Pro-Obama Catholic: abortion is 'intrinsic evil,' but you can still vote pro-abortion

Quoting Pope John Paul’s encyclical “The Splendor of Truth”, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Thomas Aquinas, Kaveny proposes that “ ‘intrinsically evil’ does not mean ‘gravely evil’,” since “intrinsically evil acts are acts that are wrong by reason of their object, not by reason of their motive or their circumstance.”

“Furthermore,” she adds, “not all intrinsically evil acts involve a significant violation of justice, the precondition for making an act illegal. No serious candidate for national office maintains that masturbation, homosexual acts or contraception should be outlawed in the United States today; and most Catholic legal theorists, whether conservative or liberal, would agree with them.”

“Some commentators,” Kaveny writes, “have suggested that voters ought to prioritize opposition to gay marriage and abortion because third parties have an overriding duty to prevent intrinsically evil acts and to protect their potential victims.”

“But this argument is incorrect,” she claims. “It is not always most important for third parties to intervene to prevent harm caused by intrinsically evil acts. Sometimes preventing harm caused by other kinds of wrongdoing, or even harm caused by natural disasters, can take priority.”

Trying to make the case for why devout Catholics should vote for Obama, she also argues that “in this fallen world, moral character alone is not enough. Political competence and other practical skills are also required. The person with the best moral character may not be the best president.”

“Finally,” Kaveny points out, “the defender might admit that there is one issue of overriding importance for which the term ‘intrinsic evil’ is useful in political considerations: abortion.”

But the professor argues that the application of this moral term “has moved far beyond the technical use normally employed in Catholic action theory: it is evocative, not analytical.”

And therefore it would be licit, she says, even necessary for a Catholic to consider other “infamies” at the same moral level of abortion and euthanasia, such as “disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons.”

In conclusion, speaking about herself, professor Kaveny says that “for many pro-life Catholics, the issue of voting and abortion comes down to this: what does one do if one thinks that the candidate more likely to reduce the actual incidence of abortion is also the one more committed to keeping it legal?”

Kaveny delivers her answer in an article published on Newsweek´s web site and penned in conjunction with professors Kmiec and Cafardi in response to an article by George Weigel.

“Is Obama the perfect pro-life candidate?” the professors ask. “No. Is he preferable to the self-proclaimed ‘pro-lifer’ McCain? Yes, because promoting life in actuality beats McCain's label and all of Weigel's elegant theorizing and hand-wringing. The Republican alternative familiar to Weigel is simultaneously self-righteous, easy and ineffective. The Democratic path is practical, anything but easy—as no act of bona fide love of neighbor ever is— but inviting of a life-affirming outcome.”