Abortion and the disintegration of the state

Can a United States citizen conscientiously vote for a political candidate who supports legalized abortion? Perhaps we should let Pope John Paul II answer that question. These words are from his powerful 1991 encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

“This is what is happening at the level of politics and government: The original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people — even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: The ‘right’ ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part.

“In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The state is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.

“The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy.

“Really what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is, the most unjust of discriminations practiced: Some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity?

“When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the state itself has already begun” (#20).

By John Paul’s analysis, legislators who support and vote for abortion are contributing to the disintegration of the state itself and undermining our democracy. As he said, “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others” (#20). Such a society, he said, “is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness” (#24).

Any politician who would claim to be personally opposed to abortion but would support its legalization is engaged in a “tragic caricature of legality,” is betraying democracy, is contributing to the establishment of a “tyrant state,” and is on “the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness.”

These are the words of John Paul II. We have Catholic politicians who say that they are personally opposed to abortion, and we have no reason to doubt that they are personally opposed to it. However, they then, as we know, usually go on to insist that they cannot “impose their beliefs” on others. But it is not a matter of imposing their beliefs on others but of protecting the innocent in society which is their civic duty. The inviolability of the innocent is not a revealed religious doctrine recognized only by the adherents of a particular religion but a mandate placed on all by the natural moral law.

Public servants — whether legislators, executives or judges — must work for the public good. To those who claim they are personally opposed but cannot force their beliefs on others, John Paul said: “Abortion goes beyond the responsibility of individuals and beyond the harm done to them and takes on a distinctly social dimension. It is a most serious wound inflicted on society and its culture by the very people who ought to be society’s promoters and defenders. As I wrote in my Letter to Families, ‘we are facing an immense threat to life: not only to the life of individuals but also to that of civilization itself.’ We are facing what can be called a ‘structure of sin’ which opposes human life not yet born” (#59).

The form of government we utilize is no safeguard against injustice. Democracy can be as brutal as totalitarianism. And an unjust law is equally unjust whether it is enacted by a majority vote or a single tyrant. To quote John Paul again: “When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that it is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a tyrannical decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings?

“Everyone’s conscience rightly rejects those crimes against humanity of which our century has had such sad experience. But would these crimes cease to be crimes if, instead of being committed by unscrupulous tyrants, they were legitimated by popular consensus” (#71)?

Every conscientious American knows the answer to that question.

John M. Haas is president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and founding president of the International Institute for Culture. He is a member of the Medical Moral Commission of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.