Pro-Life Catholic Leader Says Nicholas Cafardi Wrong on Obama, Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 1, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading pro-life Catholic is taking Duquesne University School of Law dean Nicholas Cafardi to task for his recent endorsement of pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama. Cafardi joins Catholic law professor Douglas Kmiec in saying Obama isn’t so bad, but Father Frank Pavone disagrees.
In an editorial appearing in the National Catholic Reporter, Cafardi contends he believes abortion is an "unspeakable evil" yet he supports Obama, who has pledged to keep abortion legal another 35 years.
Cafardi bases his endorsement on two points — claiming the pro-life movement has "permanently" lost the abortion battle and saying voting for Obama can be justified on other political issues.
Pavone, the head of Priests for Life, tells LifeNews.com he takes exception to both claims.
"If you think the battle against abortion has been lost permanently, then you are asserting that the battle for America and civilization itself have been lost," Pavone says. "So don’t trouble yourself one way or another about this election."
"In a case like that, as the bishops state in Living the Gospel of Life, the American experiment would ‘no longer be worth conducting,’" Pavone says.
Pavone also rejects the view that Catholics can support Obama based on other issues apart from abortion — saying "this analysis overlooks the fact that permitting abortion makes the common good impossible."
"You cannot be right on other issues while undermining their foundation," Pavone says — expressing the notion that other rights and freedoms are worthless if someone is killed before birth via abortion.
Pro-life advocates say that Catholics like Cafardi need to be reminded just how pro-abortion Obama really is — that his policies will result in 35 more years of 50 million abortions with his pledge to only appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court.
Obama has promised to sign legislation that would overturn every pro-life law across the country and cause 125,000 more abortions a year.
Karen Cross, the political director for National Right to Life, points to a speech Obama made before Planned Parenthood in 2007 promising to sign the so-called Freedom of Choice Act that would make the Roe decision federal law.
Not only would the bill make legal abortions in all nine months of pregnancy the law of the land, it would overturn every pro-life state enacted by state legislatures. That means states across the nation could no long place even moderate, common sense limits on abortions like parental notification, banning partial-birth abortions or preventing taxpayer-funding of abortions.
Eliminating those laws would obviously increase the number of abortions — hardly consistent with Cafardi’s claims.
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