THE BRIGHT HOUR by Nina Riggs

Ancient Egyptians brought skeletons to their feasts, exhorting guests to drink and make merry while they still could. American Puritans in the 17th century kept skulls as warnings to sober up and focus on the afterlife. Memento mori, the gruesome reminders were called: remember that you must die. People died suddenly, and young. They wanted to be prepared. 

Nina Riggs did not feel prepared when she learned that a small spot in her breast was malignant. Cancer ran in her family: it had taken three grandparents and several aunts, and her mother was in treatment for multiple myeloma. But Riggs was only 37. Her sons, Freddy and Benny, were eight and five; she was not ready to leave them. Merrymaking had its place, but it didn’t address her concerns. And the afterlife, if it existed, was unknowable.

That's how my review of Riggs's The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying begins. It's in the Fall Books issue of The Christian Century, and you can read the rest here for a few more days. After that, the magazine will likely put the review behind a firewall that can be breached only by paid subscribers.

It's a short review; you have time to click and read. Seize the day. Enjoy the now. That's what Riggs advises. In the words of her great-great-great-grandfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, she wanted to be "cheered with the moist, warm glittering, budding and melodious hour that takes down the narrow walls of my soul and extends its pulsation and life to the very horizon. That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World."

Reviewers don't always like the books they describe, but I loved this one.

Death with Dignity

Seneca the Younger committing
suicide with the help of his friends,
A.D. 65 (Luca Giordano, 1684)

Next month Massachusetts voters will decide whether to allow "Death with Dignity," aka physician-assisted suicide. If a majority vote yes, Massachusetts will become the fourth state (after Oregon, Washington, and Montana) to allow a licensed physician "to prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally-ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person’s life."

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a Catholic priest and fierce right-to-lifer who weighed in on the issue in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, plans to vote no.

In "Please Step Back from the Assisted Suicide Ledge," Pacholczyk argues that physicians who provided lethal medications would destroy public trust as surely as policemen who provided guns or lifeguards who provided millstones (millstones?) to despondent people. He then offers two anecdotes: one about a woman who felt betrayed by her grandparents' joint suicide (they did not have a terminal illness, and their deaths were not physician assisted, so her story does not apply), and the other about a friend with multiple sclerosis who is glad he's still alive to enjoy his grandchildren (nobody is suggesting that PAS be mandatory, for Pete's sake, so this story doesn't apply either).

Father Pacholczyk makes me embarrassed to admit that I too would vote No.

I'm not going to make an argument here. I'll just point out that, when it comes to dying, there are more than two or three choices. Some people believe dying people should be kept alive for as long as medically possible, no matter how they or their families feel about it, no matter how much suffering is involved. Other people believe that, in extreme cases, doctors should have the right to administer lethal drugs to dying patients (euthanasia). Physician-assisted suicide lies between these two positions. So do hospice care, palliative care, and other dignified alternatives to either prolonging suffering, on the one hand, or causing death, on the other.

I believe that a lot of people support physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia because they fear they have only one alternative--to be kept alive for days, weeks, months, or even years of misery through painful interventions. Extremism breeds extremism. There are other approaches to terminal illness, however, as Bill Keller's excellent article in Sunday's New York Times points out. Last month Keller's father-in-law, Anthony Gilbey, died in a U.K. hospital of inoperable cancer. In "How to Die," Keller describes the older man's six-day dying process and the decisions--personal, medical, and political--that made his death dignified, loving, and peaceful. "We should all die so well," Keller concludes.

The approach used with Mr Gilbey, the Liverpool Care Pathway, doesn't appeal to extremists on either side, says Keller. "'Pro-life' lobbyists ... portray it as a back-door form of euthanasia.... Euthanasia advocates ... say it isn’t euthanasia-like enough." It is, however, realistic, compassionate, family oriented, spiritually sensitive, and sensible. It allowed Mr Gilbey to die at peace with God and his family, knowing he was loved.

The Liverpool Care Pathway is the standard approach "in most British hospitals and in several other countries [where, by the way, assisted suicide is illegal] — but not ours," writes Keller. "When I asked one American end-of-life specialist what chance he saw that something of the kind could be replicated here, the answer was immediate: 'Zero.'"

Learn more about how we Americans could choose to die with dignity, if only we were willing to give up our politically exacerbated extremism. Read Bill Keller's moving (and short) article. Click here.

Two political conventions, two Catholic leaders

New York's Cardinal Dolan may have tried to offend everybody in just eight days, though the Republicans seem not to have noticed his blessing on recent immigrants who have come to America in search of jobs. Democrats, however, did not miss his call for protection of the unborn, his veiled allusion to gay marriage, and his call for "religious freedom in full," which to him means freedom for Catholic institutions to deny contraceptive coverage to employees. (You can read the full text of both benedictions here.)

It must be tricky, being a bishop-politician. The Republican position on abortion sounds very Catholic, but its approach to the economy goes counter to over a century of Catholic social teaching. The Democratic platform upholds Catholic social teaching, but it also affirms Roe v. Wade.

Faced with this split, Cardinal Dolan, a great admirer of Paul Ryan, did what the Catholic hierarchy has typically done, at least in recent years--he paid little attention to social justice and focused mainly on sex. No wonder Andrew Sullivan, in a blistering op-ed piece, dubbed him "The Republican Party Cardinal."

Enough about the Cardinal. Another Catholic speaker at the Democratic National Convention was much more inspiring. Here's Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a social-justice lobby criticized by the Vatican last spring for spending too much time fighting poverty and too little time fighting abortion and gay marriage. Like Cardinal Dolan, she offered to speak at both conventions. The Republicans did not get back to her.

Who makes the choice? - the party platforms on abortion

As of last night, both political parties have published their platforms for 2012.* To nobody's surprise, they stand in stark contrast to one another, and nowhere more so than on female reproductive issues.

Republicans call their 412-word statement "The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life." Democrats call their 143-word statement "Protecting a Woman's Right to Choose."

Republicans link the "fundamental individual right to life" to the Declaration of Independence and, oddly, the Fourteenth Amendment (can fetuses then own property? should they be counted in legislative apportionments?). They support a human life amendment but do not specify what it should say. They oppose using tax money to "fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage." Interestingly, though the pro-life article in the Republican platform says "child" or "children" five times (when referring to fetuses), the word "mother" does not appear. Nor is there any mention of possible exceptions for rape, incest, or danger to the pregnant woman's health or life.

Democrats, on the other hand, "strongly and unequivocally" support Roe v. Wade. Abortion, they say, "is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way."

Both Democrats and Republicans express concern for the pregnant woman who chooses to give birth. Democrats vow to provide "affordable health care and [ensure] the availability of an access to programs that help women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including caring adoption programs." Republicans "salute those who provide them with counseling and adoption alternatives and empower them to choose life." They say nothing about providing any material help to such women, however: apparently this is a task for the private sector.

Tomorrow I plan to comment on how a pro-life Christian can support the Democratic platform, including its right-to-choose paragraph. Or at least I'll start commenting. This topic is not as simple as some people make it, and blog posts are necessarily short.
___________________________________

*The entire GOP platform is available here; the entire Democratic platform, here.

What Margaret Sanger really said about infanticide and abortion

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, founder of America's family planning movement, may be the most lied-about woman on the Internet.

Wait - I'll take that back. A lie is a conscious untruth, with intent to deceive. Certainly liars are involved with the mishmash of falsehood, half-truths, and logical fallacies relating to Ms. Sanger, but many honest people are now passing this misinformation along, sometimes embellishing it in the process. I believed some of it myself, though I wondered how a woman respected by so many in my mother's generation could be reviled by so many today.

So when I saw a copy of her Autobiography (1938) on a library bookshelf, I checked it out, found it fascinating, and reviewed it on my book blog, The Neff Review.

After I posted the review, a friend reminded me of a Sanger quotation that often shows up on anti-Sanger websites: "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." My friend told me that the sentence is from Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920), so I immediately looked it up. Indeed it is there - at location 466 if you're reading it on Kindle - exactly as she quoted it. Margaret, I said to myself, what were you thinking?

To find out, I read the whole chapter in which the sentence appears (V: "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families"), and what Sanger was thinking became clear. Excessively large families, she argues, are the root cause of all kinds of evils: prostitution, low wages, child labor, war, the oppression of women, ill health, mental dejection, spiritual hopelessness, malnutrition, inadequate medical attention, crime, feeble-mindedness, insanity, child abuse, unchastity, and - especially - infant and child mortality. She quotes research showing that the likelihood of death before the first birthday rises with each additional child, reaching 60% by child number twelve - and, as she points out, many of the children who survive to age one will not make it to age five. Sanger is by no means advocating infanticide: she is using hyperbole to underline the unimaginably squalid conditions of the large working-class families she encountered in her daily work as a visiting nurse in New York tenements. "Let the day perish wherein I was born," wailed the suffering Job. "Why died I not from the womb?" The families Sanger served were equally miserable.

How can I know she is not advocating infanticide? Her second chapter is a history of infanticide - an extremely common practice from ancient times right up to the present day, though tending in modern times to be replaced by abortion. Frequently lumping abortion, infanticide, and child abandonment together, she calls them "abhorrent practices." "It is apparent," she writes, "that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide" [loc. 202]

Hold the phone - the horrors of abortion? Wasn't Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood? Didn't she promote abortion?

Not in her autobiography, at least, written when she was in her late 50s (see page 217, for example, where she says that abortion, no matter how early in the pregnancy, is the wrong way to limit family size, because it is the taking of human life), and certainly not in Woman and the New Race. Quoting estimates that between one and two million abortions are performed each year in the United States - in 1920, when the population was only a third of what it is today! - she writes:

Apparently, the numbers of these illegal operations are increasing from year to year. From year to year more women will undergo the humiliation, the danger and the horror of them, and the terrible record, begun with the infanticide of the primitive peoples, will go on piling up its volume of human misery and racial damage, until society awakens to the fact that a fundamental remedy must be applied. [Loc. 218]

Sanger calls abortion "an abhorrent operation which kills the tenderness and delicacy of womanhood, even as it may injure or kill the body" [loc. 575].   "While there are cases where even the law recognizes abortion as justifiable when recommended by a physician," she writes, "I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization" [loc. 945].

Sanger was a Utopian visionary. In her view, widely available contraceptives would usher in a new age of health, happiness, and justice for all. War - the inevitable result of overpopulation and the concomitant search for new territory - would lose its raison d'être. Abortion would disappear:

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide. Neither will children die by inches in mills and factories. No man will dare to break a child's life upon the wheel of toil. [Loc. 1695]

(Note to the suspicious: when Sanger writes of "racial damage" and "a new race," she is referring to the whole human race. If she ever favors one subset of the human race over another, it appears neither in this book nor in her autobiography, though by lifting certain sentences out of context and applying the usual 21st-century usage of the word race, some writers have portrayed her as a racist.)

OK, Sanger was mistaken. If her figures are correct, over the last century the number of abortions in the U.S. has remained constant (though, since the population has tripled, that represents a major per capita decrease). Despite the availability of contraception, says the Guttmacher Institute's most recent fact sheet, "nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion." If you want to argue that contraception does not prevent abortion, Planned Parenthood will provide the statistics to back you up.

But being mistaken is not a crime. It's not even a moral failing, if a person is using the best information she has - and if she is careful to consider the information's source, literary context, historical context, and use of logic. It's mistaken, though, to accuse Margaret Sanger of promoting infanticide and abortion when she worked tirelessly to make both of those desperate measures unnecessary. And it's morally wrong to pass on such accusations without thoroughly investigating them, as a means of discrediting political opponents.

And anyway, why would pro-lifers want to base a campaign against abortion on misinformation? Why not just sweetly point out that Planned Parenthood's founder called abortion a horror and devoted her life to making it unnecessary?

It's a boy!

Our fourth grandbaby, due September 9, is a boy. His parents saw his anatomically correct picture yesterday, and his father posted it on the refrigerator. His grandfather and I have taken to calling him Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley), which goes very well with his last name.

Naturally, I’m thinking about gender.

We’ve been keeping track of Cholmondeley for three months, ever since he was the size of an almond. As he grew, we called him the Kiwi, the Peach, and the Hamster. But now that we know his gender, he’s a person.

I know, I know. Depending on your philosophy, he’s been a person since the moment he was conceived, or possibly from all eternity. Or, on the other hand, he won’t be a person until he’s born, or possibly later, but is in the process of becoming one. Gender has nothing to do with it.

But I’m not speaking scientifically or theologically or philosophically or politically. I’m just saying how I feel, as his grandmother. I can imagine him now, this second grandson of mine. I can think about how he’ll look in those little-boy outfits at Carson’s that line the aisle between women’s lingerie and the women’s lounge (their marketers know that grandmothers are likely to walk that way). I can wonder if his tastes will run to stuffed bunnies or board books or finger paints or drums.

Some years ago, when I was working for a religion publishing company, several authors and I got into lengthy discussions about gender pronouns. Our editorial policy insisted upon gender neutrality in referring to people, but we were fuzzier about how to refer to God.

One author upbraided me every time she noticed a book of ours using masculine pronouns for God. God is neither male nor female, she rightly observed, and using he, him, and his when writing about God perpetuates misleading stereotypes.

Another author rightly observed that we simply can’t speak of an individual person without gender references. To refuse to use personal pronouns for God, this author insisted, was to rob God of God’s personal characteristics and to turn God into some kind of impersonal force – besides, of course, butchering the English language.

I agree with both authors, and I suggest that for the next four millennia – equal to about the amount of time we monotheists have been calling God he – we call God she. Feminine pronouns are as inaccurate as masculine pronouns, they do an equally good job of emphasizing God’s personal nature, and for many people they make God seem warmer and more accessible, sort of like the Blessed Virgin.

Myself, I like to think of God as a large, comfortable, but no-nonsense woman who hugs me when I need to be hugged and chews me out when I need to behave. I call her LaHoveh. She’s certainly a mother and, given how long she’s been in business, she’s clearly a grandmother too. I imagine she’s already looking out for Cholmondeley.

Pro-choice people: Get a grip

OK, pro-choice people, get a grip.

Yes, the House passed a health-care bill that clearly excludes abortion from public funding. Yes, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said, “We think that providing health care is itself a pro-life thing, and we think that, by and large, providing better health coverage to women could reduce abortions. But we don’t make these decisions statistically, and to get to that good we cannot do something seriously evil.”

But really, why would Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, accuse the bishops of “interceding to put their own ideology in the national health care plan”? Isn’t that exactly what Planned Parenthood is trying to do? Isn’t that what everybody tries to do in a democratic republic?

The thing is, as most of us have noticed, America is seriously divided about abortion. The most recent statistics from Pew Research indicate that 46% of us are in favor of legal abortion in all or most cases, 44% are against. You’re more likely to get a hotly debated health bill through Congress if it doesn’t force people who are strongly opposed to something to pay for it. When the Democrats in Congress excluded abortion funding, most of them weren’t making an ideological statement. They were just trying to get the bill to pass.

This bill isn’t the end of civilization as pro-choice people know it. Roe v. Wade wasn’t attacked. If Congress eventually passes a health-reform bill that, like the House bill, excludes abortion payments, there’s no reason pro-choice people can’t fund abortion themselves. It actually wouldn’t cost them all that much.

Look at the statistics: there are approximately 1.21 million abortions a year in the United States at an average cost of less than $500 each. So let’s say that the total cost of providing abortions is $605 million a year.

• Current U.S. population estimate: 308 million
• U.S. population age 18 and over: 231 million
• Adults who favor abortion in all or most circumstances: 106 million
• Annual cost per pro-choice adult to cover all abortions: under $6. Ten cents a week.
  

Personally, I’m glad the House voted in favor of health care and against public funding of abortion—I’m one of those politically liberal, pro-life Catholics. But pro-choicers, if you really want to make abortion easily available and totally free, stop whining and just do it. Really, you won't miss the ten cents. And by going private, you can keep your ideology from sinking the entire national health-care plan.

"Death Book" claims vs what really happens

Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90.12

These days wisdom seems in short supply in the health-care debate: to wit the August 18 Wall Street Journal article by Jim Towey where he criticizes the VA booklet, "Your Life, Your Choices," which he dubbed "The Death Book for Veterans." Towey's allegations are amply refuted in the Huffington Post's response, "How Conservatives Got the Facts Wrong on Their Latest Obsession," so I won't go into the details here. I would just like to make a personal observation about the VA.

A close family member has been a VA patient off and on for over a decade. He will be 74 next month and has been in very poor health for years. Thanks to the VA, he has had open-heart surgery, countless tests, and repeated hospitalizations for syncope, ischemia, esophageal disorders, psychiatric episodes ... I don't know the half of it. He also has dementia. His monthly expense on medications is astronomical. If it weren't for the VA, he would have died years ago.

Now I'm going to be painfully honest here: I have sometimes wondered if the VA is spending too much on him. He often refuses to follow his doctor's orders. He is unhappy because he can no longer drive, operate machinery, or work on the many projects he began before his medical problems began. He does not seem to want to live. But live he does, and at enormous public expense.

I am not an ethicist, and I find end-of-life issues confusing. I do not believe that assisted suicide is ever justified (though in some cases, one can sympathize), but face it: we are all going to die. To what lengths should we go to preserve life? When is it appropriate to withhold further intervention and make the patient comfortable? When, on the other hand, should all available medical tools be employed?

I don't know what the VA should be doing for my relative, but I do know what they are doing. They are doing everything in their power to keep him alive, and never once have they suggested letting him die. If they are erring, it is on the side of life.

The matriarchal blessing

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about the matriarchal blessing—the moment when an old woman, staring death in the eye, communicates to a younger female relative or friend that life is good and love is eternal.

As far as I know, the only mention in the Bible of an older woman blessing a younger woman is when Elizabeth says to her young, unwed, pregnant relative Mary: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). Elizabeth probably wasn’t the matriarch of her family, and she wasn’t about to die, but her Spirit-inspired words were still similar to a matriarchal blessing. She welcomed the new life growing in Mary, and her loving hospitality surely must have given courage to the baffled young mother-to-be.

The more typical matriarchal blessing, however, is a deathbed event (think of Isaac blessing Esau and, inadvertently, Jacob; or Jacob blessing his own sons and grandsons).

“The last time I saw my mother alive was very, very special,” my friend Kathleen told me. Her mother, who was 90 years old, had been declining from Alzheimer’s disease for several years. “She was trying to talk about something but couldn't make words that were comprehensible, so she just decided to go to sleep. She must have napped for about a half hour. I stayed with her and held her hand. Her skin was so transparent that I wondered if she would die right then. But no. She woke up and squeezed my hand, and we had a chance to tell each other how much we loved each other. It was one of the best times I ever had with my mother.”

Kathleen and her mother exchanged very few words that day, but the message of love and continuity was clear. And sometimes the blessing is given with no words at all.

A week or so before my wedding date, my 91-year-old grandmother was taken to the hospital. She was not in pain, but she seemed to be in a coma. The doctors said she was dying. “Should I postpone the wedding?” I asked my parents. “No,” they said, “she would want you to go ahead.”

A few days before the wedding, I visited Grandma in the hospital. I took her hand, wondering if she sensed I was there. I spoke, wondering if she could hear. “Grandma,” I said, “I’m going to get married on Sunday.” She opened her eyes, pushed herself up on her elbows, and gave me a great big smile. I knew without a doubt that she had just given me her blessing.

My grandmother died about three weeks later, in April. Almost exactly 27 years after her death, my first grandchild was born. When Katie was five weeks old, she met my 85-year-old mother, her great-grandmother, for the first and only time. Mother had been suffering for six years with dementia. For more than a year, following a series of small strokes, she had been unable to speak. I visited her at the nursing home nearly every day, but it was impossible to know if anyone was at home behind her sad, blank eyes.

On Mother’s Day, four of us gathered in her room to honor her: me, my two daughters, and Katie. Mother was sitting in her recliner, and Molly carefully laid Katie on her lap, arranging Mother’s arms around the baby since Mother was unable to arrange them herself. (The picture at the beginning of this post shows my mother with her great-granddaughter.) Molly stepped back to look at the exhausted old woman cradling the healthy new baby—and suddenly Mother bent her head down and planted a kiss on baby Katie’s forehead.

That was a matriarchal blessing beyond all hoping.

Mother died quietly the following month. Katie is now a teenager. Life is good, and love is eternal.

When does an individual human's life begin?

Yesterday the FDA approved Plan B—the morning-after pill—for over-the-counter sales to 17-year-olds (though not until certain labeling changes are made). Web information about Plan B stresses that the method "isn't effective if you're already pregnant, and it won't terminate an existing pregnancy." According to the prescribing information document, it works "principally by preventing ovulation or fertilization.... In addition, it may inhibit implantation."

Does this mean Plan B is an abortifacient? Can there be an abortion without a pregnancy? And when does an individual human's life begin?

Last August Tom Brokaw asked Nancy Pelosi when she believes life begins, and she has been widely criticized for her answer: "I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition."

Pelosi was half right: theologians have indeed differed widely as to the exact time of "ensoulment," that is, when the soul enters the body and the fetus becomes human. Nevertheless, as Michael J. Gorman has shown in Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World, from its earliest days the church has opposed abortion, even though abortion was frequent in the Greco-Roman world. And the Catholic catechism is clear about what the church teaches today: "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception"-- which the church defines as the moment of fertilization.

Conception, however, can mean implantation rather than fertilization, and that is the meaning used by writers of Plan B's ad copy.

After the human egg is fertilized, from eight to eighteen days go by until it completely implants in the uterus and pregnancy begins. According to the definition used by many in the scientific community, until a fertilized egg has implanted in a woman's uterus, she has not conceived and is not pregnant, even if the fertilized egg is in her body. And if she is not pregnant, abortion is not possible. Therefore, it is reasoned, Plan B pills do not cause abortions.

The question remains, of course: does Plan B take human life? Is the fertilized egg a human person before pregnancy occurs? This is a question of faith, not science. For Christians who believe that human personhood begins with fertilization, Plan B is morally wrong. Other Christians, who also consider themselves pro-life and anti-abortion, argue that human personhood begins with implantation; for them, Plan B may be morally neutral.

As one who has favored the first group, let me give a few arguments on behalf of the second. In some ways, implantation may be a better model than fertilization of when embodied life--the union of dust and spirit--begins.

First, human beings are more than genetic codes: we require community and nourishment in order to live. Implantation brings the developing cells into community with their mother and provides them with food and hormones and everything else they need.

Second, each human being is a unique and unrepeatable individual. Until implantation is achieved, the developing cells may split into twins or triplets. Individuality is not assured until the cells attach to the uterus.

Third, fertilization can occur in a laboratory, but--so far, at least--no baby will result unless at some point implantation occurs.

And yet the fertilized egg has its very own DNA, and perhaps this is reason enough to consider it fully human. To some, though, that sounds rather disembodied. Does a cell with a DNA code have infinite value, the same as cells that have burrowed into their mother's womb and established a relationship with her that she feels in every part of her body? Is human nature based in a code or in a relationship?

These are important questions with implications not only for the morning-after pill, but also for assisted conception and embryonic stem-cell research. The answers to these questions are not as clear as some of us would like. They can't be found in the Bible or in scientific journals, though both sources contribute to our understanding of the issues involved. Christians of good faith disagree. As human beings who thrive in community, we need to keep our voices down and listen to others, as we would have others speak softly and listen to us.

Pro-lifers--hope or experience?

Two months ago I wrote A plea to pro-life voters, followed by The speech I wish Mr Obama would make. Today, the day before the election, I write again to pro-life voters. Not to those who truly believe that Republicans know how to manage the economy and conduct world affairs, but to those who agree with Mr Obama on nearly everything except abortion. I urge you --when you vote, consider the record. What's important isn't what a candidate says about abortion, but what actually happens under his watch.

What has happened over the last 28 years--20 years of Republican presidents running on pro-life platforms, 8 years of a Democratic president vowing to keep abortion "safe, legal, and rare"?

Short answer: the Democrats did better.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate decreased under the Bush administration, as it has under every administration since the mid-80s. The greatest decrease in abortion rates did not happen during a Republican administration, however, but during the 90s when Mr Clinton was president. No one knows exactly why--less sex? better contraception? better sex education? aging Boomers no longer fertile? less shame about unwed motherhood? less poverty?

Unwed motherhood is certainly on the rise. In 2006, 38.5% of live births were to unmarried women, says the Centers for Disease Control, noting that "this represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in nonmarital births began." But unwed motherhood does not necessarily go up when abortion goes down. Since 1980, abortion rates have decreased and single-motherhood rates have increased during all Republican administrations. By contrast, during the Clinton years abortion rates decreased significantly while single-motherhood rates held steady. Check it out here.

Abortion aside, what about other threats to human life? Under President Bush's leadership, over 4,000 of our military personnel have died; up to 100,000 have been wounded; and nearly 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. War too is a pro-life issue.

During the primaries, when support for Mr Obama started to gain on that for Mrs Clinton, The Economist headlined an article "The Triumph of Hope over Experience?" During the presidential campaign, journalists and bloggers have applied Dr Samuel Johnson's phrase to voters who favor Mr Obama, 47, over Mr McCain, 72. I think they have it exactly backward--especially for pro-life voters. A vote for McCain is a hope that he will reverse the experience of his pro-life predecessors.

Dr Johnson was talking about a man who, having endured an unhappy marriage, immediately remarried (Life, vol. 2, 1770). A lot of us are unhappy about rising abortion rates, rising rates of single parenthood, rising numbers of war dead. If we go ahead in spite of our experience and elect another Republican--one who expressed support for Roe v. Wade before he changed his mind in order to appeal to the Religious Right, one whose knee-jerk response to any question is to use military power--we will get what we deserve. More of the same.

Consider this definition attributed to Albert Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Please vote sanely.

The speech I wish Mr. Obama would make

Yesterday I appealed to pro-life voters to consider reality, not rhetoric: which candidate, if elected president, would be more likely to reduce America's abortion rate?

Today I appeal to Mr. Obama to consider the viewpoint of his pro-life supporters--and of those who would love to support him but can't get past his pro-choice record. I am not asking him to change his position, but only to speak forthrightly to this issue and, I hope, to show his own respect for human life.

Here is the speech I wish Mr. Obama would make.

Today I want to speak to people who grieve for the children lost to abortion in the United States—over 40 million since the Roe v Wade decision, over a million last year.

As you all well know, I believe every woman has the right to choose whether or not to bear a child. I have consistently supported laws and decisions that preserve a woman's right to choose, and I have consistently worked against laws that would put that decision in someone else’s hands. I will not win your vote if you require me to outlaw or restrict abortion rights, because I will not do that.

And yet I grieve with you over the tragic loss of lives and potential lives to abortion.

I grieve for women who get abortions because they already have more children than they can feed. Many of these women don’t need abortions, they need health care, jobs, and access to family planning.

I grieve for women who get abortions because they are abused by the men in their lives. Many of these women don’t need abortions, they need financial support, shelter, and a way to create an independent life for themselves and their children.

I grieve for women who get abortions because they have no way of continuing their education and their pregnancy. Many of these women don’t need abortions, they need child care, jobs, and tuition assistance.

I grieve for women and girls who are pressured or even forced to have abortions by their boyfriends, fathers, and husbands. Many of these women don’t need abortions, they need support in taking care of their children and acknowledgment of their own worth and strength.

And yes, I grieve for the never-born children who would have had life and love if their mothers had thought they had any choice at all.

I am pro-choice because I recognize women’s strength and worth and dignity. I believe I am also pro-life, because I am devoting my life to giving women a real choice--

• by giving low-income families an economic boost through tax relief, tax credits, raising the minimum wage, protecting home ownership, and making college more affordable
  
• by offering affordable, comprehensive, and portable health care to every American, including home visits by registered nurses to low-income pregnant women
  
• by helping parents manage family and work reponsibilities through expanding early childhood education, paid sick days, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the child and dependent care tax credit, flexible work arrangements, and after-school programs
  
• by supporting programs that foster responsible fatherhood
  

Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. Choice requires alternatives. If a woman is free to choose an abortion, she should also be free to choose to give birth. Too many women do not feel that freedom, because they don’t have the financial, educational, medical, or personal resources to choose to keep the children they have conceived and already love.

It is disrespectful to tell these women they must bear children even though they have no way of caring for them. It is equally disrespectful to offer them one choice only—abortion. If we respect a woman's right to choose, we must make sure that real choice is possible.

I have pledged to work with you to improve health care, create jobs, support education, and offer the kinds of resources that make true choice possible. I believe that if we work together to offer real choices--not only to rich and educated and powerful Americans, but also to young, poor, and discouraged Americans--many women will choose life. Can my opponent say the same?

A plea to pro-life voters

I have friends who plan to vote for McCain-Palin because of Governor Palin's strong pro-life stance. They admire her for welcoming a child with Down syndrome, and they are pleased that her pregnant teenage daughter plans to give birth and get married. This blog is for those friends.

I too admire Sarah Palin for living out her beliefs. I admire the courage and compassion she has shown in her family. I agree that the abortion rate in the United States is tragically high, and I would like Americans to agree on the high value of human life, born and unborn. Also, she gave a terrific speech last night.

Nevertheless, I suspect that a McCain-Palin administration would not be nearly as pro-life as my friends--and Governor Palin herself--hope.

• Historically, Republicans have done no better than Democrats at reducing the abortion rate. The U.S. abortion rate has been declining quite steadily since 1980, when there were 29.3 induced abortions per 1000 women between ages 15 and 44. By contrast, there were only 19.4 such abortions in 2005, the most recent year studied. This may simply reflect a changing demographic as Baby Boomers age (women under 25 get half of all abortions, and the under-25 segment has gotten proportionately smaller during the years studied). Still, Republican administrations have been no more likely than Democratic administrations to stem the tide. In fact, the largest drop occurred during President Clinton's first term.
  

Republican enthusiasts hope that a McCain-Palin ticket would be different from other administrations because of Palin's personal pro-life commitment. But would it?

• McCain is unlikely to try to overturn Roe v Wade. As he famously said in 1999, "I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. ... But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations." Even if, as some Democrats fear, his Supreme Court nominees did overturn the landmark legislation, the result would not be to outlaw abortions but rather to return the decision to individual states.
• If Palin tried to outlaw abortion, most Americans would oppose her. A public opinion poll last year indicates that 34% of Americans are in favor of generally available abortion ("abortion on demand"), 41% would like abortion to be legal but with more restrictions (few are in favor of late-term abortions, for example), and 23% would like abortion to be outlawed. As long as 75% of Americans favor legal abortion, it will not be outlawed.

Ironically, McCain and Palin's policies could have the net effect of increasing rather than decreasing the number of abortions in the United States. For example,

• McCain and Palin oppose sex-education classes that teach about contraception, even though abstinence-only classes appear to be less effective in preventing pregnancy. Earlier this year, University of Washington researchers concluded that "students who'd had comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to report a pregnancy than those without any sex education and 50 percent less likely than the abstinence-only group." Interestingly, teen pregnancy rates in Europe, where sex education is the norm, are much lower than those of the U.S. "Likewise, the U.S. abortion rates are disproportionately high," Nancy Gibbs wrote in Time magazine last January. "Rates in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are less than half that in the U.S."
• McCain's tax proposals will benefit low-income people significantly less than Obama's (check out this article and chart from CNN Money). If you are a pro-lifer who truly believes that Republican economic policy is more effective than Democratic policy at reducing poverty, then vote for McCain, because abortion and poverty go hand-in-hand. According to the Guttmacher Institute, "The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women)." If, however, you like McCain's view on abortion but prefer Obama's view on the economy, then vote for Obama-- economic policies that benefit the poor could have a greater effect on the abortion rate than McCain's dislike of Roe v Wade.

But, some of my friends say, this isn't just about policy. This is about the value of the unborn child. This is about speaking up for the voiceless. This is a justice issue. I agree, and I wish everyone else did too. Beware, though. The Republican team may be less pro-life than you'd wish.

• Abortion is not the only pro-life issue. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was known for his "seamless garment" philosophy, his belief that life must be protected at all stages. According to his consistent pro-life ethic, Christians must be concerned about abortion, and also about health care, poverty, euthanasia, capital punishment, military involvement, and every other arena in which human life may be devalued or unnecessarily cut short. According to Bernardin, "A consistent ethic does not say everyone in the Church must do all things, but it does say that as individuals and groups pursue one issue, whether it is opposing abortion or capital punishment, the way we oppose one threat should be related to support for a systemic vision of life.
• McCain-Palin are long-term supporters of the war in Iraq. They believe it was right for the United States to invade, and they believe a military victory is in sight. Obama, by contrast, believes it is an ill-advised war whose repercussions have made the U.S. more, not less, susceptible to terrorism. Whatever your views, over 4,000 American military have died in Iraq since 2003--and, less often reported in the U.S. media, approximately 90,000 Iraquis have also been victims of violent death.
• According to an article on an NRA web page, "Gov. Sarah Palin would be one of the most pro-gun vice-presidents in American history, and Joe Biden would definitely be the most anti-gun." The NRA thinks that's a plus for Palin. It likes the fact that she and McCain opposed banning handguns in the District of Columbia, whose death rate from firearm injuries is higher (23.8 per 100,000 in 2005) than that of any of the fifty states (Louisiana is next, at 18.8, followed by Alaska, at 17.4).

Here is my plea to people who are considering voting for McCain-Palin mostly because they are opposed to abortion. (I realize that some of you sincerely believe McCain-Palin would be better for the country, and for the world, than Obama-Biden. I disagree, but I'm not writing to you. I'm writing to single-issue voters who, apart from the abortion issue, would probably vote Democratic this year. Though if ardent Republicans want to take my advice, that's OK with me too.)

• First, tell the Obama-Biden team you are concerned. (You can e-mail them here.) Encourage them to speak up in favor of the unborn, even if they believe Roe v Wade is here to stay. Tell them you're looking for a team with a consistent pro-life ethic. Tell them you'd love to vote for them, if only they would not ignore this important issue. They just might listen.
• Second, don't let your ideals dazzle your judgment. Consider the possibility that a McCain-Palin administration would result in more war, more guns, and more poverty--resulting in arguably more deaths-by-abortion, and certainly more deaths overall--than an Obama-Biden administration.
  

Think carefully about the big picture. Vote for the team whose policies will best favor life, even if that's not the team with the best pro-life slogans. And God have mercy on us all.