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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-07-06

More On Kerry

This story was front and center on FoxNews for a few hours this morning. The key graf: Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception." Further: "I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued in the interview. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."

This strikes me for two reasons. One of which is the obvious moral cowardice of the position. Being a man, I know that I will never be in the position of deciding whether or not to terminate my pregnancy--biological fact. However, that does not preclude me from being able to think, opine, or someday vote on the subject, any more than lack of military service precluded FDR from running the military during WWII. So, as a man, there comes a time when you have to act on a belief; in the Senator's case, his choice of action is to give prima facia support to abortion. I might buy his "personal opposition" if he refused to take campaign donations from NARAL, NOW, or Planned Parenthood; as it is, his statement to the media was nothing more than announcing that he does not have the courage of his convictions. Separation of Church and State has no more to do with this issue than it did slavery--a deeply held personal belief transcends Church, no matter how much it coincides with it.

The second point, though, is purely political: who might Kerry be trying to give cover to with the Catholic Church? To my knowledge, neither Gephardt or Edwards are Catholic, so that's not that important an issue. But the Archbishop of St. Louis--Gephardt's back yard--has been the most outspoken critic of Kerry's abortion position. Was this a way of mitigating that criticism in a state he's hoping to gain by naming one of its own his V.P.?

Or was it a simple campaign blunder?

I guess we'll see.
Posted by: Michael / 7/06/2004 12:12:00 AM

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