Abortion, health reform and me: who is making our choices?

Am I the only person around who is squirming — make that fuming a little — over the concessions made to the anti-choice guys before the House passed its health reform bill? Does no one else find it offensive to turn from reading on page one of today’s New York Times about this sad state of events to page 14 for a large photo of President Obama shaking hands with Cardinal Sean O’Malley? They were meeting at the funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy in August, where reportedly the good clergyman told the president that the Congress of Catholic Bishops really wanted to support health reform ——– oh, but only if everybody caved to their wishes that abortion remain unavailable.

It is not as if we weren’t forewarned. I posted a brief note in this space a few days ago (see Abortion Foes Winning Health Concessions, 11/4, below) and tried to resume a position of calm.

It is hard to remain calm. Somewhere the lines about separation of church and state have to fuzz themselves back into reality. I believe in the right of the U.S. Congress of Catholic Bishops to tell Catholics how to behave (despite the fact that of my many Catholic friends I know almost none who pay any attention in matters of personal choice.) I even believe in the right of the Pope to tell the Bishops to tell their parishioners how to behave. I even believe in the responsibility of all individuals, including my Presbyterian self, to behave according to their conscience and their faith. I just hate being governed by someone else’s faith.

This is not a small distinction. My own church, admittedly starting with a small group here in woo-woo San Francisco, passed a fairly strong national resolution denouncing our country’s torturing folks and seeking justice. As far as I know, no one threatened the president about withholding support for these occasionally immoral wars we keep fighting unless the instigators of torture-in-our-name were sent to jail. However strongly I would like to see the latter happen, I believe there are limits to what faith communities should do.

I had personal experience with back-alley abortion, in the dark days pre-Roe v Wade. It was not pleasant. Is there any way a celibate Catholic bishop could even remotely understand the horrors to which he is condemning poor, desperate pregnant women with the relentless push to make abortion totally unavailable? No. I wish there were.

We still have got to have health reform. But what prices we are paying.