Abortion

Roman Catholic Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and an Italian, recently accused U.S. President Obama of “arrogance” for overturning Bush administration “global gag rules” on government funding for non-governmental organizations that facilitate abortions overseas. President Obama manifested arrogance by acting as one “who believes he knows what is right” in opening “the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life.” Fisichella also stated that he did not believe Americans who had voted for Obama had considered ethical issues when deciding for whom to vote. (For a fuller report, cf. “Vatican hits out at 'arrogant' Barack Obama over abortion,” published in The Times Online, January 25, 2009.)

Fisichella’s highly insulting comments display a hubris that understandably alienates rather than reconciles. He presumes that the Roman Catholic Church’s position that the moment of conception marks the creation of a fully human life is irrefutably correct. Yet no biblical passages explicitly support that view; Christian ethicists and theologians have not reached any consensus on this issue. Other major religious traditions, including the Jewish and Anglican traditions, do not presume to identify the exact first moment at which a new human life fully exists. Scientific and philosophical opinions are also divided on this issue, with the weight of opinion favoring a point well after conception.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that at conception the human is “ensouled,” i.e., God gives the fertilized egg a human soul, the person’s spiritual aspect created in the image of God. This teaching owes at least as much to Platonic thought as to Hebraic sources. Positing an eternal, spiritual soul poses problems of body-soul dualism, e.g., determining the connection and mode of interaction between body and soul. The ancient Hebrew perspective was that a person is her or his body. That perspective coheres well with contemporary scientific and theological insights (for example, cf. chapter 6 in Keith Ward’s The Big Questions in Science and Religion).

Fisichella in dismissing President Obama’s comments as arrogant insults the President by implying that anyone who rejects Roman Catholic teachings obviously has given the issue insufficient thought. Regardless of whether one agrees with Obama’s views, the new President clearly analyzes issues carefully before reaching an opinion. Similarly, Fisichella’s cavalier assessment that American voters ignored ethical issues because otherwise they would not have elected Obama as President makes the same assumption.

As a Christian priest, professional ethicist, and member of the U.S. electorate who voted for Obama, I find Fisichella’s comments highly insulting and ironic. I voted for Obama precisely because of his ethical stances, stances with which I found more substantive agreement than with those of John McCain, another ethical individual. I thank God that the United Sates has a president whose morality I respect, a president who honors the diversity of beliefs, and a president humble enough to know his own fallibility.

Intransigent, close-minded partisans like Fisichella whose condescending opinions shut down conversations before they begin are a major reason why the abortion debate remains so divisive in the United States today. Democracy requires supporting diversity of belief and action. The new policies governing government funded family planning programs abroad exemplify democracy in action. The policies importantly do not require but allow information disseminated to include facts about abortion.