A brief note on proportional reasoning

It occurred to me, as I was finishing cleaning my garage (a carry-over from last weekend), that proportionality only comes into play when one is deciding between two options both of which fall short of being a true moral good (Hey, I never claimed to be smart). This fits voting to a T, which is why many people accurately describe their experience of voting as choosing the lesser of two evils. In many important ways, though not all, this is exactly what we do, which is why prudence is so necessary. Therefore, we can see that there are times when choosing the lesser of two evils is the best we can do, thus we choose either means or even ends that in an ideal situation we would not choose. It is morally licit to do this when voting. I urge everyone to read Faithful Citizenship, it addresses this quite well. It's like that one psychological test, which I had to take, along with several others, before being admitted as a deacon candidate, that gives you two bad choices, say, between clubbing a baby seal or smacking your mom and you have to pick one with no caveats and no skipping.

I cannot emphasize too strongly my opposition to abortion. Healthy mothers aborting their children is one of the most horrible things imaginable, which is why we react so strongly to this issue. It is also why many women who make the unfortunate decision to have an abortion are often deeply wounded and scarred. One of the biggest lies associated with abortion is the post-abortion trauma experienced by many, many women, who were told that it is just a medical procedure to remove some cells, especially in an early-term abortion, like a melanoma, or some other malignant growth that you are glad to be rid of. Instead of being glad, often women find themselves sad, depressed, and self-condemnatory.

Finally, in the U.S., abortion is a constitutional issue. There are things, such as parental notification, forbidding the crossing of state lines to obtain an abortion, recognizing that fathers have parental rights, and banning infanticide, known as partial birth abortion, that we can legislatively and executively do something about and in most of the above instances, with the exception of recognizing a father's parental rights, we have legislatively acted in an often bi-partisan manner. So, find out where your candidate stood on these issues, how s/he voted if they were in a position to do so. On the issue of the partial birth abortion ban, which passed Supreme Court scrutiny and is now the law, Senator McCain voted in favor and Senator Biden did not vote. Senator Obama was not in the U.S. Senate, but has expressed his support for this ban. He also opposes late-term abortions and insists on a health of the mother exemption that really and truly only allows such procedures if the mother's life in danger. This is alright. So, the two candidates are not that far apart because McCain is alright with embryonic stem cell research, which is morally equivalent to an early-term abortion. As regards partial birth abortion, the AMA stated explicitly that a health exemption was not needed because this procedure basically consists of a woman giving birth, only to kill the child just prior to exiting the birth canal. In other words, it is never medically necessary. The subject of the requirement of a health exception for partial birth abortions was a controversy at the time of the passage of the ban because pro-abortion people admitted to lying about the frequency and medical necessity of this grotesque caricature of medical practice.

Even if a law were passed limiting abortion it would probably still allow abortions in cases of rape and incest, which, as Catholics, we oppose. It would be a step forward, however, and I would support it. The reality is that nobody is likely to do much, if anything, about abortion whether they oppose it or support it. I think it is okay to factor this in to one's decision. I also think it is important to find out what a candidate intends to do if elected.