EBSCOhost

1 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

Record: 1
Title:

Prolife Voting: More Than a Hill of Beans.

Authors:

Heaney, Stephen J.

Source:

Human Life Review, Spring/Summer2000, Vol. 26 Issue 2/3, p147, 13p, 1

Black and White Photograph

Document Type:

Article

Subject Terms:

ETHICS
ABORTION
EUTHANASIA
HUMAN rights

Abstract:

Focuses on the connections between one's moral convictions and one's

action in terms of public policy particularly in choosing a public figure with
respect to one's personal belief about abortion. Issues concerning
abortion and euthanasia; Law justification and its nature in understanding
abortion; Concept of human rights; Responsibilities of voters and political
candidates.

Lexile:

1190

Full Text Word Count:

5898

ISSN:

00979783

Accession Number:

3492739

Database:

MasterFILE Premier

PROLIFE VOTING: MORE THAN A HILL OF BEANS

By the time this essay is published, the year 2000 candidates for high office will be accelerating
toward their final clash in November, their respective salvific promises and rhetorical flourishes
flapping like battle pennants in the wind. The sights and sounds can be bewildering. If you are like
me, however, there is a particular insignia on the banner for which you look, the insignia which tells
you that the candidate is pro-life.
If you are like me in this respect, I suspect you are also like me in having a friend or acquaintance
whose voting behavior strikes you as inexplicable. Since I am assuming that we all have a friend like
this, I am going to give him a common name: I will call him "Louie," after Captain Louis Renault, the
Prefect of Police in Casablanca. Of course, I do not mean by this moniker to suggest that our friends,
like Captain Renault, are "minor corrupt officials," but I do mean that they demonstrate a common
difficulty in seeing the role they play in the bigger scheme of things.
Our friend Louie believes abortion is a grave moral evil. He prays for its end, sends money to
Birthright, knows the arguments. However, Louie is as likely as not to wax rhapsodic about a
candidate for high office who is well known for his position in favor of abortion rights. When you point
this out, the reasons why this matters not a whit to Louie come tumbling out. Well, yes, but he would
never let the poor go unprotected. Well, yes, but he's against capital punishment. Well, yes, but he

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

2 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

stands up for the working man. Well, yes, but he's great on education. Well, yes, but look at his stand
on health care. To this, you might reply: Well, yes, but Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Louie will usually be shocked--shocked!--by such a comparison. Mussolini was a bad man; The
Candidate is a good man, a compassionate man, a man who thinks about others and not just
himself. Besides, what chance does The Candidate have of actually affecting abortion law?
Practically none. Even if he did, you can't count on his position on abortion; they all say what they
think you want to hear, even the so-called pro-life ones. And you can't just take a look at one issue,
like abortion. You have to look at the big picture, the overall vision. The Candidate isn't going to vote
only about abortion; there are hundreds of issues, both large and small, with which he must contend.
Surely you don't mean to say that we should vote for a candidate based on a single issue?
Many of us experience a certain disorientation at this juncture because we know that Louie shares
our convictions that abortion is both the taking of an innocent human life and an assault against the
integrity of the woman, therefore constituting it a grave moral wrong. But while the comparison of The
Candidate to Mussolini seems perfectly clear to us, it remains perfectly opaque to Louie. If we try to
pick at one of Louie's claims, two more arise, like heads of a hydra, to take its place. Still, because
these claims are not all compatible with one another, one suspects there is some conflict within Louie
himself about this voting question.
It seems to me that there is good reason for Louie's internal conflict: his position is incoherent. It
simply does not hold together. Our main task, then, in arguing with Louie is to explain why his voting
pattern is problematic. And we must do this not by going after the individual justifications which he
puts forward but by driving at the hydra's heart. To do this we need to uncover the connections
between one's moral convictions and one's actions in terms of public policy.
In order to fully answer Louie, there are two distinct issues to be addressed. First, we have to show
why abortion and its related life issue, euthanasia, are not, as the saying goes, "single issues"--that
is, issues of peculiar concern to a particular group of voters, issues which receive disproportionate
weight when compared to other issues. It would be more accurate to call them "singular issues"--that
is, issues foundational to human dignity and human rights, to the meaning of law and the common
good. Second, we have to establish that, as a personal moral question, it matters a great deal for
whom one casts one's vote in a representative democracy. We have to establish that since voting is
not something which happens to the voter, but is rather something he does--a human action--he is
personally implicated in the outcome.
I. Singular Issues: Life and Death
The place to begin a conversation with Louie is probably with a discussion about the justification for
laws. This may sound to Louie as though we are ignoring his reasoning, but in fact this is a way of
answering his concerns about "single issue" voting.
There are various ways governments are instituted and laws are made, but not all of them can justify
themselves. Take, for instance, rule by the tyrant. He offers no justification. He simply says, "Do it my
way, or suffer the consequences." He is no different from the mugger or extortionist who says to his
victim, "Give me what I want and you won't get hurt." A second option, the Hobbesian social contract,

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

3 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

offers little more than this. Rather than one person just taking over, everyone agrees that one person
take over, because it is better than the alternative, an anarchical world in which everyone is both
mugger and potential victim. But, once this agreement is made, the only justification offered for any
law is simply, "The sovereign says so." Prior to this declaration, there is nothing right or wrong: law
dictates morality.
A utilitarian system, the third option, is kinder and gentler, but offers no more justification than the first
two systems. In a utilitarian world, we essentially contract, not for individual gain, but for the gain of
the whole. In other words, we formulate rules as a society which are designed to bring about the
greatest happiness (pleasure) for the greatest number of people. The tyrant says, "It's right because I
want it." The Hobbesian sovereign says, "It's right because I want it--and we agreed to this
arrangement." The utilitarian says, "It's right because the majority wants it." Each poses an
essentially subjective standard for choosing which path to follow. That standard is: what someone
wants.
In all three of these understandings of law, "rights" are something granted by whoever is in charge,
whoever has the power. The tyrant, or the Hobbesian sovereign, grants certain privileges because
doing so suits his purposes. The utilitarians grant them because they believe doing so will suit their
collective purpose--that is, it will bring about the greatest happiness.
There is a fourth position, however, which says that at least some rights are not granted, and law is
not simply made up, by those in power. Instead of looking for a pseudo-justification in the subjective
world of either individual or collective human desires, this fourth position finds the justification of law
in something objective, observable--in us, in our nature. Law is a way to assist human beings to
flourish, to reach their fullness as human beings. In this tradition, human flourishing can only be
found by following certain kinds of behavior and refusing to engage in opposite kinds. In other words,
the law is directly linked to what is already right and wrong, prior to the establishment of any positive
or civil law. What is right and wrong is determined, not by our desires, but by our nature.
Only such a view, something based in a discoverable human nature, can give rise to an objective
view of justice. In the first three views, there can be no absolutes. Any action which we normally
consider wrong can be justified if the consequences are grave enough. If law is an expression of
human nature, however, there can be just laws which accord with that nature, and unjust laws which
violate it and which no one, therefore, is bound to follow. In this view, there are moral, and
consequently legal, absolutes. Only in such a view, therefore, can we make sense of the notion of
fights as not simply granted by the state but inalienably founded in the simple fact of our humanity,
fights which the state is bound to recognize and uphold.
It is quite clear that it is this latter notion which is the foundation of our legal system. While there can
be said to be a social-contract element to it, and while there is a nod toward utilitarianism in the idea
of rule by the majority, neither of these can be said to be the justification for our legal system. Rather,
they are a method which generally serves to preserve and promote something more fundamental.
The claim to inalienable human fights in the Declaration of Independence, and our fierce loyalty to a
Constitution which outlines certain basic rights that belong to us simply by virtue of our humanity and
that may not be overridden by any power, whether individual or majority, make it absolutely clear that

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

4 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

we have a state based in this fourth tradition, founded on a discoverable human nature. And because
of that, we can tightly and proudly claim to be a nation based on the rule of law, not the rule of power.
If Louie disagrees with this most fundamental argument about the nature of law, then our quarrel
about pro-life voting runs very deep indeed. One could reasonably conclude that Louie's opposition
to legalized abortion is merely a matter of taste, not of fundamental rights. Assuming, however, that
Louie does agree with us about the rule of law, then he should also agree to this: government exists
for the sake of human beings, not human beings for government. The laws which a government
makes must reflect this reality, and must reflect the objective moral order conducive to human
flourishing. Positive law, the civil law, must follow from, or at least not contradict, the moral law. A
government which does not, through its laws and policies, attempt to assist human beings in doing
what is right--and this means first and foremost attempting to safeguard inalienable human fights--is
in no position to bring about a just or peaceful human society.
There are, in the tradition we are exploring, only a few things which are so fundamental that they are
not simply matters of prudential judgment. The right to life is the most fundamental. Without this right
in place, no other rights are even possible. Indeed, society itself is not possible. A government which
permits the people under its aegis to assault or kill one another renders its own citizens enemies of
one another. Such a government exists in self-contradiction, having planted and nurtured the seeds
of its own destruction.
A second fundamental right, contingent on the first one, and following logically from the notion of
government in support of human flourishing, would be the fight to religious freedom, enabling human
beings to pursue an essential aspect of our existence, our relationship with God.
A third category of necessary rights, which are contingent on the original right to life and which the
state must support to be a legitimate state, involves the stability of the fundamental social unit, what
we call today the nuclear family. Human flourishing cannot be accomplished outside social groups.
The primary one is the family--mother, father, and their offspring-into which we are born, and in and
through which we discover what it means to be human and how to flourish. The family lives within
extended families, in neighborhoods, in towns, in regions, in countries. It is involved with diverse
social organizations where its members find work, companionship, aid, and religious worship. If the
point of human action is human flourishing, and if these communities and organizations are the
entities within which human flourishing takes place, then the government makes sense only insofar
as it assists these social groups. If these social groups are undermined, the human person will lack
the society through which he comes into existence and learns how to live a truly human life.
There are other rights which flow from these original rights: the right to employment, the right to
health care, the right to an education, the right to a just wage. But notice the hierarchy. The right to
life--i.e., the right not to be killed or otherwise assaulted in my person by private individuals, or by the
state, without just cause--is fundamental. Without it, the others cannot be. For if one is killed, there is
no one to have other rights. And if living is merely a privilege, then any contingent "right" is likewise
merely a privilege granted by those in power for their purposes.
We distinguish, then, between the fundamental three, the basic human rights, and the various rights

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

5 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

that follow from them which are largely matters of prudence. That is, while the state must support the
right of the family to do its job properly, there is no particular program which it must adopt in order to
facilitate the exercise of this right. Various and sundry programs of action could perform the task well
in one time and place but not well in another. Indeed, one can imagine scenarios in which these
ancillary rights themselves dwindle to near non-existence, or disappear entirely. For instance, a poor
country might not be able to provide meaningful health care; a society could exist which was rich
enough to provide for everyone's needs such that no one received a wage at all.
There have been many times in human history when second-level rights were not recognized, and
were indeed assaulted by various groups in power. But the fundamental elements of society--life,
religion, and family--were by and large held sacred, and where they were not, there was no
discussion of, say, just wages or education. Today, in this country at least, the opposite appears to be
the case: no one argues that health care, or education, or a just wage should be denied to anyone,
although there is a great deal of contention concerning exactly how to actualize those rights. It is the
big three which suffer the assault, and the most important one, the right to life, the sine qua non for
the very possibility of bringing about the common good and a peaceful society, is the one which has
been denied to at least one group of human beings.
At this point, Louie may well think that we are wallowing in rank sentimentalism. At the least, he is
likely to be put off by the abstract, theoretical tone of the argument so far. So let us make things more
concrete and practical. Let us take a look at the abortion right as it is defined by the Supreme Court
of the United States. In the original 1973 abortion case, Roe v. Wade, the Court recognized that the
unborn clearly have legal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause, if
they are persons. The Court then refused to decide whether the unborn are, in fact, persons. The
Court ruled that, since philosophers, scientists, and theologians cannot agree about this question, the
Court was in no position to make a pronouncement, leaving the matter as "a private decision
between a woman and her doctor."
What is the legal implication of this ruling? Simply put, two powerful human beings are allowed to
make a"private decision" about whether a powerless human being is, or is not, a person, and then
act upon that decision. This implication became fully formulated with the Supreme Court's Casey
decision. This well-known passage is its linchpin:
These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime,
choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the
Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence,
of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not
define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State. (Casey, II)
No longer is it merely the case that a more powerful human being may define away another human
being's otherwise inalienable rights and then slay that being as a non-person. This is now
fundamental to one's own self-determination; to be denied this "right" is to have one's own
personhood stripped away! And, of course, people have come to expect recourse to this practice as
part of their way of pursuing happiness. Roe cannot be overturned, argued the Court, for there are
too many "people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case..." (Casey, III, A, 2).

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

6 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

The vision of our society that the Court has conjured up here is very sad indeed: an entire culture
whose "self-determination" and "happiness" can, apparently, only be purchased at the average
annual cost of 1.2 million bodies of our own unborn. The logical implication of the Court's vision of
law, however, is even broader than that. Implied is a set of purported "rights" which amount to the
raw exercise of power by the powerful over the powerless. The concept of the human right upon
which the Constitution was founded has been emptied of meaning. Originally, the idea was that a
right is a claim to protection that may not be abrogated by any other human being no matter how
powerful; when a "right" can be overridden by another's "rights" or desires, there are, ipso facto, no
rights at all, but only the struggle for power. This is the very opposite of the rule of law, which is the
rule of reason. Human beings have fights based on simply being human. Once the powerful get to
decide who counts, there is no longer a rule of law, but only a rule of power.
So now the law implies that there is no law. Now the law states quite clearly that our happiness and
self-determination as persons come from being allowed to determine what other human being counts
as a person. The rule of law has given way to the rule of the gunman or the tyrant. Now, obviously,
this state of affairs has not come about in fact in all areas of life. But it is being pushed in many
areas. The logic of the "heart of liberty" paragraph has been used by federal judges to justify the
overturning of laws where there is any moral disagreement. If we were to carry out such a program to
its full logical conclusions, all positive laws must be rejected as violations of "autonomy" and
"privacy."
The peculiarity in this justification, however, is that it rests on the very notion of nature which it is in
the midst of undermining. The basis for trying to eliminate governmental interference in purportedly
private matters is the assertion that we have an inalienable right to do whatever we wish, as long as
it is done in private. However, privacy and autonomy do not exist in a vacuum; rather, they make
sense only insofar as they serve certain ends. Which ends will they serve? The abortion rulings
would have us believe that they exist only to serve personal desires. The fact that the logic of this
claim leads, not to privacy and autonomy, but to anarchy--that is, to the elimination of the very
possibility of any rights, including privacy and autonomy-seems to have been missed.
II. The Responsibility of the Voter: Cooperation in Evil
Chances are that Louie will protest at this point, and with some justification. After all, we have already
granted his opposition to the evil of abortion and euthanasia. We know he would never have an
abortion, or perform an abortion, or even help someone obtain an abortion. Louie likely recognizes
that acts of this kind would express acceptance of abortion as a morally permissible action. Louie's
protest is that he is not the one supporting abortion; The Candidate is. But when pressed to explain
why he is supporting The Candidate, Louie returns to his familiar refrain: The Candidate is a good
man, a compassionate man, who does not want poor people to go hungry, who wants people to earn
a decent wage, who wants everyone to have affordable health care. Doesn't that count for
something? Doesn't The Candidate exemplify respect for human beings through his positions in
these other areas?
Does it count for something? Perhaps it would, all other things being equal. But all things are not
equal. When we acknowledge that human beings ought to be aided in their flourishing through just

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

7 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

wages and decent housing, we are in the realm of prudential judgment. The question is not about
whether we are concerned for the common good, but how best to bring about the common good.
Louie, being a savvy political type, may jump at this opening, accusing us of inconsistency, even
hypocrisy. The "prolifer," the argument goes, is certainly against abortion and euthanasia. However,
the people who, thanks to his efforts, manage not to be killed must then be cared for, and the prolifer
often refuses to have the government help pay for their upkeep.
In fact, there is nothing inconsistent about this position. We would be hard pressed to find a single
politician who favors starving the poor, or accepts indentured servitude, or hopes that lots of people
get sick and die. The question is not whether we support help for the poor, or decent wages, or
health care, but rather how best to bring these goods about. They are for the most part issues of fair
distribution, and that means prudential judgment about how to allocate our money and other
resources. In other words, these are issues about which good people with good intentions can
reasonably disagree; they are issues about which one can change one's mind and still be intending
the same good.
Not so with abortion or euthanasia. One cannot desire abortion or euthanasia as a moral matter, and
consequently will them as a legal matter, and remain a person with an objectively good intention.
Furthermore, so long as the logic of abortion and euthanasia obtains, the common good is not simply
harder to achieve; it is literally impossible. It is not as though abortion can be weighed against these
other issues; rather, the assault on human life is on its own scale, outweighing all other issues we
could confront.
Now what are we to say about a candidate who supports abortion rights, even if he is not especially
active about it? Louie would have us believe that The Candidate exemplifies respect and care for
human beings through his support of so many other important goods. But our question in return is:
Respect and care for which human beings? It is clear that The Candidate is not extending his
largesse to all human beings, but only to some. Other people he believes it is acceptable to kill. It is
not human beings as such that he respects; rather, it is those particular human beings he happens to
care for.
Then, of course, there is the very real question of The Candidate's grasp of what is at stake in the
right to abortion. It is not simply a matter of two people having a difference of opinion over a matter of
prudential judgment. The Candidate finds the perpetration of a grave evil on some of his fellow
human beings to be perfectly acceptable. If the argument I outlined earlier is correct, The Candidate
has accepted--at least implicitly, if not explicitly--a notion of the human person, of morality, and of the
law which is the complete opposite of what Louie says he believes to be true. The Candidate
supports a system of law which is not in keeping with human flourishing, because it allows private
citizens to kill for private purposes; it is for that reason a system of law on a collision course with
itself.
If things are really going well, and Louie is really with us up to this point, he may be willing to admit
that a vote for The Candidate--a person with whom Louie has deep philosophical differences--is odd,
even unwise, especially if there is a pro-life candidate available. We may well find it prudent to leave
it at that, because the next stage of the argument is sometimes more than Louie can bear to hear. In

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

8 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

this stage, we have to explain to him that a vote for The Candidate in these circumstances is ethically
wrong, and seriously so. Like his namesake in Casablanca, Louie must now face the fact that he is
not a powerless bystander in a game too big for him. He is a collaborator.
What have The Candidate's proposed actions in office to do with Louie? How does Louie's vote
involve doing something immoral? In order for Louie to escape moral implication, one of two things
would have to be true: either a) there is no intrinsic connection between the voter and his vote, so
that his choice of candidate says nothing about him as a moral agent; or b) there is a connection
between voter and vote, but the link is permissible.
Does a vote say something about the voter? When I vote in the election of officials in a
representative democracy, I am attempting to enact my vision of a proper society. When I vote for a
candidate, I am voting to make him my representative, and in so doing I am agreeing to live with his
vision of that society. My action is intended to put that candidate in a position to do what he claims he
wants to do. Putting him in such a position is not some unintended side effect of my action; it is the
very point of the action. Even if I believe that he is unlikely to do anything in terms of action X or
program Y at the present time, my vote means that I am willing to accept action X or program Y
should he be put into a position to enact them. It is, therefore, a form of cooperation in the action of
another person.
So, is this cooperation permissible? It depends on several things. In the first place, it depends on
whether the action in which I cooperate is good or evil. If the action is good, there is nothing wrong
with cooperating in it. In our scenario, of course, the proposed actions of The Candidate in a crucial
area would be evil.
One may, however, sometimes cooperate in evil actions without doing evil oneself--provided some
very specific criteria are met. First of all, one may not knowingly share in the intent of the person
committing the evil action. This would be called "formal cooperation." However, it is possible to offer
assistance which facilitates the performance of an evil action without sharing in the intent of the
person doing the action. This is called "material cooperation."
There are various kinds of material cooperation which can be legitimately exercised. We already
know, before entering into the conversation, that Louie finds The Candidate's stand on abortion
repugnant. He would not vote for The Candidate because he is for abortion rights. Louie's vote
certainly appears, then, to be a form of material cooperation: the vote is intended to give the
candidate the wherewithal to bring about the good features of his platform, even if it would also
permit him to bring about the evil features.
In order to be legitimate, there must be a proportionately serious reason for cooperating materially in
another person's evil action. In other words, one must be under some kind of duress such that the
exercise of one's autonomy is limited--that is, such that not cooperating will do more harm than good.
Typically, this kind of duress comes in the form of some threat to the person himself (to his safety, his
job) or to someone else, and is present before the action, serving as an inducement to cooperate.
Clearly, this situation does not obtain in our voting. Perhaps, then, we could find a proportionate
reason in terms of a threat stemming from the action itself--in this case, some result of the election.

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

9 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

For instance, as a result of one's vote (in concert with others), some people will not be as well off
under laws proposed by a particular anti-abortion candidate as under those proposed by the
pro-abortion candidate.
The difficulty should immediately be clear. Given what we have already argued, no program or policy
proposed by The Candidate is in any way proportionate to the evil he proposes to perpetrate, both in
the actual abortions that would be allowed to continue, and in the legal morass which that entails. If
we were to examine the two candidates' total set of proposals except the life issues, we would
normally find that, even where there is serious disagreement, neither candidate is proposing any evil.
There is a difference of opinion only over how best to bring about the same good. But once we factor
in the life issues, then we have two candidates whose proposals look like this:
The Candidate: A) Seriously evil (abortion) + B) some goods
The Other Guy: A) Fundamentally good + B) some other goods
In the B category, the candidates are proposing the same goods, though perhaps by different means.
In the A category, however, one proposes evil, the other good. Thus, there is no proportionate reason
to vote for The Candidate. If there is no proportionate reason, then a vote for The Candidate,
objectively speaking, amounts to a type of formal cooperation, called implicit formal cooperation. That
is, if one understood that one was accepting the grave evil without any proportionate reason, one
would be accepting the evil for its own sake. Most of the Louies in the world would not be subjectively
guilty of this, precisely because they do not understand that there is no proportionate reason for their
cooperation. But objectively speaking, how else are we to read Louie's act?
We know his commitments. He protests the evils of abortion and euthanasia; he tells people why
abortion and euthanasia are wrong; he sends money to the pro-life movement; he may pray for an
end to the killing. But then comes the conceptual disconnect, and he votes for the very things he
claims to be against, even when other options are available. Imagine a father who, in the face of his
son's sexual promiscuity, protests until he is blue in the face, but then sends the boy out on prom
night with the car, condoms, a hotel room key, and permission to stay out until the next morning. He
can tell his son not to use these things, but does this command make any sense? Does it matter that
the father hopes to accomplish some other good, like keeping his son off the road when it might be
dangerous--especially if that good could readily be accomplished in some other way, like keeping him
home? Does it matter that the boy might accomplish other good things that night, like keeping his
friend from driving drunk? Does it matter whether the boy is unlikely to be in a position to use his
father's gifts that night? What message can anyone logically glean from the father's actions? It can
only be that his protests are hollow. This, it seems to me, is more than simply material support for his
son's immoral actions; it is an entering into the intention to commit the act. If the father truly does not
wish to enter into that intention, then he must find another path, because this action says, "What you
are doing is acceptable."
The Candidate may have any number of justifications to offer for his acceptance of the abortion right.
But, in order to be consistent, Louie's acceptance of this aspect of The Candidate's position so that
other goods might be accomplished entails Louie's rejection of moral absolutes in favor of the

11/5/2012 1:11 AM

EBSCOhost

10 of 10

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?sid=2c16bbb3-5f0f-4a93-bc2a-...

principle that the end justifies the means. To act on such a principle in relation to grave matters is an
objectively grave evil act. In this situation, it is to accept the continuation of an intrinsically evil status
quo so that other good things might (possibly) happen. If this is not what Louie means to say in his
vote, then he must find another candidate to vote for. Perhaps there is some way of understanding
the meaning of voting in a representative democracy that does not require any connection between
the voter and his vote. If there is, this writer would be interested to hear it.
Louie may be heard to mutter at this point that we are not only sentimentalists, but patriots. Chances
are, though, that he will not concede yet--as well he might not, for an important question remains.
What does one do if there are only two candidates for a particular office, both of whom are
pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia? In that case, one can honestly say that one is stuck with a lose-lose
situation. There is real duress and limited options for action. If The Candidate, for example, is running
against a pro-life candidate, it would make neither moral nor legal sense to vote for The Candidate.
If, on the other hand, The Candidate is running against a Second Candidate who supports abortion
or euthanasia, we must first determine which candidate is less in favor, which is more, and vote
accordingly. If, for instance, both are for abortion, but only the Second supports euthanasia, a vote
for The Candidate makes sense. If The Candidate favors partial-birth abortion, but the Second wants
to limit abortion to the first trimester, a vote for the Second might be in order. If both are equally in
favor of abortion or euthanasia rights, then the ability to choose a pro-life candidate has been taken
from our hands. Our autonomy has been limited. We are now in a position legitimately to materially
cooperate with their wrong, because a) we do not choose the evil, but only the possible good either
one might do, and b) we will do what we can to defeat the evil, including voting for a pro-life
candidate whenever we get the chance.
If the Louie you know is like the Louies I know, then he is likely to try one last throw, along these
lines: The vote of one person won't amount to a hill of beans in an election. And we must admit that
this is, in one sense, true. It is also irrelevant. The main issue here is what one's voting record says
about one's own character.
On the hopeful side, imagine what the world would be like if all this country's Louies changed their
voting habits. One thing is certain: if we keep voting for the Candidates of the world, we'll all live to
regret it--maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.
ILLUSTRATION: AERIAL VIEW OF THE EPICENTER OF A CONNIPTION FIT.
~~~~~~~~
By Stephen J. Heaney
Stephen J. Heaney is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St.
Paul, Minnesota.
Copyright of Human Life Review is the property of Human Life Foundation, Inc. and its content may
not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

11/5/2012 1:11 AM