ALTHOUGH he persists in saying President Bush "stole" the election, Prof. John Arras actually is a very diplomatic man. In his philosophy seminar on reproductive ethics, he always denotes people who oppose legal abortion as "pro-life." For many who would not allow the choice of abortion, however, "pro-life" is a misnomer. To be truly pro-life means more than being pro-fetus, because there's quite a bit more to life than the time one spends in the uterus.
Joseph Bernardin recognized this. Shortly after becoming Chicago's Cardinal in 1983, he delivered his "seamless garment" sermon, linking abortion with other social issues such as welfare, nuclear war and executions. He urged Catholics to look at life as a whole and to consider children in poverty and in war zones as important as children in the womb.
Cardinal Bernardin's biographer Eugene Kennedy noted, "He wanted to identify the fact that if you are going to be pro-life, then you could not think of life as a cause in only one dimension; that you had to see that there was a connection between every one of those instances in which life might be threatened or be put at risk, and you had to make up your mind and face your conscience on all of these and not merely on one."
This consistent ethic of life contrasts sharply with the stance taken by many conservatives. While fighting to make abortion illegal, many people calling themselves "pro-life" also try to end public support for poor families by cutting food stamps and health care programs. Those who would force women to have children should re-examine into what circumstances they want those children to be born.
For example, the Republican Party platform of 2000 declared, "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," and piously claimed, "our goal is to ensure that women with problem pregnancies have the kind of support, material and otherwise, they need for themselves and for their babies, not to be punitive toward those for whose difficult situation we have only compassion."
This is the same party which pushed through a 1996 welfare reform law that put a five-year lifetime limit on federal aid. The American economy officially has begun its contraction, and the 5.4 percent unemployment rate is hitting hardest for low-wage service industry workers. As the economy continues to slide downward, families which did not find jobs in the last five years are receiving their final food stamps, Medicaid-insured visits to the doctor and final month's rent. A political philosophy which does not protect children from hunger, untreated disease and homelessness cannot be called "pro-life."
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Indeed, even "pro-fetus" might be too kind a description for many Republicans. To be in favor of something usually demands more than just advocating its continued existence; one must also promote its well-being. A thriving fetus requires a thriving mother, particularly one who receives good pre-natal health care. Yet the government will provide nothing but emergency care for any woman who immigrated to the United States after 1996 for the first five years of her residency. Delivery of her baby qualifies as an emergency, but checkups during pregnancy do not. Those who oppose legal abortion while supporting welfare reform appear more interested in babies who die in abortions than in ones who are miscarried or stillborn because of insufficient care.
Some conservative positions in the realm of foreign policy also are inconsistent with a genuinely pro-life attitude. During the 1970s, Cardinal Bernardin oversaw the drafting of "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," which strongly condemned the use of nuclear weapons. The pastoral letter restated the church teaching that killing innocent civilians is immoral. Senate Republicans, however, rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999. The international treaty would have prohibited all nuclear test explosions in all environments.
In March, the Bush administration began refusing funding to programs in foreign nations that give information about abortion to their patients. At the same time, the administration has done little to reduce the number of innocent lives lost in military action in Afghanistan. "Precision bombing" has been tailored to the goals of the Pentagon - minimizing harm to the military - not to the rules of just war, which require treating noncombatants at least as kindly as one treats one's own soldiers. Fetuses must be defended from abortion, but children need not be protected from American weapons.
Perhaps the most peculiar juxtaposition of stances comes when one looks at those who favor government executions. In a 1985 address to the Cook County criminal law committee, Cardinal Bernardin asked for a reevaluation of the death penalty, saying, "Capital punishment is not an appropriate response to the problem of crime in our land." Yet Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia somehow reconciles restraining women from controlling their reproduction (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) with allowing states to kill innocent citizens (Herrera v. Collins).
Those who call themselves "pro-life" should review their political views. Hopefully they will be true advocates for life - for aid to the poor, for humane foreign policy, for intelligent criminal law - and not merely anti-choice.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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