Obama Courageously Misses the Point

Were fair minded words used by Southern senators when discussing slavery? Should those who opposed slavery given up the fight because charming well spoken southern gentleman talked of how their slaves were well treated and only a tiny minority were ill treated? After all slavery was underpinning the culture of the southern states and we should enter into dialogue if a cultural divide separates us? Like slavery abortion is intrinsically evil and must be opposed. Like slavery it treats one section of the human family as if they were disposable possessions. For those who see this clearly Don't be disheartened slavery was once legal and it was eventually made illegal. Once people come to their senses and realise the brutal reality of abortion they will begin to insist that politicians work to change this traversty of human justice for no man or woman has the right to deliberately kill an innocent vulnerable child sheltering in its mother's womb.Those who say they are against abortion but won't stop another person from the right to have one are no different to those who demand abortions because by your support for pro abortion groups you are enabling them to hold sway You cannot serve two masters. Abortion is an evil act that destroys the highest most loved part of God's creation the human person whom even the angels must bow to so beloved of God is humanity.Like slavery it cannot be justified.

I think many who are pro-choice realize abortion poses many moral dilemmas. But "pro-lifers" (as if pro-choice mean anti-life), have not really acknowledged that there is another life involved -- that of the mother. The unborn child resides within the body of another person. Even if abortion is a morally inferior choice, I personlly cannot in good conscious dictate the options to another person, i.e., the mother, whose life is so uniquely intertwined with that of the unborn child. Neither am I comfortable with turning this choice over to the government.

I think Obama spoke compassionately and truthfully when he said the rights of these individuals, the mother and the child, are irreconcilable. It is a moral choice I feel unqualified to dictate, even if I have a my own opinion.

Those truly interested in the welfare of child AND mother might prove their genuine compassion in seizing the opportunity to work with a president so keen on eliminating unwanted pregnancies, and hence the dilemma of confronting abortion.

Calling Obama a "baby-killer" belies genuine Christian compassion.

To those that appear to disagree with me- I have always said, that abortion will never be stopped by making it illegal. It will cease when others come to the conclusion it is immoral, unethical, unwise, and denies other beings like ourselves the ability to do what we all do- live, breathe, have families, work, enjoy the earth etc.

The prejudice is one where those that are "pro choice" happen to have the luxury of being on the other side of womb. So easy to make those comments. I can't stop abortion through politics, but have to convince others it is not okay to have them, then when the vast majority sees that, it will then become illegal. The polls are on my side(see recent polls on abortion) Just as people realized blacks were people and should be treated as equals, my hope is us former fetuses will realize the personhood of fetuses that just happen to be on the wrong side of womb. Politics won't solve it- but impassioned debate and giving full disclosure about the babies inside womens' wombs should help.

Workhouse-run schools. That's what you get when you have a large population of unwanted children who were abandoned by their parents. If they're lucky, they wind up at places like the Hershey Institute. If they're not, they get fondled by a priest somewhere.

Okay, pro-lifers... if you get your way and abortion is made illegal, are you going to willingly pay more taxes to support the increase in AFDC and WIC, build more schools, hire more teachers, build new prisons, more welfare payments, etc.? Or are you gonna be out there waving your teabags around saying "no new taxes".

Making abortion illegal isn't going to stop it, any more than making downloading movies illegal stopped BitTorrent. It's just going to send women to back-alley providers who will mutilate them. Or, worse, you'll find more dead babies in dumpsters. Is that truly what you want?

And while the Vatican seeks proprietary rights to the wombs of women all over the world, a bit of irony, I offer.

This is pasted from Stevens-Arroyo's thread:

"NYT Today: A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades -- and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.

It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential..."
.

"It is certainly not the job of the government to tell us what to do with our bodies, but this is clearly a side issue."

The Supreme Court has, in fact, recognized that the government has no claim on women's wombs. This is clearly not a side issue; it is central.

The Christians and Catholics who wish to visit their religious precepts on the rest of us are not a side issue and have become more than a simple nuisance; they are central.

Central, too, is that some of their activities, via the churches, are in violation of tax exemption requirements, which should be removed from them immediately, unless they cease their attempts to legislate.

Farnaz1Mansouri1,
I don't think people are all that interested in the woman's womb. You do also fail to point out the child in the womb. This is what is important.

Do you also feel that people that are against legal crack cocaine want to control your nasal cavity?

It is certainly not the job of the government to tell us what to do with our bodies, but this is clearly a side issue. It is governments job to prevent dangerous medical practices and most of all, protect human life in every stage. The human life is what is important. Overall we do well with this, except with the unborn. Maybe soon we make our policies consistant.

Counterww writes:

"Being pro-life has nothing to do with politics."

Seeking to legislate your religious agenda, in this case, to gain control over the wombs of women all over the world, claiming proprietary rights to said wombs has everything to do with politics. There are any number of political terms for it, for example, facism.

There is nothing "pro-life" in the anti-choice agenda. It is pro-death for all notions of popular sovereignty.

Hello Counterww,

You said that being pro-life has nothing to do with politics. Perhaps if one compartmentalizes completely you could say that, but if one were honest it is clear that what is ingrained in us does inform our politics. It does have to do with politics as well as much more.

"we see the potential of the human spirit, and how that spirit is quashed at the selfish portal called "choice".

Poetic. That's nice. Yet...

How can you imagine that the human spirit is "quashed" with abortion? How can you assume that spirit is the gift of immortal life given by God and that it is so weak that it could get quashed by anything?

The assumption that there is only one chance at incarnate life is ludicrous. The assumption that spirit has only one chance at expression is foolish. How could that be with spirit endowed with life by God?

If God had given life to an individuated spirit, and then expressed that puppy straight into an abortion, what does that say of God? One may argue that abortion is human choice, but spirit is the domain of God.

Counterww,

How wonderful your all or nothing perspective. I favor a woman's right to choose, yet have children of my own. Totally absurd to claim such an all out anti-fetus point of view of those who are pro-choice. One can strongly encourage women through various means to carry children to birth, yet still support an individual woman's decision when she chooses not to do so.

DILD-

Again, I am amazed at your ravings.

Being pro-life has nothing to do with politics. It is ingrained in us poor religious folks because we see the potential of the human spirit, and how that spirit is quashed at the selfish portal called "choice"

The hypocrisy of the pro choice crowd is appalling. Former fetuses, given the chance to develop their lives and enjoy and accomplish something- tell other fetuses- you don't get that chance. I don't care about you. I don't care about you given the opportunities I have or had. All I care about is myself. You got yours, but damn those that happen to be on the other side of birth canal. Hypocrisy at its apex.

I am sure that Right to Lifers would view Obama as living, and governing, outside of the "culture of life". But as others have said in various ways, I say as well in my own way.

When elected George W was the poster boy for the conservative evangelical movement and a virtual small m messiah for the causes of conservatism, "the culture of life" being a motto for some of them. Anti-abortion was one part of movement toward social conservatism.

This very man, perhaps playing Jesus and going to the cross for the movement, was curiously anti-life if one looks at the whole picture.

Evangelicals generally believe as Bush believed in some particular ways. Though claiming support for unborn life, they are pro death penalty in the majority and are active voices in support of not only capital punishment but harsher sentences. Perhaps that is a reflection of what they carry of the Teachings of Jesus, but if so I do not understand it.

Conservative Christians are very pro military and the use of military power, and the Services are chock full of Evangelicals. How many have died as a result of us 'exercising' our military in recent wars is unknown, but many tens of thousands.

The outcome, the manifestation, of this belief system being exercised by those in positions of power is NOT an expression of "the culture of life" even as those doing the expressing are supposed adherents to that motto.

Truth is, many in the conservative christian community are not supporters of 'life' if that life is contrary to their own 'family'. Indeed, many are simply hypocrites. They support life when they see fit, but not across the board.

I more trust the Dalai Lama and almost any real Buddhist when they say they are for life. It shows in the actions, across the board.

Meanwhile, in today's real news AP reports:

"Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades _ and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation."

"The report concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers."

Like Reynolds, his Fox News allies, the Irish Catholic Bigots O'Reilly and Hanity, keep their single minded focus just on abortion and gays for ratings and Obama bashing.

Until the Catholic church and their Rovian allies like Reynolds start calling for throwing pedophiles in prison, they have no credibility just harping about abortion and homosexuality.

Meanwhile, the old Nazi Ratzinger looks the other way again - this time away from Ireland. Christ's Church indeed!

"One contributor even said George Bush should not be honored because executions took place in his state of Texas during his term. Well good for him, unless you are not in favor of executing muderers. I may be missing this point completely."

You are. Roman Catholic doctrine is also against the death penalty. Something that the rabid anti-abortion people tend to forget.

Doctors are probably more worried about anti-abortion crazies shooting at them or bombing their clinics than the actual practice of abortions. That's why they're quitting the business. Why should one have to wear a bullet-proof vest to work every morning? Even cops don't do that!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30838320/

Irish probe: Abuse ‘endemic’ in Catholic schools
Report: Church did little to stop decades of beatings, rapes, humiliations

The report goes on to describe 50 yrs of this abuse of thousands of children, and the Vatican cover up.

The real 'point' that JMR misses is that the Catholic church hiearchy including your old Nazi Pope should be on trial for covering up for pedophiles for centuries and have as much concern for the living as they claim for a fetus.

If you believe in God and believe in ensoulment at the moment of conception, then you must necessarily accept that God is the greatest abortionist of all time, because a vast percentage of all fertilized eggs are naturally aborted. The same God that gives life also takes life. If you can't live with that, your beliefs are not based on reality or truth.

Obama's views on abortion are not wrong, and what is morally wicked are the views of those opposed to a woman's right to choose. The pro-birth movement should focus its attention on pre-natal care for women intending to give birth and on human beings once they are born.

NEWS ITEM:
"Ireland braces for report on Catholic child abuse

"DUBLIN (AP)– A commission report into the abuse of thousands of Irish children in Roman Catholic institutions is published Wednesday after a nine-year investigation repeatedly delayed by church lawsuits, missing documentation and alleged government obstruction.

"The Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse will release a 2,575-page report in an attempt at a comprehensive portrait of sexual, physical and emotional damage inflicted on children consigned to the country's defunct network of reformatories, workhouses, orphanages and other church-run institutions from the 1930s to 1990s."
---

Oh, yeah . . . the Catholic Church sure does occupy the moral high ground, don't it?

In fact, in any sane society, the RCC would be padlocked, its assets sold off and the proceeds used to compensate as many of its living victims as can be found.

The church has been a holocaust for children for centuries. Any pronouncement it makes on abortion should be met only with contempt and hilarity.

To say that a fertilized egg is the same as a fully formed human being does not ring true. Merely to make this statement as a point of fact is not credible or believable.

Calling people baby killers simply for their political opinion is to be deliberately insulting and mean, like calling someone fat or ugly.

Seeking to outlaw abortion is to deny the facts of life that when abortion was illegal, many woman and young girls died in the process of procuring illegal abortions performed by hucksters and quacks.

It also denies all of human history when women died like flies in complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

I do not think that abortion is a good method for birth control, but there could be better ways to discourage this practice than outlawing it for all cases.

Many religious people who oppose abortion also oppose sex education and birth control. This insistence on blocking all options does not make sense. It is a primitive and backward way of thinking. It is a punitive an authoritarian attitude that just does not fly in the modern world.

Many religios people have become fanatical and hysterical in their opposition to abortion. I beleive this is an appeal to God and to Jesus, to win brownie points for salvation and access to Heaven, without really doing anything. For fanatical opposition to abortion is no more than a political opinion, just as being pro-choice is a political opinion that has nothing to do with baby killing.

A fanatical religious opposition to abortion is the lazy way out; the tears shed for the unborn are easy tears; they are tears of drama, shed for show. Real tears and real grief are much different. I know from my own experience.

I cannot respect the pro-life position, basically for all these reasons, that it does not seem credible, that it denies political and medical reality, and that it is fundamentally disingenuous and promoted in bad faith.

Heh. No response? It's really something monotheists and a-monotheists have in common. Still trying to argue your way into getting laid. :)

have to say, few atheists, 'liberated' as they may be, pass the singin' to me test, either. (It's really not about musical critique, either.)

"Why argue with people who believe in the supernatural? "

Hey, *I* believe in the 'supernatural'.... I just don't believe it hangs us ofer a pit and demands we be massively-dysfunctional.

Why argue with people who believe in the supernatural? It's like arguing over a game of craps that uses dice with no spots.

If they *really* want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, actually, speaking of American Idol, ...instead of competing for who gets to be the 'sex idol' for the titillation and later holy excoriation of the 'righteous,' they would do better to advertise *my* secret formula to shorten pressure from men I'm not inclined to have sex with:

"Sing to me and I'll consider it."

Watch em vaporize.

I mean, really, a nation of hung-up people has these competitions of who gets kicked off the 'island' of 'idols,' calls it 'reality TV' and never questions why they're scared to *sing* outside religious venues, never mind start saying who 'sucks' at it.

Guess that's 'reality TV' for you.

Not, somehow my reality, nor, I think, that of those who seek to tell me to imitate what they figure passes for heterosexuality and related penitences.

Speaking of Catholic institutions, ....American Idol? Really? That's just an exercise in inhibition, trying to find the 'alpha sinner' or something.

Whatever.

"Please be aware that the Catholics are airing a pro-life spot called "Imagine" on American Idol finale in 6 states, beginning in Baltimore."

Pity those poor Catholics who are committed to mental health, separation of church and state, a just world. Pity the poor Catholics in the traditions of Hesburgh, Oscar Romero.

They deserve our compassion and support, in this American Idolatrous hour.

"Please be aware that the Catholics are airing a pro-life spot called "Imagine" on American Idol finale in 6 states, beginning in Baltimore."

Oof, my Gods, what a horrible spectacle of nast and social insecurity *that* is. Right between the Bible ads you get treated to displays of folks abusing each other for singing. Stuff you're subjected to just to watch the TV listings. Great way to convince us this whole agenda has nothing to do with a cruel and domineering streak in conservatives.

*gak.*

Jeffrey, that does not refute or countermand the point that ND is private, is not owned by the church, and has no obligations to any specific Catholics outside the university. He simply means, it's a Catholic institution that follows Catholic teachings. In this case, he obviously disagreed with what a small group of others claimed the teachings required.

Please be aware that the Catholics are airing a pro-life spot called "Imagine" on American Idol finale in 6 states, beginning in Baltimore.

Feel free to preview at https://www.catholicvote.org/index.php?/site/donationpage/

Hey PHILAMIKE ---

“As a Catholic university, we are part of the Church—members of the ‘mystical body of Christ,’ animated by faith in the Gospel."

Straight from Rev. Jenkins speech at the 2009 Notre Dame commencement.

Poor pitiful John Mark Reynolds if people like Betsy are all he has to defend him.

What a shrill, obnoxious person.

(continued from below)

No, slave-holders didn't have a right to call people sub-human cause they chose to read a Bible* that way, any more than you have the right to use your religion to tell women that you have more right to make their decisions than they do.

*That's* a slaver's mentality, from the edicts of a book written when women and children *were* property.

And you really misconstrue the facts: such conservatives would call those who *freed* slaves 'against God' and *lynch them* quite often, then try and recapture and 'confiscate' the slaves.

"Same with the pro abortion crowd, don't like abortions, don't get one yourself."

Unfortunately, your analogy doesn't hold, but if your only justification for trying to exert government control over womens' bodies and their childrens' futures for your religious theory, gag doctors, lie about Presidents, and elect *oppressive idiots who can't even do the *wrong thing properly with the whole damn Department of Defense and all the money in the world at their disposal...*

Weak.

'Pro-life' policies are *oppressive,* *Unconstitutional,* and *don't even work.* They may make you *feel* righteous, but they are in fact *counterproductive* all across the board.

You can't 'free' a clump of cells..or even a fetus by forcing them to be born into an oppressed situation. Or die with their mother in childbirth, if they aren't born malformed and motherless by some 'miracle' of ignoring medical advice.

We can do much, much better. Government's part in this is *supporting the good.* Not *enforcing your religious edicts.*

If you're worried about things looking like *slavery,* then for starters support equal marriage rights. ...Cause it's no metaphor. They use the same damn *laws* ...not to mention religious rhetoric, against us as they used against black people and interracial couples.

jeffreyshovlin, Notre Dame owes absolutely no duty to you or to Catholics in general. NONE. You have no interest in ND, and no rights with respect to anything it does. And that's exactly how it should be. ND is a PRIVATE institution. It is not owned by the Catholic church. It is a university, not a church. It has the right to decide how to operate. You don't see the Vatican stripping ND theologians of their right to teach Catholic theology, do you? That is the ONLY recourse the Vatican would have. Rather, the Vatican, in its own newspaper, was COMPLIMENTARY of President Obama and did not get involved in the ridiculous, childish, shenanigans and antics of a few extreme zealot bishops and other kooks (Like the crazy fool Randall Terry and his ilk with the blood-soaked fake baby. Give him a Barbie already!). Stop trying to be holier that the Pope. The minority of bishops is essentially pssed off that not every Catholic obeys them on command. Too bad! They can't even get half of Catholics to agree that a woman shouldn't have the right to choose. What hope is there that they'll get their theological teachings enacted as law applicable to all. NONE.

"Same arguement as slave holders. Sorry you don't like it. But it is true. Slaves were considered non humans with no rights as long as they were slaves.Same with the unborn, no rights as long as unborn."

No, it's *not* the same, ...actually slave-holders felt they had the right to control how people, women and men, would breed because, 'by God,' they *owned* those people.

Conservative Christians seek to not only control breeding of free citizens, but even punish queer citizens *not* breeding according to their church authority.

'Partial birth abortions' are a red herring not really the key issue in the conservative agenda as the actual proposed *laws* encompass. Certainly, the practice is disgusting and terrible to contemplate, but in fact what the pro-life agenda wants is to *use* the few circumstances under which that's permissible to try and put absolutist religious language into law, even if it means both mother and prospective child *die* for *your* beliefs.

It's not about 'supporting partial birth abortions' to not let *you* tell a mother and a doctor when to let someone die.

" In this case rights were bestowed after they are born, instead of freed.
So you don't own slaves.. slave holders said mind your own business and don't buy slaves if you don't like it."

I think we're all agreed black people are *people* ...not just biological matter.

Even presidents who don't happen to be white or Catholic or Republican.

You're missing the key distinction, here.

Between your *actual proposed laws* and your condemnatory, hysterical hyperbole.

Betsy3, thanks for bolstering my point.

Abortion pill facilities shortage

The early medical abortion pill must be taken within nine weeks, sometimes with on-the-day hospital treatment.
BBC investigation also revealed there are about 100 women on the waiting list at one clinic in Bristol some of whom are being told they will not be able to have the pill in time.

The same clinic sees about 60 patients a week.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/6897020.stm
AH SOCIALIZED MEDICINE...
AND THE LACK OF DOCTORS WILLING TO DO THE DIRTY WORK.

Notre Dame inviting the President of the United States to speak at its commencement and to award him with an honorary degree after being in office less than 4 months was a great publicity ploy for Notre Dame’s President, the Rev. John Jenkins, the trustees, and Notre Dame University. Look at all of the media attention. Will it reduce enrollments? No. Will it impact fund raising? Maybe marginally at first but that will recover. What did Rev Jenkins have to risk? Very little --- and he had much to gain.

The cost of that gain, however, included throwing hundreds of thousands of Catholics “under the bus”. These are Catholics whose morality and consciousness aligns their views with the teachings of the Catholic Church, but with an open mind that accepts and welcomes open debate and argument. Had Rev.Jenkins shown some modicum of self-restraint and invited President Obama after he had an opportunity to compile a “body of work”, more moderate Catholics, like myself, could embrace Notre Dame’s commencement speaking invitation (and yes, even the foolish practice of honorary degrees) to the President of the United States.

But I guess Rev. Jenkins and Notre Dame have the same character flaw that often leads to unwanted pregnancies, abortions, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, and head football coaching dismissals ---- the need for instant gratification without any thought about the consequences!

UK women may soon have a serious problem with access to abortion due to an apparent growth in National Health Service (NHS) doctors refusing to perform the procedure.

a new breed of "conscientious objectors" has birthed in England.

There has also been a general decrease in the number of abortion providers because of the fact that doctors can choose to specialize in a field of medicine and many see abortion care as unappealing.
IMAGINE THAT, FINDING ABORTION UNAPPEALING.

Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service predicts that "within five to seven years, a woman's ability to get an abortion will be more shaped by the service's ability to provide them rather than the state of the law."
http://www.feministing.com/archives/006875.html

Betsy3, that delusional, kooky diatribe can hardly substitute for a rational argument. Perhaps you will live long enough to one day understand the errancy of your veiw, but perhaps not.
==================================
Truth bothers you doesn't it.
Look up the facts. Shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions is a growing concern for the abortion movement.
Even in England.
The polls I cited, the Dred Scott decision and reasoning, and the truth about "Doctors" who are willing to perform abortions are all facts.
Doesn't an abortion require the execution of an innocent life? That is why the pro life position has become a reality and choice for a majority of Americans.
Maybe some day you will relize the irrationality and cruelty of your stand and join the majority of born people who understand and choose life.
The unborn and future people can only hope so.

"Who made the decision that Notre Dame is the, "Flagship Catholic university?"

I don't think anyone *did:* that's just about *fame.* The sports fandom and the blatantly-Irish Catholic theme had a lot to do with it. I don't think you'd really call them either the very most orthodox nor the very most academically-prestigious Catholic university, they just sort of became the archetype for much of the nation.

Who made the decision that Notre Dame is the, "Flagship Catholic university?" The NCAA? Georgetown is older, St. John's is larger and Fordham is the only Catholic university to have a faculty member created Cardinal. Or would any Catholic university at which this president spoke automatically become the,"Flagship," in order to heighten the angst of the right-wing? Remember...96% of the pro-life groups in the U.S. are headed by men, of whom 100% will never be in danger of getting pregnant.

Where were all these pro-lifers when George W was given an honorary degree. I think these people are a bunch of hypocrites. George had the highest percentages of executions in the history of the State of Texas. He twisted the facts about Iraq so he could in place thousands of are young people in harms way. These pro-lifers must respect all life, including those of the living.

Or, Longbow... Relevant.

You're just flinging stuff around.

As mentioned below, this whole Notre Dame thing is *not* about Catholic doctrine: that's simply a conservative pose to try and start stirring up that disinformed 'one-issue' (mostly based on Obama not voting for a bill which in fact offered no new protections for fetuses of any kind, and was simply there to introduce unconstitutional *language* into law and be a wedge which you're now trying to exploit.)

Since Catholic doctrine also condemns capital punishment for any reason, yet consistently supports executioners by demonizing their opponents... then Notre Dame shouldn't have given both George Bush an honorary degree after executing so many.

If this was about Catholic doctrine, of course.

Can't help thinking it's just about something else, though.

"Now that is interesting considering that is exactly Barry Obama’s point of view, that near and far easterners actually begin their birthday at conception rather than the day of their birth."

New one on me. You could run it back through astrology, though. That's an abstraction based on solar and lunar midpoints, though, not something that'd hold up in a court of law.

" He was conceived in Hawaii and born in Kenya so that should make him a citizen of the United States. I can not say that it is a Muslim thing though. Maybe someone else can clarify that. longbow651 "

OK: how about this clarification: It's not even true.

Betsy3, that delusional, kooky diatribe can hardly substitute for a rational argument. Perhaps you will live long enough to one day understand the errancy of your veiw, but perhaps not.

And, frankly, 'Devout, practicing Catholics' who won't accept any 'moral relativism' when it comes to not allowing non-Catholic queer people to be married, ought to know that the same Church edicts about the 'sanctity of human life' which refer to reproductive issues *also* apply to capital punishment.

There are no qualifiers about 'innocent' human life being less sacred. According to the catechism, if I'm not much mistaken, executing someone, even if guilty deprives them of a chance to confess and be forgiven and all that, so is very much a no-no.

Not that that stops the Church authorities from favoring conservative candidates and talking mostly about why queer people are bad, but in terms of 'moral absolutes,' and 'obedience to the Church,' yes, it's hypocrisy to have given Bush an honorary degree and then call Obama a 'baby-killer' cause you don't like how he goes about reducing abortions.

Paganplace wrote:
'Pro-life' measures are *not* in any way consistent with an expansion of civil rights: you're changing, in fact, the 'definition of 'birth' (which defines our citizenship, in part) to something which is simply untenable.
__________________________

Now that is interesting considering that is exactly Barry Obama’s point of view, that near and far easterners actually begin their birthday at conception rather than the day of their birth. He was conceived in Hawaii and born in Kenya so that should make him a citizen of the United States. I can not say that it is a Muslim thing though. Maybe someone else can clarify that.

Notre Dame gave the president an honorary degree to honor a dignitary/head of state who has done many good things, consistent with the protocol that universities (remember, that's what ND is, it's not a church) customarily do. That doesn't mean ND espouses the president's views. If you don't see that, then, sorry to be stark, you need brain surgery. Get over it, and start looking at the "beam in your own eye" instead of trying to be holier than the Pope (who didn't object to what ND did!).

Fifty-one percent of Americans consider themselves "pro-life," the first time a majority of the country has stated a personal objection to abortion since Gallup polls began tracking the data 15 years ago.
===================================
Winning hearts and minds from the born people. Finding out the facts of the gruesome deaths of millions of unborn children is changing hearts and minds.
Soon the laws will follow.
Already there is a great shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions.
Soon the retiring physicians/executioners.. will thin the ranks to the few sadists left in the medical field willing to do this horrible practice of infanticide.
Abortion will become defacto illegal.

" I may be missing this point completely.
longbow651"

Pretty much, yeah. If this is about Catholic doctrine meaning who Notre Dame can honor, then Bush also flagrantly violated Church doctrine by being a record-setting executioner of living humans.

Just as 'sinful' by Catholic doctrine.

As a devout, practicing Catholic, I agree with the author. There is a difference between mutually respected dialog – something Notre Dame should absolutely welcome with anyone with non-Catholic moral views – and honoring an individual who acts swiftly and is an activist against a basic Catholic social teaching, to-wit:

Any direct attempt on an innocent life as a means to an end - even to the end of saving another life - is unlawful. Innocent human life, in whatsoever condition it is found, is withdrawn, from the very first moment of its existence, from any direct deliberate attack. This is a fundamental right of the human person, which is of universal value in the Christian conception of life. Every human being, even a child in the mother's womb has a right to life directly from God and not from the parents or from any society or authority.

By providing Obama with an honorary degree, I am deeply saddened because this recognized Catholic institution has honored an individual that campaigns and advocates against this basic Catholic Christian principle.

I'm so tired on whites equating every moral plight with slavery and I'm also tired of men telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies--mind your own bodies. I would not have an abortion, but that's my decision just as it is for those who do. If anything, we should change hearts, not laws.
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Same arguement as slave holders. Sorry you don't like it. But it is true. Slaves were considered non humans with no rights as long as they were slaves. Same with the unborn, no rights as long as unborn. In this case rights were bestowed after they are born, instead of freed.
So you don't own slaves.. slave holders said mind your own business and don't buy slaves if you don't like it.
Same with the pro abortion crowd, don't like abortions, don't get one yourself.
Then there is the arguement by the pro abortion crowd, what are the pro lifers doing when the child is born?
I have to ask them the same question, what are they doing for the child when it is born? If you are for choice, choice includes life, if you are for abortion only, your support ends after the child is born?
Hypocrits.

I mean, this is where conservative Christians just don't tend to understand Constitutional government: to my observation, the conservative mentality is all about 'winning' ...by whatever means, yet, ours is a government of laws, of the people, by the people and *for* the people.

Our American system of government, (and certainly, may it please all good Gods,) *is an assemblage of means,* ...that means that no matter how 'noble' or 'necessary' or 'natural' we may think they *ends* are, we do not allow ourselves the use of oppressive *means,* or we lose all we stand for.

The 'pro-life' and anti-gay-people anti-women, anti-non-'Judeo-Christian,' and all these other measures *use the means of oppression to try and enforce a theocratic control.*

Maybe you'd *like* to be theocratically-controlled: you're free to swear to whatever religious authority you'd like, if so. But you can't take away the real rights of fellow citizens: you want your guns, and people to trust you with the choice of where and when to use them, but don't want to allow others the same choices about who, where, and how they even have *sex.*

It's not about any high ideals, as the vitriol from the pro-life crowd shows. It's just about wanting your way, and demonizing people who say no with hyperbole.

It's about calling the other party 'baby-killers' cause they don't seek to impose righteous-sounding but counterproductive policies that suit your religious authorities and marginalize others.'

Hel, it's made even *more* obvious by the fact that you demand I sleep with men for the sake of your beliefs, cite your religious beliefs about 'procreation,' (even if your more-life-is-better-life-somehow ideas kinda stuck me with a body that they had to take the reproductive gear out of years ago, anyway) ...and then try to deny me my civil rights to equal treatment under the law on the grounds I'm not imitating a breeding individual. :)

What?

That's not Liberty. That's something else.

I will boldly step over the line of good taste and suggest that while the same folks that champion the pro abortion cause also champion bringing charges against those that interrogate fanatical mass murderers and call it torture. Abortion as I see it would be “real torture” that rips limbs and body parts off of innocent living victims for self serving purposes. This rational of a moral stance seems a bit one sided considering the purpose of each act. Just my opinion and food for thought.

One contributor even said George Bush should not be honored because executions took place in his state of Texas during his term. Well good for him, unless you are not in favor of executing muderers. I may be missing this point completely.

Under the constitution, it doesn't matter that a just-conceived fetus is human or that God loves it. Because we have a pluralistic democracy governed by a constitution, the issue is a legal one, and the "pro lifers" can only have their view imposed on society if and when the Supreme Court holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the fifth amendment, "no PERSON shall be derprived of life ... without due process of law."
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Replace the word fetus with slave and you have the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision.
When the slave .. a fully formed human.. was freed he/she was given rights. (Not the right to vote mind you...but..)
=====================================
The aruement that a "feturs" can not survive on its own as a reason for abortion, Stupid.
An infant, born fetus, can not survive on its own, nor a toddler.. are we to abort them too.
The embryonic, fetal, infant, child and adolescent stages are stages of development of a determinate and enduring entity -- a human being -- who comes into existence as a zygote and develops by a gradual and gapless process into adulthood many years later.

I'm so tired on whites equating every moral plight with slavery and I'm also tired of men telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies--mind your own bodies. I would not have an abortion, but that's my decision just as it is for those who do. If anything, we should change hearts, not laws.

Mr. Reynolds,

I just wonder what happens to the children and often ill-prepared parents when children are born into poverty and many other unstable, miserable situations and communities. Where is the fight to end poverty, to make education affordable, to make sure that public schools do not simply become breeding grounds for the correctional system to make workplaces pay equitable, fair wages, the fight for worker rights? Often, I wonder what the priorities are amongst our churches no matter the denomination or affiliation. I see our churches as institutions that fought side by side with citizens to make communities better and to make the world a more just place. Instead, I find that churches like many businesses hide malfeasance, sexual misconduct and still think that they are the voice of morality.

I think we would all be better off asking the "What would Jesus do?" question and then like Nike just do it...

The student body chanted " WE ARE ND!" It was OUR graduation and we were taking it back!

Betsy3, please explain why EVERYONE should be required as a matter of law to obey your religious view?

The rather ridiculous idea of making an embryo or blastula legally a 'human being' with 'rights' that outweigh womens' is that pro-lifers are effectively wanting to 'enslave' half of the population: women, to a particular religious belief in where human life begins: the measures they seek to impose certainly would use Unconstitutional *means* to make women's bodies a thing for anyone so religiously-motivated to dictate what happens to.

'Pro-life' measures are *not* in any way consistent with an expansion of civil rights: you're changing, in fact, the 'definition of 'birth' (which defines our citizenship, in part) to something which is simply untenable. The human *experience* as an incarnated being may be claimed to begin sometime during pregnancy, but certainly not as a unique human being before there's even a spinal cord there, never mind a brain. 'Pro-life' *hyperbole* uses late-term abortions (which in fact most Americans find reasonable regulation about fitting, provided there aren't medical or other extenuationg factors involved) to call *contraception* 'murder.' And that's language in the laws they *actually* try to pass.

You can't call it 'civil rights' to allow any given Christian the right to define and decide when and where a woman is a mother, then enforce that religious dictate by law.

This talk isn't consistent with 'civil rights,' but it is consistent with a theocratic agenda of *sexual control.*

The real way to oppose unnecessary abortions is to make as many as possible *unnecessary.* That's by socially and economically supporting education, contraception, fair employment opportunities, and a reduction of the very religiously-based *stigma* upon unwed and poor mothers (that the 'pro-life' right wing *also* seeks to bring back, redoubled.)

Only then do I think is it even reasonable to *consider* 'definitions of life' ...and those must be based in reason and the human experience. That's what *government* is for. If you want your religious followers to obey you, you already have the means to try.

Choice advocates and their arguement.
Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.
In the Court's mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.
======================================
Slaves did not have human rights or were they seen as humans. Only when they were freed.
Looking back this just doesn't make sense.
Same with abortion on demand. Dehumanizing the unborn human makes it all seem so nice and comfy, cadged in a woman's right to choose, choose infanticide for her own child.

Morally wicked? Really? What's morally wicked is being deliberately intellectually obtuse when attempting to analogize the plight of black slavery (fully formed human beings) with a blastocyte (let's say a 64 cell "mass"). Deliberately being ignorant to science and developmental biology is what is incomprehensible.
=========================================
Obama supports removing the ban on partial birth abortion. A bit more than a few cells. A woman wouldn't even know she is pregnant till millions of cells have been formed. Maybe you are referring to an embroyo for stem cell research. After too much multiplication even a stem cell from an embroyo can not be used.
Why don't you get a basic education before spewing your ingnorance on here?

If laws can't be changed to prevent them, the availability of physicians willing to do this gruesome job is growing more diminished everyday.

"The legalization of abortion was a necessary but insufficient step toward the provision of abortion services for women in the United States. As suggested by Overstreet 2 decades ago, these services ultimately depend on the availability of affordable clinicians who are both skilled and willing to provide abortions. To the extent that such clinicians are not available, the public health promise of legal abortion will go unfulfilled.

In recent years, access to abortion services has become increasingly limited, because of both the dearth of facilities in rural America (2) and the growing shortage of clinicians providing the service
http://priestsforlife.org/articles/grimes.html

You said: "Though it was a mistake to give him a high honor"
--------------------
George Bush, the governor of the state that executed more people than other in the union, received an honorary degree also.

Spare me your hypocritical outrage!

The Catholic Church/Vatican does not hold the moral high ground in this or any other matter - in fact, I seriously doubt they can even see the moral high ground from where they stand.

President Obama is the President of the United States, first, and not - "the most powerful abortion advocate in the world." America's separation of Church & State is vital to our survival, as the recent GQ feature reveals: photographs of US servicemen going into combat captioned with Biblical verse on DOD documents for the Commander-in-Chief. As an alum of Notre Dame, I must say that I believe the fanatic Christians in this country who use abortion cynically as a tool to leverage the national political discourse and discredit both the sitting President and the University at this year's commencement [- a special event *for the seniors & their families* -] to be a despicable and patently un-American behavior (well represented in this article). While I am against abortion as justified in Roe v. Wade, and for other reasons no one discusses, I can recognize that the Pope commands more wealth than anyone else, and Pres. Obama commands more destructive power than anyone else. I also can recognize that this year's collegiate graduates face an American reality that includes the catastrophic cyclic failure of the free market and a huge redistribution of treasure to the financial sector that caused the disaster. Our gov't, according to Durbin & others, is corrupted nearly beyond recognition. At this moment, the future is being wrestled over by forces that care nothing of conscience. Meanwhile, the vital discourse is co-opted by this sort of tempest in a teapot. If you want to howl about a moral issue, there are plenty to choose from: usury, torture, the erosion of Constitutional rights for the citizenry, mercenaries, cover-ups galore (DOJ, Rove, CIA tapes, emails, Enron/Cheney, Plame, Goldman-Sachs), the New Orleans debacle... If your conscience is not demanding accountability on these issues, too, you are a hypocrite. Save it for the pulpit, if it helps you raise money. Corporations own you and your message. Wake up. Getting mad is one thing, doing something about it another. If the only thing you have a problem with is abortion and gay rights & the 10 commandments in a court house and rewriting America's religious profile to fit your agenda, you're a failed American. I also find it ludicrous that so many Baptists and Protestants are genuinely concerned about the Holy Cross mission at Notre Dame. I recommend a little investigation into the history of American conflicts between these factions. JFK is recent history, but it's a joke that the old hatreds of the Papists are long gone. Cloaking the discussion in political platitudes changes none of that.

Paul Ferris -- that is such a key point that zealots overlook: NO ONE IS REQUIRED TO HAVE AN ABORTION. Even though the constitution gives you the right to have one, YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE ONE. This is significant, because it shows that the battle is all about REQUIRING PEOPLE BY LAW TO FOLLOW RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS.
======================================
Same arguement was used by the pro slavery group and even condoned by the Supreme Court of the day. See Dred Scott decision.
Slaves were less than human and had no right to freedom. Sounds just like the pro abortion/infantacide crowd today.

Remember when JFK was feared for being a Catholic? The fear was that the US would be ruled by the Vatican.

Well they're Heeeere!!! When they achieve their goal and make abortion illegal, they'll be coming for your birth control pills next.

you see, it is not about abortion. It is their love of rightous indignation and a need for a crusade. When this crusade is over, they will make up another.

Morally wicked? Really? What's morally wicked is being deliberately intellectually obtuse when attempting to analogize the plight of black slavery (fully formed human beings) with a blastocyte (let's say a 64 cell "mass"). Deliberately being ignorant to science and developmental biology is what is incomprehensible. Nothing like sticking your head in the sand about science (and yes, I at least can discuss the Council of Nicea with some intelligence even as a scientist-it's quite clear you can't discuss the science at all even as a religious "scholar").

If abortion is murder then what of injury from activities of the mother, intentional or not? Is that also a consideration to be included in the discussion? Aborting or not is an all or nothing approach. There's a large segment of issues of responsibility between the two that is being ignored.

BK_WaPo -- you are 100% correct. Keep in mind, however, that the Court can declare an act of congress unconstitutional. You obviously know that. More importantly, it is exceedingly difficult, to say the least, to amend the constitution. The likelihood it will be amended in this manner is virtually nil. That is the problem. Yes, with such an amendment, it would be the law, even if it coincides with and/or is motivated by religious beliefs. Without the amendment, however, it is totally up to the Supreme Court, which has no obligation whatsoever (and in fact is duty bound not to) to fashion the law to require people to follow any religion. I think this highlights the fact that goal of the Catholic church (of which I am, apparently, a very deficient member) is to make its religious teaching the law of the land by, essentially, brute force (which will fail) because they cannot succeed in somehow getting the constitutional amendment they would want.

The fact that the Supreme Court makes wrong decisions that sometimes take a long time to correct does not detract from the fact that it is that court which gets to interpret the constitution to enforce the rule of law. The fact that the court is wrong in one case doesn't mean it is wrong in another case. More significantly, and thankfully, the Court has to apply to law to everyone (the equal protection of the law), not just to people who the Catholic church says are required to follow its teachings. The court is also there to apply ONLY the law, not the Bible. There is NOTHING precluding ANYONE from following the bible, their priest, minister, rabbi, imam, whatever. Just because you think YOUR religious views are correct and should be followed, you have no right under the constitution to have the Supreme Court enforce that view as the law. If that doesn't sit well with you, you really should just go to a country that has a theocracy (there are plenty of them you know), then you'll be able to have the peace of mind of knowing that everyone is acting the way you think they should.

PhilaMike at 9:57 -- I think you're correct that the current legal issue is whether an unborn child can be afforded the protection of law under the Constitution. The Constitution is silent on this matter, which is why the debate has devolved to the courts and the legislatures, which weigh the state's interest in protecting an unborn individual's life against the rights of that individual's mother to determine whether or not to be pregnant. At this point, a slight majority of people favor the mother's right of self-determination, which is why the legislatures and courts support that view.

However, we should remember that the US Supreme Court does not write the Constitution -- it interprets it. Congress passes laws in accordance with the powers granted to it by the Constitution, and the President executes those laws in accordance with the powers granted to the Executive Branch. Ultimately, it is the people of the United States who write the Constitution. If a sufficient majority of citizens determines that the unborn deserve legal protection from the moment of conception, those citizens have the power to amend the Constitution to make it so. Once that happens, the issue is beyond the court, because something that is in the Constitution cannot be unconstitutional. It wouldn't matter whether the amendment derived from a moral or religious grounding (look at the Temperence movement and prohibition) -- once it's in the Constitution, it becomes the supreme law of the land. And that will only occur when the culture of our nation changes to a degree that a sufficient majority of people recognize the rational case (and yes, despite the cacophony spouting from the anti-life and anti-religion zealots on this blog, there is one) for extending legal protection to unborn human beings.

Are Blacks human beings? Believe it or not, there was a time when the Supreme Court's answer to this question was no, not if they were slaves.

It was 1856. Dred Scott, a Black slave, had been taken north of the Mason-Dixon line into Illinois and Wisconsin where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.

In the Court's mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.

Dred Scott
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Obama is the most powerful voice of the pro abortion crowd.
Unborn children are non humans.
His support of FOCA shows his true colors and the actions he has taken to declare war on the unborn.
Are Blacks human beings? Believe it or not, there was a time when the Supreme Court's answer to this question was no, not if they were slaves.

It was 1856. Dred Scott, a Black slave, had been taken north of the Mason-Dixon line into Illinois and Wisconsin where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.

In the Court's mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.

Dred Scott

Are Blacks human beings? Believe it or not, there was a time when the Supreme Court's answer to this question was no, not if they were slaves.

It was 1856. Dred Scott, a Black slave, had been taken north of the Mason-Dixon line into Illinois and Wisconsin where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.

In the Court's mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.

Dred Scott
=========================================
Gee sounds just like the pro abortion arguement. Unborn children are now considered non humans.
That is the connection between slavery and pro life.
Obama's record on abortion shows he is a monster who would allow abortion up to the moment a child's head is still in the womb.
Obama supports infantacide under the guise of the unborn are not human, till born.
-----------------------------

WASHINGTON (April 25, 2007) – In response to the April 18 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, prominent Democratic members of Congress the next day reintroduced the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA), a proposed federal law to nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion.

The lawmakers proposing the legislation, and groups endorsing it, repeatedly emphasized that the bill would, among other things, completely nullify the national ban on partial-birth abortion that the Supreme Court upheld on April 18 in Gonzales v. Carhart.
Obama was one of those lawmakers.
He is a monster.

I've always wondered how the Catholic Church, can proclaim to be 100% pro-life, yet not support sensible family planning to include all forms of birth control (stopping short of abortion) in order to stop the population explosion that threatens the life of all humans on this planet?? Seems they are looking at preserving life in a very limited, simplistic, short-term way. Why can't they see their anti-birth control stance actually threatens to destroy human life. I'd respect their view on abortion if they supported/promoted birth control. The church is just plain no-other-way-to-put-it stupid in my book. Offense intended!

Paul Ferris -- that is such a key point that zealots overlook: NO ONE IS REQUIRED TO HAVE AN ABORTION. Even though the constitution gives you the right to have one, YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE ONE. This is significant, because it shows that the battle is all about REQUIRING PEOPLE BY LAW TO FOLLOW RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS.

The Church really needs to ask itself, does the church want to reduce abortions, or is it primarily concerned with making sure Catholics share the church's ideology (which does nothing whatsoever to address the problem of abortion in society)?

Most Catholics do consider abortion a grave evil, especially its widespread practice in our society, but we need to be reminded that the government is not telling anyone to have an abortion. That is a decision only individuals can make.

Government leaders, on the other hand, are in complete control of military policies and defense budgets, and can order its citizens to go to war. This actual power also involves grave evil. Senator Obama supported the position of John Paul II and the U.S. Catholic Bishops and opposed the unjust invasion of Iraq.

The United States government has the heretofore unimaginable power to unleash nuclear weapons which could destroy all life on our planet. As citizens we are mostly powerless to prevent such a decision if government chooses to follow this course.

Government leaders, even in a capitalistic society, control worldwide economic destinies in ways we are just beginning to appreciate. The use of corn for the production of ethanol, for example, has increased the price of corn and caused hunger in parts of the world.

One of the best ways to combat abortion is for men to follow the example of President -elect Obama’s devotion and responsibility to his wife Michelle and his children, Sasha and Malia.

Most Catholics do consider abortion a grave evil, especially its widespread practice in our society, but we need to be reminded that the government is not telling anyone to have an abortion. That is a decision only individuals can make.

Government leaders, on the other hand, are in complete control of military policies and defense budgets, and can order its citizens to go to war. This actual power also involves grave evil. Senator Obama supported the position of John Paul II and the U.S. Catholic Bishops and opposed the unjust invasion of Iraq.

The United States government has the heretofore unimaginable power to unleash nuclear weapons which could destroy all life on our planet. As citizens we are mostly powerless to prevent such a decision if government chooses to follow this course.

Government leaders, even in a capitalistic society, control worldwide economic destinies in ways we are just beginning to appreciate. The use of corn for the production of ethanol, for example, has increased the price of corn and caused hunger in parts of the world.

One of the best ways to combat abortion is for men to follow the example of President -elect Obama’s devotion and responsibility to his wife Michelle and his children, Sasha and Malia.

Reynolds:

One more thing . . . It was touched upon earlier by another poster, but needs to be said again and clearly:

Your comment that proponents of segregation can be regarded as "well-intentioned" reveals your devious wrongheadedness and the utter corruption of your so-called principles.

No one who defends, however obliquely, those who promote the segregation of the races deserves to have his views on abortion -- or anything else -- received with anything but contempt.

If you find this judgment "uncharitable," then you should examine your own attitude concerning the value of human persons.

Noslok, absolutely right on the mark!

And still none who insist the fertilized egg is a human being comment, to support that view, on also insisting that when the pregnancy is determined a Certificate of Conception (or another name for it) be issued certifying that from that moment on that that person exists, with all due protections. That would put responsibility where the claim is.

Guns and abortion are unsolvable issues in America -- at least not through legislation. If tomorrow, laws were passed making guns and abortion illegal, all that would be accomplished is a quantum leap in the number of criminals living in America.

So much propaganda has been spewed by both sides of these issues, and battle lines have been drawn so clearly, that there is, quite literally, no room for compromise or even debate.

Any time religion is involved in a political discussion, that is where the discussion ends. How can you argue with anyone who says their side is fighting for God's will? And how can the other side compromise if they, if fact, believe that they are fighting for God's will?

So, keep talking at each other if it makes you feel like you are accomplishing anything. Overturn Roe if that is your life's goal. Nothing important will have changed.

A pox on both your houses!

Professor, the legal/constitutional issue, please.

Also, I was in the Joyce Center on Sunday as my wife just received her J.D. from Notre Dame.

It is extremely convenient to suggest that the student chants of "Yes We Can" came directlyafter the protester shouted "Stop killing our children". It is however, not accurate.

The crowd chanted several things and specifically chanted "We are ND" after the protestor who said stop killing our children.

And the protestors, like you, are missing the point entirely.

Bill,

In my field to read "charitably" means to read assuming the best one can about the article or book . . . trying to make sense of it and not picking the worst possible interpretation . . .

I hope you read my phrase "reading charitably" charitably in that sense!

John Mark

Mr. Reynolds, you are the one who is entirely missing the point.

It was absolutely appropriate for Notre Dame to award President Obama an honorary degree for many reasons including the fact that he is the nation's first black President, the schools history in fighting for civil rights, and the commencement fell on the the 55th anniversary of Brown v Board.

Secondly, his speech did not "pretend to be something it was not." It was a commencement speech not an abortion debate. The President did an excellent job of addressing the controversy head on while still making his statements about the graduating students and not him or a political issue. The point of his speech was that people can disagree on things without demonizing one another. That these young graduates should be guided by thier faith but also by reason, the use of fair minded words, and willingness to find, or at least look for, common ground.

In regards to abortion it is not just a simple right/wrong moral issue as some would like to reduce it to. It is a complicated issue that has political, social, and legal implications. What the President said, and I strongly agree with, is that we may come from opposing views on the legal right to an abortion but we can all work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. That should be the focus, not just trying to single mindedly change a law that has stood on the books for 35 years now.

The article struggles to be fair and open-minded, but I'm troubled by the line: "We should all charitably read opposing views ..." Shouldn't opposing views be read with a determination to understand rather than to read with charity. Sounds condecending and superior.

I totally agree with those who praised the university for inviting the President to speak at commencement and awarding him the honorary degree they would have otherwise awarded to him had he had a different view of abortion. While the pro life issue is one that Catholic teaching holds firm, it is not the only one. This is not a one-horse religion or doctrine of theology. Catholics are equally firm on issues of celibacy, homosexuality, birth control and the death penalty. I wonder how many of those who have responded or protested so fiercely on the issue of pro life, are equally firm on Catholicism's stand on the death penalty? I doubt, many. How many of the university's students and ardent supporters of Catholic purity can also claim conformance with the church's teachings on these other sensitive topics? No doubt, few. Notre Dame, while a Catholic university, accepts among its well paying students, people of diverse faiths and cultures along with their corresponding beliefs. Are we to now set the bar for the privilege of participating in the Notre Dame community or being awarded a degree, honorary or otherwise, from this prestigious university based on who pays and who does not? It seems to me, not.

John Mark Reynolds who? Wow, you're so Christian, too bad your last name couldn't be "Joseph." Regarding your "head in a wind tunnel" analysis, sir you are part of the problem, not the solution. You could use a little waterboarding.

@DOTHERIGHTTHING

You are a good example of a Bushie spreading lies and fear.

Obama does not use the law to go out and abort fetuses- think before you write something so stupid...I can picture Obama now...with his black abortion cape riding in his limo and just stabbing pregnant women with a coat hanger as he goes by.

THE SUPREME COURT DECIDES ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE LAW!

Unfortunately most people are still trapped in the Bush era-mentality and they may get left behind as our country moves on to renaissance where intellectualism and free thinking become the norm instead of being “unpatriotic,” and uninformed bad decisions were worn like a badge of courage.

While I may not agree or disagree with abortion – these are dangerous extremists who have now kidnapped this graduation speech as their ground zero. These people are just as crazy as islamic extremists and are certainly responsible for more terrorists attacks on our soil than Osama bin Laden with the murders and bombing of abortion clinics. Yet, somehow they get a free pass because it is done “Jesus” name. The irony is too thick to take these people seriously…ask them about the death penalty and all would line up to be the person to inject the needle into a criminal.

It’s shameful and completely disrespectful to the Presidency and the University. How do you expect to move forward your agenda without having a few moments alone with the President? Airplanes and signs and protestors certainly will never affect his political views…intellectual debate is the only civilized way of making change…the mast majority of morons in this country will be left far behind!

John Mark Reynolds: Professor, I would appreciate if you would address my constitutional point at 9:57. Thank your for checking and responding to the comments. It alleviates a lot of reader frustration. Best regards, Mike

Very good article and on the mark with respect to the fact that loyal Catholics did NOT begrudge Obama a speech; instead, they begrudged NDU for honoring with a law degree a person who uses the law to kill innocent human beings by the millions all over our blue planet.

LyleWibledon: "Unfortunately most people are still trapped in the Bush era-mentality and they may get left behind as our country moves on to renaissance where intellectualism and free thinking become the norm instead of being “unpatriotic,” and uninformed bad decisions were worn like a badge of courage."

WELL-SAID!!! The whole post is right on the mark.

Sensible pro-life people do consider that they might be wrong. Since many of us are conservatives, we do not desire to increase the size of government unless it is very necessary. We are persuaded by argument that it is necessary in this case.

What arguments? Read a book by a friend Francis Beckwith (Defending Life, Cambridge University Press).

Not all pro-life folk are conservatives of course, so the notion that "liberals love children after they born" and pro-life people before they are born is wrong. There are millions of pro-life Democrats. Pro-life conservatives care about medicine and poverty, but simply do not think government the only (and usually the best) solution to those problems. That might be wrong, but it is not a result of not caring for the problems.

The primary point of nearly all the supporters of the protesters is that abortion is wrong. That is not the actual issue as it affects our society however. The issue is a legal one under the constitution.

A fetus has not been held to be a "person" under the constitution. That would require a decision of the Supreme Court holding that it is. This has not yet happened. Since the issue is informed to a large degree by people's religious beliefs (especially in the very early stages of pregnancy), there is no warrant for making some people's religious beliefs the law of the land which would apply to believers and nonbelievers (or simply non-followers) alike.

Under the constitution, it doesn't matter that a just-conceived fetus is human or that God loves it. Because we have a pluralistic democracy governed by a constitution, the issue is a legal one, and the "pro lifers" can only have their view imposed on society if and when the Supreme Court holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the fifth amendment, "no PERSON shall be derprived of life ... without due process of law." The court may one day do that. If, however, it does not (or until it does), the goal should be to modify Roe v. Wade to move up the point at which the interests of the unborn child and the state outweigh the interest of the mother in not carrying the child to term. Science as developed since Roe was decided definitely supports moving that point up.

I would suggest that Justice Kennedy's decision in the partial-borth abortion case last year, while unlikely to result in stopping a single abortion, provides a virtual road map for how state legislatures can craft statutes cutting back on abortion which will withstand constitutional scrutiny.

Unfortunately most people are still trapped in the Bush era-mentality and they may get left behind as our country moves on to renaissance where intellectualism and free thinking become the norm instead of being “unpatriotic,” and uninformed bad decisions were worn like a badge of courage.

While I may not agree or disagree with abortion – these are dangerous extremists who have now kidnapped this graduation speech as their ground zero. These people are just as crazy as islamic extremists and are certainly responsible for more terrorists attacks on our soil than Osama bin Laden with the murders and bombing of abortion clinics. Yet, somehow they get a free pass because it is done “Jesus” name. The irony is too thick to take these people seriously…ask them about the death penalty and all would line up to be the person to inject the needle into a criminal.

It’s shameful and completely disrespectful to the Presidency and the University. How do you expect to move forward your agenda without having a few moments alone with the President? Airplanes and signs and protestors certainly will never affect his political views…intellectual debate is the only civilized way of making change…the mast majority of morons in this country will be left far behind!

Shame shame shame!

Bishops that elevated to Pope the very man who willingly and stealthly relocated raping priests to unsuspecting parrishes got their knickers all knotted up about having a pro abortion President receive an honorary degree.

Tell us about their vaunted moral standrds....

Bishops that did not utter a word when W was given an honorary degree with his record of the most executions ever as governor, nor did they rescind it when he lied this nation into war and killed thousands of innocent Iraqis..

Tell us about their vaunted moral standards........

The church interfering with the duties, and the obligation of our public servants to protect our laws and constitution by daring to deny them sacraments if they do.

Tell us about catholic relevance to America....

The Pope hopes he is basking in the milk of human kindness and forgiveness. The Church has paid out millions and millions it could have avoided had he even once gone to authorities instead of currying favor and earning his creds in the Church hierarchy by a silence that allowed more and more children to be abused.

But unwanted children that live on the streets, endure grinding proverty, neglect and abuse don't get a break from him at all. No, he's scolding about OTHER people's weaknesses and demanding they live a standard that he didn't. DARING to carp about condoms in Africa, where AIDS has orphaned thousands and thousands of children. STILL subjecting children to unspeakably desperate lives, filling our prisons. Sure, they are big on getting the kid here, but when he is 5 and 7 and 9, they are AWOL.

IF he does not put a damper on certain catholic abuses in this country, we can and will vote to deny it non profit status for interference with our civic laws and governance. How much in income tax and property tax do you think that will net?

Bunches...and we need the money too much to continue to sit by while the Church tries to impose its religious beliefs on our civic lives.

The difference between libs and cons is definition of life, of course. I see it this way: Libs and pro-choicers believe that each of our lives essentially begins at birth, and our obligation is to make sentient life as beautiful as possible. We support medicine and research that could cure disease, alleviate suffering, etc. We're not as concerned with scoring points with a god to be redeemed upon our death. Cons and "pro-lifers" (a misnomer) will go to no ends in support of what they define as life prior to birth, but that's where it ends. Many also support the use of torture, capital punishment, and wars that result in the death of scores of civilians. As a liberal, I can't justify the hypocracy of such a position.

Mr. Reynolds:
You state, "President Obama's views on abortion are wrong, and morally wicked."

My question: How is it that you are so confident that you are right in this debate? Have you even considered the possibility that you might be wrong? Is it not prideful and wicked for anyone to believe that they possess the knowledge and judgment to know truth with certainty? Do you truly believe that you know God's mind?

If you so believe, on what do you base this belief?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a place far far away, there lived a group of charlatans who wanted to consolidate wealth and power, so they combined Hebrew and Pagan traditions and holidays and created a new scam, a scam evinced upon the unwashed masses, a scam that turned Enlightenment into Dark Ages, a scam that caused untold suffering and death, a scam that required a tithe, a scam most of the free world has turned its back on, but for the greatest nation in the world, the secular, non-theocratic, we the people, not gods or kings nation, whose denizens still madly, fearfully cling to the outmoded, uneducational ramblings of Bronze Age griffers, to their detriment, to the detriment of society, to the detriment of mankind, to the detriment of free thought, to the detriment of reason, and apparently to the detriment of common sense.

Pointing out the inconsistencies and ludicrousness of something that the deluded are attempting to use as a cudgel to decimate school Science programs or use as a wedge to eliminate the civil rights of the populace is common sense. Take your religion and keep it away from our secular institutions and this poster will never discuss it again. Keep trying to dumb down America or threaten The Constitution with anti-civil rights legislation or a theocratic rewrite and your lunacy deserves every denigration it receives.

Seems like Washington Post is a repository of all the right wing idiots with their daily opinions posted in the front pages of the paper.

thanks for responding at all. that's rare here.

I will not be able to respond further (with thanks to comments) as I must get back to work on a book project!

Very well said, Professor!

To answer a thoughtful question:
Let's say (given the space here) a simple thing to define praiseworthy actions: a human has done a morally praiseworthy thing when he or she intends to do do a good deed and when it his or her actions were in fact good.

1. intention certainly counts in accessing a person's morality. If one intends to do a wicked act, then one is behaving wickedly. This is true (as the example cited shows) even if the intention fails in its goal . . . or even produces an accidental good.

Simply put intention is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for morality.

2. intention is not everything. A person may intend to do what he or she believes to be a good act, but do a wicked one. One reason (and there are others) might be ignorance. The person is sincere in believing he is doing a good deed (no need to attack that sincerity), but actually does a deed that (as Aristotle would say) is intrinsically base. As Aristotle would say, the man has done a wicked thing and his ignorance has not excused him.

My simple point is that good intentions are not enough . . . bad things can be done by people who intend good but are (to give another example) the product of bad moral formation in childhood. He or she thinks her actions good, and is not a person who means to do wrong, but his or her actions are wrong.

The fact that he or she is sincere would not justify his or her actions. We might (rightly) acknowledge his or her intentions in speaking with him or her or assessing punishment or rehabilitation strategies, but we would not say the action was good.

No Sir, Mr. Reynolds, YOU have missed the point of the President's speech. The President was not invited to defend his views on abortion. He was invited to address graduating students and to receive the honorary degree (based on the University's determination that most of his important views reflect something that Catholics should value). That he felt compelled to address the controversy at all is unfortunate. But a commencement ceremony is certainly not the time to defend one's views on abortion against the spirit of the audience. That argument is better saved for some other venue. The President's wisdom is seen in his addressing of the controversy without marring this ceremony with argument. You apparently missed his point.

Please pardon typographical errors as, with my vision, I find posting difficult in these spaces.

Someone asked me why traditional Christians are consumed with one or two "social issues." In fact, I answer the questions I am asked here. It would delight me to write about social justice issues related to the poor more. We are rarely asked such questions.

Reynolds claims that we sometimes have noble motives for wicked acts. Is that possible? That claim implies that the consequences of our actions are the only yardstick by which to measure their goodness of evil. Do intentions count for nothing? If that is the case, then actions motivated by ignoble motives must be morally good. If a terrible dictator in the heat of a tantrum ordered an entire village eradicated and the "bombs" sent to do the job turned out to be duds that, instead, cured the villagers of a miserable disease, would that be a morally good act?
I suppose Reynolds might try to claim that he isn't referring to absolute wickedness--that he simply means nobly intended acts may have some or all wicked consequences. But the use of the word "wicked" in that context is sophistic, because it eliminates agency altogether.

I should add that I do commend President Obama for embracing civil discourse. I am aware that outside of the academic community it is rare.

I do not think describing my opinion about his views ("wicked") is itself uncivil. There are reasons for thinking allowing third trimester abortion is a wicked act . . . but I don't think Obama means to be wicked.

Tough language about ideas strikes me as fair. People have certainly used tough language here about my ideas! However, the President is right when he says that we should not impugn the motives behind our opponents.

It is good to see such spirited discourse about my piece.

Four things:

1. I based my description of the student chant on an MSNBC story on Sunday. See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30782728/

2. The mortality rate of humanity is 100%. The fact that some embryos die naturally no more justifies our intentionally killing them than our certain deaths justifies killing innocent human beings.

The fact that death happens naturally does nothing to justify humanity killing people without a great deal more argument.

3. President Obama believes taking the life of a third trimester infant, right before birth, should be legal. This is an extreme position, even in other countries where abortion is legal, and I is quite extreme.

4. Finally, I do not think the difference between "honoring" a person and hearing him or her out is a useless distinction. There are very, very few cases that would justify not listening respectfully to another person's opinion.

Notre Dame should be commended for hearing out the pro-choice side, though President Obama was very shy about advancing any such argument.

However, President Obama was there, in part, to be honored. Both the Catholic bishops and the pope have argued that abortion is not just "another" issue for Christians. Christians of good will can disagree on whether particular actions are licit or illicit, but the traditional Christian intellectual consensus on abortion is not one of those "gray areas."

As for arguments against abortion, they need not be based on religious perspectives. I have religious and non-religious reasons for opposing abortion. I would point interested readers to look to magazines like "First Things" to find both types of arguments and a sound general perspective on religion in the public square.

Thanks for the opportunity to watch such spirited debate,

John Mark

EdithF1 wrote at 16:03

>You are missing my point.

No, you've missed mine.

>People on the other side of
>this debate feel just as strongly
>as you do that life begins at
>conception.

I've never denied that life begins at
conception. I just don't care. Human life is cheap, and the life of an unwanted fetus is worthless.

>you fail to recognize that
>for them, it is MURDER

What I don't fail to recognize is that many of the same people who scream that the destruction of a pre-conscious blob of cellular matter is murder are also the most ardent supporters of the death penalty, and never protest when their military kills innocent people in their name.

I recognize them as flaming hypocrites and I don't give a rat's arse how they feel about fetuses. I care only that they be prevented from imposing their delusions on others.

>many rational people do believe
>life begins at conception, just
>as many rational people don't
>believe that

I have never heard any intelligent person argue that life DOES NOT begin at conception. The question is, is a small, partially developed lump of protoplasm significant life? I believe most rational people would say it's not.

If you don't like abortion then don't have one is a perfectly reasonable attitude. Better an abortion clinic on every street corner than the birth of one more unwanted child.

"All of us are in favor of civil discourse and few see any reason to question the motives of our opponents."

I almost choked on my dinner reading this incredulous pie-in-the-sky piece of crap. Have you watched cable news lately? Listened to Talk radio? Internet blogs? This country has raised hatred to an art form in its attempt (woeful) at "civil discourse." We have completely lost our ability to talk to one another in a civil manner in this country.

President Obama correctly recognized that we "should question the motives of our opponents" because their motives are forever in a very attack-oriented place.

To Mister Reynolds (John Mark? What about the other 10 apostles?) I say this... get out of your dreamland cul-de-sac and join the rest of us out here in the real world.

And by the way, when is the Catholic Church going to stop hiding their pedophile priests?

It is Mr. Reynolds not President Obama that misses the point. First the occasion is to celebrate the graduation of the Notre Dame class of 2009 not to advance a political agenda from either side. Second Obama more than meets the criteria to receive a honorary laew degree: He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law, was editior of the Harvard Law Review, taught Constitution and election law at the University of Chicago, and currently is the principle supporter and defender of the Constitution, to not grant him the "honor" would reflect ignorance. Third George W. Bush spoke in 2001 and no one seemed to care even though he had most recently been the Gov. of Texas; a state which seems to delight in the facts that it puts more people to death than many entire countries let alone other states. Obama has clearly stated many times that while he does support a woman's right to choose dominion over her own body his goal is to reduce the overall number of abortions and that is something we can all agree upon. The decision is not an easy one for anyone to make and is between a woman and God.

The sanctity of life. The following comes from information supplied by the March of Dimes Foundation

* There are about 4.4 million confirmed pregnancies in the U.S. every year.

* 900,000 to 1 million of those end in pregnancy losses EVERY year.

* More than 500,000 pregnancies each year end in miscarriage (occurring during the first 20 weeks).

* Approximately 26,000 end in stillbirth (considered stillbirth after 20 weeks).

* Approximately 19,000 end in infant death during the first month.

* Approximately 39,000 end in infant death during the first year.

* Approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage; some estimates are as high as 1 in 3. If you include loss that occurs before a positive pregnancy test, some estimate that 40% of all conceptions result in loss.

* Approximately 75% of all miscarriages occur in the first trimester.

* An estimated 80% of all miscarriages are single miscarriages. The vast majority of women suffering one miscarriage can expect to have a normal pregnancy next time.

* An estimated 19% of the adult population has experienced the death of a child (this includes miscarriages through adult-aged children).

Is this God's will?

If so, do the right-to-life folks accept this carnage?

And if they accept it what does it say to their stance on the sanctity of life?

What would Mr. Reynolds say?

If it is God's will is not then abortion a divine act?

Reynolds, with his transparent "Christian" obsessions only focused on abortion and homosexuality, reveals he is nothing more than a cheap, dime-store, Dobson wannabe thug.

Who ever heard of Biola University anyway - maybe Virginia Conservative and Patriot 1 were graduates. Sounds like it

Perhaps inadvertently, the author of this column gives a strong argument for the advocacy of pro-choice. He makes several choices himself in the column, including the implication that abortion is killing in every instance. And he does so without acknowledging that the mediation approach of Obama and others who agree with Obama is, by definition, a choice, their decision as to which position makes the most moral good sense to them. Faced with absolutist stances by the pro-lifers--who presume they are the only ones who value the sanctity of human life--pro-choicers have chosen to respect conflicting points of view, although disagreeing.

Perhaps the best response to John Mark Reynolds is this from Obama's speech yesterday:

"...the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt.

"This doubt should not push away our faith... But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness."

Believing the Bible to be literally and infallibly factual ( even with all that begating, incest and familial murdering, not to mention the woes of poor Noah), I can see why Reynolds would not think anything wrong with self-righteousness.

The irony of Obama's words is that excessive self-righteousness creates a barricade to the wisdom of the meaning of those words.

Good luck to you, Mr. Reynolds, in your small corner of the world.

"..The United States of America is all about FREEDOM, including the freedom of a human being to make choices about what they do to their own body...
But of course the issue is that the mother is doing something to another's body as well, the fetus. Even though the fetus is inside the mother, it is completely separated from the mother."

No, it's not 'completely separated,' even by your definition. But the 'pro-life' policies don't stop calling you, or a politician, a 'baby-killer' if it's not about a *fetus.*

You may be in doubt about what constitutes 'human life,' but the 'pro-life' theocratic agenda and hysteria want government involvement in our most intimate business long before anyone can claim by any objective standard, that the human *experience* begins.

But for you it's not about human experiences, it's about 'definitions' and your God's purported sexual and social and political demands.

You still don't get to use the United States government to claim you're more allowed to decide than a woman when, how and under what circumstances she'll complete a pregnancy.

And it doesn't make what you lot say about Obama any more true just cause you say it more and louder.

coloradodog,
re renolds saying,
"with his typical evangelical political agenda, labels Obama as "the most powerful ABORTION ADVOCATE in the world.."

that's just they way the talk. spin and hyperbole. i don't even know if ther CAN be nice. rove et al. have been brilliant (evil, but brilliant) at divide and conquer...but it looks like people are stating to see through it. it appears most catholics have denounced the rabble rousers.

GoofyCarly:

Great post! Thank you. Yes, unsurprisingly, it was an excellent speech, all that a commencement address should be.

Cannot figure J. Mark Reynolds out. Philosophers aren't known for using language quite so sloppily, for disregarding what we understand to be evidence, etc.

Farnaz

GENUINERISK wrote:
...The United States of America is all about FREEDOM, including the freedom of a human being to make choices about what they do to their own body...
But of course the issue is that the mother is doing something to another's body as well, the fetus. Even though the fetus is inside the mother, it is completely separated from the mother. Nutrients are transfered across the placenta. There is no exchange of blood etc. Though the fetus may not be able to survive in the outside world on its own, why should the mother be able to remove its source of nourshment any more than we would allow her to starve it after it is born?

Bottom line: different strokes for different folks!

Two points, one of which underlies the inherent dispute here, the other of which deals with the fact that the Pro-Life movement doesn't REALLY believe fetuses are people legally.

First, Mr. Reynolds states that "President Obama's views on abortion are wrong, and morally wicked..." That's Mr. Reynolds' flaw in his argument. Because many Americans don't believe Obama's views on abortion are wrong or morally wicked. Many Americans believe the Mr. Reynolds likely views about homosexuality are wrong and morally wicked. When you are dealing with something based on mere feeling and emotion, and that's all that anyone's beliefs on whether abortion is morally wicked or not comes to, and the community is that divided on the issue, you have to go with looking at the rational facts. And the rational facts show, at the very least, a strong correlation between the legalization of abortion and the decrease of crime among the poorest groups in our country. You telling me something is wicked won't change my mind, and me telling you that it's not won't change yours. But you can't come up with a single non-faith based reason for me to change my mind.

Second, if a fetus is a human being with all of the inherent rights to life a person has, you create a legal quagmire. If a woman is aware she is pregnant and drinks, smokes, or takes drugs and there is a miscarriage, should she be charged with reckless homicide? If a person is driving negligently and has a car accident, and a miscarriage results, should the driver be charged with negligent homicide?

Obama is not a baby killer, as some so-called Christians would have you believe. The United States of America is all about FREEDOM, including the freedom of a human being to make choices about what they do to their own body. What next, will they tell us we can't eat chocolate because it pollutes God's Temple (our bodies)??? Where does it end? The Catholics are getting ridiculous.

Err, SB: it's spelled 'divisive.' And a President isn't 'divisive' when he actually works for common goals, ...

...as opposed to a near-illiterate who somehow got through Yale and then passed himself off as a 'just-folks' conservative endorsed record-setting executioner, and said he was a 'uniter, not a divider,' then proceeded to run the country on nothing but wedge issues.

The 'divisions' are remnants of the last administration when there was nothing but ideology in charge.

And it's spelled POTUS.

I'm sure you didn't mean to be rude with that other spelling.

As a Roman Catholic, I totally disagree with Reynold's article. I applaud Notre Dame, given its history in the field of Civil/Human Rights, for honoring America's first African-American President. I heard President Obama's full speech yesterday, and as a commencement address to the graduating class of 2009, it was totally on target. It was not too lengthy, it had humor, it defined the challenges of today's world that this graduating class will confront, it challenged this generation to leadership and service, and, most importantly, it was educational, by teaching this future generation of leaders to be temperate in speech and to reflect on all points of view judiciously and without malice. It was all that a commencement speech should be. This speech nor occasion would have been the proper forum to dwell on the pros and cons of abortion.

As the President of the United States, he has the moral and legal responsibility to uphold the current laws of the land, whether he likes them or not. A commencement address is not the place to dwell on the topic of abortion, nor enter into personal opinions on the matter. Instead, President Obama gave suggestions on how both sides of the issue can work together to find ways to minimize unwanted pregnancies and the need for abortions, to expand adoptions, and to further find solutions for this social and moral problem.

Notre Dame University, as a Catholic, and one who worked for a Catholic University, I applaud you and I applaud, on the whole, the student body for their mature behavior during the Presidents speech. I am proud of this Catholic Institution of Higher Education for demonstrating to its student body and to the world its true value of open expression, learning and thought. Thank you for not giving in to the petty, closed minded individuals who would rather see Notre Dame University be place for controlled thought and expression.

Reynolds, you are totally wrong with your analysis in this article.

Reynolds, with his typical evangelical political agenda, labels Obama as "the most powerful abortion advocate in the world.."

This is another neocon/neochristian lie.
Obama does not nor ever has "advocated abortion" He respects a woman's right to choose and for that receives attacks by every two bit Johnny-one note like Reynolds who harps on abortion and says nothing about torture, capital punishment and pre-emptive war. Abortion obsessed "religious men" have transparent political agendas.

By the way, I don't favor abortion, buggering little boys, capital punishment, pre-emptive war or torture, but for the last three opinions only I am cast our as a godless liberal by the O'Reilly Catholics and the Dobson evangelicals like Reynolds who would have America be their own private theocracy.

Norte Dame inviting Obama to set him up to be called "abortion advocate" and "baby killer" is another cheap Rovian trick of the likes of Reynolds and his "Christian" political thugs.

Mr. Reynolds,

Using words like "morally wicked" is not a way to win friends and influence people. Unsurprisingly, Obama's speech was excellent, entirely appropriate for the occasion, calling upon Notre Dame students to step up and participate with good will in dialogues concerning us all.

You would have done well to sit in the audience and listen carefully. You have not, in this essay, demonstrated the ability to do what the President asked of the Notre Dame graduates.

Same Catholic Church that placed Galeleo under house arrest for life for suggesting the Earth revolved around the sun? Same Catholic Church that held back the advance of science and medicine for 400 years in what we now call the Dark Ages? Will they never learn to listen and to honor those with whom they disagree? God must cringe at what religions do in His name.

brampton,
very nice points.

Choice is an acceptable approach if either choice is ethically ok. We don't allow parents, under any circumstances, to kill their "born" child. We are imposing a law on them regardless of their situation because none of the inconveniences would out weigh that act. So the question on abortion is if the "pre-born" is alive - not if each person should decide for themselves.

The answer to this question was above the current President's "pay grade" to determine and he believes that all decisions made on abortion are made seriously, with full responsibility and due dilligence. If I believe this were the case I would feel a lot better about the current situation. People would ask to see the ultra-sound to see exactly what they were decidinng on. What does a baby look like at 3 weeks (heart is beating already.) What does the baby look like at 6 weeks (brain activity.) When are the finger nails and feet clearly developed? What actually happens in an abortion to child? Do they feel pain? Why is there blood, arms, legs and crushed heads involved? Why is the suicide rate for women that have had abortions so much higher than those that carried to term?

Why is Planned Parenthood so adamently against providing information and time to make an informed and responsible decision? If there is no issue then the truth should not be uncomfortable to look at?

How many people providing commentary on this article have actually taken the time to find out what actually happens to someone that looks very quickly like more than a bunch of cells? Truly do that and then come back and give an honest commentary. Hopefully President Obama during his term will look closer and closer at this "choice" and maybe see an innocent child that deserves the civil rights that any human being is entitled to.

fr johnmarkreynolds:

>...We don't know whether Notre Dame students "heart Obama" or not....

It is VERY obvious that ND students HEART President Obama, or there would have been less people there. The ones who heckled him should have been ejected from the ceremonies by security, and have to write in for their diploma to be mailed, COD.

LETS FACE THE FACTS HERE. THE DARK AGES AND ALL THAT IT INVOLVED INCLUDING TORTURE AND MURDER DURING SUCH SCINTILLATING PUBLIC EVENTS SUCH AS THE INQUISITION ARE OVER. HUMAN RIGHTS ARRIVED LONG AGO. IF THE CHURCH CANNOT STEP INTO THE LIGHT OF DAY THEN SO BE IT. MOLESTING CHILDREN AND SENTENCING THOSE CAUGHT UP IN THE AFRICAN AIDS EPIDEMICS TO DEATH BY REFUSING TO SANCTION BIRTH CONTROL WINS NO FRIENDS. ON THE OTHER HAND, BY INVITING OBAMA TO SPEAK PERHAPS THE CHURCH IS WILLING TO MODERATE ITS IDEAOLOGY MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD FIRST STEP. WE SHALL SEE.

I think the point is Commencement! The President is to be honored above all agendas and points of view at Graduation.
I have known well meaning Catholics but the issue I take at Notre Dame is not the students but their use as pawns in the Anti-Abortion Rights issue.I remember President eisenhower on the wrong side of Civil rights and lynching and he was the first to be allowed to speak at ND. Where was the outcry for human life, then? The president spoke of Freedom riders as part of his speech. There were many deaths mostly African-American in this search for freedom. I think it disingenuios to go into the womb of a woman to save a life while crushing those through the death penalty and senseless bigotry and racism to say the least. I am old enough to remember Martin in Jail in Birmingham and the white clergy some reknown in their day telling him to wait for civil rights.The clergy and the religious right should remember some of Christ's teachings and remember everything is in God's hands. Here was born out of the greatest senseless infantacide and mass abortions since Moses. Herod and Pharaoh respectively killed thousands of male babies in an attempt to slay Moses and the Christ. My point is leave the abortionists to cleaner hands than ours. To aligne a President with the sin of Abortion because of his veiws for a woman's right to chose is the same as condemning everyone on the opposing view of civil rights as a racist.

And will those who insist "human at conception" demand also that when pregnancy is determined a Certificate of Conception/personhood be issued and if a live, healthy person is not born in a normal time frame an investigation be initiated to determine where that person is or why they are not healthy. The fertilized egg can't be considered a human being for some purposes and not for others. Any views of this from others?

why do so many Catholic women have abortions if the Church is so against it? Because they are dealing with unwanted pregnancies like every other woman who has an abortion.

Don't blame Obama for your wives, sisters, and daughters' actions.

If you believe abortion is a sin, don't have one.

Don't impose your beliefs on others who are exercising their right to abort a fetus. This country is not Catholic, it is Democratic.

The alumni, students, and faculty of Notre Dame who tried to silence the President of the United States should be humiliated by their ineffectual, stupid behavior.

"Our positions are not sanctified by our sincerity. This is as true of the proponents of segregation, well-intentioned though they are, as it is of advocates of abortion."

Alright, on second reading, I can report that I find this offensive.

It was entirely appropriate that the President was asked to speak and be given a well deserved honor at UND. Doing so honors the Rev. Theodore Hesbergh as well; a priest and Catholic who has dedicated his life to the promotion of civil rights and to the exchange of ideas that do not always coincide with various aspects of Catholic teaching. Those who rant against the university's invitation and Obama's acceptance are the fringe mullahs of the Catholic world.

John Mark Reynolds (what a great WASP name...or a WASC) description of rhetoric is as embarrassing as your use of exclamation points. i have read better papers turned in by college freshmen... and they don't get paid.

Mr. Reynolds, I thought you were supposed to be a Christian, supposed to love. All I see is hate. Maybe you should let Notre Dame speak for itself. Seems like they'd do just fine without you. I've seen nothing you've written on this website worth reading. Your commentary is worth no more than any vile act committed by your average blogger or tabloid smut jouralist. Why don't you go find David Duke and have coffee so you can pontificate on the merits of segregation!

The notion that President Obama ought not speak at a Catholic University because of his stance on issue is absurd. At the risk of stating the obvious, Notre Dame is not a church-- it is a university. It would not be much of a university (let alone one of the academic leaders amongst Catholic universities and colleges) if it did not embrace a wide range of viewpoints. People who are upset with his speaking there should really be worried about Bob Jones university. Those people pose a much bigger threat in terms of anti-catholicism and bigotry than any one speaker.

A college campus, even a Catholic university with Norte Dame's tradition is supposed to bring speakers whose views don't coincide with everyone else's. This is supposed to further dialogue and understanding on both sides. By bringing in President Obama, that's all they were doing.

Oh my, but the pro death folks are out in full force here. How sad.

The view taken by Ramesh Ponnuru here at the discussion groups is worth a look. to him the words of Obama were not the words of a man confident that abortion isn't about killing a living human. its a thought provoking point of view.

The sad thing is Pres. Obama has a lot of things he could have talked about yesterday, but some people painted him in to a corner over one of the most divisive subjects out there. And not surprisingly here we are today talking about it, still.

You suggest that everyone who has ever given a commencement speech at Notre Dame before Pres. Obama lived up to the ideals of Catholicism, I suggest that no one has, unless they were God. None of us were with them in the confessional, and we will never know their true beliefs or how they have lived them. His have been exposed because of the path he chose to walk as a politician. He deserved the honorary degree just as the rest of the "sinners" who have received it before him. His goodness far outweighs the sin of one belief. A true believer knows that it's the Man we meet at the end of the road that makes the final decision as to whether we receive an honorary degree. I pray his criteria for receiving one is far more forgiving than yours, for I fear that no one that I have ever loved and lost will be there to greet me.

Judging by the volume and variety of comments this debate trundles on unabated. And, in many ways, that's as it should be - both sides have valid points that should be considered.

If you stayed awake in history class, or studied literature, or just read the front page of a newspaper occasionally it becomes quite obvious that hubris (thinking your view is more correct or valid and/or you are more important than other people) is the common denominator through all the disasters and tragedies people have caused or participated in. Hubris, be it quiet and behind the scenes or violent and in your face is obvious in both Al-Qaeda’s terrorism and in the Bush administrations war in Iraq. The intellectual and ethical bankruptcy on both sides has killed tens of thousands caught in the crossfire, mostly because neither side was willing to respect the other side's right to believe differently. The Bush also repeated the most disastrous mistake of the Vietnam War - they assumed a completely different culture would react as we would.

John Mark Reynold's comments betray that same hubris, asserting that only his interpretation of the church's position has value, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong or evil or both. The Catholic Church has done monumental good works and charity, but it has also sponsored some monumental evil; backing the Crusades, ignoring the Holocaust, and allowing the Spanish Inquisition are some of the more notorious black marks on the church’s history.

Here is my point: Mr. Reynolds -- you and I and President Obama and Notre Dame are all members or a diverse, secular society, something you should be grateful for! If the U.S. were a Theocracy it would probably be Baptist and who knows if Notre Dame would even exist - or if you would have the right to speak your mind.

Your right to speak your mind, my right to comment, an Barak Obama's right to become President are all rights worth fighting for (I am a vet). It is obvious President Obama's ability to show respect for those he disagrees is alarms people at both ends of many issues. But until you learn to tone down your hubris and respect the right of well-intentioned and highly moral people to disagree, you will convert no one and accomplish littler more than further polarizing your readers.

No one, I think, would want the number of abortions, here or elsewhere in the world, to increase. There are many millions every year, mostly in countries where abortion is illegal. Untold millions of mothers also die.

However, many of those Americans who oppose abortion most vehemently, and not only Catholics, are also opposed to contraception. We do not hear this opposition voiced so loudly. Even those who do not oppose contraception, per se, should be protesting against all the methods that prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo.

Why the silence?

Many of those who protest against experiments involving embryos are also opposed to artificial insemination. We do not hear this voiced so loudly. Even those who do not oppose fertility clinics, per se, should tell us what should be done with all the fertilized embryos that are not used.

Why the silence?

Many of those who oppose abortion also vote for candidates who seek to remove funding from the state and federal programs that could help young mothers cope. Even those who do not should surely tell us how society should respond to the needs of all the additional babies.

Why the silence?

Many of those who oppose abortion believe that the procedure should not be performed even to save the mother's life. Even those who do not should surely explain and defend the exceptions that they would allow, and state how many of the late-term abortions they seek to prevent would fall within such provisions.

Why the silence?

Those who have protested against Obama's visit to Notre Dame, and the administration's obligation under law to fund Planned Parenthood, did not call George Bush a murderer in connection with the hundreds of millions of dollars that his administration provided, under Medicaid and Title X.

Why the silence?

Many of those who rail against Planned Parenthood because of its involvement in abortions seem unaware of the many other services that it provides. Th0se who are aware should tell us who should fund and provide all those services.

Why the silence?

If one believes that a fertilized embryo became a human being at the moment of conception, one may well feel obliged to protest vehemently. However, one should not accuse others of passing matters over in silence before fully laying out the implications of one's own position, and examining the merely political aspects of opposition.

How many of the activists on either side are taking personal responsibility for the welfare of any individual young mothers and children in poverty? Not just donating to a charity or pressing for legislative change.

I am a generally pro-life (no abortion except in the case of rape or the endangerment of the mother's life) conservative and life-long (I have voted in 9 presidential elections, always Republican) Republican who is appalled that any institution of higher learning in the United States would hesitate at having a sitting president agree to speak to them. The presentation and debate of thoughts and ideas is what universities are all about. How could any American or American institution be so hateful, ignorant and narrow-minded that they would not want to hear the president of the United States speak? I didn't vote for him, and I don't see eye-to-eye with most of his ideas, but how can one not want to better understand, or hear articulated, the thoughts of the person elected by the majority to govern this nation-- even if it is to disagree? Kudos to Notre Dame for having the courage to do the American thing, and shame on those who would hope to silence people with whom they disagree. They are living in the wrong country, and they don't get it.

"While I am not a Catholic, I can understand why practicing Catholics would be upset seeing their flagship university honor a man their own Church says has morally wicked positions (however sincerely held). That is not whining, but acting as a stake holder in a school they love."

You said this many, many posts back, John, but there's some items that should be clarified regarding your statement:

-I can tell you the vast majority of Catholics were either okay with Obama speaking or didn't care that much. Those protesting or making this sort of issue out of it were in a slim minority. And it's not that I know this because I *am* Catholic (which I am), but it has been reported (quietly, amidst the sort of media attention that you have been giving). A minority of bishops, and a small minority of people, not even all of them Catholic. This is because many practicing Catholics, though entirely pro-life, realize there's better ways to reduce abortions, and there's ways that Obama can help perpetuate other Catholic ideals. There's never been a president that 100% matched Catholic ideals, but let's try to focus on those aspects that match, to try and do the most good.

-The Vatican has not only drawn back from its initial fears over what Obama might try to enact regarding right-to-life (because he hasn't effectively done anything), but it has in fact welcomed his rise to office, and in fact never really weighed in on this Notre Dame commencement nonsense. They actually know better than to waste their time on this American political partisanship.

Basically, it's disingenuous to use the blanket terms 'Catholics' and 'the Church', as neither in their entirety, or even majority, have been clamoring to boycott the ceremony or condemn ND for inviting Obama. They know where they all stand on abortion; but most, including the Vatican and Obama right now, realize there's more pragmatic ways about reaching common ground to improve the BOTTOM LINE, than to waste all this air and perpetuate a hot-button conflict.

I love men telling women what to do with their bodies.

Where were all the demonstrations against the pedofiles - some who are still being supported/paid?

Where were all these demonstrators when Bush spoke - he presided over more deaths in TX than any other Governor? Catholics are against the dealth penalty.

How many children have these demonstrators adopted?

I'm sick and tired of these self righteous people telling women what to do with their bodies yet they're not lifting a voice/finger against all the other church teachings. Abuse of children; hunger; death penalty, etc.

I think some of this is pure racism - they don't like the fact that a black man is the President and they hide behind abortion.

I'm sick and tired of the self righteous who do nothing to help those who are born.

I am not going to report any of these comments as offensive. I report that I find this whole thing offensive. Firstly, the WashPost has a big fat argument about aaa-bortion in this ON FAITH section seven days out of every week, solely as a grab for eyeballs. Everyone is angry here, hardly anyone listens to each other, and in the end no one hugs, no one makes up and, lo and behold, the issue is still ultimately unresolved. More tomorrow! The Post is really doing nothing for rational and productive discourse by abortion-baiting in a basically unmoderated forum.

Secondly, Baila University? Could they go further out of their way to find a more obscure institution, to supply a more confrontational or hubristic essayist? Does his rhetoric seem even a wee bit heated and spiteful? Don't you think it is even a bit self-serving that the Post chose such a person rather than, say, a Catholic, to comment on what is ultimately a Catholic issue? Without any space for an opposing (or even a moderate) essay? Or that it is left to the commenters to point out even the logical inconsistencies in Mr. Reynolds' essay (what of capital punishment, etc)?

People in future generations are going to have access to these comment sections, regardless of the continued existence of the Washington Post. When future students go to study the death of civil discourse and rational deliberation in America, these pages will surely be some of the source texts to which they refer.

Again, I have to say to the editors of the opinion section, You have been poor stewards of these pages which are meant to be a public trust, and a real marketplace for ideas.

i wonder if men got pregnant if we'd even be having this debate?

Reynolds,
I wonder what you mean by traditional Catholics. Clearly many more people identify as Catholic in opinion polls than actually agree with the Bishops' stands on public issues. I wonder if the Church establishment's alignment with the Republican party, via its focus on eradicating "wicked" acts such as abortion, is making it harder for them to keep track of the rest of their flock in terms of church attendance and the sacraments.

This also may be an issue of race-Latinos make up a third of American Catholics, and they are very Democratic. What might the church due to bridge the racial divide between white Catholics concerned about abortion and electing Republicans and Latinos who like Dem views on economics and social justice.

One clue...the Bishops are generally old, and white, and male.

"The President spoke as if the controversy centered on his appearance at Notre Dame and speech when in reality it centered on his being honored despite his views."

Wow, there's some serious hair-splitting. He was giving a commencement speech. It would have been silly for him to ignore this somewhat ginned-up controversy, and irresponsible for him to dwell on it. You've got this one very wrong - but then, your straw men don't help.

I find it fascinating that the same people who scream about too much government intrusion in their privates lives are the first to stick their noses into he sex lives and reproductive decisions of strangers.

The basic problem with the Anti-Choice stance is the child-like notion that if this procedure, abortion, is made illegal, it will stop. Of course thinking adults understand that abortion will continue as it has for as long as women have made the decision to terminate their pregnancies. That is to say, forever. Safe, legal abortion procedures for all women have been possible since 1973.

The so-called "Christians" who want to send women back to the days of"hush hush" medical procedures performed in private doctor's offices or, if too poor to afford that luxury, potentially life-threatening, back-alley abortion butchers, are just self-absorbed narcissistic sociopaths. These anti-choice fascists really want to see women suffer. That is the bottom line.
It is a national scandal and disgrace that a small group of religious zealots, mostly Christians, are attempting to subordinate the rights of women who want the most private and personal of decisions, whether to continue or end a pregnancy, kept safe and legal.

In talking to members of Anti-Choice groups over the years, one thing has become a common theme. That is, these zealots are much more concerned with carrying a pregnancy to term than worry about the mother's ability to care and nurture a baby after birth. They should be called Right-to-Birth-ers. They care only about the womb. It starts and ends in the uterus. Once the baby pops out, the mother is on her own. BTW, those are the words and sentiment of Joseph Scheidler, head of the Pro-Life Action League.

I do not know anyone who is Pro-Abortion in the sense that terminating pregnancy is an easy choice! Pro-Choice vs. Anti-Choice is the proper rhetorical terminology. Pro-Life is a rhetorical misnomer, as many of the Christian anti-choice zealots are pro-death penalty and pro-war. When George W. Bush spoke at Notre Dame, the fact that he oversaw, as Governor, the death sentences of hundreds of prison inmates in Texas, was overlooked. The fact that Bush started two wars and caused the death of tens of thousands of innocent civilians was overlooked, as well. This is about control. This is about attempting to re-instate the co-mingling of Church and State as was the norm in European Christian monarchies until the 20th Century.

I mean, seriously, Wallenstein. If you *really* believe babies' lives are at stake, you should be a little more careful about believing everything you hear.

You should *thank* Obama for opposing that bill: it was *you* that was intended to deceive.

richmennie,
i have posted this before, but, since you asked...

Is God “pro-life”? Though He makes no specific statements about “abortion,” in Exodus 21:20 we get a rare, almost accidental, glimpse into what He thought about fetuses. While describing penalties for various transgressions, He says,

“If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows.”

In those days a “premature” baby was a DEAD baby. The fine was remuneration for causing the miscarriage. It’s just a fine. If God considered the fetus a human life, the penalty would have been death. In the next verse, God goes on to say,

“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

God was talking about "serious injury" to the woman, NOT THE BABY.

We can surmise that God would probably be in favor of abortion (and murder) if the mother has other Gods. Surely some of Joshua’s victims were pregnant and in Hosea 13:16, God warned unbelievers in Samaria that they would have their “little ones dashed to the ground and pregnant women ripped open.” True, they were infidels, but it’s not very fetus-friendly. Later Jesus warned specifically of woe unto unbelieving expectant mothers at the tribulations (Mt24:19).

concern for an "unborn child" is a humanist concern.

To Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn -- if you're going to give a forum to a viewpoint, why not pick a "heavyweight" instead of a lightweight like John Mark Reynolds. Half the people posting here, probably none of whom are professors or theologians, have compeletly eviscerated the man's "argument." It's like stealing candy from a baby. Get someone of greater stature, and higher intellect. This is disappointing.

"The common defense is a specific constitutionally-sanctioned expenditure, and one that actually benefits the whole of society (even pacifists) by protecting them from physical attack. It's like funding for the police. If I was an anarchist who didn't believe there should be a law enforcement arm of government, the fact remains that the existence of police protects me and my family from harm, whether I like it or not. Abortion does not meet that criteria.

POSTED BY: SOPRANO116 | MAY 18, 2009 4:03 PM "

Sorry, but I don't believe the war on drugs does either.

I know all the intellectual blow hards like to show off what they learned in class but this is very simply. In a free society we are free to chose what to believe in. We get to make those decisions for ourselves. You get to do the same. The problem seems to be that you are having trouble with the freedom issue.

"In almost all countries where abortion-on-demand is a settled matter of public policy, Obama's views on third-trimester abortions would be considered barbaric. And that's all you really need to know. His views are bizarre and cruel"

This might be so, Wallenstein... if the 'pro-lifers' views of Obama's actual positions weren't inflated out of a deception regarding his voting against a bill which offered *nothing* new as regarded 'protecting fetuses' and could only serve as just the fodder for smearing people as 'baby killers' that the GOP in fact tried to use it for during the elections.

The bill this all comes from was redundant with real protections but was Unconstitutional and intended to insert certain language into the law for application in other matters.

Thank you for your article.

mightysparrow -- Excellent! I agree and will fight with you. (I am Catholic, well, a cafeteria Catholic a/k/a to many as a Protestant. But proud of it!)

MR. Johnmarkreynolds, this speech given by President Obama at Notre Dame was for the graduating class of 2009. It was for them and not for you. Your definition of "brave" has lost its context. What is noteworthy, is that President Obama used the speech as a "teaching moment". A teaching moment not about rationalizing pro-choice- which is his view and most of the country's viewpoint. He doesn't have to do that, nor should he. This is a time for the students first and formost. If you understand that, you'll understand the power of the speech. The first audience, the second audience (their families), the third audience (the Notre Dame management), and the fourth audience (all the rest of us). Speech-making has to be honest and uplifting, but you need to be honest about the real people you are talking to. Talk to students like adults and make the ideas reachable and uplifting. Make the moment a teaching moment. You Mr. mark, obviously did not learn from this "teaching moment". I did.

IVANGOWICH said: "Only PERSONS can be murdered. A human becomes a person when it emerges alive from the womb, and not a second earlier."

You are missing my point. People on the other side of this debate feel just as strongly as you do that life begins at conception. You are no more "right" than they are, and it is possible that science would disprove either position as too radical. My point was that it is oversimplifying things to suggest that the "answer" to the abortion debate is to suggest that abortion opponents simply refrain from having abortions, as you fail to recognize that for them, it is MURDER, and thus something that cannot be tolerated as legal. As I said before, we codify our morality ALL THE TIME. The continuing problem with the abortion debate is that there is not a shared understanding of the moral status of a fetus - and there is no progress to be made on this issue by simply shouting, ever more loudly, that life begins at conception, or that it doesn't. Rational minds differ - yes, many rational people do believe life begins at conception, just as many rational people don't believe that (and just as many IRRATIONAL people hold both views).

i believe that the university president and the president obama did themselves proud in the way they handled the situation.

Crucialitis: "There's plenty my taxes to go that I don't agree with. It's such a trifling amount spent on abortion vs war. You all should be railing against those expenditures."

Your logic is flawed (and you must have missed the part where I said to keep abortion legal). The common defense is a specific constitutionally-sanctioned expenditure, and one that actually benefits the whole of society (even pacifists) by protecting them from physical attack. It's like funding for the police. If I was an anarchist who didn't believe there should be a law enforcement arm of government, the fact remains that the existence of police protects me and my family from harm, whether I like it or not. Abortion does not meet that criteria.

Although I have read the Bible front to back I must have missed where Jesus comments about abortion. If someone can direct me to those specific passages I would appreciate the information.

Question Authority -- excellent point!

Irish7888 -- great post. That makes it painfully obvious that these so-called, self-proclaimed "Christian" protesters, were acting completely un-Christlike. They should be ashamed of themselves. Regrettably, I would guess that shame is not an emotion they recognize.

Mr. Reynolds doesn't get the point of the 1st amendment's "Establishment Clause." He seems to feel that it is appropriate for Christians with his particular views on abortion rights to force their religious views on others. Nothing could be less in line and in consonance with the American Constitution and way of life. Under the current law, peopel can choose to have an abortion in the first trimester- however, that does not make those who support such rights "advocates of abortion, as Mr. Reynolds would have us believe. It simply makes abortion in early pregnancy available legally to those who would choose that option.

I quote Mr. Reynolds:

"President Obama's views on abortion are wrong, and morally wicked, but listening to an argument on them is not."

Mr. Obama's views are wrong and morally wicked to YOU- according to YOUR religious views, but we do not yet have a theocratic government such as Iran or the Taliban, so you cannot legally force your religious views on me. This is still a constitutional democracy, and I will fight with my dying breath to keep Mr. Reynolds and anyone else from forcing their religion on me though government policy, in violation of the first amendment.

I suppose the reason that the protests against Obama's invitation by and large fell upon deaf is because the Catholic church is too rampant with hypocrisy in order to viewed as a moral authority. They insist we should protect the unborn, but for decades they turned a blind eye to the physical and sexual abuse of thousands of children. They insist that life is precious, but there's silence as millions across the world are slaughtered via wars / executions / and other acts of senseless violence.

Abortion is a politically charged issue that has it's supporters and enemies who will defend it at all costs. However, those who consider themselves pro-life have the tendency to brand anyone who disagrees with them as pro-Abortion; an outright lie that should be denounced everytime it's spoken.

It is funny (not "ha ha" funny, but weird funny that the focus on abortion is so often exclusively on the woman. She is supposed to be responsible. The impregnator? Rarely given a thought. Yet we seem to think we have some right, religious or otherwise, to tell her what to do. Women have been handling this sort of situation, when it is left entirely to them by the departure of her mate, for a very long time, not always safely for themselves. And we have been hearing all this high-sounding morality from whom? In an embarrassing number of instances, from priests who used their power to impose their sexual will on others. Ummmmm--hipocrisy?

Roe v Wade was about privacy rights being protected more specifically for when a woman is seeking abortion. That was enough for the flood gates to open. It has since then been used as a catapult in offering pregnancy termination as birth control and a quick fix solution. It has become a solution for a "me-first" world that demands immediate gratification.

I am a Catholic who was taught "to think of others, always" and I feel quite strongly that abortion, like marriage, should be "off the political table"; it is not the business of any governing authority, the neighbor next door, or the busy-bodies down the street. It has no place being part of a political platform or podium fodder for any one. As Catholics we are taught to not bring scandal to ourselves or the faith, but neither are we to bring or cause scandal for others. Allowing it to be bandied about like a football, does precisely what we are taught against.

In terms of the President being honored by the University of Notre Dame; good for them! But, as I am sure the leadership at ND realizes, it was playing both sides against the middle.

My uncle was at Notre Dame for forty years. He was the Religious Superior at Notre Dame; taught theology and religion at Notre Dame; he was rector at Moreau Seminary; and championed the creation/building of Holy Cross House for retired clergy at the University of Notre Dame. He was no stranger to controversy in his tenure which included the pre and post Vatican II years. He would have welcomed the President. But he would have been firm and direct with him and the public as well that while the honoraium was occuring it was in no means a commending of his prochoice and stem cell research views (ND did that, but after the fact). The honoraium and inviation however were meant to be an accolade to the accomplishments and successes of the first American president of African-American ancestry. ND should have then used this forum as an opportunity to critically address those very issues with him and the rock and hard place position that American Catholics may find themselves in, in supporting him.

It could have been so much more, for Notre Dame, for the President, for American Catholics ... instead it too, just became fodder and scandal.

Wallenstein, that's a fair point. But it is off the point. The church even forbids RU486, a drug that practically eradicates the moral dimension of "abortion," at least when taken before one can even know whether they are pregnant. (This assumes that, like me, you are willing to disregard the church's teaching on artificial contraception.

I'm not sure what commencement address John Mark Reynolds was watching, but I just returned home from Notre Dame's graduation and was appalled to read this. Not only is it ridiculously narrow-minded to assert that Notre Dame should not honor a man who has done so much on so many social justice fronts simply because he doesn't agree with the Church's teaching on abortion or stem-cell research (and let me remind Mr. Reynolds that these are just the tip of the pro-life iceberg), the article is wholly inaccurate.

First, when protesters interrupted President Obama's address (and yes, they did interrupt his speech, NOT his honorary degree reception), the student body rose and chanted "We are ND" and NOT "Yes we can." If Mr. Reynold had any familiarity at all with the university, he would have recognized that. It can be heard on every televised Notre Dame athletics event. The students were expressing both their solidarity and their support for Notre Dame president Jenkins, who has been under constant fire since the announcement.
Secondly, both Jenkins and Obama most certainly did confront the controversy head-on. Jenkins, speaking first, clearly stated the Church's position on both abortion and stem-cell research. He pointed out that Obama's position is in direct opposition. He also made clear the reasons for the honorary degree: the initiation of dialogue with certain nations, arms reduction talks, opposition to torture, and real help for women who don't want to choose abortion. President Obama also tackled the controversy, saying specifically that he was concerned about women's rights, and that although he said he recognizes others' views of stem-cell research, he sympathizes with, for instance "parents who have a child with juvenile diabetes" and hope such research will provide a cure and a better life.
Mr. Reynolds is also dead wrong when he asserts that intention has nothing to do with right and wrong. In fact, it is the definition of sin to knowingly and willfully commit evil; so intention is everything.
Believe me, there was nothing civil about the protesting in South Bend over the last several weeks. With the exception of the few hours that Obama was present, a plane constantly flew overhead with a bold anti-abortion slogan and graphic picture of an aborted fetus. This was especially offensive considering I was attending with my small children in tow. At the main entrance to campus, about a hundred protesters stood with similar signs, and at one point a man made it on to campus pushing a stroller containing a bloodied doll. Not really family fare! So yes, I believe that our rights were infringed upon, our right to enjoy a weekend that my brother--as he graduated ND Law--worked seven years to earn.

I wish those representing so-called 'traditional' Catholics, a euphemisim for 'one issue' Catholics if I ever heard one would quit throwing around language like 'Pro-Abortion' in reference to Mr. Obama or anyone else. It is an old speech trick to label your opponent with your choice of names and it is disengenuous at best, flat-out lying at worst. I can hear the same from Rush Limbaugh.

The revolting thing about this is that a non-event like the 'protest' at ND was portrayed as a major story by the media, overshadowing Obama's appearance. During the Bush years the media ignored protests involving thousands, protesters were kept in 'protest zones' far from the president's appearance, and people were arrested and ejected just for wearing a T-shirt with an anti-bush message.

Like the tons of coverage of the recent poorly attended 'teabag' protests, the media gives out of proportion attention to right wing orchestrated protests, but ignores real grassroots dissent every time.

The bishops, priests and ministers declare themselves to be the moral and spiritual leaders of the land. They declare abortion to be a moral and spiritual failure and then point their fingers at the politicians and accuse them of this failure. It seems to me that if the bishops et al. are the moral and spiritual leaders, then abortion is a failure of their moral and spiritual leadership - not the politicians.
If they have the courage of their stated convictions, they could start with a little soul searching and perhaps take a long hard look in the mirror. They might see the root of the problem and perhaps even the beginning of a solution.

A significant fact that no one has mentioned. Catholics break down similarly to the rest of society between pro-life and pro-choice. What might be stirring the anger of the demonstrators is that half of U.S. Catholics don't hold the view that the other half contends a Catholic must hold. The Church cannot even get its members to agree with the church's political view regarding abortion (i.e., that you can't vote for a pro-choice candidate, as opposed to believing that abortion is wrong). Hence, there is simply no way the church will be able to achieve the feat of having its view become law. The Pope is not dumb. In fact, he's exceedingly intelligent. That's why he recognizes that he must have (and he does have) a "live and let live" attitude with President Obama, even if they disagree. The protesters and their ilk don't have the Pope's prescience or patience. They're like screaming babies who are going to do everything under the sun to make people give them their way.

In almost all countries where abortion-on-demand is a settled matter of public policy, Obama's views on third-trimester abortions would be considered barbaric. And that's all you really need to know. His views are bizarre and cruel compared to those of the vast majority of reasonable, intelligent people in other idustrialized democracies. And for the life of me, I cannot understand why.

After 6 months of pregnancy, any rational person would say that a woman has foregone her right to abort.

"In Jefferson's brilliant Statute on Religious Freedom, he stated "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." This applies to federally-subsidized Planned Parenthood counseling young girls to have abortions as much as it does to school teachers using their classrooms to proselytize."

Well then I guess all of us are suffering from a little sin and tyranny. There's plenty my taxes to go that I don't agree with. It's such a trifling amount spent on abortion vs war. You all should be railing against those expenditures, instead you're caught up making sure everyone brings children to term despite that maybe a century ago, many modern would-be mothers would've actually been would-be corpses.
...But, I guess modern medicine ISN'T playing god just this once?

I watched and listened to President Obama's speech at Notre Dame. You couldn't understand what the person or people who said something a couple of times during the talk. Nothing. You just heard the students shouting "N. D." for their university name to show respect and support for the President. Most of the students were shouting that I saw in support. This author is using a little blurb to mark big controversy in the room. There was not any. Furthermore, after the event, the news made it known that the people (four) who were not students, were removed from the building.

I thought the speech was very effective. To dedicate oneself to service and even when people had different ideas and belief systems, engage them. Engage them with respect and care- the Golden Rule- because everyone at the table is worthy of respect and are often moral and ethical people with a different viewpoint. Even when viewpoints are polar, their are places to look for to get things accomplished together. Making abortion rare is shared by all. Making it illegal is one side and making it legal is the other. We can work together to make it rare by supporting programs for pregant women AND by making birth control ubiquitous, uber-cheap and integrated with effective and cheap family planning education. Denmark has made this work. Abortion is rare.

John Mark, you are not representative of the Catholic or broader Christian Church that I know.

You are the basest huckster and silly boy. You missed everything Obama had to say. You do not deserve to be an American and you certainly are not recognizable for your Christianity.

The WP should be ashamed of giving this space to your words. Unfortunately you never had the tutelage of the great Catholic bishops Obama quoted in his speech. In fact, are you sure you are not a Scientologist?

To: soprano116

You don't know what you're talking about. The US can't fund abortions in countries where abortion is illegal. We have not interest in funding abortions in countries that is legal. He overturned the global gag rule because what it did was deny funding to organizing that perform in the US, even though the aid work they do overseas have nothing to do with abortion. Just because Planned Parenthood in the US offers abortions, International Planned Parenthood can't offer abortion in countries where it is illegal.

I don't believe that anyone is pro-abortion, nor is anyone in favor of unrestricted abortion. I am pro-choice and I strongly believe that abortion is the wrong way to deal with birth control, which the Catholic Church is just as dogmatic about.

Taking away a woman's control over her body is the wrong way to approach this problem. Education about birth control and other options to getting pregnant in the first place is the right way, as are services that help a woman decide to have a child by providing support after the child is born.

The Catholic Church's black and white view of the world will only continue to marginalize it in a fast-changing modern-thinking world.

EdithF1 wrote at 15:36:

>You might as well say "If you
>don't like murder, don't commit
>murder"

This is absurd on the face of it.

Only PERSONS can be murdered. A human becomes a person when it emerges alive from the womb, and not a second earlier.

Persons deserve every legal and other protection we can give them.

Partially formed, pre-conscious conglomerations of cells that are still part of the host's body do not.

In reponse to mike1228:

"It all seems so simple. The rules of the Catholic Church should apply to Catholics. The rules of the Catholic Church needn't apply to non-Catholics. The moral teaching of one religion forced on another denies religious freedom to the other. I find nowhere in our Constitution that allows one religion preference."

You miss the point entirely and over-simplify the issue at hand. Most pro-life Catholics and non-Catholics I know are not as angry that abortion is legal as they are that their tax dollars are legally allowed to SUBSIDIZE something that they and over half of Americans (according to a recent Gallup poll) consider to be murder, both domestically and now - thanks to Obama's executive order overturning a decade of sensible abortion policy initially embraced by Clinton - overseas.

In Jefferson's brilliant Statute on Religious Freedom, he stated "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." This applies to federally-subsidized Planned Parenthood counseling young girls to have abortions as much as it does to school teachers using their classrooms to proselytize. The government has no business promoting such activity on the public dime. Keep it legal, but don't actively promote it with my money.

If ND had rules excluding pro-choice students and professors, it might make sense to exclude pro-choice commencement speakers.

No one seems to have mentioned that belief in full personhood from the moment of conception is a religious belief. There's no way to prove or disprove that. Most people who say "life begins at conception" believe a soul inhabits the body beginning at conception, but again, there's no way to prove it. The scheme proposed by the court in Roe v. Wade made a practical choice, moving the point back somewhat from the traditional point, childbirth. That's a more reasonable legal determination, in my opinion and evidently the opinion of most Americans, than the "life begins at conception" view. Obama was right to essentially call for people with various beliefs on this to co-exist civilly.

I always thought that if the fetus was fully human, it should be named and given a "conception certificate," and that women should be monitored so that proper funerals could be given to fetuses lost naturally or through accidents. I've never heard pro-life advocates advocate that.

SPEECH TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT OBAMA– BUT TELLS US MUCH ABOUT NOTRE DAME

Obama has never hid his rabid Pro Abortion position from Day 1 of his campaign. Say what you will about him, this position was well known, documented in both books. The speech tell us Nothing about Obama.

The speech does, however, regrettably tell us much about Notre Dame.

We are all Disappointed with Notre Dame.....

Notre Dame is BETTER than this.

"The most powerful abortion advocate in the world"!?!?!?!?
To put it bluntly, Mr. Reynolds is lying for his cause.
$500 to some worthy Christian cause if Mr. Reynolds can point out where President Obama has advocated abortion, It's a calumny and a deliberate one. It turns the rest of his argument to mush that he resorts to such a statement.
It is this type of mean-spirited unchristian dialog that the President rightly warned us against.
ND Law Class of 1972 and never been prouder

http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-05-17.3113921258

What a sad, angry, and out of control man. I watched and listened to this speech by President Obama, and I couldn't disagree with this man more. I hope his blind self-righteousnous will age and he will find the words of Jesus and the Golden Rule. His words are disrespectful and worse, they are filled with wrong assumptions filled with hatred. This by a minister. It is clear that man hasn't changed over millenium. You give a person the temptation to be self-righteous and a certain percentage go that way.

Our President is not Catholic and certainly isn't religious in the way this man talks about a religion of rules made by man. Clearly, our President is very moral and ethical. He is religious but a different religion. He, like many of us, love the ideas of what our country is founded on and the very laws of civil rights and checks and balances in our Constitution. We love the idea of our democracy and our founding father people myths. Our new President is a man of those ideas and educated in constitutional law and history. This author is not and he, like his Church, is not part of a democracy, but a theocracy. The catholic church is it's own separate country without allegience to the USA or any other country. That our President bothers people like this author is because the President gave a great speech and communicated powerful words- powerful ideas- that do move people. The speech was the best graduation speech I ever heard. I am not alone. Watch the speech if you can make the time.

"The President spoke as if the controversy centered on his appearance at Notre Dame and speech when in reality it centered on his being honored despite his views"

A distinction without a difference.

Followed by outright misrepresentations of Obama's views.

Obama did not address the core issues of the opposing views on abortion because it would be rude and inappropriate. He was asked to give a commencement speech, not to argue the abortion issue.

The author is also rude to tag the presidents comments with the quote-marked "bravely" in order to ridicule the president's speech. I don't recall the president or anyone else claiming his appearance or speech was brave.

Obama did not defend abortion - he challenged you to work with him to reduce its practice. Instead, you focus on attacking Obama, belieing your true motives. Abortion is just the vehicle you use to for your attack. You don't care if a few more fetuses are aborted while you proclaim your high moral righteousness over others.

George W. Bush must return his honorary degree! He's pro-death penalty! He even executed a mentally retarded man! Come on all you pro-lifers, let's go protest outside of Notre Dame for another month until the former President does the right thing and apologizes to all Catholics for his morally wicked beliefs!

.....

Now does that sound silly when it's applied to one of your own?

If you're going to claim the moral high ground on Obama, you better be prepared to do so for all those honored guest who differ from Church doctrine.

There is NOTHING NEW about these positions for the pro-choice, feminist community. It's what we have called for as long as I have been doing this work.
Rev. Debra W. Haffner
http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com

Where were those who so vigoroulsy opposed President Obama speaking at the Notre Dame Commencemnet because they claim to support right to life when George Bush who signed more death warrants than any other governor in history spoke at Notre Dame ?

Their inconsistant position begs the question was their opposition to Obama a matter of religiion or a matter of politics ?

Oh, lord, I can't believe I'm going to wade into this directly. Let me start by saying that I believe abortion is an abomination - but I do not believe crimilizing abortion is the answer. If my roof is leaking, I fix the damn roof, I don't make it illegal to go into the kitchen. I believe that abortion has to be legal and safe because life is much more complicated than people on either side of this debate seem willing to admit. If the goal is fewer abortions, crimilizing abortion DOESN'T WORK.

That said, I have to take issue with those saying "If you don't like abortion, don't have one." This is ludicrous, and I have to believe these posters realize how overly simplistic they are being. Pro-lifers view human fetuses as human beings. You might as well say "If you don't like murder, don't commit murder" - as if it is infringing on your 1st amendment rights when the state passes laws criminalizing murder. The state makes moral judgments ALL THE TIME. Our entire criminal and civil code are based on shared concepts of right and wrong. The reason the abortion debate is so difficult is because there is not a shared belief on the humanity of a fetus. This may, in fact, be an area of irreconcilable difference, but that doesn't mean progress can't be made by reasonable people. Oversimplifying either position is counterproductive. It amazes and saddens me that people cannot at least agree not to demonize one another as they discuss this.

cmstraub37 wrote at 15:28:

>Notre Dame did not only the
>Roman Catholics a disservice
>but they did for all the pro
>life advocates.

Nonsense. EVERYONE is "pro-life." NO ONE is "pro-death."

Some people, however, are anti-choice, and it is those who feel offended that other people's moral choices may also be respected. Tough for them.

And kudos to Notre Dame for giving the back of its hand to those types.

When Republicans held all three branches of the government and ran on the banner of being the only ones that are really pro-life I always looked for the "next step". On the campaign trail they loudly proclaimed the position that this was a principle of such a high priority that if one did not vote for them they would never have another chance to change Roe vs. Wade. Still the "next step" never came. I paid attention and looked for any sign that they would take the next step. The next step - for such a highly important PRINCIPLE - you would think would be to put forth an amendment to any of the vast spending bills the Republicans forced through that would show their courage for such a principle - overturn Roe vs Wade.

No, that would take too much courage. The PRINCIPLE may fail. IT would surely go to the Supreme Court and they did not have the votes as yet to go over the top. Without the votes, the principle is not so necessary. Integrity and character falls short. I looked for that "next step". PRINCIPLE should not wait for the votes.

After all we are only talking about children. We acted very agressively and spent almost a trillion - yes a trillion dollars - for the banks and the wealthy (without any oversight) and didn't blink an eye when the economy was in trouble. A trillion dollars could go a long way to programs offering alternatives to abortion, but still I kept waiting. Then reality came back to mind - they like the message to get the votes to keep them in office but not to challenge such a risky "vote" that may send them home.

So much for Republican PRINCIPLE.

I believe - how do you like them words on an issue that pretends its base is centered in faith??? - I belive that this country is depending on a law to change behavoir and hearts. The law won't do it.

And conservatives - thinking of their wallet first and the WORK, yes WORK needed to really change minds and hearts - do not want to pay the price. IT IS TOO HARD FOR THEM. Remember, PRINCIPLES are best put up the flag pole and waved around and trumpeted as the highest good as long as it doesn't hurt.

John P. Conrad

To John "Plank Eye" Reynolds:

These people (bishops, priest, political activists) ought to refer to scripture if they are so concerned about the university, specifically:

He who is without sin among you, cast the first stone. (John 8:7)

- and -

How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you don't see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! (Luke 6:42)

The Church that "runs" Notre Dame should have a say; the people that "work" for Notre Dame should have a say; maybe the graduating class should have a say as to who they would like to hear speak at thier commencement ceremony. Anyone else should just sit down and shut up...including the media.

Boo. This whole debate is a such a joke of partisanship. I am a Catholic, and a pro-lifer at that. I recognize that there is more to being "pro-life" than the single of issue of abortion. There's war, death penalty, economic policy, and on and on. There is not a single politician on the planet that is 100% in lock step with Catholic doctrine.

Was the President invited to Notre Dame to defend his views on abortion? No, this is an meme put forth by those who use fear and disinformation to further their political agenda.

I am a pro-life Christian who believes that all human life, regardless of race, creed, or socio-economic status is to be treasured and defended. I suspect that I am more in accord with Obama than the vast majority of "fundamentalists" who march and opine about the death of the unborn but don't blink an eye at capital punishment, wars fought to advance America's economic agenda, refusing to aid the sick, the elderly, and the poor. From my perspective, Obama's position and message on all of those issues, including protecting families and unborn children, is far more firmly rooted in Scripture that those who criticize him.

Perhaps the most outspoken of Obama's critics should spend a little more time reading Matthew 25 than in posturing and publicly "praying" for the unborn and railing against "baby killers" and making use of inflammatory rhetoric like "culture war" and "the war on Christmas". Perhaps they should be more concerned about the destruction of the very creation of which God made us stewards.

I struggle with my faith every day and find it next to impossible to reconcile the positions taken by the religious right with the teaching of Jesus Christ and His Gospel. Those on the right who claim Christ don't make this struggle any easier.

Notre Dame did the Catholic Church and Pro Lifers a disservice. The Catholic Church is there for Religious Doctrine not politics. The Catholic Church I was raised with is long gone and now they have Secular Progressives. Sad commentary.

You missed the point, Mr. Reynolds. The debate about abortion won't change until the anti-choice side starts telling the truth. No federal tax dollars are used to pay for abortion. Try learning about the Hyde Amendment. In states where Medicaid covers the cost of the abortion, it's paid for by the state, not the federal gov't.

BISHOPT2, as coincidence would have it, I read your post. I graduated from Marquette in 1977. I do not agree with your emotionally charged rhetoric.

Here's a link to the Vatican's newpaper and what it had to say about Obama at Notre Dame. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=16034
In light of this, the "holier than the Pope" Catholics should perhaps be a bit embarrassed at the venomous nature of their words and actions.

The thing that antiabortion zealots fail to understand is that, because we live in a pluralistic democracy that gives rights to all, those rights are defined by the constitution and how the Supreme Court interprets it. You mentioned slavery. Yes, it was wrong, and, eventually, the constitution was amended to so reflect. Because the constitution is paramount, no church teaching, regardless of whose church, is entitled to have the status of being the law applicable to all, believer and nonbeliever alike. That is a sacrifice we make in order to have a government of laws, and I dare say that without the constitution and our third-branch independent Supreme Court, this country would long ago have ceased being free. The fact that someone else has an abortion doesn not implicate wrongdoing on your part. You are not required to get a law passed, imbued with religious beliefs, to stop that abortion and make people agree with you. You certainly can, and should, try to educate and persuade that person and anyone else to your viewpoint. But it must stop there. You will always be able to have religious beliefs; however, without the rule of law of the constitution, you will not always have freedom. By its nature, the constitution is a compromise. That means no groups wins 100% of what they want. People who are "misbehaving" over this are not "doing what Jesus would do." They are despising their enemies, not loving them as they love themselves.

One needn't be an evangelical Christian to oppose the violence against children in the womb. Sex selective abortion and infanticide are cited as violence against women in international compacts: the child is dead, whether or not her parents had a "right" to kill her.

The bottom line here is that being polite about another person's wish to destroy an unborn child is not a middle ground. Liberals should know this better than anyone - would we tolerate a 'little' apartheid or 'fewer' executions or 'preventing unwanted PR debacles' in the place of pollution prevention?

We have finally two generations of young adults who have heard their mothers and fathers defend their "right to choose" to destroy their siblings. They have got to wonder about their own luck in being planned and convenient.

I oppose capital punishment because it is final, fallible, and inhumane - it brutalizes those who support it as well as those who undergo it. I oppose abortion for the same reason - we shouldn't kill other humans as a way of solving problems.

Obama knows this, and he has a moral responsibility to talk about more than just the "punishment" of an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

If being wanted becomes a test of who deserves life, we are all in danger.

Notre Dame did not only the Roman Catholics a disservice but they did for all the pro life advocates. The Catholic Church is in the business of Religious Doctrine not Politics. At least that is the Catholic Church I was raised in was. So sorry but they sold the Catholics and te pro lifers out.

Cthulhu3 wrote at 14:14:

>You can abort a child at the
>drop of a hat in this society;

That's a foul lie. No "child" is ever aborted. What is aborted is a zygote, embryo or fetus -- none of which qualifies as a "child."

These are pre-conscious blobs of protoplasm and are not deserving of protection except in the eyes of those who subscribe to the delusion that such a partially formed conglomeration of cells has been magically imbued with a "soul" and an identity by some supernatural entity.

Everyone is free to believe such nonsense, but that does not trump other people's right to believe otherwise.

>you who are pro-choice are still
>so very angry? It can only reveal
>some deep disturbance in your
>consciences.

No. It reveals outrage that self-appoointed moral arbiters still insist on imposing their particular religious delusions on the rest of us.

Stop doing trying change the law to remove people's free choice in the matter of abortion, let people follow their own consciences without being harangued by fanatics, and watch anger melt away. . . .

"In addition: unless you do not know that pregnancy can result from sex, choosing to have sex is asking to be made a parent No person has the right to complain if they are given what they ask for."

Furthermore, that kind of idea can only apply in (also conservative Christian) contexts where only unprotected heterosexual penis-vagina sex for purposes of potential procreation even *is* 'acceptable sex' ...which is also where the 'pro-life' position wants to go.

It's not actually about babies. Or mothers. It's about *control,* ...where the social policies to make abortion 'safe, legal, and rare' through providing other real choices in fact resulted in fewer abortions, insisting upon ignorance, adversarial and punitive treatment of unwed mothers, and 'abstinence only' education coupled with allowing any given part-time pharmacist to deny emergency contraception whenever they feel like it....

Increased abortions and unwanted pregnancies.

It's not about 'babies.' It's about control.

Mr. Reynolds and some others. The point of the speech and the exercise, and the day was the graduation of 2900 young people. As a great American President once said, "It isn't about me. It has never been about me."
Barak H Obama

Don't you hard-core Evangelicals have better things to do? Like search for the image of the Virgin Mary in a plate of scrambled eggs?

It seems that with the Holy Father in the middle east reaching out to Muslims and Jews, the American Catholic bishops could reach out to Pro Choice advocates and try to come up with solutions which would support alternatives to abortion, like adoption and/or providing support for mothers who choose to raise their children alone (day care, affordable housing, quality health care, etc.). As long as this issue is viewed as dichotomous, we will sadly have no reconciliation or progress. Young mothers and their children, born and unborn, are victims of both positions. Pro life advocates are not expending enough energy supporting expanded social, educational and health services for single mothers and unmarried pregnant women. Pro choice advocates are not expending enough energy educating young women about the gravity and implications of choices they are making or supporting services (social, educational, and health) which would give women a REAL choice.

Bishopt2 - I will gladly send you as many pictures of war-torn dead Iraqi/Pakistani/Afghani children as I can find so that your dead children and mine can face off. I'm sure that as you look at the entrails of a six year old killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time you revel in the righteousness of your fight against evil.

"In addition: unless you do not know that pregnancy can result from sex, choosing to have sex is asking to be made a parent No person has the right to complain if they are given what they ask for."

By that logic, you're in favor of aborting accidental pregnancies.

The Catholic Church is also against the Death Penalty and Unjust Wars that were started based on known lies. Were are these "Defenders of the Faith" when it came to Bush and his crimes against the values that the Church holds sacred? When Bush spoke at ND in 2001 where were these devout Catholics to protest a man that had signed more death warrents than any other Governor in the Country?! Where were these defenders of the faith when the previous administration consistently violated the 7 foundations of the Churches official writings and teachings of Social Justice: Human Dignity for ALL peoples, Global Solidarity, Option for the Poor, Economic Justice, Stewardship of Gods Creation, the Rights and Responsibilities to participate in building community. As longs as the conservative community focuses solely on One Issue only, and ignore everything else they lose credibility as Defenders of the Faith. Personally, as a Catholic who believes that ALL life is sacred and should be defended and protected where-ever possible, I will stand by this Administrations goals and beliefs as being morally superior to the previous Administrations!

An interesting article that also misses the point: this was a graduation speech, not a forum to address a highly divisive topic. Even if this was the forum, Obama's rhetorical skills would never provide pro-lifers with the ample justification for his beliefs that you assume they apparently wanted to hear (?). Though civil dialogue may not be the central question, it deserves to be reiterated in this divisive climate given it's apparent that a growing number of folks do not want to respect differing views.

The sad truth is that we often are no longer content with indefinately believing our opponents are "misled", but are evil, hence it easy to think that "words don't matter". You're right, they should not have honored him. Honor is then only meant as a tool to reinforce your own beliefs.
-83% of abortions occur in developing countries;
-47% of abortions occure in women who have had at least one before.
-14% of abortions are paid for by public STATE funds.

All this controversy because Pres. Obama respects a woman's right to choose. Thank goodness the man has the decency to stand up for women's rights.

That said:

The Catholic Church through its outdated theology and position against birth control does nothing to help the abortion issue. If the Church would wake up and realize that we are no longer living in the Dark Ages they would understand that birth control is not a sin.

Whether to have an abortion is a difficult decision, and I have never met any woman who has made that decision lightly or carelessly.

However, the Church and all too many so-called "righteous" people have made up their minds that no matter what there should be no abortions.

Never mind the cost to a raped young teenage girl or a woman whose life is endangered; never mind any of the myriad reasons that bring women to make such a decision.

The outdated, medieval mindset of the Catholic Church along with the Church's history of protecting their pedophile priests, not allowing priests to marry, not allowing the ordination of women, not allowing birth control, etc. -- are some of the reasons my husband and I left the Catholic Church.

The CC has ceased to be relevant, benevolent, or compassionate.

DL13 calls the Democratic party the "Baby-Killer" Party. DL13, where is your moral outrage when it comes to capital punishment? Are you God that you can decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die?

For you Bible Thumpers, Please read Matthew 7:5 "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

What is wrong with this guy and people like him? There cannot be a saner view than Obama's.More should be done to avoid pregnancies.How many catholic girls the author knows of who do not have sex?How many of them have only partner in their lifetime?is it okay with Catholic values to have more than one partner?Is it okay to let pedophile priests go scot free?
Is it okay to convert people from other faith luring them with money and other material bribery? Hypocrisy is written all over the piece.Jesus would turn in his grave to see his teachings being misinterpreted and exploted by guys like this.Obama did not profess to be what he is not.He is imploring for a decent dialogue and respect the other point of view.Let me tell you about this girl with cerebral palsy who is now an adult and the pain she goes through as she cannot live to be a normal person.She dies every day!The parents feel terribly guilty to have brought her into the world fully aware of the consequences.Whose choice is this? It is not a easy one word answer.If one has such an answer it is sheer arrogance.It is an individual and personal decision and there can be no artificial guidelines. Dogmas are what divide people without rationale.There are more pressing social issues and it is a shame that a personal and a private issue is being portrayed as a social issue, diverting all attention from other issues like poverty,greed,corruption and diseases.

Frankly, until these same 'protesters' disrupt other events with their cries of 'Stop the killing of innocent civilians, primarily women AND living children with the cowardly drones, Israeli bombs, American bombs", etc, etc., I don't put much credence to their hollow protestations. And until they come up with a foolproof way to care for all the maimed-for-profit, starving, abused, sold-into-sexual-slavery children who live lives of wretchedness, then I'm afraid their protestations are hollow and rather crass.

It all seems so simple. The rules of the Catholic Church should apply to Catholics. The rules of the Catholic Church needn't apply to non-Catholics.

The moral teaching of one religion forced on another denies religious freedom to the other. I find nowhere in our Constitution that allows one religion preference.

What might be a mortal sin to the Catholic Church may not be to others who may differ in their religious or non religious philosophy.

And finally, Notre Dame is an educational institution, an excellent one at that. Their pursuit of excellence and learning has never had restrictions to either faculty or students based upon personal and religious affiliation or preferences. Their reputation has been built on that. Let it be so today and forever.

A good commandment is "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."
If you oppose abortion, don't have one.
That government is best that governs least, and allows people freedom. Freedom to choose.
The Church does not believe in Freedom. It believes in control and persecution. It has not traveled far from the days of the Inquisition.
The Founding Fathers had good reason for separation of Church and State.

Choice is the point. With choice comes responsibility. With no choice, no responsibility? Why did the Creator invent us and give us choice? Why did the Church decide the Creator got that wrong? People who are passionate on this issue seem to me to always be deciding the issue for someone else. The President doesn't like abortion. But these flaming righteous Church members are really not the kind of people I want deciding anything for me.

Abortion, while terrible, is not against the law. Nor is it morally wicked and wrong. And surprise, surprise, the bible doesn't say it is either. This belief is just that, a belief (based mostly on fiction) If the Christian right (especially Catholics) would open their eyes to the fact that birth control is necessary in this over crowded world and moved into the 21st century, they might find out that the most effective prevention for STD's is a condom. If we used more options like this, there would be less need for abortion.

It's hard to believe that in this day and age anyone could be as short-sighted and narrow-minded as Mark Reynolds. I look forward to the day when the conservative extremists will drop the Lee Atwater act and start acting like civilized human beings.

Demonizing your opponent with a lot of hyperbole does not help either side. Until both sides are willing to have a civil discussion of policies we disagree with, it will be impossible to move forward. Calling people evil and baby-killers does not advance either agenda, it just riles up a lot of small-minded "ditto-heads" that can't think for themselves.

John Reynolds - next time you want to spew you hate speech, please do it elsewhere.

If you believe abortion is wrong, that's fine.

Don't have one.

But the laws of this country should allow good people such as yourself and myself to live our lives without religious-inspired encumbrances, such as abortion restrictions based entirely on the specious and unprovable assumption that fetuses contain souls.

Well, guess what? Some of us don't believe in souls. Or god, for that matter.

We don't really have a problem smushing blastulas or early embryonic matter.

We are willing to talk about what we have in common, as Obama has urged, but make no mistake. Your efforts at forcing us to live like you do will now and forever be met with fierce resistance from the non-religious and tolerant.

Readers and Mr. Reynolds - I can't help but to sit back and wonder what would happen if this much debate and activism (by catholics and non-catholics, alike) took place about the 'second biggest' issue facing the church today - sex abuse by priests.

Pro-Lifers are so concerned about the health and welfare of the unborn...what about re-directing your passion for life to protect the living?!

How interesting would the conversation be between pro-lifers and pro-choicers if pro-lifers could demonstrate their moral and faith-consistency by not tolerating abuse of any person...born or un-born.

What I don't understand is why the Democrats don't support the rights of unborn children to live. They are claiming to be for the people, yet, if you look at their track record one might surmise that they have now become the Baby-Killer Party instead. What happened to all of their high ideals?

To responds to JREA's "sick child" analogy...

In order to make the analogy work, we must first explain that the person "hooked up" to the child *caused* the child's illness.

When people consensually have sex, and a pregnancy results, both sexual partners are responsible for creating something that is unable to survive on it's own. Therefore, they become responsible for the eventual death of that thing, whether it is a week after conception or 80 years after birth. They become responsible for any suffering that will ever be endured by that thing. "But for" the sex, this thing would never suffer death or pain.

IF that thing is, in fact, a person (and I make no argument here), then yes, it is perfectly just and fair to force any person responsible to actually be responsible for supporting that person's life - even unto the death itself of the parent.

A more apt analogy would be: if I shoot a child and greviously wound it, so that it cannot survive except through my help, should I be responsible for doing whatever it takes to keep that child alive, and then for any future repercussions of my shooting?

In addition: unless you do not know that pregnancy can result from sex, choosing to have sex is asking to be made a parent No person has the right to complain if they are given what they ask for.

Argue that fetuses are not people. Heck, argue that killing babies is good for the economy. But arguing that people could not justly be held responsible for the result of a pregnancy is not a logically valid argument.

In May 2001, Notre Dame extended the same honor to President Bush despite the fact he oversaw many executions during his term as governor of Texas. Catholics believe in the sanctity of all human life, yet the church turned a blind eye to Bush's acts. Why? It couldn't be politics, could it? We need reasoned debate about all of these issues, but we cannot do that if the Catholic Church along with other religions insist on a purely political debate on a highly-charge moral issue.

Catholics have there own religious sensibilities, which they take on faith. That is their right; but what right do they have to impose their faith on others, by writing criminal law in accordance with their own religious-based take on things? They need to reflect on this, and to learn humility.

Amazing, sick, narrow diatribe from an obvious, hate-filled, superstitious fanatic. Aborting a fetus -- a mass of throbbing tissue with much less complex biochemistry than a single eye in a common house fly -- equates to "killing a baby"?

Yet you are, and have been throughout your history, completely happy to provide a myriad of painful deaths to *real* human beings for such things as being witches, being heretics (non-believers), and being Muslim (or any other non-catholic faith for that matter).

Remember -- God's supposed mouthpiece on earth turned a blind eye to a proud, devoted Lutheran-Catholic named Adolf Hitler in his insanely evil quest against the Jews -- all as vengeance for "killing Christ" -- and even joined forces!

You should also thank God you enjoy the protection of our government to allow you to continue your horrific, evil-minded brainwashing and officially condoned pedophilia.

Personally I think you should be honored and grateful to have our president set foot in your university, and I think you should pay for his accommodation and travel expenses, rather than it be on the taxpayers bill. I thank GOD we have this man as president to keep people like you in check.

.

Your all missing the point. If we illegalize abortion it would take an already screwed up country and make it 100 times worse. As it stands there are lots of babies being born to unfit parents. If we were to eleminate abortion that number would sky rocket and then who is going to pay for these kids that their parents can't afford? Oh thats right we the tax payer would be paying the tab and guess what you poeple who complain about the govenment using your tax dollars to kill fetuses(not babies). It's gonna cost a whole lot more to raise a bunch of children for 18 years when we can't even afford to pay for social security so you tell me where is this magic money going to come from?

It's not enough for Christians to state their distaste in abortion or homosexuality and avoid it. They need to have everyone do as they do: Hide in airport bathrooms cruising for no strings flings, pay drug addicted male escorts for trysts or join the clergy and have a feast.

I'm sorry, but the anti-choice side is no more "pro-life" or otherwise moral than their opponents. Insisting that a 9-year-old girl die rather than end a pregnancy forced on her by rape is neither pro-life nor moral. Requiring a woman to risk death by sepsis by carrying a dead fetus to term is neither pro-life nor moral. Forcing a brief and doomed life of acute suffering on infants, suffering that you will not share, is neither pro-life nor moral.

Extreme positions? Unrepresentative? Fine. Denounce them. Cleanse your ranks of them. For now, they are defining your position.

bishopt2, that's a whole lot of anger and venom and hate for people you don't even know. Work that out on your own will you? You do yourself a diservice with your post. Was that your intention? You are the problem, not a part of the solution. Good for you.

To support the claim that human life begins at conception those demanding that need to also demand that when pregnancy is determined a Certificate of Conception be issued and if a live, healthy person is not born in a normal time frame an investigation be initiated to find out where that person is or why they are not healthy. Results would be handled the same as if that person had already been born. The fertilized egg can't be considered a human being for some purposes and not for others. Short of that demand it seems such claims are but lip service without also demanding the responsibilities that go with that view. How many are willing to put their child bearing loved ones in that position of responsibility?

Cthulu:

"Wow, Paganplace,

"It's a are day when your posted speech proves my very point."

Since your only point seems to have been to *generalize* that any criticism of a Protestant telling Catholics which politically-motivated bishops and hysterical accusations of 'baby-killing' to follow... somehow constitutes Catholic bashing, well, your point is made, I'm just saying it's not true.

"" Let's start with this generalization: "Conservative Catholics are far more likely than many others to exercise power motivated by their bigotry than certain others they feel 'entitled' to call 'morally wicked' or 'objectively disordered,' or otherwise demonize, scapegoat, defame, or oppress in our own country."

"Boy, I can't remember an instance when the Federal government mandated any Catholic doctrine be followed by every American or jailed anyone who did not practice Catholicism."

Actually, the Federal government still enforces purely-religious edicts about homosexuals, in the military, marriage, the courts, the schools, displays on public property, and many other places. Catholics are not of course the only offenders in this regard, but they are still there. People lose their jobs for *not* condemning Harry Potter books as somehow a Wiccan glorification of 'witchcraft,' ...that not being true, either.

You, of course, don't see how the government is used by plenty of conservative Catholics and others to perpetrate real injustices, ...cause you're the 'privileged' ones.

You squall about being 'bashed' when your demands to have your way over all others are even *questioned,* but, frankly, I went to your *schools.*

Bashing ain't a metaphor to me.

MB56 said:
" The culture wars will end when Christians back off and practice their faith ONLY in their homes and churches. Will that ever happen? I doubt it."

It's the "nature of the beast", i.e. those less evolved.
.

(continued above:)

"And before you jump, abortion is a matter of social justice in Catholicism."

Based on your religious idea that a human soul is *created* at conception and has only one chance at human life, after which it'll be 'judged' on whether or not it becomes a Christian.

In my religion, motherhood and pregnancy are certainly sacred things, but not in the same way. And not in ways which mandate the same 'legal' controls.

" It is not religious doctrine or revelation purely as any human being with right reason can discover that murdering the innocent is wrong. Not God, not Church needs to reveal that. It's a moral axiom of reason."

Reason means you must examine and question your 'givens,' not seek to demand them by 'authority.' American law is based on the rights *of* the individual to reason and seek their own religious truths:

What you call 'reason' in this matter is *not.* A blastula or the idea of 'conception' as the sexual act that later becomes a viable pregnancy are not *reasonable,* never mind a basis for a definition of 'murder.'

""So, not only have you adopted the bigot's first rule--overgeneralize, ignore particulars, and paint with a broad brush--but then you deliver this little zinger: "You call it 'Catholic-bashing' when we don't *kneel* as a Protestant tells you a true Catholic should want us to.""

As a certain nun would say, 'If the shoe fits....'

"Huh, I guess you have to use mockery, too, and refer to Catholic customs such as genuflecting."

Err, no, that's not what I was referring to, I was referring to your expectation I kneel in political submission to church authorities.

"Paganplace, your anti-Catholic bigotry is too obvious. I almost hope you keep on posting so it will be easier to pick it up and show it in each sentence that you write."

Posted by: Cthulhu3

Well, keep trying. 'Showing' things that aren't in fact there, like accusations of 'murder' seem to be a necessary job skill in the GOP.

"The culture wars will end when Christians back off and practice their faith ONLY in their homes and churches. Will that ever happen? I doubt it."

As non-theistic as I may be, I disagree.
I'm comfortable with them praying in schools, workplaces - They can have mass on the sidewalk for all I care. As long as they don't change rules so that I have to follow their practices. It should be hands-off for all. You can pray and give birth all you want, but please leave the pro-choice and homosexuals alone, love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek. Stop being a walking contradiction, it turns people off to the word of God you're intending to spread. Especially when you assert your enemy is not a child of God.

One initial comment - as best as I could understand, the student body did not chant "Yes We Can!" - instead they asserted their own right to hear the President speak by chanting (complete with claps): "We Are .. ND!"

I am a pro-life Catholic Notre Dame graduate who is proud of my alma mater for honoring our President with an honorary degree. Catholic social teaching extends FAR beyond the abortion debate, and no President this country has ever elected upheld all of the principles the Catholic Church teaches; however, President Obama's commitment to social justice, peace, and the dignity of all human life (including that of our enemies) mark him as much closer to those ideals than any other President in recent history.

In response to RichardKefalos,

Sir, in the spirit of respectful discourse, I hope you will rethink your sterotypical categorization of Catholics. A majority of them voted for Obama in 2008 and while some priests have given the church a bad name, many others have given their lives to the service of God and mankind. To categorize people in this manner is neither accurate nor kind.

Mr. Reynolds - in your mind, what is "traditional Christianity"? When I read the early Fathers of the Christian faith, I see a Christianity aligned with those who speak out for the poor and for peace, and who sound much more in the spirit of Sojourners than Focus on the Family. For any of those early Fathers, our current president would be more deserving of such an honor than the previous resident of his office.

All religions espouse their way as the way to get to Heaven. Does this mean there is a wrong way, and it won't work?"
Billw3
------------
Well, actually, 'all religions' don't in fact do that. Though some may tell you differently.
--------------
Right, I mis-spoke with the word "all". Sorry. So then, perhaps the most extreme case is that of the Muslim faith. Seems to me they and a few others need to grow up.
.

I quite sure that the comments on this story are not examples of the "fair-minded" discussion that President Obama referred to in his address at Notre Dame

And many of those so quick to condemn Obama as "morally wicked" are the same ones who supported George Bush. Talk about morally wicked: implemented policies that clearly favored the rich at the expense of the poor, started an unnecessary war that has caused the death and insurmountable suffering of thousands (Iraqis and Americans), lied repeatedly to the American people, and is an avid supporter of the death penalty, etc. That's the problem I have when people start pointing fingers and making judgments about morality. There's a little too much hypocrisy for my taste.

One Christian wonders why non-Christians are so angry. Another claims "We did not start this culture war". Excuse me... but where have you Christians been the last 200 plus years?

It was Christians who put references to God on our money. It was Christians who put references to God in our Pledge of Allegiance and our courts. It is Christians who continue in their attempts to rewrite history and claim this nation was founded as a "Christian" nation. It is Christians who continue to attempt to undermine and insert God into our science classrooms.

Yet you aren't responsible for the resulting culture war and anger? The sad truth is that Christians have stark history of relentless and aggressive pushing of their beliefs on to everyone. The culture wars will end when Christians back off and practice their faith ONLY in their homes and churches. Will that ever happen? I doubt it.

I'm a Catholic. I'm against abortion. But I'm also an American, and I'm pro-choice. Because that's the way it is, in a free country.
If you really believe in God, then consider this: even if abortion did mean ending life on this earth for a fetus (and we truly cannot determine that as fact, never mind the beating heart), life for the soul cannot be extinguished.

fr betsymccrory:

>As one who lives in South Bend, Indiana, and has listened to the very vocal opponents of Obama's presence at the graduation (NOT the students or faculty but strident protesters from the outside), ...

Please accept my sincere sympathies in having to put up with the anti-choice and anti-President Obama nutballs who flooded South Bend last week.

The Catholics have issues, and I would suggest that throwing stones when sitting in a glass house, is not a good idea. Protesting that the president supports womans right to choose, which indeed IS a right confirmed by Roe vs Wade, is just ignorant. If I was Catholic, I would be more concerned about cleaning up the Catholic church from pedofiles, than about womans right to choose as being against principles of Catholic teachings. But I guess it's easier to ignore real issues and create politics from non-issues.

So should Notre Dame not welcome any speaker who believes in a woman's right to choose? Everyone who believes in a right to choose is off limits? Do they typically ask all speakers their beliefs before inviting them? To have the President of the United States speak at a commencement address is an honor. Let the narrowminded students miss their own graduation because of their lack of tolerance. I wonder if they will only be employed by those share their beliefs. This is just another example of why I quit the Catholic Church. Amen.

I was sorry to miss Obama's speech but I was singing in choir at Mass. As a practicing Catholic, I can honestly say tht I am proud to have Obama as my president and proud of Notre Dame for sticking to its guns on this issue. I am well and truly tired of Republican bishops and the Catholic League pretending to speak for American Catholics. No one is Catholic enough for them among the Dems and no Catholic Republican can violate Church teaching without gaining their approval and silence. It was and is a political partisan divide and has a lot less to do with preserving the integrity of our faith. I predict that the Vatican and American Catholics in general will continue to warm up to and support this genuinely good man.

In reality, Mr. Reynolds, it is you that has completely and utterly missed the point. You have mistaken what you would wish the point to be -- with what the point actually was, and is.

"No reasonable academic, and no patriotic American, questions the right of our President to speak his mind. All of us are in favor of civil discourse and few see any reason to question the motives of our opponents."

Have you looked around you Mr. Reynolds? I don't see many of your brethren favoring civil discourse. I don't see many on either side doing it, and I haven't for quite some time. You are some sort of fool if you think you're speaking for the crowd.

Obama's plea for civil discourse and people of ALL persuasions of faith to work together to find their common ideals and to continue to debate their irreconcileable differences while they perform constructive acts together more than hits the point directly on the head. You can argue all you want about abortion in the heirarchy of sin, but many of us believe that while it is most likely a sin, there are MANY more sins out there that are not being addressed, which are much MORE impacting on the fate of the world and the lives of the people.

Perhaps abortion sends the doctor and the would-be-mother to hell. I'm not so convinced it all hinges on one abomination, but to each their own. It seems to me, however, that the worship of Jesus AS the Father, the sacrifice of being a good parent for money, the act of sitting to watch Everybody Loves Raymond instead of going out to help feed somebody who hasn't eaten are all acts that would be categorized as much more damaging to the world as it actually exists.

Maybe abortion deprives the world of a sacred soul that God had prepared for us, but look around you. There are plenty other sacred souls you should be attending to as well while you sit in your fancy office and think of intellectual ways to argue an illogical argument.

Mr.John Mark Reynolds!

I'm sorry sir, but some of us so called Christians are hypocrites. Can you please comment on the Various Priest within the Catholic church who molested hundred and thousands of little boys in your next article please!!

You call the president a 'baby killer', what about the wars that your conservative president Bush and Cheney started in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you realize how many Children have been killed since it started? Please do me a favor and look at the opposite side of the coin before you comment on anything.

The analysis offered in the article is nonsense. It is based on the false premise that the purpose of the speech was to address abortion!

Cthulhu3 speaks only for Cthulhu3, not for Catholics. Not all of us Catholics are in line with this person, in fact none that I know, and I know mostly Catholics, is in line with this Cthulhu3 person. Of course now I will be told that I am some sort of lessor Catholic by this Cthulhu3 person. If you need to do that in order to feel good about yourself Cthulhu3, by all means, call me names.

The Catholics are getting mighty big for their britches. They carp and whine about abortion, scrutinizing the splinter in women's eyes while completely ignoring the beam in their own: the pederasty of the Catholic clergy and its vicious sexual abuse of children. The Catholics ought to first clean their own damned house before opining on morals to the rest of us. The Catholic church is filled with hypocrites who point the finger of blame at others, while the more appropriate target for moral opprobrium is themselves. Their views are only one among many and do not deserve any special consideration, although they seem to believe that their opinions merit special attention, having been issued by "god." In a society with separation between church and state, the Catholics' views hold validity only among themselves and such who choose to follow the Catholics' intramural rules.

"All religions espouse their way as the way to get to Heaven. Does this mean there is a wrong way, and it won't work?"
.
Billw3

Well, actually, 'all religions' don't in fact do that. Though some may tell you differently.

As a social worker I think it is time to do what is best for the mother and leave the decision to her and her doctor. Please do not discredit me for being a social worker and a Christain. I have years of experience and work with families and these issues are best left to the families and the professionals.

Obama is right why do we have to shout nasty words and hold up signs rather than sit down and discuss the issues involved. I have some good ideas on what Jesus would do.

"I am MORE than a little sick and tired of Protestants in general and evangelicals in particular lecturing us Catholics on Church doctrine."

All religions espouse their way as the way to get to Heaven. Does this mean there is a wrong way, and it won't work?
.

With respect, Mr. Reynolds misses the point. There are no "abortion advocates" anywhere in the world. Those who disagree with him are in favor of a woman's right to choose whether or not to be pregnant.

The problem is precisely that the rights of the mother and child are, as President Obama pointed out, "irreconcilable".

The reconciliation of these rights awaits advances in the realm of medical science. When we are able provide an alternative that allows the baby to come to term in an environment other than the womb of the unwilling mother, we shall be able to lay these concerns to rest.

Until that time, any effort to reduce the number of abortions is highly commendable.

Wow, Paganplace,

It's a are day when your posted speech proves my very point. Let's start with this generalization: "Conservative Catholics are far more likely than many others to exercise power motivated by their bigotry than certain others they feel 'entitled' to call 'morally wicked' or 'objectively disordered,' or otherwise demonize, scapegoat, defame, or oppress in our own country."

Boy, I can't remember an instance when the Federal government mandated any Catholic doctrine be followed by every American or jailed anyone who did not practice Catholicism.

And before you jump, abortion is a matter of social justice in Catholicism. It is not religious doctrine or revelation purely as any human being with right reason can discover that murdering the innocent is wrong. Not God, not Church needs to reveal that. It's a moral axiom of reason.

So, not only have you adopted the bigot's first rule--overgeneralize, ignore particulars, and paint with a broad brush--but then you deliver this little zinger: "You call it 'Catholic-bashing' when we don't *kneel* as a Protestant tells you a true Catholic should want us to."

Huh, I guess you have to use mockery, too, and refer to Catholic customs such as genuflecting.

Paganplace, your anti-Catholic bigotry is too obvious. I almost hope you keep on posting so it will be easier to pick it up and show it in each sentence that you write.

John, I hold a B.S. from Georgetown, a Catholic college. When I attended Georgetown, I was a practicing Catholic who opposed legalized abortion.

in the years since, I have become an atheist who supports legal abortion. Should Georgetown revoke my degree?

I look forward to wading through the Evangelical jargon of your response.

First, to say right up front, I think the notion of god is an irrelevant one. That may, in your mind, disqualify me. If it does, so be it.

Second, the opportunity of choice for woman is near and dear to me. When my wife was carrying our first child, we discovered at 18 weeks that the our future son had serious, serious defects that would likely have resulted in death in the womb, but certainly, no possibility of viability outside. While our choice was clear, it was at the same time very upsetting. We named our child (William Moberly), and had a ceremony to say goodbye. My wife and I both grieved. And, at 20 weeks, we terminated the pregnancy. Conveniently, these sort of circumstances are almost always glossed over by the sanctimonious righteousness of the "pro-life" crowd.

Third - are you kidding me? Segregationists well intentioned? Are you kidding me? Any shred of credibility you had went right out the window.

Curt Hill

Obama, who carried fifty-four percent of the Catholic vote, was invited to speak at the commencement by Notre Dame. He didn't just up and decide to go there on his own. So why aren't protesters targeting Notre Dame today? My guess is that the protesters, most of whom didn't attend Notre Dame, would never have voted for Obama anyway, no matter which side of the abortion issue he supported. Sterling Greenwood/Aspen Free Press

"...President Obama's views on abortion are wrong, and morally wicked..."

Wow. Heavy opinion, good thing for the 1st amendment. And ironically, thank God for the people that disagree.

BOB55 -- You are so right! It is obvious that most, and I do mean most, "Christians" (including Catholics) are Christian in name only, by saying they are. Their behavior most often is decidedly UN-Christian. They can fancy themselves anything they want, but "they'll know we are Christians by our love." If you exhibit an attitude of hatred TOWARD ANYONE, quite simply, you are not a Christian so stop kidding yourself. Don't delude yourelf into thinking that this doesn't include you, if you agree with the tactics of extreme zealots like Randall Terry an others.

TO: all who protest obama's speaking (or being "honored") at notre dame,

to see how stupid, narrow-minded and faux-principled you're being, imagine if i told you i agree with you. he should not have been ALLOWED to speak there. what if i got on my separation-of-church-and-state high horse and protested the use of my taxpayer dollars going to pay for his security, transportation etc... and all the time he wasted. it is the government FAVORING the catholic religion - all but declaring it our national religion. there are many catholic teachings i find offensive: for instance, "transubstantiation" amounts to cannibalism - and i'm against cannibalism. he should only be allowed to speak at secular colleges...

you'd rightly laugh me off as crazy.

"President Obama "bravely" defended civil dialogue in his speech when civil dialogue was not the question. No reasonable academic, and no patriotic American, questions the right of our President to speak his mind. All of us are in favor of civil discourse and few see any reason to question the motives of our opponents."
*******************

Civil dialogue was not in question? "Obama is a baby killer" is civil dialogue and demonstrates commitment to not "question the motives of our opponents"? The writer's disingenuousness and hypocrisy is apparent.

With arguments like this, folks with this writer's view of the subject reveal themselves to be closed-minded zealots. In fact, to anyone who watched the speech yesterday, it was apparent that the vast majority of attendees, regardless of their views, were listening closely to the main thrust of Obama's argument: that we must approach discourse on this and other topics with respect for others or we will will never progress as a nation.

There were, I will admit, a few folks in the audience who apparently shared the same perspective of this article's writer. They were the ones staring at the floor or scowling with their arms defiantly crossed. Notre Dame, with its core mission of broadening minds and providing students the tools to listen and engage, failed these few.

Calling people 'baby killers,' there, guy, because they will not pursue tyrannical, oppressive, (and incidentally counterproductive) *means* to try and 'command' people to *obey* your purely-religious dictates... however noble you may think the 'end' 'should' be....

Does not mean you're being *bashed* when others set limits.

Calling people 'baby-killers' is not a way to help mothers or children. For those of us who know what it's like to *really* be bashed, ....that's a prelude to some kind of attack.

Convince yourself someone a 'baby-killer,' and, well, obviously your God will let you do anything you like to them, right?

So what if it's not even true?

http://nativepeople.chipin.com/assistance-to-native-people

Excellent analysis. The speech was, as usual masterful, but when analyzed is nothing but a collection of nice sounding Catholic Social Justice keywords and catch phrases.

It is interesting to compare this speech to the much less tolerant call to action by candidate Obama before Planned Parenthood in July, 2007.

Defining abortion as a moral issue leads to many moral dilemmas. The moral authority of the Catholic Church, and by extension Norte Dame (an independent catholic school), is not granted by the U.S. Constitution, but by the Pope and Bishops of that religious organization.

If you think of the Catholic Church as a business corporation, with its own mission, By-Laws, Articles of incorporation, officers, and stakeholders, then it is understanable that the Catholic Church has a "marketing plan" and a lobbyist effort, and other business goals and strategies.

Just like GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, Banks, etc. the Catholic Church is fighting for survival. As I understand it, the number of U.S. Catholics is declining.

But as I undestand the U.S. Constitution, there is no Catholic representative, no Catholic section of moral laws, not even a mention of Catholics.

Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark decision regarding abortion.[1] According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Roe v. Wade does not say anything about the Catholic moral position on abortion. Row v. Wade does not grant the Catholic church any kind of "court of appeal" for determining the "disapproval" of abortion cases. Indeed, Roe v. Wade established "privacy" conditions for abortion cases. The Catholic church was not granted any kind of "special hearing" authority for abortion.

The U.S. Constitution strives to establish a self-governing nation, where "all men are created equal". The moral authority of the Catholic church is not listed in the constitution; the Pope is not elected by the people of the U.S.; and thus, the Pope does not make any laws in the U.S.

So in all fairness, to John Mark Reynolds, President Obama was elected as President of the United States, and he has taken the oath of office to defend the constituion of the United States. Thus, Obama now has the authority to apply U.S. Law.

John Mark Reynolds is comparing apples to oranges. The Pope is in charge of his corporation; President Obama is in charge of our government. The two entities have entirely different purposes.

John Mark Reynolds, you said,
"Obama navigated those waters, but he did so by missing the point of the entire controversy surrounding the visit."

so i read the whole article trying to find where you explained the point of the controversy. i couldn't find it. unless you answered it by saying,

"The President spoke as if the controversy centered on his appearance at Notre Dame and speech when in reality it centered on his being honored despite his views."

and,

"Traditional Christians in the academy were not concerned that the President was invited to speak at a Christian university."

you're REALLY saying the controversy is because he's being "honored" instead of just "invited to speak"?!?! i don't think many protestors are making that fine a distinction. as far as the "honor" of it all, do you really think that "honorary doctorate" means anything to obama? i mean, like he'll put it on his next resume? or maybe someday his obituary will mention his notre dame honorary doctorate....sheesh...

the fact is it's an honor FOR NOTRE DAME to have him there.

I am MORE than a little sick and tired of Protestants in general and evangelicals in particular lecturing us Catholics on Church doctrine. You cannot convince me this isn't ALL about politics. Even though the Church has been more than clear about its strong stance against the death penalty, these self-appointed "critics" had no problem at all with Catholic institutions honoring Executioners-in-Chief Bush and Reagan. Mr. Reynolds's commentary is inappropriate and dishonest. Clean your own house first, and don't hide behind "religion" and "values" when you really mean to air your political views.

What I think is that you, Mr. Reynolds, have missed the point of the address entirely.

FIrst of all, a commencement ceremony is not the place to defend either side of this issue. Obama respectfully declined to do so, and directed his address to the student themselves. I thought it was compassionate and inspiring.

Attempting to characterize Obama as a radical "pro-abortionist," or as you put it "the post powerful abortion advocate in the world," lacks integrity. This is so obvious to anybody listening. This false accusation is an ineffectual weapon coming from people who indeed are obsessed with the notion of a "culture war."

"The anti-Catholic bigotry and hate speech is rampant throughout a large number of these comments below. Sad, very sad--and these are people who will never be prosecuted, lose a job, or otherwise be held accountable for their prejudice and hate."

Sorry, 'Cthulu,' (Interesting choice of name) .

..it's not 'anti-Catholic bigotry and hate' to not wish to be commanded through our own government by the Church's unsupportable demands.. and often slanders, (Sorry, not a 'baby-killer,' here, though some will call you that for voting Democrat.)

Conservative Catholics are far more likely than many others to exercise power motivated by their bigotry than certain others they feel 'entitled' to call 'morally wicked' or 'objectively disordered,' or otherwise demonize, scapegoat, defame, or oppress in our own country.

You call it 'Catholic-bashing' when we don't *kneel* as a Protestant tells you a true Catholic should want us to.

Boo. Hoo.

I think it is John Mark Reynolds who misses the point. Obama was not there to debate the abortion issue, nor should he have been. A graduation is not the forum for a debate. Notre Dame (a university, not a church, some seem to overlook), rightfully honored a head of state (our own) by giving him an honorary degree in accordance with the normal protocol for universities. It did NOT signify that ND agrees with Obama's views on abortion, or that it was giving a forum to the enemy; it was not; nor did Obama, a very decent and respectful person, assume one. This whole affair has been blown entirely out of proportion by zealots who want to use an obvioius public forum that they wouldn't otherwise have to espouse their own views and attempt to stifle debate on issues they feel, quite self-righteously, they are right about. It is significant that the Pope, a gentle, decent, smart persuader, did not enter the fray over this. Maybe others should follow his Christlike example of loving their enemies while seeking to persuade them into hopefully changing their views/behavior, not by attempting to coerce or force their views on others. Notre Dame's president's comments were right on the mark. He can be proud, unlike the childish zealots who wanted to get arrested because, after all, it's really all about them isn't it. I am Catholic and I feel that I've been embarrassed by ultra conservative overly zealous Catholics who have perhaps garnered support of similarly closed minds but who have failed miserably to set an example or to persuade anyone who disagrees with them of anything. Their behavior is completely at odds with any behavior that Jesus ever exhibited. That ought to tell you something.

"50 million children tortured and murdered through abortion."

Maybe we would be even better served to protect the millions and millions of children who are sexually abused and beaten to death by their parents every day. Why don't the fanatics show concern about this issue. Has anyone once thought about the fact that unwanted pregnancies could be a direct result of other abuses done to children while they are young?

mhoust,

I did exactly as you say pro-life people should do: it is called adopting children. But I have a feeling that won't get me a free "hypocrite pass" in your limited point of view. But I praise the biological mothers of my children that they did not abort them and allowed them to have life.

Obama, by the way, voted against the Family Adoption Tax Credit in 2007. Strange, huh? But just go to FactCheck. I guess he didn't really want to encourage more Americans to adopt children and make abortion "safe, legal, and RARE." He was more concerned about loading the coffers of Planned Parenthood (and lining his pockets in the process)than aiding tens of thousands of Americans to adopt children. Now, that, houst, is a hypocrite royale.

Why all the brouhaha? If people were so outranged at having a pro-choice president give the commencement speech at Notre Dame, then why don't they go back and denounce all the other speakers in the past who were also pro-choice? Or is that really the plumbline for allowing someone to speak there?

But let's not stop there. Why not make it a pre-requisite for attending Notre Dame? "Check here if you are pro-choice." Probably would eliminate half of the student body. And maybe even (horror of horrors!) half the football team. Now that's something everyone in South Bend would rally behind.

I believe we need to refine our debate on abortion. On the one hand is the moral argument vs the right to privacy issue of Roe vs Wade. If abortion is murder and/or immoral, then the States should deal with it as such and the feds should stay away. Similarly, stem cell federal funding crosses the line that half our citizens don't want crossed. Obama is dead wrong to both force everyone to pay for federal research they find abhorrent and to deny States their power to proscribe abortion (murders) within their borders.

What I want to know where in **** is "Biola" University? I have heard of Loyola, but Biola......?

Perhaps at "Biola" repeated use of the word "wicked" is considered to be intellectually sound, but it does nothing to further understanding among people. It is empty rhetoric, and I am glad I am not in this guy's classroom.

I am, finally, proud to be an American, once again. I am proud of my fellow citizens who voted for President Obama, taking the first step towards ridding this nation of a government controlled by religious fanatics. The founders of this nation chose to separate religion from government for many, legitimate reasons. Those same reasons stand as true today as they did then. Religion, especially Christian religion, has become little more than an ugly, backwater superstition used to control and belittle. If Jesus were alive today, I firmly believe he would disown the lot for using his name for such poor behavior.
President Obama is a man who stands for many things beyond mundane, fanatical religious nonsense. Eventually, even the catholics, if they hope to survive in this changing, growing world, will have a pope who will recognize the harm they have done to the world for so very long and find the humility before God to apologize to the world and beg forgiveness.
I, for one, do not care about any so called 'controversy' coming from a religious group of any kind. I find them all silly, moronic and lost. If there is a God, and I do not dispute that point because I don't know, then religious whack-jobs like John Mark Reynolds should be praying to Him or Her to forgive them for their controlling, ignorant, and hateful behavior.
President Obama, Keep going, you're doing fine.

Several attendees at the event testified that the Notre Dame students were actually shouting "We are N.D.", not "Yes we can". I agree with the President's comment that we have to stop this nonsense of "demonizing" anyone that disagrees with our viewpoints. I was so sick and tired of receiving emails from various people this past year telling me that anyone that disagreed with me on any subject was obviously an Al-Quida terrorist. This reactionary garbage is part of the reason that only 21 percent of Americans consider themselves to be a Republican right now.

You may choose your religion, and thus your sins. The state should not choose your religion, and thus should not choose your sins. It is a sin for a woman to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, so should we make it a sin here? If your belief structure causes you to believe that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. But what do you do with pregnant women who smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, or just don't have healthy diets? Are they to be arrested for child abuse? Do we remove the babies asap from these unfit mothers? What about the women who have miscarriages? Should we investigate their lifestyles to find some culpability and charge them with a felony? Perhaps the husband had sex with his pregnant wife, and she miscarried several days later. Should we arrest him for murder, or at least manslaughter? Is a family member's second hand smoke grounds for child abuse? Are these scenarios really so radical? We have never considered fetuses to have full human rights--they are sort of pre-human beings. Thus we do not have formal burials for miscarriages. We usually wait until birth to name the infant. We encourage good pre-natal care, but do not legislate it. (We are often ambivalent about prenatal care, hunger, and medical care in general in the poverty community.)
It is best to keep sins and laws separate, just as it is best to keep religion and governments separate.

Let's say that there is a very sick child. A child who could eventually grow up to be the next Rembrandt, or the next Hitler. Say that the only way to cure the child is for you to be strapped onto a table next to the child for nine months, giving the child continuous blood transfusions, making you quite ill in the process and possibly threatening your own life. Then, when the child is cured, you are made liable for all of his living expenses for the next 18 years, unless someone volunteers to do it for you. This is all required by law, you have no choice. Would anyone say that using the law to force you to do these things, regardless of the impact on you, is moral? In any way justifiable?

How is the State forcing a woman to carry a baby to term any different? Because she participated in creating that baby? Is this punishment for having sex?

In the end, you may volunteer to help that child. But the State has no place in forcing you to do so. That is the fundamental difference between the pro-choice and anti-choice positions. It is not about "pro-life versus anti-life", nor is it about the morality of terminating a pregnancy. It is about whether the State have the right to control women's bodies or not.

"One last unrelated but point-making note: Sarah Palin is pro-choice. She confirmed it when she stood behind her daughter's "choice" to have her baby. Look up the press statement.
It's not always as clear as black and white."
cubbiesfan217

Well, that's kind of the point, it not being black and white, but Palin doesn't have 'pro-choice' credentials just because when abstinence-only education failed in her own radical-Fundie family, that the 'illegitimate' child was still carried to term as the 'pro-life' position seeks to demand for everyone.

Shotgun weddings go way back, that doesn't really constitute 'choice.'

They wanna have a kid, great, they're made of money, they can bypass the hard stuff that leads to 'choices' they don't like. I do question being all 'pro-family' and proposing to be in a position to step in for an old and ailing potential President with a newborn of her *own,* but it hardly proves anything 'pro-choice.' As a politician, she's anti-anything* about informed and responsible sexuality and free choice.

It seems to me that everyone has missed the point. Since when has a graduating classes commencement speech been about issues of public debate. It's supposed to be congratulatory for the hard work which brought them to where they are on this day, graduating from a presitgious university. It's supposed to inspire them for the next step in their lives to do what they love and pursue a successful life and career. It's supposed to provide them with that feeling which comes with accomplishment and the unknown of the future they will now take in their hands.

MichaelSwitzer, does the Biblical
“But when...the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13) not mean anything to you?

Sola scriptura doesn't cut it since it was the Church that gave us New Testament Scripture to begin with, not the other way around.

The anti-Catholic bigotry and hate speech is rampant throughout a large number of these comments below. Sad, very sad--and these are people who will never be prosecuted, lose a job, or otherwise be held accountable for their prejudice and hate.

Odd, too, is how those who seek to protect the dignity of unborn human life are so villified--and those who are pro-choice are so angry all the time. The president is on your side, the law is on your side: why be angry? You can abort a child at the drop of a hat in this society; you've got what you want. If it is not a sin, not an evil, not a moral offense for you, and not a legal infringement on the life of the innocent, again I ask why be so angry? Are you angry because people of good conscience won't praise your point of view, won't bless it as a holy act in their houses of worship?

I just don't get it: pro-choice people rule the government, the courts, the congress, the executive office, and the powers that be are on your side, yet you who are pro-choice are still so very angry? It can only reveal some deep disturbance in your consciences.

"Safe, Legal, and Rare" aptly describes what should be the ideal state of abortion in the United States.

Every, single, opponent of abortion is living in a blindered state of ignorance.

They are totally ignorant of the history of abortion in this country, and in the world, since the creation of humankind.

Women will seek abortions whether they are illegal or not. If they are illegal, then the only abortions they will be able to obtain will be, by definition, unsafe. Illegal abortions will kill thousands of women. Illegal abortions will maim, cripple, and sterilize tens to hundreds of thousands more. And the fetuses will still continue to die. We MUST not return to the days of illegal, back alley abortions.

Federal and state governments do not have the responsibility to fund for abortions; not even in the case of the impoverished, or underaged. But both the federal and state governments should allow women who need them to obtain them.

Finally, those who oppose abortion need to put up, or shut up. If you're not willing to meet an unwillingly pregnant woman at the clinic, take her in and provide for her physical and mental needs for the next 9 months, pay for all of her healthcare, and assume all costs and labors of parenthood for the child until they are 18; then you're a hypocrite. Then you're not anti-abortion, you're really a closet dictator and anti-freedom.

I don't think we have enough abortions in this country. Everybody knows someone who should of had an abortion. I am tired of people saying that tax dollars go to waste on an abortion. An abortion costs less than 800 bucks but supportinga baby through welfare and other social programs costs over $800 a month! But I do agree that the main issue should be to limit the # of abortions through the dispension of condoms, birth control pills and morning after pills. It is always poor no-account mothers who sleep with men who are just having a good time that inists on keeping a kid they have no business having and can't support. An abortion should always be a viable option.

"I have a question, please. Suppose a wife commits adultry, gets pregnant, and decides not to tell her husband. Is it appropriate for her to have an abortion?"

Morally, no. Legally, yes.

Just as it would be if a married man conceived a child in adultery, and then was told he needed to donate a kidney to save that child's life, but refused, because it would cause his wife to find out about the child. Immoral, but his legal right.

Would it not be better to teach love and commitment before sexual activity? Perhaps explain the consequences of casual sex? Maybe if we took that approach, abortion would not be some people's birth control.

You are right, Mr Reynolds.

President Obama, as usual, "courageously" supporting politicaly correct positions. Rhetorically perfect and inspiring, factually pushing hard his agenda.

Mr Reynolds nailed the issue right on the head. He expected that the graduates would be more open to his idelogy and would react to any attempt to disrupt the proceedings. this comes as more and more younng college students are swayed in their thought process by left wing professors on this campus as well as 95% of all other campuses across the nation. The respect for life has been destroyed by the radical left teaching doctrines employed by educators as well as the media. The degree presented is a slap in the face of religion in general and to true Catholicism as well. Elected leaders, such as Kerry, Pelosi and others who are Catholics, have presented the smorgasboard style of religious faith as acceptable and the Catholic Church has condoned it which is one reason why the church is not able to confront members who are selective in what creeds of the church they accept and encourage in their lives.

President Obama only "missed the point" if the purpose of his visit was to discuss reproductive rights. His decision to include only a passing reference to YOUR controversy is entirely appropriate; to think otherwise is highly presumptive and narrow. His presentation was consistent with the wishes of the University and, most importantly, to the expectations of the young men and women there to celebrate their achievements.

Reading this column makes me wonder if Christians long for a previous era in which they were able to simply burn anyone who disagreed with them at the stake. Times change, but the Christians remain an oddly violent bunch.

"It is unfair to try to level the execution of an adult convict with the abortion of a totally innocent unborn. The first is a criminal, the second just an involuntary nuisance to the mother."

So it's a mere "nuisance" to have someone else living inside you, using your energy, your body parts, your blood, making drastic and sometimes permanent changes to the most intimate parts of your body, causing huge swings in mood and emotions, possibly endangering your health permanently or even your life?

My three-year-old is sweet, innocent, and not guilty of any crime beyond trying to pet a kitty who didn't want to be petted, or asking Mommy for a cookie after Daddy already said no. And yet if he needs to use another person's body parts to live, and that person doesn't want to donate, _even if that person caused his situation_ (through drunk driving, say, or careless neglect), neither he nor I can force the other person to give them. Why is my three-year-old less human than a two-celled blastula? (Or is it that a pregnant woman is no longer a human, whose continuing consent is needed for the use of her body?)

I have read many takes on this situation by "expert analysts" and so far all have missed the point. The point of the speech was not to solve for all the abortion debate. He could have not even brought it up and been okay in my book. Nor should the goal of his speech been to try and assuage the concerns of the folks who were not so sure if he should have been there speaking. He was invited and he accepted- end of story as far as that goes. No,the aim of any commencement address is two fold, 1) to congratulate the student body for a job well done, and 2) to inspire them as they go out into the world. In this light Obama's speech was off the charts and I have only respect, and perhaps some envy, for the students who earned the right to be a part of it.

What's really funny is that the people condemning Obama for being "morally wicked" in one area, are wholly morally corrupt.

The Bible does not teach celibacy. The Bible does not teach contraception is wrong. The Bible DOES condemn fornication, which includes premarital sex and child abuse - which the church fully condones.

The Bible doesn't teach the Trinity, hell fire, Mary worship, idolatry, Christmas, Easter, murder by sending people to war, mixing with politics - all things the Catholic Church introduced into "Christianity". In fact, if you look at Jesus' teachings and Catholic teachings - Catholics aren't Christian at all.

So when one charges another with being "morally corrupt" and yet practice things they themselves teach are wrong - what do you call that? Hypocrisy. And Jesus publicly condemned hypocrisy multiple times.

While I agree 100% that the Bible teaches that abortion is wrong, the Catholics have no right at all to call someone out for not following the Bible's teachings. Period.

Now John Mark Reynolds speaks for the graduates? No you don't honey. They didn't just politely clap, the stood in ovation. They shouted down the christianistas who arrogantly assumed they should shout down the President of the United States during a commencement ceremony for all students of ND, not just them. Again the arrogance of the christianistas is astounding. You don't like abortion, don't have one. Live according to your own chosen religion and the behaviors it requires of you, but stop attempting to force the rest of us, who don't belong to your chosen religion, to do the same. We will not, and regardless of how much you cry and stamp your foot, regardless of what names you call us and your histrionic wailings, we will not all conform to your chosen religion. It will never happen, and you need to deal with that. Now stop speaking for Catholics and ND graduates, it is not your place.

I have a question, please. Suppose a wife commits adultry, gets pregnant, and decides not to tell her husband. Is it appropriate for her to have an abortion?
.

Mr. Reynolds,

Where was the moral outrage when President Bush received a honorary degree and spoke at the 2001 commencement at Notre Dame? Isn't the Church as opposed to the death penalty as it is abortion? Didn't President Bush oversee the execution of 152 people as Governor of Texas. The hypocrisy here is sickening!

I await your response.

John Mark:

Please correct a glaring error in your article. The ND students were absolutely, positively NOT shouting "Yes, we can" in unison when the protester began shouting. We were shouting "We are ND", which is a cheer from football games, to show our solidarity against the outside protesters who attempted to ruin our commencement ceremony. Please correct the error - the student body would never say "yes we can" to killing babies.

It is decidedly ironic that Democrats wont torture possibly guilty suspects (only because of political pressure), but they will kill innocent babies (only because of political pressure). I guess the Democrats are the party of "yes we can" to killing and maiming innocent children.

I think the torturing of suspects was a little over the top, but killing millions of babies (while hiding behind rhetoric and supposedly standing for the right of women, ha!) that is totally unacceptable.

Which of the two political parties has more innocent blood on their hands?

For an opposing and much more relevant viewpoint on the issue of those who are trying to make the Catholic Church a one-issue church, please read "Right Wing Warriors Cause Damage to the Church" by Vincent Miller on the National Catholic Reporter website: ncronline.org
Obama speaks with clear vision on so many issues that have long been Catholic social justice issues. The respect he receives from the majority of Catholics is well-deserved, as is his honorary degree from ND!!

I think the reason that this speech was such an unmitigated success is that it undermined the long-standing context of abortion debate as a moral issue. That fact, in itself, presents a tremendous challenge to the pro-life right, which has been deliberately couching a political issue in a multilateral, polyreligous society in terms of their own faith-based beliefs. That is why so many in this thread are acting as if the topic of abortion was not broached in the speech. They were looking for old questions and old answers, and they failed to see a very real new threat to their small-minded bullying. Ironically, the handicap that keeps them from understanding the importance of Obama's speech is the same miopia that causes them to miscategorize the abortion debate in the first place. In order to understand complex issues, one must have the ability to understand ideas beyond the scope of their own dogma.

Also interesting - did you notice the neat rhetorical trick Reynolds pulls associating the pro-choice movement with segregationism? Wow. As if segregation wasn't supported by the same group, motivated by the same ideology, and defended by the same tactics as the pro-life movement. To keep things simple, lets keep the right on the right and the left on the left.

Self-righteous much, John Mark?

Most of your article is good. I do not, however, think it's reasonable to make Obama out as the most powerful abortion advocate in the world. He's pro-choice, but not of the extreme sort that views abortion as a fine and dandy personal choice. He seems to recognize that there's something sick/disturbing about the way pro-choicism has worked itself out in the USA. Let's give him credit for that.

Having said this, who could have imagined 40,000,000 abortions in the USA since R v. W? This is staggering. That's up to 40m people we don't now see on our streets or in our schools because they were legally eliminated before birth. If we sustained such casualties in a war or as the result of some domestic genocide program, our nation would be reeling. As it is, there's just an awkward silence about the fact and many people don't want to talk about it.

In view of the above, it's worthwhile to make lots of noise about this problem to shake our country out of its mental lethargy. Some people rail against ordinary Germans for not wanting to know what was being done by their government during the war. Sadly, the same lack of interest prevails here, the only difference being that the execution of the means to eliminate part of the population has been outsourced from the government to individuals. The end result is the same.

Amazing that so many who are pro-"choice" don't see that it is often the men who are making the choice and the women who are being forced by their husbands, boyfriends, doctors, and fathers to have abortions. The point is that American tax dollars, yours and mine, are going to support abortion and Obama is among those who promote this. By the way, I don't find many non-Christians helping support unplanned pregnancies when abortion is not chosen, and I've been volunteering for a long time.

obama wants fair, obama doesn’t know fair he has been on government dole all his life. There is NO common ground obama here. There isn’t a darn thing that is FAIR with obama , schummmmmmmmer, dodd, frank, reid, peloski, waxman, kerry, kennedy and the DEMOCRATS RAPING the middle class hardworking TAXPAyers with ARRA(America Rape and Reaping ACT).
We have had all the MARXIST FAIR we can stand.
I worked for a fertilizer company once that the owner during Jimmy Carter high inflation years kept telling the agronomist that our prices were FAIR. I kept asking in meeting when you 15% higher then the competition FAIR to who Jerry it isn’t the FARMERS. After 3 months of this bs, I left and went to work for companies that competed and 2 years later the FAIR PRICED Jerry went bankrupt.
ARRA stole thats right it was a theft of taxpayers money to give to obama and his government dole buddies of taxpayers money.
We have to stop this madman and his thugs before they destroy all the middle class hardworking taxpayers.
We will throw the thugs out in 2010 and the head thug out in 2012 and he can take his lying foney FAIR with him.
When I hear FAIR I know I better keep my backside covered because there is a thug that is a dirty fighter and speaks with fork tongue.

Dear Mr. Reynolds,

The student body responded to the protester with the common Notre Dame cheer of "We are" clap clap "ND" clap clap, not "Yes we can." As a student, I would argue that they used this cheer to make a point that there was a better way to protest the speech (the Mass on South Quad is an example.)

judyecoughlin1,

It is unfair to claim that pro-lifers should be against the death penalty. Most of them are. It is unfair to try to level the execution of an adult convict with the abortion of a totally innocent unborn. The first is a criminal, the second just an involuntary nuisance to the mother.

This is the worst sort of sanctimonious drivel. To say that the president “‘bravely’ said nothing at all to defend his view that it should be legal to take the life of a child in the third trimester,” is more than a gross mischaracterization of Mr. Obama’s views; it is a blood libel.

John Mark,

Did you insinuate that Obama avoided a dialogue in giving his speech? Have you ever been to a commencement speech and stayed put afterwards for the "Question and Answer" portion? Of course you didn't, because it's not there.

Obama did not ignore the controversy, and he also didn't give what some around the blogosphere would take as preciously as the "One Ring to Rule Them All." He didn't give a Carrie Prejean-style answer, which could have been anything from "All of you need to stay out of the doctor's office when a woman has a question for a doctor" to "Abortions keep the economy going." How deep into this controversy did you think he was going to get? He's not about to tell a room full of Catholics that while their God may not want them to get an abortion, the Bible's really just a book of guidelines, not actual rules.

Which, by the way, is true. Then again, I'm not the President of the United States. Bless him for being careful with his words, bless him for being willing to talk about his viewpoint (which, also, isn't as rigidly defined as the media would have you believe. It's not just one or the other without any gray area), bless him for having the patience necessary to see the real problem with the abortion issue, that of unintended pregnancies, and bless him for wanting to help women make a choice none of us would want to make for ourselves.

One last unrelated but point-making note: Sarah Palin is pro-choice. She confirmed it when she stood behind her daughter's "choice" to have her baby. Look up the press statement.

It's not always as clear as black and white.

Are you kidding me? Reading your article is like watching a dog chasing its tail.

I cannot believe this article made it to print. Pity I can only read it online because I would love to recycle it when I go relieve myself.

For fanatics and fools, abortion is an evil act. In fact abortion is an act of desperation and the person who needs it should not be punished. If the lunatic fringe is so against it then they should support safe sex education, they should promote the use of birth control and do whatever can possibly to keep that person from getting pregnant. Abstinence and ideological tomfoolery are not solutions, they are empty promises/solutions.

Where was the outrage about Bush getting his honorary degree from Notre Dame? He has actual blood on his hands for killing people as capital punishment while Governor of Texas. The RCC is against capital punishment, yet there were no protests against him. So according to this Reynolds character Notre Dame's reputation was already tarnished. They also welcomed Carter, who is pro choice, and big daddy Bush, who is pro capital punishment. They don't have a good conservative Catholic track record with all the past Presidents who spoke, yet Obama is the only one protested and called out for his views. This hardly seems fair, or even Christian. Yet christianistas like this Reynolds character don't see their own ignorance and hypocrisy.

John_Chas_Webb says:

"The 'point' is that we do not want procreation issues being totally mandated by government."

In greater adherence to the constitution, one should more accurately say, "the 'point' is that government needs to stay out of issues that involve religious principles."

I didn't hear The Pope comment on the "Obama affair". He's certainly anti-abortion as well as anti-stem cell research, anti-death penalty and anti-unjust war. He didn't hesitate to speak out against Bush policies? His silence on this "affront to all Catholics" is deafening. Maybe the 'once a week or more' Catholics should listen to their own spiritual leader.

American right wing Conservatives are exploiting Catholics in the same way they exploited Evangelicals. How did that work out for America and the World?

Prof. Reynolds sits in his theocratical chair and deigns to pass judgement on the elected leader of a SECULAR nation which includes in their primary legal document, the words:

"... no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Opposition to abortion is a matter of sectarian doctrine and dogma. Such beliefs should never be imposed on any group outside of the sects that embrace them. Obama, as the elected leader of our nation, chose to honor Notre Dame by accepting their invitation to speak. The protestors dishonored the school and their faith.

I think the author deludes himself. I can attest that there are truly wicked, evil people, who consciously commit wicked, evil deeds. I find it ingenuous at best to describe Segregationists as "good hearted." That is the most disturbing, apologistic bunch of crapolo I have read in a long time. Segregationists were angry, violent and abusive, as are many public demonstrators in favor of the PRO-Live position. You first off do a disservice to pro-lifers (which i am not one of) by associating them with Segregationists, but I think your article shows where your SYMPATHIES lie. You somehow think segregationists HAD THE RIGHT IDEA. You are absurd, either because you associated pro-life to Segregation out of ignorance, or because you believe they are similar. Next, you will be telling us that speakers who whipped up Nazi hatred against Jews in Germany were just "misguided."

It just seems to me to be out of place. As part of the majority of Catholics that voted for President Obama and sleep just fine at night, I agree with the other comments about his commitment to the poor and to ending wars abroad to be much more in line with those values. Catholics are not single issue voters or single issue people. Please stop painting them as such.

I think you are missing the point. As one who lives in South Bend, Indiana, and has listened to the very vocal opponents of Obama's presence at the graduation (NOT the students or faculty but strident protesters from the outside), it seems to me it needs to be said, as both President Obama and Fr. Jenkins said, that we are never going to transcend this great divide between the pro-life and pro-choice camps as long as both sides dig themselves into these positions of self-righteous indignation. The time is ripe for civil discourse and the search for a common ground. If that can happen, President Obama will do far more to reduce the number of abortions than any president to date and Notre Dame will have been vindicated in its decision to honor this president who is capable of nuanced thought as opposed to the doctrinaire hard-line response we have seen but previous republican and democratic presidents.

Wasted words. Most people in this country agree with safe, legal, and rare. We won. We'll win marriage rights for all and we'll stop the discrimination in the military. In 20 years no one will even remember John Mark Reynolds.

I'd never encountered any writings by this fellow Reynolds before...lucky me. What a dreadful hypocrite...and since when is it the job of any President to "placate" radical members of one religion?

what a bunch of bullcrap!!!! The issue is not abortion, in fact, the very fact that trivial issues like these play any role at all speaks volume of just how wicked American culture has become, this is a nation condoning invasion, murder, rape, torture while at the same time the same crowd of "believers" have the gut to accuse others of being wicked. We didn't molest children, Catholic Church sanctioned "fathers" did, unless you can clean up your evil-filled "church" that has been waging war against conscience, science, human rights and everything about justice throughout the millenium, you're in no position to demand the imposition of your wicked "moral" on the rest of us. btw, what made you the representation of catholic? What made the same group of clergymen who molested children and hide it representative of catholic? Other people didn't demand you accept abortion, other people didn't demand you marry a dude, but you somehow feel the need to demand other people accept your position. You're acting like the worst dictator in history, which all religious freaks are. CLEAN UP YOUR ACT AND LEARN SOME SCIENCE BEFORE YOU AGAIN ACT LIKE A FOOL!!!

I am just grateful that we finally have a President who can speak to us as if we are a mature, intelligent electrorate (though he may be somewhat of an optimist). He spoke realistically about this difficult topic. And as a praticing Catholic, I can appreciate the difference between the ideals the Church stands for (no murder, war, abortion, etc.) and the fact that all these have and as Pres. Obama hinted will always exist.

"He said nothing at all to show why the Catholic papacy and bishops are wrong to say that support for abortion is a sin so grave that it overshadows other good deeds in politics."

With all due respect, Mr. Reynolds, it's not the president's job to decide what is a sin or not. The real question is: How much government intervention will society tolerate in the effort to eliminate abortion?

Let's put the question to you, Mr. Reynolds, to truly test the strength of your convictions: How long should a woman who procures or attempts to procure an abortion be sent to prison? Don't dodge the question by saying the law can be written to only convict doctors - that won't withstand a constitutional challange. You have to be willing to imprison women or make them suffer the death penalty for their murder.

What's an appropriate prison sentence, Mr. Reynolds?

"While I am not a Catholic, I can understand why practicing Catholics would be upset seeing their flagship university honor a man their own Church says has morally wicked positions (however sincerely held). That is not whining, but acting as a stake holder in a school they love."

Mr. Reynolds, they say *everyone's* 'morally wicked,' anyway. You constantly ignore the fact that the Church's moralistic positions are of no help or use in government. In a pluralistic Republic, we do not accord the state power to enforce your religious ideas and hysterias.

It's convenient for those in bed with the GOP to distort the President's actual positions and policies and follow him around demanding attention over your own disingenuity... simply because he's working to *actually* reduce abortions rather than simply *use* the issue to get people elected who may *talk* as you like but can only hurt civil rights while serving the greedy...

But it's neither good government, nor, I think, responsible religious teachings.

As I said below, accusing him of wanting to kill your children isn't a 'message,' it's an accusation. You might say 'false witness' if you read that bit of your own beliefs.

Frankly, if I were still Catholic, I'd be pretty offended at a Protestant such as yourself telling me which bishops to obey or ignore as is how Church politics have worked for a long time.

That's why conservative and increasingly 'culture-war' aligned bishops are trying to use force of government to compel obedience: since their influence has long since been slipping among the most sincere Catholics.

You are so wrong, and you miss the point. President Obama never said that he was a pro abortion advocate. I am Catholic, and although I am against abortion, especially as a means of birth control, but feel that there are, are at times, where a pregnancy may have to be terminated. The old Churches idea that do everything you can to save both mother and child is just as much murder as if the birth were intentionally terminated. Obama was clear that he felt that a woman should have a choice, which is between her and God. Only God can judge. The same people who are out vehimately protesting against abortion are most assuredly ones that head home and beat the crap out of their children. The President is correct in the fact that there are two distinct, very strong opinions on the matter and basically its a no win situation in our society today. Its a consequence of free will. Leave the judging up to God, please.

I find it both disgusting and divisive to refer to President Obama as "the most powerful abortion advocate in the world." This is a baseless claim, rooted in misunderstanding about both President Obama's personal ethics and his position on the Constitution. President Obama has never advised anyone to have an abortion. He's never said he's "pro-abortion". He's never denied the fact that abortion is a moral issue, and that we can and should work to reduce abortions by providing better healthcare for expecting moms, and better support for families at risk.

I think it's great that the President avoided the topic of abortion because this wasn't an abortion panel discussion, it was a day to celebrate the accomplishments of the students. So the President gave a nice speech that the students and their parents can remember and talk about in the future. I'm glad that the President didn't say anything to offend anyone and ruin such a happy occasion.

From your writings I wonder if you've ever spent any time at Notre Dame especially during football season. I was a student there in the late 80's and I saw a lot of behavior from the students that was very un-Catholic like. If you saw what I saw I don't think you would bring the Blessed Virgin Mary into this.

Honoring President Obama is the least of Notre Dame's problems. When the students started yelling "Yes we can" instead of something more Catholic like, I think the root of the problem was exposed.

Please correct the spelling of "th" to "the". Thank you.

Where were the protesters against the death penalty, which Obama also purports to support? No one, especially no woman, is "for" abortion. Being in favor of choice is not at all the same thing. Of course, I don't really care what the Catholic Church or Catholics think, because I don't share what seems to me a belief system based on superstiton and male power. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church has been conspicuously silent in protesting the death penalty, a far more egregious use of state power against the individual. They should have been standing outside the White House screaming for the last eight years, in protest of the joking executioner, former governor of Texas, George Bush.

Well written article, thoughtful. persuasive, critical, analytical in perspective about the juxtoposition of th Catholic Church and its pro-life stand and our pro-abortion President and his speech which according to the article seemed to skirt the issues at hand.

PostAmerican,

We don't know whether Notre Dame students "heart Obama" or not. I am not a big Obama fan, but I would have politely applauded him and acted as most of the students did. I would not have yelled things at the President, because he is my President . . . and it is inappropriate.

His speech was Hallmark Card like in sticking to safe truism, which is wise in a graduation speech I suppose. What is was not was a brave argument for the pro-choice position.

While I am not a Catholic, I can understand why practicing Catholics would be upset seeing their flagship university honor a man their own Church says has morally wicked positions (however sincerely held). That is not whining, but acting as a stake holder in a school they love.

John Mark

johnmarkreynolds, the only people who believe in the nonsense you call "a cultural war" are radical christianistas. There is no cultural war going on except in your heads. The rest of the country laughs at you when you attempt to call your crusade for a theocracy a cultural war. You live in a very diverse country, get over yourself. We all have to live here together, yet the "cultural warriors" don't accept that we all live here. I will not live by your chosen behavioral rules based upon your version of religion. Deal with it. I am not going anywhere and neither are you. I can accept that you feel their is some sort of war going on, and that in your delusional world you feel that you are at war with people like me. I am not threatened by that at all. Yet you seem threatened enough by people like me to declare some ridiculous war against us. Bummer for you.

President Obama did not 'miss the point' he is, in fact' right on-point.

The 'point' is that we do not want procreation issues being totally mandated by government.

What we do want is for religious groups who enter into politics to lose their tax-exempt status.

Barry's idea of a "dialogue" is a situation in which he does all of the talking and there is no forum for pesky questions that might tarnish the empty rhetoric that he reads passionately from the tele-prompter. Despite all the baloney about Barry wanting to "choose life", look for him to make abortion easier to come by down the road. After all, why care about the unborn if they can't vote in 2012 anyways!

The Reason for the protest?

50 million children tortured and murdered through abortion.

How ironic that an 80 year old priest gets arrested on the University of Notre Dame for praying a Rosary to end Abortion!

The times are strange my friends when good is considered evil, and evil is considered good.

I admire MOST in this whole ugly Commencement drama by Father Jenkins and Notre Dame...the old priest who risked death, arrest, and injury to stand with Christ.

May the Good Lord protect the ole guy for giving a true witness in Christ Jesus.
Amen.

Pro-lifers are anti-women because only women carry the burden of a pregnancy. The men can skip and forever be free of the obligation of caring and raising a child into a good adult. Pro-lifers are a bunch of hypocrites. If women cannot abort, the men should be castrated.

There are so many more important things in our lives these days, why dwell on such an unnecessary topic. Sounds like the former V P was right,,,we do a lot of whining these days!

It is my opinion that abortion should not be regulated by the Federal Government, State Government, or any other public agency. It should be between the woman, her husband, (if she has one), and her doctor. Everyone else should butt out! It is not your business.
Sarah Murnen

Notre Dame HEARTS Obama. I was blown away at the reception Obama got, how he thinks and speaks. The 4 Protesters just looked stupid. Obama gave a great address to young Americans. I just don't understand the constant whining and beaching. regards

Paganplace,

One final comment: Here is my narrow point. Obama is getting "courage" points (as is Notre Dame) for doing and applauding what is not controversial in the academy: listening to our opponents with respect.

We try to do that here in the comment boxes of Wa-Po . . . though I am sure we sometimes fail. It is a good thing.

That is not what the best of the critics of giving Obama an award were against. They were against a Catholic school giving Obama a coveted prize from the flagship Catholic University.

Obama argued for something most people are for and ignored the actual controversy.

That is not courage, but it is good rhetorical strategy.

Paganplace,

Progress on the abortion front will not mainly come from politics, but in changed hearts and minds. The laws will follow the growing consensus that abortion is an ugly and invasive procedure that harms everyone.

Christians did not start the culture war. We did not change the status quo that allowed states to develop abortion laws that fit community consensus by using the court to turn it into a federal right. We did not seek to redefine marriage. For the most part, we have been on the defensive.

Of course, the value of human life (respect for which includes opposition to torture) is not only a position held by Christians anyway, but by people of many faiths and of no faith at all.

Obama did not defend the pro-choice position. He changed the subject. I am sorry for that, because real dialogue would have been interesting.

John Mark

"When a few protesters interrupted President Obama's speech at the Notre Dame graduation by shouting, "Stop killing our children!" the student body replied by chanting, "Yes, we can."

"This inadvertent juxtaposition of messages was, perhaps, not the best way to placate traditional Catholics."

OK. Shouting 'Stop killing our children!' isn't a *message,* it's an *accusation,* (and a false one at that,) ...not to mention, apparently, some people claiming other people's potential pregnancies as *their children.*

It's also nonsense.

Yes, we can work toward ending the need for abortion. But not your way, sir. Your way is just about the political *authority* of people you deign to call 'traditional Christians...' not about doing anything *effective,* just about flinging accusations of 'Baby Killer' at people who won't oppose contraception and punish people who disobey your religious view of sex and pregnancy.

So, I can only imagine what you were trying to make it sound like, but yes, we can do better than your 'culture war.'