First Things: Voting Pro-Life
September 25, 2006

Robert P. George writes:

Mirror of Justice, a website for Catholic law professors, has been the forum for some exceptionally thoughtful debates about the implications of Catholic social thought for questions of law and public policy. One question that has been explored in a sustained way since the 2004 presidential campaign concerns the obligations of Catholics and other pro-life citizens when it comes to voting for candidates who support legal abortion. Cornell law professor Eduardo Peñalver, a liberal MoJ blogger, has pressed the argument elsewhere that pro-lifers may legitimately vote for pro-abortion liberals. Indeed, he has suggested that voting for Democrats (even if they are “pro-choice”) may be the “pro-life” thing to do, because the Democratic party’s policies on taxation, welfare, etc., could reduce the number of abortions. Professor Peñalver’s MoJ colleague Richard Garnett of Notre Dame Law School has ably responded, pointing out that the Democrats, in addition to supporting legal abortion, (a) support public funding of abortions, (b) oppose judicial nominees who might permit even moderate regulation of abortion, (c) oppose even those minor regulations of abortion that are permitted under prevailing constitutional jurisprudence, (d) support proposals that would compel Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, and (e) demonize opponents of abortion as hostile to women’s rights and civil liberties.

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