Catholic Bishops Weigh In on Stenberg v. Carhart

By Susan E. Wills

The fall general meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) presented the first opportunity for U.S. bishops to speak collectively about the Supreme Court's June decision on partial-birth abortion and they did so in blunt and powerful prose.

In a statement entitled "Abortion and the Supreme Court: Advancing the Culture of Death," the bishops decry the Stenberg v. Carhart decision as having "brought us to the brink of endorsing infanticide."

Abortion, the bishops note, "is not about 'when life begins,' or even exclusively about abortion." In 1973 when Roe was decided, medical evidence was irrefutable that human life is a "continuum ... from conception onwards." The Roe Court's agnosticism on this point left the question open and permitted abortion until the process of delivery begins or--as abortion advocates used to argue--until birth.

But now, after 27 years of our cultural acclimation to "abortion on request" for the duration of pregnancy, abortion supporters and the Carhart majority are leading us into territory where only a handful of utilitarian ethicists, such as Princeton's Peter Singer, have trod. In their view, the standard for deciding whether a full-term infant can be killed no longer hinges on location (in the womb vs. partially or wholly outside the mother). It comes down to this: does the mother want the child?

The implication of the decision is that human rights are not inherent. They may be conferred, or withheld, by judicial fiat. The child's life is understood to have no intrinsic value, but only such value as the mother chooses to ascribe.

This "expansion of the logic of Roe" has already been used, the bishops note, "to attack congressional efforts to reaffirm that a child completely born alive is a legal person." On the basis of the Carhart decision, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) has claimed that protecting the lives of fully born infants who have survived abortion attempts, "is 'in direct conflict with Roe' which 'clearly states that women have the right to choose prior to fetal viability.'"

The bishops assert that, by the 5-4 majority decision in Carhart, our legal system, and thus our national culture, is being pressed to declare that human life has no inherent worth, that the value of human life can be assigned by the powerful and that the protection of the vulnerable is subject to the arbitrary choice of others. The lives of all who are marginalized by our society are endangered by such a trend.

Because "no human government can legitimately deny the right to life or restrict it to certain classes of human beings," the bishops conclude that "the Court's abortion decisions deserve only to be condemned, repudiated and ultimately reversed."

Abortion has had a corrosive effect and has weakened many other aspects of American life.

Our culture is one, they write, "whose casualties include not only the unborn but the countless thousands of women who have suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually from the deadly effects of abortion; in which fathers, grandparents, siblings, indeed entire families suffer and are forever changed by the loss of a child." Increasingly, "many Americans turn to the destruction of innocent life as an answer to personal, social and economic problems; which encourages many young men to feel no sense of responsibility to take care of the children they helped to create and no loyalty to their child's mother; [and one] in which men who do feel responsibility for their children are left helpless to protect them."

Pope John Paul II has described this as the "culture of death," one which has done more than rend the bonds of family which have existed from the beginning of human history. A legal and cultural framework which tolerates the brutal elimination of unborn children for convenience must make its peace with violence and deceit. It must deny objective moral standards. The public must agree to keep its eyes averted from the truth of what is going on in order to maintain a precarious state of denial.

At their November 13-16 meeting, the bishops recommited themselves to the task of reversing the Supreme Court's abortion decisions.

To this goal, the bishops rededicate the Catholic Church "to education, public policy advocacy, pastoral care, and fervent prayer for the cause of human life."

The bishops remind us of the promise made by our founders in the Declaration of Independence to generations yet unborn, "that our nation would respect life as the first among the inalienable rights bestowed on us by our Creator." To uphold that promise, " the nation's founders pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. We must do no less."

Nor must we.

The full text of "Abortion and the Supreme Court: Advancing the Culture of Death" can be found at http://www.nccbuscc.org/prolife/issues/abortion/culture.htm. A pamphlet developed by the bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities, The Door Opens to Infanticide, explains the Carhart decision. Full-color and camera-ready B&W versions may be ordered from the NCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities by calling (202) 541-3070.