Transcript:
I am really confused about which direction to use as my voting choice. I heard the Holy Father’s response to both candidates, and he said, well, like the person that asked him the question said, one of them is not so nice to migrants, and the other one is not so nice to unborn babies. And then the Holy Father went on to say that, “Well, you know, you’ve got to choose the lesser of the two evils. Killing babies is worse.” Of course, the Bible also says, “Take care of the widows and the orphans and the foreigners.” I know that God gives us a free will. And so my friend says, “Government limiting women’s choice is wrong.” So I am not sure which is the most important.
Why don’t I take a swing at it, and we’ll see if it helps. So the first thing I’d mention is your friend’s argument that women should have a right to choose to kill children is nonsense.
That would justify killing anybody. God does give us a free will, but that doesn’t mean society should allow homicide.
But if we have homicide laws to protect the lives of born people, we can also, we need to have homicide laws to protect the lives of unborn people. So we shouldn’t be killing anybody, born or unborn. That’s a specious argument. Your friend is just, her reason is fundamentally flawed on this point. In terms of the issues of immigration and abortion,
a standard Catholic moral theology approach would be to distinguish between two issues. The first issue is which is denying an immigrant access to a territory they want to enter versus killing somebody, which is worse.
Well, people have a right to life. They don’t actually have a right to immigrate.
That’s being generous of the state to allow immigrants in, and there’s a limit to how many immigrants a state can reasonably allow in. That’s something Pope Francis himself has acknowledged on 60 Minutes, that the church is teaching on immigration is not just fling the borders wide open and let everyone in the world come in.
So if you’re comparing the issue of letting people or denying someone entry into a particular territory versus killing that person,
well, or killing a person, killing a person is obviously worse. The right to life is an absolute right, and it’s, I mean, unless you forfeit it by, say, murdering somebody.
But the right to life is much more fundamental than a right to migrate, which isn’t really a right at all.
So the issue of abortion considered in the abstract vastly outweighs the issue of immigration considered in the abstract.
But then there’s a second issue that has to be thought through, which is what are the practical effects in the current political environment going to be of voting one way or another? Now, before Roe v. Wade was abolished,
in America, we had a fundamental block on the ability to do very much regarding abortion. There was no way that we could make significant progress on abortion. I mean, we could nibble around the edges a little bit, but we couldn’t really deal with the issue head on as long as Roe v. Wade was there. Now that Roe v. Wade has fallen, the situation has changed, and so consequently, the issue has at this point devolved on the individual states. And so now we have a state by state education battle to educate people on the need to have pro-life laws and a state by state legislative battle to try to improve the legal protections for unborn people. What that means, if you’re asking about the presidential race, is the role of the president, at least at the moment, is diminished. And so you have to think a little more hypothetically about, well, what will happen, depending on what candidate gets into office on the abortion issue?
Will a particular presidential candidate support some form of abortion, or will they try to take it out of the hands of the states by creating a national law or a constitutional amendment or something like that? And you’ve got to think about what impact is the president going to realistically have on abortion going forward, and then factor that in as part of your calculation.
When it comes to immigration, you’ve got to think about that too. How many immigrants can the US have come in reasonably?
What requirements, and this is something the Catechism talks about, should they be subject to?
And would it, in fact, be better to, rather than bringing them into the US, would it be better to help fix their own countries so that they don’t want to leave?
To my mind, it’s better to fix where people came from so that they’re happy where they are and don’t need to migrate. I know I’d much rather be able to stay where I am in my own homes and have to migrate somewhere else.
So, immigration is a much more complex issue, and you need to think about the impacts on the immigrants, on people back in their home countries, and on people here in the US. And you need to factor all that into your calculation. Then there are other pressing issues, because even though we’re not currently in World War III, we have had nuclear saber rattling from Vladimir Putin. And hypothetically, we could get into a major war in the next presidency. Hypothetically, it could be a nuclear war, which would kill loads of people, or could kill loads of people. And therefore, you need to think about, okay, that issue too, because that’s another life issue.
And say, okay, which candidate do I think would be better at preserving life overall?
Not just on abortion, but on other issues too, like nuclear war. And from out of all that, you got to make a decision. One thing I liked about what Pope Francis said, and by the way, he didn’t name the candidates, but he said, choose the lesser of two evils.
Unfortunately, there are no perfect candidates that we can pick. And it was nice to have a reminder from the pontiff that we are not responsible for every bad thing a candidate does. We need to use to do what we can do, which means using our vote to promote the most good and avoid the most evil.
But we shouldn’t be holding candidates to a, oh, if you’re not absolutely pristine on Catholic doctrine, I cannot vote for you. That will only allow the forces of evil to win. So make your best determination and vote accordingly.
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