During the Vice Presidential debate, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan\u2014both Roman Catholics\u2014were asked about their respective views on abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s answer is one that we have come to expect from Catholic Democrats.\u00a0 Personally, he said, he shares his Church\u2019s perennial position against abortion.\u00a0 However, this is a belief that he refuses to \u201cimpose\u201d upon others. Thus, Biden remains, along with the Democratic Party of which he has been a life-long member, rigorously \u201cpro-choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
This point of view is as intellectually as it is morally bankrupt.<\/p>\n
The Roman Catholic Church opposes abortion for the same reason that it opposes murder: abortion, like murder, inescapably entails the destruction of an innocent human being.\u00a0 If <\/em>Biden subscribes to Catholic teaching on this score, then this is what he believes.\u00a0 What this means is that he has no basis, neither within his faith tradition nor without, upon which to justify his refusal to do what he can to prevent people from pursuing abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet for as indefensible as Biden\u2019s position is, Paul Ryan\u2019s was confused as well.<\/p>\n Ryan unabashedly identified himself as \u201cpro-life.\u201d He rejects abortion, he said, because of \u201creason\u201d and \u201cscience,\u201d yes, but, ultimately, because of his faith.\u00a0 However, Ryan immediately insisted that he and Mitt Romney are willing to allow for abortion under some circumstances.\u00a0 Abortion, he explained, is morally permissible if a woman conceives as a result of incest, say, or rape.\u00a0 If a woman\u2019s life is endangered by her pregnancy, an abortion is a morally acceptable course of action for her to pursue under this condition as well.<\/p>\n The problem for Ryan is that his Church agrees with none of this.\u00a0 For that matter, neither will his invocation of reason and science save him here.<\/p>\n Recall, for the Church, abortion is an evil because it consists in the destruction of an innocent human life.\u00a0 Now, regardless of how or why this life came into being, it is still innocent of any wrongdoing. That being so, if it is immoral to deliberately <\/em>kill an innocent human being some of the time, then it is immoral to do so all of the time.\u00a0 After all, it is the innocence of the human being, and most definitely not the circumstances of that being\u2019s conception, that is morally relevant.<\/p>\n So, Ryan\u2019s Catholic faith simply will not supply him with a justification for these exceptions that he appears willing to make for abortion.<\/p>\n But \u201creason\u201d and \u201cscience\u201d are equally impotent in this regard.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take the latter first.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Ryan alluded to science to justify his opposition to abortion, presumably he was trying to make the point that even science confirms that life begins at conception.\u00a0 This is true.\u00a0 Yet, in itself, it is also morally irrelevant, for science is science\u2014not morality.\u00a0 And if science hasn\u2019t the authority to speak to the moral import of abortion or even life itself, then it certainly doesn\u2019t have any authority to speak to the moral import of the circumstances surrounding conception.<\/p>\n Reason, though, unlike science, isn\u2019t silent with respect to the sensibleness (or not) of the concessions that Ryan is willing to make to abortionists.\u00a0 In fact, it actually militates against <\/em>them.\u00a0<\/p>\n If, as he says, reason tells Ryan that abortion is impermissible because reason establishes that a human life comes into being at conception, then reason must dictate with just as much force that the circumstances of conception are irrelevant.<\/p>\n But, it may be asked, what about when a woman\u2019s life is endangered by her pregnancy? Is not Ryan correct?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it morally permissible in such an extraordinary situation to choose an abortion?<\/p>\n According to the Roman Catholic Church, the answer is a resounding \u201cno.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It is here that the traditional Catholic doctrine of \u201cdouble effect\u201d comes into play.<\/p>\n According to double effect, even if such-and-such an action has consequences that are undesirable and even otherwise evil, as long as those consequences are unintended and unavoidable, it is permissible to choose the action in order to escape a more evil choice.<\/p>\n For example, suppose a woman is, say, suffering from an ectopic pregnancy.\u00a0 It is permissible, Ryan\u2019s faith teaches, for her doctor to \u201cabort\u201d her unborn child, for unless so, both <\/em>mother and child will die; this way, in contrast, at least one life\u2014that of the mother\u2014can be spared. \u00a0In other words, since, according to Catholic morality, it is the intention <\/em>of an action that makes it what it is, insofar as the doctor\u2019s intention here is to save the mother\u2019s life\u2014not <\/em>kill her unborn child\u2014the act in question is not truly an abortion at all. No one can be said to have chosen <\/em>an abortion.<\/p>\n The point, however, in all of this is that Paul Ryan has no basis in his faith to qualify his opposition to abortion in the ways that he has. He may not have strayed as widely from his faith as has his opponent, but it would be dishonest to deny that he has indeed strayed.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the Vice Presidential debate, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan\u2014both Roman Catholics\u2014were asked about their respective views on abortion.\u00a0 Biden\u2019s answer is one that we have come to expect from Catholic Democrats.\u00a0 Personally, he said, he shares his Church\u2019s perennial position against abortion.\u00a0 However, this is a belief that he refuses to \u201cimpose\u201d upon others.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n