Exceptional teaching for life

Ultimately, the South Dakota life protection law/abortion ban went down in the referendum last week because of the smokescreen Planned Parenthood was able to put up about a rape and incest exception. You know that if you’ve been following this (click on ‘abortion’ on the right for the fuller story–plenty of posts there).

But for people who at least understand that the law in South Dakota DID have such an exception, there has been confusion about the moral permissability of even the tightest wording, the finest tuning, of anything that would allow even the remotest possibility of taking one human life. That’s a good question to ask, and this is the best time, because this legislation is going to move forward, and a lot of other states are writing up something similar.

I was on Relevant Radio the other day explaining this, and have received some very good questions from well-informed listeners and readers. Jerry is probing here for some answers that a lot of folks are probably wondering, and it’s an excellent inquiry.

Explaining the South Dakota law’s ‘rape and incest’ clause, you outlined the three results of taking the Plan B pill.  Setting aside the debate over voting for the ‘lesser of evils’, the wisdom of allowing abortion in any form in order to limit it incrementally, or accepting the canard about the near statistical insignificance of those children conceived through rape or incest (and the requisite questions about the relative dignity of those human persons), I was hoping that you could clarify how you presented the ‘Plan B’ option.  Were you presenting this as a morally acceptable position, or merely as the nearest thing to an acceptable position?  If the former, could you please direct me to Church documents that may support that position?  Thank you for your consideration.

Glad you raise these points, Jerry. No, it is never morally acceptable to take a human life at any stage and cannot be presented as such. The good people of South Dakota who drafted HB 1215, which became the “Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Law” agonized over the protection of all human life under all circumstances and the passage of that law with 33 years of Roe and Doe‘s abortion on demand. What they crafted seemed to be the best possible legislation at this time.

And this is the time to get familiar with Evangelium vitae, the ‘Gospel of life’ encyclical written by Pope John Paul II and released on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1995. It covers just about everything we’re facing in the culture of life vs. culture of death battle, issue by issue. JPII anticipated this gnarly problem of trying to legislate protection of life back into a country’s whose laws permit taking it in all sorts of ways.

In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to “take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it”.

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. (EV no. 73.2)

Once these state laws are finally enacted, they can be fine tuned even further to close loopholes and render more perfect law. We are nearly there, as South Dakota proved. Evangelium vitae is the best possible guide to get there, and to change the hearts and minds necessary to make the law more perfect.