Cathy Kaveny's Response to Russ Hittinger (and, Inferentially, to Greg Sisk, Gerry Bradley, Robert George, and Others)

Dear Russ,

Your question to me was how do I show solidarity with the unborn in voting for Kerry? I thought a while about the question, without coming up with an obvious answer. Then I realized that my problem is with the question itself. To explain why, I need to back up and provide a moral analysis of what it is I'm doing, from a moral perspective, when I'm voting.

When I'm voting in an election, my choice is far from unconstrained: I am choosing between a finite number of candidates. I respect, but do not in the end agree with, Alasdair MacIntyre on the desirability of not voting in cases such as this. I think there are other ways of making clear that both candidates are deeply dissatisfactory, and unacceptable. But in the privacy of the voting booth, I don't think I can fulfill my duty as a citizen by voting for neither viable canidate. One, after all, will be elected. I have to help choose the person who will lead us--the least worst alternative.

In analyzing the candidates, I look at two things: (1) character and leadership ability; and 2) positions on issues that matter to me. Obviously, these two are not entirely separable; my assessment of character is inevitably affected by someone's "bottom line" position on certain issues. But my assessment of character is also is affected by my sense of whether and to what degree they possess the virtue of political prudence. As you well know, Russ, in Aristotelian-Thomistic thought prudentia is not equated with a narrow form of consequentialist reasoning, but is right reason about all things to be done and to be avoided; it is centrally a virtue of the cognitive faculty, not of the will. Citing Isidore of Seville, Aquinas defines the prudent man as "one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen and he foresees the event of uncertainties" (II-II.47.1). For anyone who has a copy of the Summa Theologia handy, and has a few hours to spare, it might be worth rereading what Aquinas has to say on prudence; not just in general, but on its component parts (II-II.49): memory, understanding and intelligence, docility, shrewdness, reason, foresight, circumspection, and caution. It would also be worth reading about the virtues connected to prudence, euboulia (disposition to take good counsel), gnome (ability to deal with exceptional factual situations) and synesis (right judgment about particular practical matters).

Now, mindful of Aquinas's position on the unity of the virtues, I don't believe that either Kerry or Bush can possess prudence simpliciter, or prudence in its fullest sense: both are too lacking, in my view, in the virtue of justice to do so. But for reasons big and small, largely having to do with revelations about how the decision to wage and conduct the war against Iraq were made, I have entirely lost confidence in Bush's possession of even a modicum of prudence necessary safely to lead the world's only superpower in these very dangerous times. I think he is both arrogant and subject to manipulation by his advisors, most of whom I distrust heartily. I think he operates on the global stage with a Manichean worldview that I think is very dangerous long-term. And I think he operates with a particularly dangerous strand of American exceptionalism, a belief in the "manifest destiny" of the United States, which I believe is to be viewed with extreme suspicion by anyone who has absorbed the basic lessons of Augustine's Civitatis Dei (written, after all, as the Vandals were about to lay waste to the Roman empire in the West, precipitating what we now know to be somewhat misleadingly named the"Dark Ages"): in particular, that no empire, theirs or ours is uniquely special. And frankly, I think Bush just isn't very smart; his cognitive faculties (and therefore his capacities for prudence) are compromised, in my view. Do I think Kerry is possessed of prudence in the full sense? Absolutely not. But I think he is likely to be at least somewhat better than Bush, in whom I have lost all confidence as a leader.

Could I be wrong about this? Of course. But one of the most disturbing features of the way the Catholic discussion of the presidential election has gone, in my view, has been the occlusion of questions of political character and judgment. We seem to be looking solely at campaign platforms, not at the men themselves who will be our leaders. Questions of leadership capacity are entirely folded into analysis of a politician's stand on key issues. In my view, that is a fatal mistake.

What about the issues? Well, in voting for either candidate, I will be voting for someone whom I know will advance policies with which I heartily disagree--and in some cases, whom I know will advance immoral policies. How do I grapple with the ethics of this situation in general? Here, I draw upon the Catholic tradition's concept of cooperation with evil. Cooperation deals with a situation in which one agent, A, contemplates an act that he or she knows will contribute to the wrongdoing of another agent, B. How does A decide whether to go ahead with the act? Well, what the tradition calls formal cooperation is never permissible: formal cooperation is defined as A's contributing to B's wrongful act with the intent of furthering it. Material cooperation, in contrast, is a situation in which A performs an action, foreseeing that it will contribute to B's wrongful act, but not intending to contribute to it. Material cooperation is sometimes permissible, sometimes impermissible, depending upon a number of factors. In lay terms, it's what lawyers call a facts and circumstances test. In technical terms, a vote for a candidate who supports morally bad policies, not taken in order to support those policies, but to achieve other ends important to the common good, probably qualifies as material mediate remote cooperation with evil--which the manualists believed, as Cardinal Ratzinger noted, was justifiable by proportionate reason. This is standard maualist moral theology.

What has to be justified by proportionate reason is the act of the material cooperator--i.e., my vote for Kerry, foreseeing but not intending his support of abortion. What goes into that justification, I believe, is the character issues discussed above, as well as the considerations on issues to which I now turn. Like Michael Perry, I think the web of law and policy that is likely to be put in place by the Democrats is more likely over the long term to protect the vulnerable--including the unborn, by maintaining a social safety net. And I do not believe that this Republican administration will be able to do much about the legal status of abortion: there simply isn't the underlying popular will to undo Roe. Even if Roe is undone, it will simply throw the matter to the states, many of which will not criminalize abortion. Women who want them will simply travel to get them. I think we need to concentrate more on providing women with the resources they need to bear their children rather than aborting them. The statistics show that countries with more ample social safety nets have lower abortion rates. I can't go into detail here, but I would strongly suggest people read Mary Ann Glendon's Abortion and Divorce in Western Law for a comparative law analysis of that topic.

My analysis of character and of issues, taken together with my judgment that not voting isn't a morally acceptable option, lead me to the hold my nose and vote for Kerry position. So my puzzle, Russ, is what exactly "expressing solidarity with the unborn" means in the context of a vote for president. Here are the options, as I see them.

1. One might argue that "expressing solidarity with the unborn" points to the fact that voting has an expressive function, a symbolic function. But I just don't believe that's true about voting. I vote privately, in a booth--I choose the person whom I think would be the least worst leader. I am not making a symbolic statement just by the act of voting.

2. One might argue that "expressing solidarity with the unborn" is a radical stance that places concern for this issue above all else. Here my response is lexically ordered.

First, assuming that this understanding of solidarity is correct, I just don't see why it requires a vote for Bush instead of Kerry. More specifically, I just don't see why this view of solidarity means that I have to consider the position on abortion outlined in the party platforms in the abstract, without factoring in my assessment of their likely success in achieving them. I just don't think the Republicans will succeed in making a real dent in the problem, and I think abortion rates may well be higher under them, if history is any indication. I will put it even more strongly: I think large segments of the Republican leadership are disingenuous about their desire to restrict abortion.

Second, I'm not sure this understanding of solidarity's requirements is correct. It seems to me to be an alternative and colorful way of requiring single issue voting. I simply think that's not required of Catholics, and that it is a deeply mistaken strategy, for two reasons: 1) it invites voters to ignore questions of political character; and 2) it minimizes the complicated and interrelated array of issues voters must consider to promote the common good.

Third, and relatedly, I think I am called primarily to solidarity with flesh-and-blood persons, not with classes of persons. How, then, should we take into account persons described in categories? In my view, it depends on what type of category you're talking about. Flesh-and-blood persons could not escape the categories of black, Jew, gypsy in the regimes that oppressed them. Furthermore, there was no possibility of changing categories--it depended on ethnic origin. But the category of "unborn" is not at all the same type of category. This category points to is a developmental phase through which all humans pass--and a phase at which all humans in the U.S. now are vulnerable to abortion, under Roe. So what: Well, suppose I am in solidarity with the 500 "unwanted" fetuses conceived on October 15; I am, in other words, in solidarity with a particular group of unborn human persons. Say 200 of them will be aborted--killed. But then 300 of them will be brought to term, and by definition will leave the category of the unborn. But at the same time, they are precisely the same human beings they were while in the womb. Am I now obliged to minimize concern for the welfare of these 300 human beings, now born, and prioritize concern for, say, those conceived on July 15, the day the members of the first group are born. That seems to me to give pride of place to abstract categories. 200 of these fetuses conceived on October 15 may not die in the womb, but they may die of abuse or neglect in the first years of their live, or go on to live severely compromised, painful lives. I think that this insight is what the "seamless garment" approach is meant to address. If we are really serious about the unborn being persons, vulnerable persons, who need our help, than how can we ignore their plight if they happen to make it through the unborn stage to birth?

So, in short, I just don't see what your notion of "solidarity" in this context legitimately requires of me, separate and apart from considering how to vote in the manner just described.

Best,

Cathy