Every time an election looms on the horizon, Catholics have to ask themselves: who will I be voting for? To pretend that there is ever an easy answer would be to fool oneself, for the fallen state of man makes a perfect choice almost impossible. That being said, there are certain principles that Catholics must abide by when exercising their civic duty at the ballot box. This article is not going to tell the Catholic voter who to vote for, as that is ultimately the choice for them to make. The purpose of this article is instead to inform the conscience of the voting Catholic so that he or she can make the best decision in line with Church teaching.
Catholics have a duty to participate in the political affairs of a free society, and to bring the Christian message into the world. In choosing a candidate, the first and most important consideration are the policies that candidate wants to implement. If those policies are intrinsically evil, a Catholic has an obligation to vote against them. Of course, it is almost never that simple. More often than not, every viable candidate advocates for an intrinsic evil of some kind. In this case, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, a Catholic can take the extraordinary route of not voting at all, or he can opt to vote “for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.”
Deciding which candidate is likely to affect the least amount of evil is no easy decision, but it is one that can be made. The USCCB designates abortion and euthanasia as the “preeminent threats to human dignity because they directly attack life itself, the most fundamental human good and the condition for all others” and “because of the number of lives destroyed [by abortion and euthanasia].” Further, the “direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong... [and] must always be opposed.” According to America Magazine and other news sources, Pope Francis has stated that he concurs with the designation of abortion as the preeminent threat. In 2017, 862,000 children were aborted, and since 1973, over 60 million have been killed. Pope Saint John Paul II, in his 1988 Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici, said that “the inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” Thus the right to life supersedes all else — without the right to life, there can be no other rights; there can be no other priorities.
According to the USCCB, a Catholic can never vote for a candidate because of his or her support for abortion. The Church teaches that to do so is formal cooperation with evil, and is a grave sin. Further, a Catholic can never vote for a candidate who supports abortion just because he or she agrees with the candidate’s other positions. To do that would constitute material cooperation with evil, and is also a grave sin.
The USCCB states that it is “permissible [to vote for a candidate who supports abortion] only for truly grave moral reasons.” Catholics must not, however, engage in a “moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity.” A “truly grave moral reason” means that the alternative to the candidate who supports abortion must advocate for an evil that is inordinately greater than abortion. Because abortion is the greatest evil that the nation faces today, there are few issues that can supersede it. Some examples of a greater evil would be something on the order of genocide, or an openly expressed desire to use nuclear weapons without provocation.
There are a few moral equivalencies that some make in an attempt to justify voting for a candidate that supports abortion. The most common equivalency is that the alternative (not pro-abortion) candidate does not take as stringent a stance against climate change or environmental degradation, and therefore it is justifiable to vote for the candidate who supports abortion and more stringent climate policy. The argument is that climate change will, eventually, be more destructive than abortion. Both climate change and environmental destruction are, undoubtedly, issues that Catholics must work to solve, for we are obligated to protect and care for our common home and God’s creation. There is an extremely important distinction between climate policy and abortion, however. First, the Church places the issue of abortion above that of climate change (as can be seen in the USCCB’s Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship). In other words, the Church unequivocally categorizes abortion as a worse, more pressing evil than climate change. Abortion is also the most immediate and direct threat to life that the nation faces, and results in hundreds of thousands of deaths every year in the United States alone.
The climate issue, while certainly necessary to address, does not have the same immediate and direct threat. Even if one were to consider the long-term, whatever climate policies that the US enacts, the effect on overall climate change would be negligible, particularly when the largest polluter, China, and the other great polluters, namely India and Africa, remain (and are almost guaranteed to continue to remain) unchanged. Further, even with the most dire credible predictions, there is no reason that technological advances and engineering would be unable to prevent potential mass loss of life or to rectify the situation (be it through carbon-capture technology, renewable energy, emission reducing technology, infrastructure [like sea walls], or the like). This does not mean that the voter must abandon the environmental issue, in fact quite the opposite. Climate change is most certainly happening, and the Catholic will always have a duty to advocate for policies that protect God's creation. But the Catholic voter must consider the most immediate, direct, and known threat to human life as paramount, and that is abortion. Abortion, of course, is a policy choice with clear and obvious consequences (the killing of the unborn) being enacted. There are no major US politicians who are advocating for a purposeful increase in climate change with the intent to kill, so there is not even a remote comparison to abortion.
Another claim made is that electing pro-abortion politicians has actually served to reduce abortions in the US. This claim is both illogical and false. Firstly, it neglects the fact that the abortion rate has slowly declined for every administration since and including Ronald Reagan. Further, the pro-life movement having gained traction and the Supreme Court allowing greater state restrictions on abortion after Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, have served to aid in this decline. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization, much of the decline was due to the “declines in births and pregnancies overall,” along with state restrictions. It also has to be noted that the incredible strides in recent years of the pro-life movement are yielding very promising results, with pro-life judges appointed to the courts, and numerous states enacting pro-life legislation. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reports that between 2011 and 2019, 483 legislative restrictions on abortion were enacted. So if nothing else, electing pro-life candidates and advocating for the cause of life have actually been one of the main drivers in the reduction of abortions in the United States. Electing pro-abortion politicians, especially when they look to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law or use federal money to fund abortions, would be a grave setback for the cause of life.
A corollary to the previous claim is that it is reasonable to vote for pro-abortion candidates if they support expansive welfare programs, because those programs will help alleviate the need for abortions, and thereby reduce them. The first problem with this claim is that it assumes that abortions are mostly the result of financial issues. This is false. As the Guttmacher Institute found, 74% responded that their reason for receiving an abortion was because it would “interfere with a woman's education, work or ability to care for dependents,” 73% responded that it was about affordability, 48% responded that it was because of relationship issues or parenting concerns, 40% responded that they were done having children, and about 30% responded that they were not ready for a child. The reasons for abortions are therefore “typically motivated by multiple, diverse and interrelated reasons.” Therefore, while financial issues certainly play a role, they are far from the only, or even the largest, role. Further, the states with the largest welfare programs also tend to be the states with the greatest number of abortions. California, a state with generous welfare programs, accounted for 15.4% of US abortions (despite being only around 12% of the population), and had an abortion rate of 16.4 per 1000 women in 2017. New York, another state with generous welfare programs, accounted for 12.2% of US abortions (despite being only 6% of the population), and had an abortion rate of 26.3 per 1000 women in 2017. In the same year, the abortion rate for the entirety of the United States was 13.5 per 1000. In other words, the evidence for the claim that welfare programs reduce abortion is just not there (in fact, there is more evidence to the contrary).
The nation faces an extremely important decision on November 3rd, and it is a decision with serious consequences. Hopefully this article has served to help the Catholic voter in making that decision. Catholics have a duty to participate in the democratic process, and equally have a duty to bring the teaching of the Lord into the formation of public policy. In the end, of course, the choice of who to vote for rests on the individual conscience.