Catholic Senator Joe Biden appeared on Meet The Press this morning. Revisiting the same topic he discussed with Nancy Pelosi, Tom Brokaw inquired Biden's view on the beginning of human life and the matter of abortion and what he would do if Obama sought his counsel on the subject:
SEN. BIDEN: I'd say, "Look, I know when it begins for me." It's a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I'm prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths--Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others--who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They're intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life--I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. And I know you get the push back, "Well, what about fascism?" Everybody, you know, you going to say fascism's all right? Fascism isn't a matter of faith. No decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea.
MR. BROKAW: But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you've also voted for abortion rights...
SEN. BIDEN: No, what a voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's a moment of conception. There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that's existed. Back in "Summa Theologia," when Thomas Aquinas wrote "Summa Theologia," he said there was no--it didn't occur until quickening, 40 days after conception. How am I going out and tell you, if you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith? And that's the reason I haven't. But then again, I also don't support a lot of other things. I don't support public, public funding. I don't, because that flips the burden. That's then telling me I have to accept a different view. This is a matter between a person's God, however they believe in God, their doctor and themselves in what is always a--and what we're going to be spending our time doing is making sure that we reduce considerably the amount of abortions that take place by providing the care, the assistance and the encouragement for people to be able to carry to term and to raise their children.
Senator Biden can be commended for his opposition to public-funding for abortions (incidentally, a view which his Presidential running mate supports), but to characterize opposition to abortion as the "imposition of a
religious judgement on everybone else" is absolutely false. As
George Weigel noted in response to Senator Kerry's use of the same "reluctance to impose my religious opinion" defense in the 2004 election:
... suggesting that this is something analogous to the Catholic Church trying to force everyone in the United States to abstain from eating hot dogs on Fridays during Lent is simpy false. ... You don't even have to believe in God to engage [the pro-life position] because it's a position rooted in basic embryology and in basic logic, and anybody can engage that."
Once again, we are greeted with the curious spectacle of a defiant "pro-choice" Catholic politician
appealing to 13th century comprehensions of human development (or rather
fourth century BC, since Aquinas's views were based on Aristotle) -- in opposition to
the Catholic Bishops' appeal to advancements in human embryology by modern science! While it may be a "matter of faith" for Biden, recognizing that
human life begins at "conception" is surely no great obstacle for scientists -- nor American citizens in general.
* * *Curiously, as Princeton professor Robert P. George noted on the role of religious authority in debates on public policy, it is pro-choice advocates who typically want to transform the question into a “metaphysical” or “religious” one:
It was Justice Harry Blackmun who claimed in his opinion for the Court legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) that “at this point in man’s knowledge” the scientific evidence was inconclusive and therefore cold not determine the outcome of the case. And twenty years later, the influential pro-choice writer Ronald Dworkin went on record claiming that the question of abortion is inherently “religious.” (See Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).) It is pro-choice advocates, such as Dworkin, who want to distinguish between when a human being comes into existence “in the biological sense” and when a human being comes into existence “in the moral sense.” It is they who want to distinguish a class of human beings “with rights” from pre-(or post-) conscious human beings who “don’t have rights.” And the reason for this, I submit, is that, short of defending abortion as “justifiable homicide,” the pro-choice position collapses if the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into the question of when a new member of homo sapiens comes into existence as a self-integrating organism whose unity, distinctiveness, and identity remain intact as it develops without substantial change from the point of its beginning through the various stages of its development and into adulthood.
As Catholics we believe in the sanctity of human life -- but this is not to say that the pro-life position can be seriously engaged by anybody.
In "Christian Conviction and Democratic Etiquette (First Things March 1994), Weigel explains:
How are we to make our case to those who do not share that prior religious commitment, or to those Christians whose churches do not provide clear moral counsel on this issue? And how do we do this in a political-cultural-legal climate in which individual autonomy has been virtually absolutized?
The answer is, we best make our case by insisting that our defense of the right to life of the unborn is a defense of civil rights and of a generous, hospitable American democracy. We best make our case by insisting that abortion-on-demand gravely damages the American democratic experiment by drastically constricting the community of the commonly protected. We best make our case by arguing that the private use of lethal violence against an innocent is an assault on the moral foundations of any just society. In short, we best make our case for maximum feasible legal protection of the unborn by deploying natural law arguments that translate our Christian moral convictions into a public idiom more powerful than the idiom of autonomy.
And to think that the Democrats were hoping the abortion debate would somehow "fade away" this election? -- Thank you, Senator Biden, for providing a clear illustration of why Catholics cannot be silent.
Related
In the same week of his nomination of a Hispanic Catholic for the Supreme Court of the United States, 
Joined by "Snowflake families" (children, who were formerly stored embryos and their parents), 
Posts
Following the 2004 Presidential election, we've expanded our discussion to cover the public policy decisions of Catholics in public service on both sides of the political divide.
