Back in 2006, right-wing Republican panjandrum Ramesh Ponnuru published The Party of Death, a book aggressively attacking the Democratic Party for its embrace of “abortion rights”, or, as Ramesh, and the Republican Party, described it, murder! For if, as the Republican platform claims, every human fetus, from the moment of conception, is, or should be, under the law, a living human being, then any abortion, regardless of justification, is flat-out murder!
But that was then, “then” being “before Dobbs v. Jackson”, the notorious Supreme Court decision overturning another notorious Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that “invented” (IMHO) the “right” to abortion in the first place. Now, it seems, “murder” has fallen out of the Republican lexicon, and, one suspects, Republicans heartily wish that “abortion” would disappear as well.
According to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, only about 6% of abortions occur 15 weeks or more after gestation. Yet at the recent (Nov. 8, 2023) Republican “presidential” (allegedly) debate, only one hopeful, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, was willing to go so far as to favor even a 15-week ban at the national level, much less one that would make an actual dent in abortion figures nationally. In the Republican “war” on abortion, discretion has suddenly become the better part of morality.
Afterwords
In fact, Republicans have been exercising “discretion” when it comes to the abortion issue for a long time. The right has always insisted that, though they would outlaw abortion, and punish those who performed them, no pregnant woman would ever be punished for either seeking or obtaining an abortion. But why not? If abortion is murder, isn’t hiring someone to perform an abortion the same thing as hiring someone to perform a murder? Where is the difference? Other than in the voting booth?
But there is still another layer, for Catholics like Mr. Ponnuru and, I suspect, any other Christian opposing abortion on religious grounds. For most if not all denominations, baptism is a sine qua non for salvation. The issue of the damnation of fetuses was raised at least as early as the 5th century, by St. Augustine, no less. So what can we say about a woman who subjects her unborn child to eternal damnation for any purpose whatsoever, even to save her own life? For Catholics, only excommunication would seem an appropriate fate, and irrevocable excommunication at that, for a damned soul can never be redeemed.
Perhaps I haven’t covered all the requisite caveats, questions, and quiddities involved in this brief take, since I am not, after all, all that learned in Catholic theological minutiae. But if Mr. Ponnuru, or anyone else, has examined these issues, I haven’t heard about it.
