Obama At Notre Dame -- Why?

President Obama flew to Notre Dame University and pleaded for common ground between pro-lifers and free-choicers. Why did he bother? He might as well have gone to Kansas in 1855 and asked the pro-slavers and anti-slavers to be civil with each other.
It didn’t happen in “dark and bloody Kansas”; it’s highly unlikely to happen in the debate between those who see abortion as the murder of a human being and those who see it as merely the termination of an unwanted, non-human growth to be done at the mother’s convenience.
More to the point, actually, he might as well have gone to a Jewish synagogue in the 1930s and pleaded for common ground between Polish Jews and Hitler. That’s how the anti-abortionists see it, and the pro-choice people actually aren’t that far from Hitler’s theory on human life, convenience and the merits of disposing unwanted sub or non-humans.
It’s a gulf you are not going to bridge. (I am aware that pro-choice activists are liable to scream bloody murder at my equating them in any way with Nazi theory. But if they were to look dispassionately at the Nazi rationale for exterminating sub human races, I think they would see similarities.
On the one hand, Nazi Eugenics saw their program as improving the human race by getting rid of unwanted and inferior strains. Abortion-on-demand theory sees their program as improving human life by getting rid of an entire class of unwanted and inconvenient life forms.
Like the Nazis, the abortionist and his backers deny the humanity of the life forms they are eliminating. Many go as far as to insist that the non-humans they have aborted would probably grow up to join the criminal class and be a danger to or burden for society, another common Nazi claim.
If this somehow is not an accurate depiction of those who support abortion on demand, then it is certainly how they are seen by those who disagree. The likelihood of “common ground” becomes a hopeless fantasy. Some conflicts really are irrepressible.)
Possibly if President Obama thought in terms of reaching common ground with those who advocated keeping his wife’s ancestors in slavery, he might see the impossibility of what he seeks now.
People on one side of the divide truly see the death of a million aborted fetuses a year as genocide on a scale the Nazis could only envy. On the other side, supporters of abortion truly see the right to lifers as supporters of a system that keeps women in cruel bondage, with no choice over her own destiny.
I’ve known several women who’ve had abortions. I rack my brains to no useful effect when I try to come up with an alternative solution for these specific women in a society structured as this one is. I will be the first to admit that those who most vociferously oppose abortion should be first in line to offer protection, shelter, medical care and child care to women with unwanted pregnancies.
As I’ve written before, I don’t see that happening. This raises the question of at least a bit of hypocrisy on the part of those who merely condemn her for her choice—rather than taking a personal interest in her alternative solutions.
One thing the religious right/conservative Christians have to realize is that many of the women seeking abortions were raised in a post-Christian society. The mores and morality that one associates with tradition Christianity simply weren’t and aren’t part of their make-up.
These people simply aren’t going to respond the way a traditional Christian at Notre Dame or anywhere else might expect. Christians have got to learn that there is an entire stratum of American society that simply does not speak the same language or share the same values as Christians do.
They are never going to communicate all that well with Christians. It’s like people shouting at each other in different languages. It’s as if Simon Legree and William Lloyd Garrison tried to convince one another about the virtue or vice of slavery.
Even if the president were to go barefoot to Notre Dame and stand three days in winter snow, he can’t make it happen. (This may hard for a very rational, lawyer-trained man like Obama to understand.)
What can be done? Both sides have to step back and realize that THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND. Accepting reality is a first step on the road to sanity.
Christians, especially—as I have written before—have got to accept the fact that the United States is indeed a democracy (technically a republic, but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s call it a democracy). The majority rules.
As Obama and Pelosi said to the Republicans this winter, “We won”. We have the votes; you don’t.
The right to life people simply don’t have the votes right now. Too many people really want abortions available. For whatever reason. (Yes there is such a thing as John C. Calhoun’s “tyranny of the majority”.) Those of us who oppose abortion on demand simply lack the votes.
So, my fellow Christians, do what the Christians in the first centuries of this era had to do in Rome—back off. Don’t preach against (idolatry, slavery, infanticide, gladiator combat) what you can’t change. People who are not Christian—in Rome or the USA—simply are not going to share your moral viewpoint.
Accept it. Pray against it. Proselytize. Argue gently if at all. No shouting, no anger, no hostile words. Fall back on that old bromide preached by Christ and almost always honored in the breach—love them.
Love abortionists, women who get abortions, politicians who advocate abortion on demand. Be courteous, be loving and, above all, be quiet.
President Obama went on what could almost be called a Fool’s Errand to Notre Dame. He shouldn’t do it again—and we Christians shouldn’t become so strident that he feels it necessary to do so.
We don’t have the votes to do anything but love them and accept present reality. Just as in ancient Rome.