{"id":110,"date":"2010-11-12T08:51:46","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T08:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/an-abortion-dissent.html"},"modified":"2010-11-12T08:51:46","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T08:51:46","slug":"an-abortion-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/an-abortion-dissent.html","title":{"rendered":"An Abortion Dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"O'Brien.jpg\"Let me put in a plug for George Dennis O’Brien’s new book, The Church and Abortion: A Catholic Dissent<\/i><\/a>.
\nNo doubt that last word will immediately cause many pro-life Catholics
\nto turn away without a second thought. But as my friend Michael Sean
\nWinters likes to emphasize about himself (e.g. here<\/a>), it’s often from people with whom you disagree that you learn the most.<\/p>\n

O’Brien,
\na former college president, is a philosopher by training who brings to
\nthe superheated abortion debate dispassionate prose, orderly arguments,
\nand pointed questions–especially for his pro-life co-religionists. For
\nexample: If the latter are serious about forswearing criminal charges
\nagainst women who obtain abortions, how can they justify calling
\nabortion murder? <\/p>\n

To Catholic politicians who support Roe v. Wade<\/i> he says: <\/p>\n

Stop
\ntrying to avoid the issue by saying that you are personally opposed to
\nabortion or that you accept the Church’s views on abortion, but <\/i>it
\nis not your responsibility as a legislator to impose your moral will on
\nthe country. That is a cop-out. Anti-slavery legislators in the
\nnineteenth century did not retreat into personal opinion or religious
\ncover–they thought that there was something wrong with the law of the
\nland that needed radical change. The problem with abortion for a
\nsensible legislator is not whether it is right or wrong, religious or
\nimpious; it is that it cannot be legislated away. When rounded on by
\none’s local bishop for “supporting abortion,” don’t duck for cover–ask
\nthe bishop just what law he would recommend that would accomplish the
\nprohibition of abortion. You won’t likely get an answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that doesn’t mean that the bishop–and the rest of the pro-life community–shouldn’t be obliged to come up with one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me put in a plug for George Dennis O’Brien’s new book, The Church and Abortion: A Catholic Dissent. No doubt that last word will immediately cause many pro-life Catholics to turn away without a second thought. But as my friend Michael Sean Winters likes to emphasize about himself (e.g. here), it’s often from people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Abortion Dissent - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/an-abortion-dissent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Abortion Dissent - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let me put in a plug for George Dennis O’Brien’s new book, The Church and Abortion: A Catholic Dissent. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}