impose some of his religious beliefs, but not others\u2014or at least not his belief that abortion is immoral.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

We are left with one of two possible answers to this question.\u00a0 The one possibility is that there is some Catholic doctrine or other that requires Catholics and Catholic politicians to put up zero resistance to abortion in public life.\u00a0 The other possibility is that Joe Biden is full of the very same \u201cmalarkey\u201d of which he accused Paul Ryan of being full.<\/p>\n

As a practicing Catholic myself, my money is on the latter option.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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