Bush is not pro-life? What!? - Catholics for Democracy

Reality Check

Comment added by hugetim on Wed 15 Sep 2004 - 20:06 h

This post is quite a good example of slanted coverage of Bush's policies by Catholics for Bush. Soon, I'll take a closer look at your website and see how you do there, but let's just start here.

First, let's remember that the case you have to make is that Bush is not only more anti-abortion than Kerry but that this difference is so great that a whole host of other life and death issues related to wars and extreme poverty and hunger are irrelevant in this election. I see people make this argument constantly by speaking as if a million unborn lives hang in the balance this election. You openly admit this is not the case, but you still somehow imply that voting for Bush because of abortion alone makes sense. In fact, however, Bush is not willing to do what it takes to move the pro-life movement forward, and the movement can do just fine without him.

For starters, Bush is not against abortion in the cases of incest and rape. This position is a insult to all women who have abortions for serious personal reasons other than these, such as extreme poverty or threat of abandonment. Either it is always wrong to take a human life, or it isn't--Bush's lukewarm position distorts the pro-life message and condones the killing of the unborn.

Bush has publicly stated on more than one occasion that the country is "not ready" for Roe v. Wade to be overturned--that's right, he is not in favor of it! It's no wonder then that media reports have consistently indicated that his prospective Supreme Court nominees are pro-choice (e.g. White House council Alberto Gonzales). (Note: other federal judgeships are a different story: both Bush and Kerry are willing to nominate pro-life judges for these positions.)

It is quite an understatement to say that Bush does not "talk about abortion at every stop." All mention of abortion is missing from most of his most prominent speeches like the State of the Union--the fact is that he only broaches the subject in front of very friendly audiences, such as the Pope or the RNC. Some champion of the pro-life cause!

The fact is that Bush gives us pro-lifers just enough to get us to vote for him, but he is not willing to go any farther than his political advisors tell him to. He threw one bone to us at the convention (where I need hardly mention the most prominent speakers were pro-choice), but does he have any new plans for advancing the pro-life cause in his next term? I didn' t hear any!

Finally, Bush shows very little understanding that it is a problem that 4,000 women per day want to have abortions in the first place. We need to do more to promote adoption, provide more funding for child care and health care and other things so that women in poverty know that society is behind her and willing to make sacrifices to help her raise her child. Instead of championing vulnerable women, Bush champion's tax cuts for the rich that make mending the social safety net impossible.

In short, I believe the pro-life movement suffers with Pres. Bush as it's most well-known (supposed) member. Bush's hypocrisy on other issues, as well as his many hypocrisies on abortion-related issues, greatly weakens our image, rather than bolstering it. I would argue that Kerry's positions are a good antidote to some of Bush's flaws on abortion--Kerry's policies will help lift people out of the most extreme levels of poverty and certainly help many women feel more capable of raising their children. I do have to agree that Kerry is downright an abortion rights advocate, but Bush's weak leadership on abortion and outrageous record on every other issue is simply not getting us closer to a change in Roe v. Wade, much less a culture of life.

reply to this comment

abortion

Comment added by Unregistered on Fri 17 Sep 2004 - 10:19 h

Some of these items are a matter of opinion, I guess. I try and look at things from the Catholic perspective and try not to examine them by other people who are not Catholic. In the case of President Bush, he has done more in 30 yrs for the pro life movement than any other President. He isn't even a Catholic. Thanks to him, Catholics can no longer be fired from their jobs at hospitals for refusing to perform or participate in abortion. John Kerry on the other hand has had 19 yrs as a Catholic to prove that he is either going to advocate policies that will reduce abortion, or help to have the laws changed. He has done nothing. I have asked over and over again, one policy he has voted for that would help reduce abortion, one that would support the abortion law being overturned, and no one can provide me with one. It does no good to state what he will do now, as President when he has had 19 yrs in the senate to prove himself.
Abortion covers so many issues. It is part of health care. Do we want our health care dollars being spent on abortion? I don't. Especially when that money can be pushed towards other needs of the population.

Who is a vulnerable woman? Is it someone that is a teenager, and her parents do not want to be embarressed about her pending pregnancy? If that is the case, those are exactly the type of children we as CAtholics want to protect. Is it a poor woman that should have made a decision to either not have sex or if she is a non CAtholic protect herself in some way? Is that my fault? Is that the tax payers fault? No. Do I want to help her? Only in the sense of not throwing her child away before it is born, and help educate her for the future. Do I just want to give her a blind handout? No, I don't. I want to make sure that she will not be dependent on charity. I want to help her have dignity towards herself, and help her see a future. I do not believe that our current system helps the poor do that. Honestly, if you are speaking about poor black women, there is a group that feels that abortion is part of a conspiracy to wipe black babies off the face of the earth. They see it as a genocide of 3 generations of people. They have a point, because statistically there are more black women that choose abortion than there are white women. They have an excellent group and web site. The Catholic church has hundreds of angencies that are funded by the private sector, and also get government assistance. I would rather see our money go to those agencies, because we are a church of empowerment and not dependence. To me that is more in line with our social justice stances, than giving tax dollars to the government as charity.

reply to this comment

Quick response

Comment added by hugetim on Fri 17 Sep 2004 - 12:29 h

My quick response is that Kerry has been a big supporter of policies that economically empower poor women, which most probably have reduced the abortion rate more than anything Bush has done. I can get you specific examples later.

I find your comments on a hypothetical poor woman with a crisis pregnancy very disturbing, but telling: "Do I want to help her? Only in the sense of not throwing her child away before it is born, and help educate her for the future. Do I just want to give her a blind handout? No, I don't." I agree that we want to stop her from throwing her child away, but the rest of your response says to me, in effect, "I want to watch her and her child live a life of hardship with no hope for the future. I want to continue the cycle of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, poverty, and despair."

Your view that assistance coming through the government is "charity" in a way that assistance through private organizations is not is inexplicable to me. I suspect it is more conservative ideology than anything resembling Catholic Social Teaching, which holds that government programs are necessary when smaller efforts are unable to uphold the common good on their own. My challenge to you is to find a coalition of private organizations that will offer to take over the financial burden of assistance to low-income families in the form of health care, education-assistance, child care assistance, food stamps, housing assistance, and when necessary, cash assistance, which the government currently provides. If you knew much about these programs, you would know that they are aimed at moving families toward independent financial security, crafted very decisively toward this end, even to a fault, currently. These programs help fill a great need in this country, providing a safety net and a chance to bounce back, though they are certainly not nearly enough at current funding levels. If you deny this need exists, then we can talk some more about that. (For starters, one third of US families live on less than $35,000 per year. 44 millian Americans have no health care coverage, and tens of millions of Americans regularly struggle even to find enough food to eat.)

If, however, you or another reader have personal experience of extreme poverty and the difficulty of getting out of it, and do not believe government programs are doing any good in this regard, I am very open to hearing what you have to say.

reply to this comment

I do have that experience

Comment added by Unregistered on Sat 18 Sep 2004 - 14:26 h

I do have the experience of getting out of poverty on my own. I am a single mother, I get no child support, and when I was laid off from work and couldn't find a job, I was in extreme poverty. I do have a lot of experiences that I can share.

Social justice does not mean, dependence. It means true, real help for people. Will I give the shirt off my back for someone in order to help them. Yes, I will. There are many reasons why taxation as charity is wrong. One - is the dependence issue that I have discussed before. 2. is that there is no pride or dignity in being on social programs, there is nothing good that comes of it, except for a band aid. I have asked you this before, you point out one Government program that actually works in helping free people from it's grip. Here is how welfare works - if you are on it, you are on it. If you get a part time job, you lose your daycare. So, where is the humanity in that program? What kind of social justice is that?
3. There is no dignity for the poor if they can't get away from their poverty, and they are stuck in it. It is almost like saying to them you have dug your grave and we are going to throw the dirt over you now.
4. Look up Catholic Charities, and call them up, find out about their programs. THEY do help free people from the throngs of dependence. The programs are set up that way. They do a better job than government.
5. Take a look at Caring and Sharing Hands in Mpls. This woman is a saint in our time. Mary Jo Copeland helps people have pride in themselves, and she is one of the most successful of all charities to help free people from being poor.
6. Take a look at the statistics for charitable giving. Note this; In the states in 2002 that voted for Gore, those states had the lowest amount of charitable giving. The Bush states had the most.
7. Is giving taxes enough if that is what you are going to use for your charities? I say NO. You must do more.
8. If you believe that Government charity is necessary, what if your taxes go to abortion? If you are CAtholic, that just can't be, so wouldn't empowering people to do their own giving be a better idea? I say yes
9. If you believe that Government charity is a necessity (obviously some government programs are necessary, I do not advocate getting rid of them all) then how do you know that your money is getting to those people, or perhaps, it is going to a war, that I know you specifically do not agree with - again empower yourself and give money on your own.
10. Have you ever thought about how manipulating these programs are to the people that support them? How arrogant it is to think that someone in government is better equiped to say that you are too stupid to do things on your own, so we have to do it for you? We are smarter than you? I don't need them to tell me who to give my money to. I don't need to be manipulated by some politician because he wants to continue to get re-elected to his Senate seat or any other seat, so he supports those programs, and doesn't find a way to get people off of them. I believe they do it on purpose, because how many poor people would you know that would vote for someone that says, we are changing things, and we are going to help you become free of your poverty. If I was in that situation, I don't think I would believe it. I would vote for the safety net of the program.

11. Name one thing that John Kerry has done that has reduced abortion? I have also asked you that before, this in fact is the third time on this board.

We must help people be free of poverty, no one is disputing that. I believe and so do my Republican counterparts that there are better ways to do so with our taxes.

reply to this comment

Good discussion

Comment added by hugetim on Sat 18 Sep 2004 - 16:09 h

First, I really want to thank you for continuing this discussion and sharing your perspective. And I'll start off with where I agree with you. Absolutely paying taxes and other donations are simply not enough--we have an obligation to educate ourselves about the situations others face and give of our time, with our hands, however we can--not just of our excess, but to "give until it hurts." I am a huge fan of Catholic Charities and other programs like the Mnpls one you cited. I'm currently volunteering at So Others Might Eat in DC, which I believe has a very good record of helping people from homelessness and addiction to dignity and indepence.

Now, I get the impression that you do not understand fully how government social programs work:
- The Catholic Charities USA website says "...about 67 percent of funding for Catholic Charities agencies programs comes from state, local, and federal government grants and contracts to provide services such as day care or welfare-to-work programs." In fact, very much government funding is very flexible and goes to these sorts of programs. It may also be instructive to take a look at Catholic Charities' lobbying agenda: www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/advocacy/.
- It is a problem that child care assistance is often taken away because of arbitrary restrictions, but that can be fixed--that's why we need more funding and reforms that take into account the experience of people such as yourself.
- Government programs such as the current TANF (welfare), housing assistance, child care funding, and job training funding, are all targetted at helping people move out of poverty and into self-sufficiency. If you have some other problem with these programs, fine, but it's strange to argue they don't move people out of poverty and into dignity when that's what they are designed to do, and what they do in so many cases. Would you deny all the people that these programs have helped just because they don't work in a few cases?
- No government funding currently goes to abortion. (It does go to unjust wars, but we can try to change that, too. That doesn't mean more people in this country should suffer.)
- The reason we need government funding for things like housing and health care rather than only having folks donate their shirts on an individual level is that charitible giving is not reliable--there is simply not enough to even nearly meet the need (hence Catholic Charities' funding), and charitible giving greatly decreases during recessions, just when the need increases. (by the way, the statistic about charitable giving from Bush states actually just indicates that wealthier people vote for Bush, people who give to get tax deductions and so forth. You'd have to make a lot of corrections to show a real relationship there.)

Finally, Kerry has or would decrease the number of abortions, as I've said before, through policies that help give women economic security. He is a big supporter of a minimum wage increase, targetting tax cuts to create jobs (unlike Bush's targetted indiscriminately to the wealthy), ensuring access to health care for all, working pro-actively to reduce the gender wage gap, providing desperately needed government services to immigrants, working to increase available affordable housing (an urgent need), increased funding for child care, and so on. I believe these initiatives could greatly reduce abortion, combined with other programs more specifically targetted at abortion. Look, I strongly believe that abortion should be illegal, but I also believe it is a huge problem in itself that 4,000 women want to have an abortion each day (granted, many are tragically pressured by others). I don't see either side talking about this, but I do believe Kerry's policies address it more effectively.

reply to this comment

Virtue

Comment added by Unregistered on Sat 18 Sep 2004 - 15:34 h

I have one last thing to say on this subject that I forgot. Do you feel any virtue in using your tax dollars as your giving to charity? How can anyone? They don't even know where their money is going, and they are letting someone else pick where it goes. They don't even have enough caring in themselves to do the giving themself. They can't even take the time to care enough about the poor to pick charities on their own, they have to let the Government do it for them. I say.. change the system.

reply to this comment

The government is of and by the people

Comment added by hugetim on Sat 18 Sep 2004 - 16:18 h

It's unrealistic to expect you as an individual to figure out how to provide education, housing, health care, child care, food, and every other service that is needed. It is a virtue to be a good citizen and pay taxes, as our Church explicitly teaches. (By the way, there is explicit teaching on most of the things I've been talking about regarding government programs. Click "Church Docs" above.) It is also a virtue to advocate for more adequate and effective human needs programs, even if it does mean a slight raise in taxes on us or a decrease in our nuclear arsenal to a level that would allow us to blow up the entire world just once instead of twenty times (forgive the sarcasm, but check out the dog video at http://www.truemajority.org/fun/ ). Of course, I agree that paying taxes is not enough...

In general, our attitude toward government in this country is distorted. The government is ours, and it exists to secure the common good (direct quote from the Catechism). There are many problems with it, but the solution is to change the system, as you say, but not to abandon it.

reply to this comment

We will have to agree to disagree on this

Comment added by Unregistered on Sat 18 Sep 2004 - 21:08 h

We will have to agree to disagree on this. I don't agree with you at all on using Government in this way. I do know a lot about how CAtholic Charities gets their donations. Caring and Sharing hands ONLY gets donations from private parties. One of the advantages of her programs is that she doesn't have to go through a lot of red tape to get items to the people that really need it. If you come in to her shelter, she will just tell you .. go to the store and pick out what you want.
John Kerry has had 19 yrs to prove what he will do to reduce abortion through his social programs. He hasn't done it. You have not given any specifics. Clearly, you don't believe him either, if you can't give a specific thing that he will do to reduce abortion and what he already has done to reduce abortion. You also have not provided one specific program that is not creating dependence on Government.
I don't think at this time in our lives we should be arguing over welfare reform, when we have an opportunity to see 2 or 3 Supreme court justices retiring and if President Bush is re elected, he will make sure that judges get into those positions that are pro life. Obviously, we can't feel too happy about John Kerry and people like Kennedy that try to thwart those opportunities. I guarentee you, if the Republicans do not act in the next four yrs, when they will hopefully have the control over Congress and the Senate, then I will make sure that not another one gets elected. I will be looking at the Libertarian party or one of the other independent parties. I know for a fact that there are a lot of others like me out there. I want this law overturned for the benefit of our society, and those that follow us.
Lastly, How do you know that money isn't going to health care that funds abortion. Any money that you give in taxes may go to a health care program that indirectly funds abortion. You don't know for sure.
I really wish you would reconsider. It does appear to me that your issue that is most important is the war. We do not have the equipment mentally and the inside information to judge whether this war is a just war or not. I do trust that President Bush is not the greatest mass murderer of all time, and that is what he would be if he knowingly took us to war for oil. I believe he is a good man. He may have gotten bad advice, but I believe that jury is out on that.

reply to this comment

Government vs Individual responsiblity

Comment added by Unregistered on Mon 20 Sep 2004 - 13:41 h

One of the differences between Republicans and Democrats as far as social justice- is Democrats tend to think of it as a government responsibility and Republicans tend to think of it as a community responsibility. George Bush did initiate the "Faith Based and Community Initiative"

From Whitehouse Web Page

President George W. Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiative represents a fresh start and bold new approach to government's role in helping those in need. Too often the government has ignored or impeded the efforts of faith-based and community organizations. Their compassionate efforts to improve their communities have been needlessly and improperly inhibited by bureaucratic red tape and restrictions placed on funding.

Secondly, if we rely on the government solely for social programs we have potential issues -

Potential for government waste as we see with the Pentagon buying $100 hammers.

Deminished need for individual responsibility - both for the recipients and the donors. For instance Germany has a real problem with people finding work after being laid off as they currently are guaranteed 60% of their former salary for life. They have no initiative to go to back to work.
If the government provides the majority of social programs - we don't have the ability to decide what programs need to be supported as well as a diminished need to participate in the community. It becomes someone else's problem.

I am not saying we need to eliminate government programs - there just needs to be a balance.

I also think that the best way to curb abortions is to change the society's attitude towards "sex". I did research about 20 years ago as a high school project on "abortion"

Abortions have not dimished the number of unwanted children. If I recall correctly - most impoverished people tend to have their babies. Young teenagers from lower socioeconomic families - because they want to feel loved.

The people that tend to have abortions are actually from the higher socioeconomic families.

From press release from

reply to this comment

Abortion

Comment added by Unregistered on Thu 26 Aug 2004 - 19:32 h

It is also unfortunate that the Catholics for Kerry have banned people for sending the list of Bush accomplishments to their board. Apparently they consider this obnoxious. That is what they called me when I posted the excerpt on abortion from our Catechism. Clearly, the Bishops agreed that the board was not supporting the ideals of Catholicism or Ono wouldn't have been terminated. I doubt if censorship is part of the Bishop's plan as well.

reply to this comment