Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Winter 2008
Publication Information
31 Fellowship Cath. Scholars Newsl., no. 4, Winter 2008, at 11.
Abstract
From the Introduction
The "pro-life" position consists, basically, of these two propositions. One is that people begin at conception, so that to kill anyone from conception onwards is to kill a human person. The second proposition is that it is wrong - morally wrong - to intentionally kill any innocent person. Neither proposition is about religious faith. No one needs religious faith to see and to say that both of these propositions are true.
So it won't do to say that one is "pro-life" because one views abortion with profound misgivings, or because one regrets that so many abortions occur and that the law should work to make it more rare, or because abortion is, in some sense, wrong and evil. Abortion is all these things. But abortion is much more than all these things. In an abortion someone who has the same right not to be killed that everyone else has, is killed. This is the "pro-life" position I have in mind in asking: under what circumstances is the "pro-life" voter morally justified in voting for a "pro-choice" candidate?
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
Pro-life Voters and the Pro-Choice Candidate,
31 Fellowship Cath. Scholars Newsl., no. 4, Winter 2008, at 11..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1794
Comments
This paper is a slightly revised version of remarks delivered by the author at the University of Notre Dame on October, 2008 in a public exchange of views on Catholics and the presidential election.