PHILADELPHIA — Tim Kaine was educated by Jesuits, he told the world Wednesday night. Kaine proudly identifies as a Catholic.
But when Kaine supports legal abortion and taxpayer abortion subsidies, he flatly and plainly disregards the moral teachings of his own Church.
This is not really a political argument—few voters are likely to judge a candidate by his adherence to the doctrines of his faith. But it needs to be said because Kaine, by simultaneously wearing his Catholicism to help himself, is spreading a lie. And a lie about a basic moral question — about deliberately taking an innocent human life — must not stand.
“I have got a personal feeling about abortion,” Kaine has said, “but the right rule for government is to let women make their own decisions.”
“I’m a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade,” Kaine has said on other occasions, “and women being able to make these decisions. In government, we have enough things to worry about.”
First, note the flip way he treats abortion. He doesn’t argue that it is a fundamental right. His words “we have enough things to worry about” imply that he thinks it is a minor thing.
Second, Kaine supports a Supreme Court decision widely understood as corrupt and flawed at its core. Liberal hero and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Roe “Heavy-handed judicial intervention” that “was difficult to justify.”
“Constitutional origami,” was Michael Kinsley’s phrase for the decision, which discerned a right to abortion “emanating” from the “penumbras” of the Constitution.
Finally, Catholic moral teaching flatly rejects Kaine’s “middle ground” on abortion.
“Direct abortion,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “is gravely contrary to the moral law.” Pope John Paul II in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae wrote about abortion: “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.”
Tim Kaine does exactly that — he defends the “right to abortion” in law.
“Laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual,” John Paul wrote in that encyclical.
“Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult,” the Church has stated. “Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.”
Liberal critics will argue that all Catholic politicians deviate from Church teaching in some ways. Paul Ryan isn’t as supportive of an expansive welfare state as Rome has been. Many Catholic conservatives oppose abortion while supporting the death penalty.
But the liberal argument here rests on false equivalence. The principle that we have a duty to the poor doesn’t imply any particular policy or level of funding for Medicare, food stamps or federal unemployment insurance.
If Ryan declared “we have no duty to feed the poor, let them starve,” he would violate church teachings. If Ryan disagrees with Nuns on the Bus or even Pope Francis over what duties are properly carried out by Washington, which by the state, and which by the parish, that’s a question of prudence.
But there is no logical path from the principle that we must protect innocent life to Kaine’s acceptance of legalized abortion — and the Church has stated this repeatedly.
But Kaine goes further. He has said he’ll work to advance his party’s policy of forcing taxpayers to fund abortions. The Democratic Platform demands the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions, and Tim Kaine has taken the laughable stance that he “personally opposes” repeal but will work “to carry out Secretary Clinton’s agenda,” which includes repealing the Hyde Amendment.
If Kaine is as proud of his roots in liberal Jesuit Catholicism as he claims, he should read the latest editorial in America, a liberal Jesuit magazine.
“Incoherent as it is,” the editors at America write, “being ‘personally opposed’ at least maintains some minimal contact with the difficult moral reality of abortion. Working for the elimination of the Hyde Amendment forecloses the moral debate and abandons any attempt to find common ground.”
That Kaine would take the absolutist position on abortion was inevitable. On abortion, the Democratic Party is not only extreme, it is also intolerant of dissent. Safe, legal, subsidized abortion is perhaps the most inviolable principle of the party.
Tim Kaine, to be the vice presidential nominee, had to accede to the creed of the party, and to reject the clear teachings of his faith.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
