Until recently, Frances Kissling was the president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a group claiming that a pro-abortion stance was somehow compatible with Catholicism. Sitting at the polar opposite of the political spectrum, Phyllis Schlafly is a right-wing icon. She founded the Eagle Forum, and was central to derailing the Equal Rights Amendment. Although a Catholic, her worldview owes more to a strong secular nationalist ideology, with shades of American exceptionalism. Schlafly is also a firm believer in the use of nuclear weapons, having once pronounced that “the atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.” She defended the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the grounds that it saved lives, especially American ones: “Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima meant the difference between life and death to hundreds of thousands of our best and brightest young men”. She even dubs it, perversely, the “lifesaver bomb”.
Let me set out two basic moral principals, fundamental to Catholicism. First, it is never licit to do evil so that good may result. To say otherwise is an exercise in naked consequentialism. Second, the deliberate taking of innocent human life is always and everywhere wrong. Thus any directly-procured abortion is intrinsically evil, as is a nuclear attack on a city, which, by its nature, targets non-combatants. And, as we know, an intrinsically evil act is evil is its object, so that it can never be justified by either intent or circumstance. Thus a directly-procured abortion cannot be justified by appealing to the consequences of having the child, such as the welfare the mother. And dropping an atomic bomb on a city cannot be justified, even if it manages to save millions of lives.
But the Kisslings and the Schlaflys of the world do appeal to particular circumstances when defending their favored evil actions. Consequentalist arguments are like a big circle: whether you start from the right or the left, you always end up at the same point. Schlafly is considered an icon in pro-life circles. How can that be? Doesn’t the right understand that appeals to the morality of abortion spring from the same flawed philosophy as appeals to the morality of nuclear weapons? Note that many moralists holding the strongest positions against nuclear weapons are also some of the staunchest opponents of abortion and euthanasia. Moralists like Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis argued that even the nuclear deterrent is deeply immoral, on the grounds that such deterrence entails an intention to kill innocents. Elizabeth Anscombe dubbed Truman a war criminal, and vehemently protested Oxford’s granting him an honorary degree in 1956. She noted that in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “it was certainly decided to kill the innocent as a means to an end”. Anscombe, by the way, coined the term “consequentialism” in the first place. She knew what she was talking about.
So, at the end of the day, Kissling and Schlafly are not so different. They both defend the taking of innocent life because they perceive some “greater good”. They both reject fundamental Catholic principles, and see no problem with that. Consistency is dead.
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