Here is the new platform:
“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.”
I want to make two comments (see Steve Waldman and Doug Kmiec for more).
In one sense, this platform represents a step forward. A truly Catholic approach recognizes that, in the case of abortion, the accompanying social and economic circumstances are just as important as, and intimately entwined with, the legal framework. This is why the approach of entities like the National Right to Life Committee is fundamentally flawed, given that it attaches itself to the a certain partisan agenda and embraces a set of anti-life policies and actions, such as associating with people who support the use of nuclear weapons; opposing universal health care; supporting candidates with regressive economic policies, and who support war and torture; and inviting speakers who are associated with people who promote forced abortion and sex slavery.
It is for this reason that the Catholic church promotes the consistent ethic of life. The New Zealand bishops put it brilliantly: “Our responsibility to protect unborn children includes considering the legal framework for abortions, and also supporting pregnant and single mothers, and ensuring all children are welcomed and supported. What is the position of political candidates on the protection of unborn children? What do they say about the social and economic circumstances which contribute to higher or lower rates of abortion?” In that sense at least, by their focus on strong pro-family measures that encourage women to have children, the new Democratic party platform is in the right track.
But in a second, more profound and more fundamental sense, this platform actually constitutes a step backwards. The 2004 platform enshrined the Clintonian policy that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”. This itself was highly imperfect, but at least the inclusion of the word “rare” suggested that abortion was not something good, something to be encouraged and promoted. And that is the heart of the problem. If you believe in the “right” to abortion stemming from the “right” to privacy, then it is very difficult to argue that abortion should be as rare as possible. For if something is a “right”, then it is surely good, and –as Aquinas stated clearly– the good is that which all things strive after. How can one therefore say on one hand that abortion is a right, and on the other hand that it should be eliminated? ‘
And so the new platform eliminates any need actually reduce abortions, and instead focuses solely on reducing the need for abortions. The problem is a deep one. As long as the Democratic party sees abortion through the lens of individual freedom and choice, rather than the right to life and the common good, then Catholics will have a problem. It would be one thing to say that the ideal rate of abortion is zero, but that they best way to focus on achieving this is through extra-legal means– but they don’t even go that far. And that is a problem.
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