The Catholic Church And The Politics Of Abortion

A View From The States

Timothy Byrnes, Mary C Segers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000315097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

We had a great deal of help in producing this book. Lyman Kellstedt of the American Political Science Association's Special Section on Religion and Politics allowed us to try out our ideas on a panel at the association's 1990 meeting in San Francisco. Paul Weber and John Francis Burke offered helpful suggestions at that session. Amy Eisenberg and Deborah Rich at Westview Press were helpful and supportive throughout. A. David Lynch of the City College of New York and Murray Karstadt of Rutgers University turned eleven chapters 011 five different word processing programs into a single manuscript. Needless to say, we could not have done it without them. Vicky Donner, supported by the City College Scholars Program, also assisted in readying the manuscript for publication. Dolores M. Byrnes prepared the index. Mary Segers acknowledges Dean Donald G. Stein and the Graduate School at Rutgers in Newark for the partial support provided by a 1 990-91 graduate research award. Lastly, we both offer our gratitude to the contributors to this volume. All of the chapters of this book, with a single exception, were written explicitly for inclusion in this book; none have been published previously. We could not have asked for more enthusiastic responses to our requests to contribute nor greater responsiveness to the time constraints we set. The goodwill of the contributors allowed this book to be the collaborative effort we originally hoped it would be. That said, the views expressed by each individual author are those of that author alone.

1
The Politics of Abortion: The Catholic Bishops

Timothy A. Byrnes

The Supreme Court of the United States transformed the politics of abortion in July 1989 through its decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Inc. By upholding several provisions of Missouri's restrictive abortion law, the court signaled its retreat from Roe v. Wade, invited other state legislatures to further limit access to abortion, and reinvigorated a political struggle over a very emotional issue.

The American Catholic bishops, long opposed to abortion and firmly committed to a constitutional amendment banning it, are active participants in this reinvigorated struggle. With the court's decision in Webster, limiting access to abortion has become a real political possibility for the first time since 1973. As a result, the bishops' faint and distant hope for a constitutional amendment has given way to immediate expectations of restrictive legislation at the state level. Those expectations, in turn, have led to a flurry of activity on the part of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and its individual members.

In this chapter I will describe these activities and analyze them from the perspective of two central questions:

1. How has the Supreme Court's decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Inc. affected the Catholic bishops' approach to abortion as a legal and political issue?
2. How have the new political circumstances swirling around abortion in the wake of Webster affected the debate among the bishops concerning the formulation and articulation of their public agenda?

The Bishops and Abortion

As a general rule, the Catholic hierarchy'S opposition to abortion, itself consistent, must be tailored to changing political circumstances if it is to be effective, or even credible. In particular, the bishops have to focus their antiabortion efforts on the appropriate level of politics. In the 1960s and early 1970s the bishops of various states denounced the liberalization of those states' abortion laws and mobilized the church's resources in opposition to legal abortion. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops coordinated many of these activities, and the bishops issued a number of collective statements emphasizing Catholic teaching on abortion. But as long as the issue remained on the state level of politics, the primary responsibility for opposing abortion remained in the hands of individual bishops or small groups of bishops from a particular state. It was not until the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade placed abortion on the national political agenda in 1973 that the NCCB became the central actor in the Catholic hierarchy's opposition to abortion. The NCCB's leaders forcefully denounced the decision and called for a constitutional amendment to nullify it. The bishops collectively supported and funded a number of national antiabortion organizations. And in the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, released in 1975, the conference called for "well planned and coordinated political action" for the purpose of electing antiabortion candidates and passing an antiabortion constitutional amendment.¹ I

This effort, to be sure, included an important local element. A constitutional amendment would require the support of congressmen, senators, and state legislators, all of whom are responsive to local constituencies of one kind or another. Nevertheless, the bishops' opposition to abortion was decidedly more national in focus after Roe v. Wade than it had been before. The issue of abortion was nationalized in 1973, and the bishops' antiabortion activities—their public statements, lobbying, and voter mobilization efforts—had to shift accordingly. In fact, this shift in focus led the bishops directly to active participation in the national political process in the 1970s and 1980s.

In July 1989 the Supreme Court reversed this process and tangibly reintroduced abortion to state and local politics. The issue moved from the national, judicial arena to the more local, political arena. And pro-choice and pro-life activists shifted their attention, in part at least, from votes on the Supreme Court to votes in various state legislatures. For their part, the bishops enthusiastically welcomed the court's retreat from Roe v. Wade, and called for legislative efforts to test further the court's evolving doctrine on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. But given that new circumstances required new approaches, the bishops also sharpened their focus on pro-choice Catholic politicians and rededicated their institutional and financial resources to the pro-life cause.

The Bishops and Catholic Politicians

In November 1989 the bishops released Resolution on Abortion, calling abortion "the fundamental human rights issue for all men and women of good will." ² In this resolution the bishops summarized their own long and short range goals regarding that issue. Those goals were:

1. constitutional protection of the right to life of unborn children to the maximum degree possible
2. federal and state laws and administrative policies that restrict support for and practice of abortion
3. Continual refinement and ultimate reversal of Supreme Court and other court decisions that deny the unalienable right to life
4. Supportive legislation to provide morally acceptable alternatives to abortion, and social policy initiatives which provide support to pregnant women for prenatal care and extended support for low-income women and their children³

These objectives were well established, appropriately tailored to the circumstances at hand, and really not particularly controversial coming from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. However, the bishops also urged "public officials, especially Catholics, to advance these goals in recognition of their moral responsibility to protect the weak and defenseless among us."⁴ In addition, they declared in unequivocal terms that "no Catholic can responsibly take a 'pro-choice' stand when the 'choice' in question involves the taking of innocent human life."⁵ This last passage was a bluntly stated message to Catholic politicians that their religious leaders expected them to oppose abortion in political as well as moral terms.

This expectation was not a new one, of course. It was established church teaching that a Catholic can never "vote for" or "take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of" a law that would "admit in principle the licitness of abortion."⁶ And in 1984, Cardinal John O'Connor had insisted to Geraldine Ferraro, and by implication all American Catholics, that the church's position on abortion was "monolithic."⁷ Nevertheless, the American bishops' forceful restatement of this teaching in 1989 resonated loudly in the new political context created by the Supreme Court's decision. In the past, many Catholic politicians had hidden behind the court's rulings and argued that while they opposed abortion personally, their political options were limited because they had sworn to uphold the constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Whether such a position was based on nuance or duplicity is irrelevant for the purposes of this chapter because after July 1989 it was no longer a viable position for a politician, Catholic or not, to take. Webster meant that substantial legal restrictions on abortion were possible again; votes would be taken, records would be established. And in that context, the bishops declared that any vote by any Catholic politician in favor of maintaining abortion rights was by definition irresponsible and in fact un-Catholic.

Given the fact that these politicians and legislative battles would be found at the state and local levels of government, it fell to individual bishops to apply the NCCB's general dictum to specific political circumstances. A number of bishops did so in very public and controversial ways.

• Bishop Leo Maher of San Diego, California denied Holy Communion to Lucy Killea, a Catholic Democrat running for a seat in the State Senate, because, in his words, she had placed herself in "complete contradiction to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church" through her "media
• advertisements and statements advocating the 'pro-choice' abortion position in the public forum."⁸
• Bishop Austin Vaughan of New York publicly warned Governor Mario Cuomo, another Catholic Democrat, that he was in "serious risk of going to hell" for his support of abortion rights and of public financing of abortions for poor women.⁹
• Bishops Elden Curtiss and Anthony Mi lone of Montana admonished all "Catholics who hold public office in [their] state to refrain from public statements which contradict . . . basic principles of Catholic morality."¹⁰
• Cardinal O'Connor, the chairman of the bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities said that "where Catholics are perceived not only as treating church teaching on abortion with contempt, but helping to multiply abortions by advocating legislation supporting abortion or by making public funds available for abortion, bishops may decide that for the common good such Catholics must be warned that they are at risk of excommunication. If such actions persist, bishops may consider excommunication the only option."¹¹
• Bishop Rene H. Gracida of Corpus Christi, Texas actually excommunicated Catholic directors of abortion clinics, describing those directors' activities as "a sin against God and humanity and against the law of the Roman Catholic Church."¹²

These statements and others like them underscored the determination on the part of many bishops to apply a kind of internal discipline to the new legislative and legal battles over abortion. To be sure, not every bishop agreed with specific applications of that discipline, and I will return to the bishops' disagreements in this regard later in this chapter. Nevertheless, the conference's collective statement, even absent any particular reemphasis by an individual bishop, was unmistakable in its implications for a Catholic politician from either party who wanted either to support abortion rights or finesse his or her way around the issue. There is no way such a politician can deny that anything short of active support for more restrictive abortion law is starkly inconsistent with the clearly articulated teachings of the church's leadership. In the words of Bishop Maher, "a pro-choice Catholic is an oxymoron."

A Public Relations Campaign

Something happened on the way to more restrict ive abortion law, however. Denied its cherished and accustomed protection of the U.S. Supreme Court, the pro-choice movement discovered substantial political resources. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services rendered certain types of more restrictive abortion law constitutional. But during the elections and legislative struggles of 1989 and 1990 it became apparent that support for restrict ive laws, constitutional though they might be, was in many parts of the country politically dangerous. Politicians from both parties began to position themselves accordingly, and the Catholic bishops faced another challenge. Now that the pro-life movement was clearly on the defensive politically, what could the Catholic hierarchy do to help?

The bishops answered this question in April 1990 when their Committee for Pro-Life Activities announced the NCCB's intention to spend several million dollars over the next three to five years on a public relations campaign to popularize opposition to abortion.¹³ Convinced that the pro-choice movement had presented its case more effectively, and that the media was biased against the pro-life cause, the bishops opted to mount their own information offensive. "We believe that the most critical issue in the United States is the problem of abortion," said Cardinal O'Connor, the chairman of the bishops' Pro-Life Committee, "and if we believe that then we should try to use the best possible means to communicate."¹⁴

In time, the bishops contracted the Wirthlin polling group to gauge public opinion on abortion, the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm to execute the campaign, and the Knights of Columbus to pay for it.¹⁵ Just as they had in the 1960s and early 1970s, the bishops offered their unparalleled resources to the pro-life cause in its hour of need. Over the next several years, the bishops will use a variety of public relations outlets to convey their message that the important aspect of the issue of abortion is not who does the choosing but rather what is actually being chosen.

The Supreme Court's decision in Webster has affected the bishops' approach to abortion as a political issue, then, in the sense that it has substantially altered the political context in which the bishops act. Catholic politicians were required by church law to oppose abortion before Webster. But Webster has forced these politicians to fac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Politics of Abortion: The Catholic Bishops
• 2 Abortion Politics Post-Webster: The New Jersey Bishops
• 3 The First Test of Webster's Effect: The Florida Church
• 4 The Consistent Life Ethic in State Politics: Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and the Abortion Issue in Illinois
• 5 The Abortion Control Act of 1989: The Pennsylvania Catholics
• 6 Abortion and Religious Coalitions: The Case of Louisiana
• 7 Leading the Nation After Webster: Connecticut's Abortion Law
• 8 The Cardinal and the Governor: The Politics of Abortion in New York State
• 9 Learning and Teaching Consistency: Catholics and the Right-to-Life Movement
• 10 The Loyal Opposition: Catholics for a Free Choice
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index