 |
A smaller crowd hopes to make a differenceMillions of people will be in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20 for the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. Estimates range from 2 million to 4 million or more attendees at the Capitol, on the National Mall and along the parade route. A lot of people want to witness the historic event when Barack Obama takes the oath of office. The annual March for Life, a couple of days later, may look small in comparison, but the traditional walk from the Mall (near Congress) to the Supreme Court takes on greater meaning in 2009. For all but eight of the past 28 years, the couple hundred thousand marchers have had a president sympathetic in the fight against abortion. Often, Presidents Reagan or the Bushes sent messages or envoys to the event. That is unlikely this year, with the new president having released a statement last Jan. 22, that said, “Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it’s never been more important to protect a woman’s right to choose. Last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women’s health.” Then-candidate Obama outlined in that statement his support for “reproductive justice” and his work against laws that banned abortions and de-funded contraceptive coverage for low-income women. He also talked about alternatives to abortion, but spoke only in terms of greater access to birth control, not about promoting adoption, or pre-natal care for women who feel they cannot carry a child to term because of the financial or emotional burdens of pregnancy. Pro-life groups step into this fray all the time, providing aid for mothers before and after birth and assisting mothers with alternatives to abortion. But candidate Obama, now president-elect, promised to support the passage of the Freedom of Choice Act. Whether FOCA, in one form or another, will be brought to a vote in Congress this session is in doubt, as it has failed to be brought to a vote in the last 20 years. The nation faces significant economic troubles, a war on two fronts and the effects of increased tension in the Middle East. Our legislative and executive branches need to focus on these issues first, not FOCA. The U.S. bishops, in a statement by their conference president, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, congratulated Obama on his election, but called Roe v. Wade a bad decision that should not be enshrined in bad law. It warned him not to misinterpret the electorate’s mandate for economic change with a mandate in favor of abortion. “If the election is misinterpreted ideologically as a referendum on abortion, the unity desired by President-elect Obama and all Americans at this moment of crisis will be impossible to achieve,” Cardinal George said in his statement in November. “Aggressively pro-abortion policies, legislation and executive orders will permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans, and would be seen by many as an attack on the free exercise of their religion.” Obama is in line with Catholic social teaching on some policies – especially in support of the poor and disenfranchised – and for partly this reason, he won the election, while garnering the support of many Catholics. If he wishes to build a consensus among all Americans, whom he now represents, he will do well to listen to those who march for the sanctity of life at one of the first public gatherings after the inauguration.
|
Advertisement
|