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AmSpecBlog
Kmiec's Delusion
Kmiec's endorsement of Obama -- as well as a similar endorsement on different grounds by Philly radio host Michael Smerconish -- is evidence of the Bush fatigue/"brand damage" issue that has increasingly affected the GOP since the 2004 election. In the Republican ascendancy, the bandwagon became crowded (I remember Smerconish hawking a book at CPAC 2006) and now they're hopping off. As with Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley, the reasons offered for these Obama endorsements range from implausibly naive to absurdly superficial.
Kmiec's whole purpose is to persuade Catholics to vote for Obama, but his suggestion that sex education of the "comprehensive" variety that Obama advocates will reduce abortion is not merely naive, it is un-Catholic. Though I am myself strictly Protestant, in years of covering the pro-life movement I have necessarily become acquainted with Catholic doctrine on this subject (e.g., Humanae Vitae) which is directly at odds with the "comprehensive sexuality education" (CSE) philosophy that Obama and the Democrats support. Not only is CSE pro-homosexuality, but it mandates explicit instruction in the use of condoms and contraceptives ("safe sex"), which are forbidden by Catholic teaching.
Furthermore, as any truly hard-core pro-lifer would tell you, contraception causes abortion. I repeat: Contraception causes abortion. This counterintuitive fact involves several factors, including the undeniable reality that every method of contraception (except abstinence or surgical sterilization) has a failure rate. If a method of contraception is 99% effective, that 1% failure rate will result in a lot of unplanned pregnancies if millions of people are using that method regularly. At a more fundamental level, the widespread use of contraception gives rise to a culture in which sex without consequences is the norm and pregnancy -- which is the most natural outcome of sexual intercourse -- is viewed as an aberration. This inevitably leads to more promiscuity and less commitment in relationships, both of which contribute to the abortion crisis.
As to the propriety of sex education, perhaps Kmiec would benefit from dialogue with Jim Sedlak, a devout Catholic and president of the American Life League. Sedlak argues strongly against any classroom sex-ed program (including abstinence-based programs) on the grounds that this undermines the parents' role in their child's moral instruction, and that discussing sex in a room full of 25 kids violates modesty. (Read Wendy Shalit's A Return to Modesty, where she talks about her own experience with being mocked because her parents opted her out of her school's sex-ed program.)
Kmiec and his fellow Obamacons, like a lot of Americans, are in for a brutal disillusionment once Obama actually becomes president. It's been 14 years since Democrats controlled both the White House and the Congress. If others have forgotten 1993-94, I have not.
Comments
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Jessica O'Connor| 10.18.08 @ 1:40AM
"implausibly naive to absurdly superficial" aptly describes both Kmeic's and Buckley's endorsements. I have not read those of the others you mention. And while your remarks on sex ed are well taken, I wish you had said more about this fog of stupidity that seems to have descended on the world.
Scott| 10.18.08 @ 12:44PM
Actually, it is this article that is absurd and implausible. Contraception prevents pregnancy according to every major medical organization; abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. Multiple independent studies have demonstrated that abstinence-only programs are failures, that teens who make "virginity pledges" have as much pre-marital sex as teens who don't, but because ab-only doesn't teach medical facts, the "virgins" are more likely to get STDs and just as likely to get pregnant. With no measurable success, and evidence of fraud with the programs, taxpayers should ask why $1.5 billion continues to be spent on failed abstinence-only programs. I'm sure it is hard when conservative Republican legal scholars like Kmeic, Cafardi, and others like Buckley, Frum, Parker, Will, Krauthammer, Edwards and Brooks all agree that the far-right has taken the GOP too far off course, and perhaps when the far-right stops lying about sexuality, contraception, sex-ed, and even abortion, Americans will listen again. Mostly people are just tired of the lies.
Robert Stacy McCain| 10.18.08 @ 5:58PM
Scott, I am very skeptical that the "multiple independent studies" have proven what they claim to have proved. One of the big secrets of social science is that it's not nearly as scientific as some claim. As one criminologist told me, "We can 'prove' anything." It is very difficult to disentangle multiple factors of causation and demonstrate the independent effect of something like "abstinence only."
BTW, Scott's contribution here points up something that one of the commenters at my personal blog noticed a month ago. Democrats have apparently invented a new political tactic: Organized trolling. Every conservative blog is getting a wave of liberal commenters like Scott, and it seems oddly systematic.
Mary| 10.18.08 @ 8:21PM
Aside from the abortion issue, I'd like the Obamacons to explain how a man who spent 20 years in a church preaching gussied-up Marxism can claim to be a Christian, since Marxism is the antithesis of Christianity.
Ken Anderson| 10.19.08 @ 11:28AM
Yes, let's have more abstinence-only sex eduction in schools - the Palin family demonstrates how well that works!
Ken Anderson| 10.19.08 @ 11:28AM
Yes, let's have more abstinence-only sex eduction in schools - the Palin family demonstrates how well that works!
Mrs. Jackson| 10.19.08 @ 7:20PM
Contraception does cause abortion. Both in the way Mr. McCain describes and quite literally. The Mini-Pill is actually an abortifacient. It does not prevent conception like the original Pill did, it prevents implantation of the fertilized egg. As we all recall, Obama declined answering when life begins as that was above his paygrade. Yet most intellectually honest people will concede that life does begin at conception and argue whether that (young) life has the right to legal protection. So, accepting the intellectually honest argument that life does begin at conception, it is more than possible that women on the Mini Pill are aborting babies (several times a year) in the privacy of their own homes.
fun2bfree| 10.20.08 @ 12:20AM
Most intellectually honest people will concede that life might begin at birth or conception, but that governments are in a poor position to make that distinction as compared to individual families in their own consciences... The arrogance of the self-righteous to tell everyone else how to make the most personal decisions is apparently boundless.
Ken C| 10.20.08 @ 9:34AM
Ken Anderson, a more important decision than whether to give in to the temptation to have premarital sex is the decision whether to take final responsibility for the outcome of that action. And the Palins have done just that.
JC| 1.22.09 @ 3:26AM
1) The Supreme Court has declared that abortion must be legal as long as contraception is legal. Most people take for granted that abortion is a "failsafe" to contraception.
2) And contraception fails. In the only wide-ranging, secular study of NFP, done a few years ago in Europe, three groups of couples were compared: those using the Kill Pill, those practicing "fertility awareness" (using NFP charting techniques then having intercourse but using condoms during fertility); and those using full-fledged NFP. I forget how all the numbers worked, but I calculated it as aa 50% "failure rate" for condoms used during fertility.
3) And then there's the issue of "conception" versus "pregnancy" in the anti-life movement's jargon. Conception: sperm meets egg, resulting in a new embryo. Pregnancy: embryo is implanted in uterus. Estrogen pills, taken daily at the right dosage, have a 2% "failure" rate at preventing *pregnancy*. That's *if* they're taken every day and at the right dosage. Most people on prescriptions forget a day or two, and the estrogen pill is no different.
If the estrogen pill does not prevent ovulation--as often happens--it also weakens the lining of the uterus to prevent implantation. We're told this isn't "abortion' because the embryo isn't implanted yet. But it still constitutes killing a living embryo.
Then there are other"contraceptives", like IUDs, which operate *specifically* by refusing an embryo entry into the womb.
In any case, Kmiec insists he is a good Catholic, acting in accord with his beliefs. He may tihnk that by supporting Obama, he's being "pro-life." He may think that Obama's promise of signing FOCA is an empty campaign promise.
However, as this article so astutely points out--and few in even the "conservative" Catholic media are willing to say--Kmiec is expressly condoning artificial contraception and immoral forms of "sex education."