[...]Square Zero » 2009 » Has Doug Kmiec Truly Lost His Mind?[...]…

Republicans and Democrats often agree about the ends but disagree about the means, and it’s easy to claim that the other side is evil as though they oppose your stated end rather than means (e.g., Republicans aren’t opposed to everyone being able to get healthcare; they just think that government involvement isn’t the best means to having the most effective healthcare system; they aren’t trying to kill off poor people, even if their views on healthcare may in fact be wrong). In any event, please explain to me which issue could possibly outweigh the *intentional* slaughtering of children. The Dems may have commendable views on ways to alleviate poverty and prevent the conditions that motivate some toward abortions, but you are kidding yourself if you think many abortions are anything more than excuses for irresponsible sex. And the Dems are often the ones championing the right to exterminate these innocent human beings in the name of uninhibited sexual activity.

Fighting to end the abortion regime isn’t just about preventing abortions. It’s about justice. And justice demands that murder be punished, whether the murderer could have been better deterred or not. If we want to fight for justice (and some of us do), we must fight for the punishment of abortionists, just as we would for rapists. If someone suggested to you that you shouldn’t try to make rape illegal because we can prevent it by handing out free porn to men to alleviate their urges, I suspect (and hope) that you’d find that quite unsatisfactory. Rapists, like abortionists, must be punished. That’s what the criminal law is for.

That’s exactly what lots of us who voted for Obama think, and yet for some reason you seem to think that the idea is unavailable to us. Well, my friend, if it’s unavailable to us, it’s unavailable to you. If you actually think that the Republican party platform is commendable on any issue other than abortion, then we have a different argument to have. If you, like many of us, think that the Republican party is something of a mixture between a joke and a force of evil, and that quite a bit of the Democratic party’s platform is worthy of support, then the question becomes whether or not Democratic support for Roe v. Wade should be enough to keep you from voting. I, for one, think that democratic politics simply has to be about getting things done. Since the Republicans themselves won’t overturn Roe v. Wade, and won’t have any success in making abortion illegal or less prevalent elsewhere even they do, and since the Republicans will go on supporting disastrous policies in just about every other area imaginable, I will vote for Democrats in good conscience.

If you’re really troubled by abortion, stop complaining about it on blogs and in your living room and in your church and get out there and do something to help people deal with the problems that lead them to seek abortions. We will need to do that whether or not abortion is legal (and we’ll need to do it even more if it’s illegal). If we pretend that we have done enough because we have voted to make a law, we’re fools at least two times over.

What would be the result of withholding our votes from the nominally pro-life candidate? Would we suddenly find that we have more committed pro-lifers to vote for? Or would be instead get to be represented by pro-choice lawmakers who won because we sat out the election?

I don’t think the comparison with blacks is particularly apt, either. Pro-lifers vote for pro-life candidates because they’re pro-life, not because they’re Republican. Most of the pro-lifers I know wouldn’t think twice before voting for a pro-life Democrat; I’ve done so several times.

Why aren’t we winning? Why isn’t abortion under steady attack, and Roe v. Wade on its last legs?

Because pro-life candidates know that we have nowhere else to go. We cannot, will not, should not vote for candidates who support abortion. Yet we are convinced that it is our civic duty always to case a vote, and some Catholics even argue (with sum justification, based on a passage in the Catechism of the Catholic Church) that it is our moral duty as well.

Which means that, in a race between a putatively pro-life Republican and a pro-abortion Democrat, we cannot vote for the Democrat, so we must vote for the Republican.

And the Republican knows it. And he knows that we’ll vote for him again when he comes up for re-election, whether he follows through on his pro-life promises or not. So the temptation is there to take the easy way out — to campaign as a pro-lifer every two or four or six years, but to govern as someone for whom abortion is a non-issue.

Thus pro-life voters have become for the Republican Party what black voters are for the Democratic Party — a block of “sure votes” that can be appeased by words and ignored in action.

And if you think that has worked out well for blacks, I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you.