Failing the "Ethical Test"
Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

"The ethical test of a good society is how it treats its most vulnerable members." Thus
spoke John Kerry in an address on October 24, in which he also declared that he
disagrees with those who oppose abortion.

But the very reason people oppose abortion is that they want to protect society's most
vulnerable members, the children in the first nine months of their lives.

Kerry went on to say, "[W]e have a moral obligation to one another, to the forgotten, and
to those who live in the shadows."

Right. And people oppose abortion because they recognize their moral obligation to the
children growing in the womb, who are the most forgotten of all.

Mr. Kerry is not the only public official involved in this contradiction. A letter sent last
summer from forty-eight Catholic Democratic members of the House of Representatives
to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington indicated that while they disagree with the
Cardinal and among themselves on the abortion issue, they are each "committed to the
basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social justice - [including] protecting the
most vulnerable among us."

What we see here is an inability - or simply an unwillingness - on the part of public
officials who support legal abortion to discuss it in clear and forthright terms. They can
learn something from Ron Fitzimmons, who until recently was the director of the
National Coalition of Abortion Providers, and with whom I engage in regular dialogue.
Ron has told me numerous times, and has expressed publicly, that abortion is a form of
killing, and that any productive dialogue on the issue has to begin by acknowledging that
basic fact.

Public officials can also learn something from the court transcripts of the trials held this
past spring in three separate courtrooms across the nation regarding the ban on partial-
birth abortion. Doctors took the stand to testify not only about the details of that
procedure, but about other more common abortion procedures. They spoke in clear terms
about "crushing the head of a baby" and "dismembering" the body.

These are the most vulnerable members of society. If one supports the legality of
abortion, one should be willing to describe it. People like Mr. Kerry will not describe it,
however, because then it is clear that allowing it fails what he calls "the ethical test of a
good society," namely, "how it treats its most vulnerable members."

Kerry and others, of course, take refuge in the argument that "My task as I see it is not to
write every doctrine into law. That is not possible or right in a pluralistic society."

But it is not clear what "doctrine" he is talking about. If he means the doctrine that human
life is sacred, then he is talking about the same doctrine embodied by the law that protects
your life and mine!

When we in the Church and the pro-life movement call on public officials like John
Kerry to be committed to protecting the unborn from abortion, we are simply calling for a
consistent application -- to all human life -- of the laws that protect the born. This does
not impose any belief, but rather protects us all precisely from the beliefs of others who
might not see much value in our own lives. That's the position of the Catholic Church.

We should not expect any public official to impose his religion on us. But we should
expect him to understand it, and to be able to make the distinction between an article of
faith and a demand of what he calls "the ethical test of a good society."


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Tel: 888-PFL-3448, 718-980-4400; Fax: 718-980-6515; web: www.priestsforlife.org