Priests for Life is an organization that is based in my home town of Staten Island, New York. Its leader, Father Frank Pavone, made an interesting statement today. He said that Barack Obama is in the minority with respect to his pro-abortion stance. He made this statement on the day Obama was to speak at Notre Dame.
The protesters at that graduation event should not have interrupted him when he spoke. This puts them in the same category as the folks who interrupted Tom Tancredo in North Carolina recently.
But Father Pavone is right. Obama is in the minority on this issue, based on the results of a Gallup Poll released this week that indicates 51% of Americans now consider themselves to be pro-life. This is unsurprising to some of us, because when questioned in detail, Americans tell pollsters they do not approve of abortion taking place in the vast majority of situations in which it typically occurs. We have known that for years. And the pro-life position has become more widely held since the advent of 4-D ultrasound technology, which has demonstrated to the American people without equivocation the vital life of the fetus.
The fact that a majority of Americans are now pro-life makes me wonder about the claims some have made that the social issues have undermined the electoral success of the GOP. I think these people are plainly wrong.
But even as we learn about the movement of the American people toward a pro-life stance, we also learn some sad news of the increasing rates of illegitimacy in our country. The rate is now approximately 40% of live births.
Abortion is a huge injustice. But illegitimacy is also, as a couple of sources have pointed out.
Mona Charen:
The life prospects for children born into intact families are so dramatically different from those born into single-parent homes that it would seem a gross injustice if it resulted from anything other than the free choice of parents. Actually, it is a gross injustice to the children — even if it is perpetrated by their parents...
Young women, especially poorly educated ones, have gotten the idea that marriage is all about them — about their romantic hopes. In fact, while marriage often does deliver on the promise of happiness for adults, it is only secondarily about adult happiness. It is primarily about safety and security for children. The old stigma against illegitimacy was harsh and led to its own kind of suffering. But it prevented narcissistic young people from impairing the lives of their children on a grand scale.
Dr. Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council has written about another reason why widespread illegitimacy is a very bad situation:
This system is a massive injustice. Married people are the source of a massive transfer of payments to broken families. Those who stay together are also paying for those adults who do not.
And Peter Robinson writes at Forbes.com about a graduation address given by Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana. Daniels, who is an otherwise mild-mannered midwesterner, had some edgy things to say:
Daniels...performed a feat rare among politicians: He talked about social issues without sounding either apologetic or preachy.
"Our parents," he said, "formed families and kept them intact, even through difficulty, 'for the sake of the kids.' To us [baby boomers], parental happiness came first. We often divorced at the first unpleasantness, and increasingly just gave birth to children without the nuisance of marriage. 'Commitment' cramps one's style, don't you know? Total bummer."
"Please, be judgmental," Daniels continued. (In the text the governor's press office released, those italics are his.) "As free people, we agree to tolerate any conduct that does no harm to others, but we should not be coerced into condoning it. Selfishness and irresponsibility in business, personal finances or in family life are deserving of your disapproval. Go ahead and stigmatize them."
Be judgmental? Stigmatize bad behavior? An elected official said that? He did indeed. And the audience gave him a standing ovation.
The great Obama suggested today that the differences we have in America on the issue of abortion are "irreconcilable". The implicit message is that the cultural far left has won on this issue, and that's the bottom line.
But I don't think we can be satisfied with a status quo that suggests that individuals old enough to procreate are not responsible to the larger society on some core issues that have civilizational import; and that these folks are not expected to subjugate their own interests for the benefit of the child they have conceived.
That status quo is lunacy; and it is amoral.
I am reminded of one alternative to this lunacy in an article that describes the ancient Greek concept of citizenship:
In the West, our concept of citizenship originated with the ancient Greeks, who identified it with the essence of being human. Aristotle observed that only gods and animals took no part in the affairs of the polis, the city-state.
If you were a member of the polis, the public and private spheres were not separate realms. The obligations of citizenship were inextricable from the everyday life of individuals living in the polis. For the Greeks, citizenship was founded on citizens’ obligations to the community, not on a concept of inalienable rights. This worked because the city-states were small, organic communities whose members felt that their destinies were linked to that of the polis.
Citizenship, active and engaged, also was for the Greeks an opportunity to demonstrate one’s virtue, thereby winning the respect and honor of fellow citizens.
Obviously, there is an appropriate balance to be struck between individual rights, which we hold to be sacred, and the responsibilities that men and women have to the larger community, and to the children they conceive. We have failed to find that balance in contemporary American society. We ultimately need a higher call to citizenship that includes expectations regarding family life.
High rates of abortion and illegitimacy continue to be the clarion indicators in our society that something is terribly wrong. The fact that a majority of Americans have taken the pro-life position, in spite of the position taken by a relativistic President Obama, is an encouraging sign.
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