Note:
Three months into President Obama’s first term, one of his most
prominent pro-life opponents, Robert P. George, engaged in a debate
with one of his most prominent pro-life supporters, Douglas W. Kmiec.
The article below is adopted from George's remarks, which called for
candid speech on Obama's abortion record.
One does not treat an interlocutor with respect if one refuses to
speak plainly. Candor, far from being the enemy of civility, is one of
its preconditions. And so I will speak candidly of the points where I,
as someone dedicated to the principle that every member of the human
family possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, find myself at
odds—deeply at odds—with President Obama and his administration.
In my judgment, citizens who honor and seek to protect the lives of
vulnerable unborn children must oppose the Obama administration’s
agenda on the taking of unborn human life. Our goal must be to
frustrate at every turn the administration’s efforts, which will be
ongoing and determined, to expand the abortion license and the
authorization and funding of human embryo-destructive research. Because
the President came into office with large majorities in both houses of
Congress, ours is a daunting task. But the difficulty of the challenge
in no way diminishes our moral obligation to meet it. And I here call
upon pro-life Americans, including those who, like Professor Kmiec,
supported President Obama and helped to bring him to power, to find
common ground with us in this great struggle for human equality, human
rights, and human dignity.
Professor Kmiec and I share common ground in the belief that every
member of the human family—irrespective of race, class, and ethnicity,
but also irrespective of age, size, location, stage of development or
condition of dependency—is entitled to our care and respect and to the
equal protection of our laws. This is what it means to be pro-life. In
this shared conviction, Professor Kmiec and I are on one side of a
crucial divide, and President Obama is on the other. Professor Kmiec
and I stand together in our opposition to abortion and human
embryo-destructive research, but we share very little common ground on
these matters with President Obama and those whom he has appointed to
high office who will determine the fate of vast numbers of our weakest
and most vulnerable brothers and sisters.
I appreciated the President’s candor at Notre Dame when he said:
“Now understand, understand, class of 2009, I do not
suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away.
Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it . . . the fact is
that at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.”
The President is right. His view regarding the status, dignity, and
rights of the child in the womb, and the view shared by Professor Kmiec
and myself, are irreconcilable. A chasm separates those of us who
believe that every living human being possesses profound, inherent, and
equal dignity, and those who, for whatever reasons, deny it. The issue
really cannot be fudged, as people sometimes try to do by imagining
that there is a dispute about whether it is really a human being who is
dismembered in a dilation and curettage abortion, or whose skin is
burned off in a saline abortion, or the base of whose skull is pierced
and whose brains are sucked out in a dilation and extraction (or
“partial birth”) abortion. That issue has long been settled—and it was
settled not by religion or philosophy, but by the sciences of human
embryology and developmental biology.
So it is clear that what divides us as a nation, and what divides
Barack Obama, on one side, from Robert George and Douglas Kmiec, on the
other, is not whether the being whose life is taken in abortion and in
embryo-destructive research is a living individual of the human
species—a human being; it is whether all human beings, or
only some, possess fundamental dignity and a right to life. Professor
Kmiec and I affirm, and the President denies, that every human being,
even the youngest, the smallest, the weakest and most vulnerable at the
very dawn of their lives, has a life which should be respected and
protected by law. The President holds, and we deny, that those in the
embryonic and fetal stages of human development may rightly and freely
be killed because they are unwanted or potentially burdensome to
others, or because materials obtained by dissecting them may be useful
in biomedical research.
The President speaks of human rights, and I do not question his
sincerity. But he does not understand the concept of human rights, as
Professor Kmiec and I do, to refer to rights—above all the right to
life—that all human beings possess simply by virtue of our humanity.
For the President, being human is not enough to qualify someone as the
bearer of a right to life. Professor Kmiec and I, by contrast, believe
that every member of the human family, simply by virtue of his or her
humanity, is truly created equal. We reject the idea that is at the
foundation of President Obama’s position on abortion and human
embryo-destructive research, namely, that those of us who are equal in
worth and dignity are equal by virtue of some attribute other than our
common humanity—some attribute that unborn children have not yet
acquired, justifying others in treating them, despite their humanity,
as non-persons, as objects or property, even as disposable material for
use in biomedical research.
President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that
the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the
bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse
Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a
failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in
opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was
designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at
least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the
humanity of the child. What he denied, and continues to deny, is the
fundamental equality of that child—equality with those of us who are
safely born and accepted into the human community.
During his campaign for the Presidency, then-Senator Obama was asked
by Rick Warren: When does a baby acquire human rights? In reply, the
future president did not say, “well it depends on when a baby (or a
“fetus”) comes to life, or becomes a human being.” He knows that an
unborn baby is alive and human, and he did not pretend not to know. His
response to Pastor Warren did seem to express doubt of as to when
rights begin, saying that the question was “above his pay grade.” But
Obama’s record as an activist, legislator, and now as President makes
clear his view that an unborn baby, or even a baby outside the womb
like the one discovered in that soiled linen bin by Jill Stanek,
possesses no rights that others are bound to respect or that the law
should in any way honor. Throughout his political career, Obama has
consistently and fervently rejected every form of legislation that
would provide unborn babies or children who survive abortions with
meaningful protection against being killed. Indeed, he has opposed even
efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would discourage the
practice, limit its availability, or directly favor childbirth over
abortion.
Professor Kmiec and I believe in the equal fundamental rights of
all, including the equality of mother and child. We recognize that
women with undesired pregnancies can undergo serious hardships, and we
believe that a just and caring society will concern itself with the
well-being of mothers as well as their children. We agree with Mother
Teresa of Calcutta, who by precept and example taught us to reach out
in love to care for mother and child alike, never supposing that love
for one entails abandoning care and concern for the other. President
Obama holds a different view. He has made clear his own conviction that
the equality of women depends on denying the equality and rights of the
children they carry. He has made what is, from the pro-life point of
view, the tragic error of supposing that the equality of one class of
human beings can and must be purchased by denial of the equality of
another.
One wishes that President Obama had listened carefully, and with an
open mind and an open heart, to the pleas of Mother Teresa during her
last visit to the United States. Her message was that a pregnant woman
in need is not in need of the violence of abortion. What she and her
child need are love and care—love and care from all of us. Our task,
Mother reminded us, as individuals and as a society, is to love and
care for mother and child alike.
President Obama’s supporters do him no good service by pretending
that his expressions of willingness to find “common ground” with
pro-lifers involve, at some level, recognition that abortion or
embryo-destructive research is bad or tragic because it kills a living
member of the human family. Unlike, say former President Clinton or
former New York Governor Cuomo, or even Vice President Biden, President
Obama does not profess to be “personally opposed” to abortion, or to
believe that abortion is a wrongful act that must nevertheless be
legally permitted because the consequences of outlawing it would be
worse than those of tolerating it. His belief, and his policy, is that
abortion, if a woman chooses it, is not wrong. That is why he is not
personally opposed to it. There is no wrong there to oppose. Indeed,
the President made crystal clear his view that abortion can be an
entirely legitimate and even desirable option, when he said that if one
of his daughters made a mistake and became pregnant, he would not want
her to be “punished with a baby.” In such a case, he saw abortion as
the right solution to a problem—a solution that we should be happy is
available, and that we should make available if it happens not yet to
be available. Without it, a young woman would be “punished.”
I have no doubt that the President regards it as deeply unfortunate,
sometimes even tragic, that the problem giving rise to the woman’s need
for an abortion exists; but there is equally no room to doubt that
President Obama regards it as fortunate that a solution to the
problem—in the form of abortion—is available. For someone holding this
view, and many people in the academic world hold it, abortion is not in
itself a bad or wrongful thing, any more than a knee replacement
operation is in itself a bad or wrongful thing. Of course, it would be
better if no one ever injured a knee and found himself in need of a
knee operation. No one regards knee operations as desirable for their
own sakes. No one deliberately injures himself just so that he can have
a knee operation. And people don’t have knee operations performed on
them for frivolous reasons. But a knee operation is not something that
one would discourage or be personally opposed to. It is a solution to a
problem, and should therefore be made as available and accessible as
possible for people who need them. For those who share President
Obama’s view of the moral status of the child in the womb, the decision
to abort may be more wrenching for many women than the decision to have
a knee operation typically is, but it is like a knee operation
precisely inasmuch as it is a legitimate solution to a problem.
All of this was made transparently clear at a recent meeting at the
White House in which people on both sides of the abortion issue were
brought together to see if they could find some common ground. The
meeting was led by Melody Barnes, the Director of the President’s
Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, one
of the nation’s most aggressive organizations devoted to legal abortion
and its public funding. At one point in the meeting, she recognized
pro-life activist Wendy Wright, who attempted to explain ways that the
President could begin to achieve his reported goal of reducing the
number of abortions. Barnes interrupted her to make clear that the
precise goal of the administration is to “reduce the need for
abortions.” Two days after the meeting, the President spoke at Notre
Dame, and he chose his words carefully. In speaking of common ground,
he did not propose that we reduce the number of abortions, but rather
[and I quote] “the number of women seeking abortions.” Get it? The
President and his administration will not join us on the common ground
of discouraging women from having abortions or even in encouraging them
to choose childbirth over abortion. The proposed common ground is the
reduction of unwanted pregnancies—not discouraging those in “need” of
abortion from having them. The idea that the interests of a child who
might be vulnerable to the violence of abortion should be taken into
account, even in discouraging women from resorting to abortion or
encouraging alternatives to abortion, is simply off the table.
The President and the people he has placed in charge of this issue,
such as Melody Barnes, have a deep ideological commitment to the idea
that there is nothing actually wrong with abortion, because the child
in the womb simply has no rights. This commitment explains the policy
positions President Obama has consistently taken since he entered the
Illinois legislature. It crucially shapes and profoundly limits what he
and those associated with him regard as the “common ground” on which he
is willing to work with pro-lifers. And it explains why he and they
reject what we, as pro-lifers, propose as common ground.
Because the President does not believe in the profound, inherent,
and equal dignity of every member of the human family; because he does
not believe that babies acquire human rights until after birth; because
he does not see abortion as tragic because it takes the life of an
innocent human being, he is utterly and intransigently unwilling to
support even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would plainly
reduce the number of abortions. Moreover, he is adamantly in favor of
funding abortions and abortion providers at home and abroad, and has
already taken steps in that direction by revoking the Mexico City
Policy and proposing a budget that would restore publicly funded
abortions in Washington, D.C.—despite the well-documented and
universally acknowledged fact that when you provide public funding for
abortion, you get more abortions.
Some pro-choice people think that the killing of unborn children
where there is no grave threat to the mother, though bad and unjust,
should not be made illegal at least in the earliest stages. Potentially
we would have significant common ground with these fellow citizens in
the form of policies to discourage abortion and reduce the number of
killings. For example, we could join together to oppose the funding of
abortion at home and abroad; we could work together for bans on second
and third trimester abortions, on abortions for sex-selection, and on
particularly heinous methods of abortion, such as partial-birth
abortions; we could agree on what Professor Hadley Arkes calls “the
most modest first step of all,” namely requiring care—at least comfort
care—for the child who survives an attempted abortion and is born
alive. We could provide desperately needed financial support for
pro-life clinics that assist pregnant women in need—need that is not
always financial, but is often emotional and spiritual—and encourage
and help these women make the choice for life. We could enact waiting
periods, informed consent laws, and parental notification laws that
have been shown, in research by Michael New and others, to reduce
abortions. We could reject the funding of embryo-destructive research,
and join together to support promising research and treatments using
non-embryonic sources of stem cells.
However, far from meeting us on any of these areas of common ground,
President Obama opposes our efforts. Political realities have prevented
him from making good on his promise to the abortion industry to sign
the pro-abortion nuclear bomb called the Freedom of Choice Act as one
of his first acts in office. But he was not lying when he made that
promise. His policies, and above all his appointments to key offices in
the White House, the Justice Department, Health and Human Services, and
elsewhere make clear that his strategy will be to enact the provisions
of FOCA step by step, rather than as a package. As anyone occupying the
role of David Axelrod or Karl Rove will tell you, this is obviously the
politically astute way for the President to prosecute his agenda. The
country does not accept President Obama’s extreme position on abortion.
A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans now regard themselves
as pro-life, and a majority favors significant legal restrictions on
abortion. Plainly the President’s actual views are far more favorable
to abortion than those of the general public; so if he is to advance
his goals, and the goals of those who share his commitment to making
abortion more widely available and easily accessible, the last thing it
would make sense to do is try to enact FOCA as a package.
At Notre Dame, the President offered to work with pro-lifers to
draft what he called “sensible” conscience protections for pro-life
physicians and other health care workers. This favorably impressed some
in the pro-life community, especially since one of President Obama’s
first acts was to rescind conscience protection regulations supported
by the pro-life community that had been put into place by the Bush
Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services. Here, alas, I
must urge caution. It seems to me overwhelmingly likely that the key
word in the President’s offer is “sensible.” What is “sensible” to him,
I predict, is precisely what is regarded as sensible by the Committee
on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
namely, requiring physicians to refer for abortions, even if their
consciences forbid it, and allowing pro-life obstetricians and
gynecologists to refuse to perform abortions only when it is clear that
an abortion can be provided by a willing physician in the area. For
physicians and surgeons who believe that abortion is unjust killing and
a grave violation of human rights, this is not sensible. It is ominous.
I beg the President’s pro-life supporters urgently to request from him
a statement clarifying the meaning of “sensible” conscience protection.
If it means weakening current laws, so doctors will be compelled to
refer for abortions and in so-called emergencies even to perform
abortions, then even here pro-life citizens have no common ground with
the President of the United States.
Finally, let me say a word about a matter that has been of deep
concern to me—the expansion of federal funding for embryo-destructive
research. I regret that the President passed up a golden opportunity to
establish true common ground with pro-life citizens. He could have left
the funding of research involving cell lines created by the destruction
of human embryos in place, and led the charge to promote ethically
unproblematic non-embryo-destructive forms of stem cell science. He
could have rallied the nation around adult stem cell science and
brilliant new technologies for the production of pluripotent stem cells
that manifest the very qualities that make embryonic stem cells
interesting and potentially useful. He could have shown that we can
give both sides in the great stem cell debate what they want—the
promise of stem cell science, without the moral stain of embryo
killing. But the President did not do that. He revoked the restrictions
on funding research involving embryonic stem cell lines created after
August 9, 2001. He even took the additional step of revoking President
Bush’s 2007 executive order promoting research to advance
non-embryo-destructive sources of pluripotent stem cells. Finally, he
opened the door to funding research involving stem cell lines created
by producing human embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer or other
means specifically for research in which they are killed. He delegated
the details of any new guidelines to the National Institutes for
Health. The NIH, under Acting Director Raynard Kington, a
Bush-administration holdover, recently published its draft guidelines,
which mercifully decline to walk through the door the President opened.
For now, at least, there will be no funding of research involving
embryos created just for destruction. If the President’s pro-life
supporters are partially responsible for this piece of good news, they
deserve our sincere thanks, and I here heartily offer mine. The NIH
guidelines also include strong consent rules for parents. Already the
supporters of embryo-destructive research and so-called “therapeutic
cloning” are pressing the NIH to reverse course in both these areas.
For that reason, I plead with all who believe in respect for human
life, and especially those whose support of the President politically
has given them influence with him and his administration, to work
tirelessly to ensure that there is no further expansion of funding for
embryo-destructive research or weakening of current consent
requirements.
The common ground I am interested in is with pro-life Americans who,
like Professor Kmiec, have supported the President politically. The
election is over, and the current question is not who anyone thinks
will do the best job as President, or even whether one may legitimately
support candidates who deny the fundamental dignity and right to life
of unborn human beings and who promise to protect and extend the
abortion license and expand the funding of embryo-destructive research.
The question is: On which issues will we support the President’s
direction, and on which will we challenge him because he is heading in
the wrong direction? Those pro-life Americans who voted for him and
support him should not object when we speak for the most vulnerable and
defenseless of our fellow human beings, even when that means severely
criticizing the President’s policies. They should stand with us on
common ground, and join their voices with ours.
Robert George is a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.