Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Trump softened his stance on abortion: so sit out the election?

Abstaining from voting would be consummately stupid and would amount to the old mistake of letting the best become the enemy of the good. I'll say it again: in the politics of the real world, the choice is between better versus worse, not perfect versus imperfect. 

A columnist at The Remnant gets it right (edits added by BV):

The basic (and fallacious) argument for why Catholics [and other Christians] should not vote for Trump is that he has softened his opposition to abortion. The stated principle [assumption] here is that a vote for Trump could [would] be wrong because it is [would be] a vote in favor of abortion. The proponents of this position know that a Harris presidency would mean countless more abortions, and likely many more late-term abortions, but this does not matter to them — all that matters [to them] is that Trump does not oppose abortion in some instances.

The folly of this position should be self-evident, but we can see its true wickedness if we apply the reasoning to an extreme fact pattern. On the one hand, we approve of Trump’s positions on many issues that Christians care about, including that he: supports families; wants to protect our rights to freely practice our religion (Catholicism); opposes crime; opposes the weaponization of the government against the American people; opposes globalism; opposes woke indoctrination in our schools; and wants to keep men out of women’s locker rooms.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Trump’s opponent is so terrible on all of these positions that she actually wants to do the opposite. Not only that, but she makes a virtue out of abortion, such that she champions it rather than simply condoning it in limited circumstances. Even worse, her dedicated opposition to Christian values would make it almost certain that she would persecute Christians like they have never been persecuted in America. America could feasibly become one of the most anti-Christian nations in the world outside of Muslim and Communist nations.

In such a case, it would be absolutely preposterous and wicked to argue that a Catholic should not vote for the only candidate who has a chance to beat the anti-Christian candidate. If anti-Christian persecution comes, then we hope God will provide what we need to persevere; but it seems that we cannot effectively petition God’s mercy if we do not do our part to oppose one of the most anti-Christian presidential candidates in history.

There is no such thing as neutrality at this phase of the battle over traditional morality and the rights of families. Those who oppose Trump are, as a matter of indisputable fact, making it more likely that Harris will be able to impose her anti-Christian views on America. Many of her supporters enthusiastically support this prospect of an anti-Christian president, and she has obviously not tried to do anything to meaningfully mitigate this reality. Those who detest Christianity should definitely support her; and those who do not want to increase the level of anti-Christian hostility in America should instead vote for her opponent. And even if we convinced ourselves that Trump would not win, we show God that we want to prevent a dramatic increase of anti-Christian evils in America if we vote for him as the only candidate who can defeat Harris.

With these considerations in mind, Catholics have a more compelling case to support Trump now than we did in 2016 or 2020. Of course we wish Trump would be more perfectly aligned with our interests, but his task at this moment is to try to win an election rather than try to be the ideal candidate for conservative Christians. Even so, he is arguably “more Catholic than the pope” and those who tell Catholics that we should not vote for him are either deluded or trying to manipulate us to serve Harris. 

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Bill Vallicella

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7 responses to “Trump softened his stance on abortion: so sit out the election?”

  1. Kurt Schneider Avatar
    Kurt Schneider

    The author is thinking like a consequentialist, which any informed Catholic would reject. A Catholic understands that Harris is worse than Trump on abortion. However, I think what is being missed here is what level of material cooperation with abortion is permissible for a Catholic. Imagine you have candidate A who’s policy would be responsible for one million abortions and candidate B who’s policy would be responsible for 500,000 abortions. Obviously candidate B’s policy is better, and yet a vote for B is to materially cooperate with 500,000 abortions (the vote being the material aid).
    I think you could support voting for candidate B by applying the principle of double effect. Now to formally cooperate with abortion is intrinsically evil, but remote material cooperation is not. The Catholic voting for candidate B intends only to save 500,000 lives and would prevent all abortions if possible. The good effect of saving 500,000 lives isn’t caused by any abortion. I think maybe the most interesting part of this argument is whether the good effect (i.e. whatever the effect of one vote is in the election in saving lives) is proportionate to the bad effect (my vote materially cooperating with abortion).
    I’m not saying don’t vote for Trump. I will be voting for Trump. However, I think it takes more work, at least from the Catholic perspective, than simply pointing out that Harris is much worse on abortion.

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  2. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    Catholic moral teaching is instructive on the rightness of voting for a candidate, such as President Trump, whose approach to abortion, although falling far short of that of the Church, has, through his appointments to the Supreme Court, reduced the harms of this hateful practice (since the overturning of Roe, 13 states have outlawed abortion and 28 states have placed controls on it based on gestational duration [8 before 18 weeks and 20 at some point after 18 weeks]).
    Following Aquinas, Pope John Paul II directly addressed this issue in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae:
    “[O]ur choice is always concerned with our actions. Now whatever is done by us, is possible to us. Therefore, we must needs say that choice is only of possible things” (Aquinas, ST, I-II q13, a5.)
    “[W]hen it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects” (John Paul II: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html)
    While the late Pope’s words speak only of legislators, the principle that he invokes, that of “a legitimate and proper attempt to limit…the evil aspects [of an unjust law]” is evidently applicable to Catholic voters.
    Vito

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Good morning, Kurt, and thank you for your comment. By the way, people, Mr Schneider has given us an example of how to write a good comment: he addresses the issue head-on and thoughtfully responds in well-written sentences.
    So if I vote for A the result will be that one million innocent human beings are slaughtered while if I vote for B half as many are slaughtered. (Bear in mind that the humans in question are actual, not merely potential.) How should I vote?
    Option 1: I vote for neither on the ground that every abortion is gravely immoral. The underlying principle is that it is absolutely wrong, wrong always and everywhere and in every possible situation, to kill an innocent human being, and this regardless of circumstances and consequences. (Extreme anti-consequentialism)
    Option 2: I vote for B on the ground that 500 K dead is better than a million dead. The underlying principle here is that extreme anti-consequentialism is false, and that a weighing of consequences and a consideration of circumstances must enter the moral calculus. (Moderate consequentialism)
    Note that both principles (EAC and MC) are consistent with being a non-relativist about moral judgments. I will assume that what is right and wrong, morally speaking, does not depend on what we think, say, desire, or are averse to. If a moral judgment is true, then it is true independently of such subjective factors.
    On EAC, one must never tell a lie, regardless of circumstances or outcomes. So if Liz Cheney is at your door, at 2 in the morning, supported by a dozen ‘IRS’ agents with full-auto rifles pointed at you, and she demands to know whether you are harboring any J-6 ‘insurrectionists’ in your basement, and you are, then you cannot lie and must give them up for interminable incarceration in horrible circumstances for their trespassing.
    If you don’t like my example, the stock Nazi example will do just fine. Either way, a reasonable person ought to admit that there is something wrong with EAC, and that it therefore cannot be naively and wholeheartedly embraced.
    On the other hand, there does seem to be something wrong with MC: To vote for B, as on Option 2, is to acquiesce in the slaughter of some innocents so as to prevent the slaughter of even more.
    Now one conclusion one might draw here is that we are caught in an insoluble aporetic bind. But we humans are loathe to admit that there are insoluble problems. And so we naturally wax dogmatic. Some insist on EAC, others on MC. Their doxastic security needs disallow their suspension of judgment or their allowance that there are genuine balls-to-the-wall aporiai. An a-poria is by etymology an impasse.
    Note that I am not endorsing this view, but merely presenting it for your consideration. I am merely trying to get people to appreciate the complexity of the problem.
    Practically, however, we must act and I urge you to vote for Trump if you know what’s good for you. Practically, you must not let the unattainable best become the enemy of the attainable good.
    More later, on double effect, etc.

    Reply
  4. Kurt Schneider Avatar
    Kurt Schneider

    Thank you for the kind words and thought provoking examples. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on double effect and how it relates to this important topic.

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  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Kurt,
    OK, the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE).
    According to the New Catholic Encylopedia, an action is defensible according to DDE if all four of the following conditions are met:
    (1) The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.
    (2) The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may merely permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect, he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.
    (3) The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words, the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.
    (4) The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect.
    My example. An obviously hostile knife- or gun-wielding intruder breaks into my house. I grab a gun and shoot him, killing him. My intention is not to kill him but to stop his deadly attack against me and my family. The only effective means at my disposal for stopping the assailant is by shooting him. But I know that if I shoot him, there is a good chance that I will kill him. Suppose the chance is not merely good, but near certain: I shoot him center mass at close range with double-aught buckshot. But I did not intend to kill him, but merely to stop him, despite the near certainty that by shooting him in the manner described I would kill him.
    There are two effects of my action, a good one and a bad one. The good one is that I stop a deadly attack. The bad one is that I kill a man. My shooting is justified by DDE. Or so say I. As for condition (1), the act of defending myself and my family is morally good. As for (2), I do not positively will the bad effect, but I do permit it. My intention is not to kill a man, but to stop him from killing me or other family members. As for (3), the good effect and the bad effect are achieved simultaneously with both effects being directly caused by my shooting. So I am not employing an evil means to a good effect. As for (4), I think it is obvious that the goodness of my living compensates for the evil of the miscreant’s dying.
    Kurt writes, >> Imagine you have candidate A who’s [whose] policy would be responsible for one million abortions and candidate B who’s [whose] policy would be responsible for 500,000 abortions. Obviously candidate B’s policy is better, and yet a vote for B is to materially cooperate with 500,000 abortions.<< Kurt's question is whether voting for candidate B is morally justifiable by appeal to DDE. It is not clear to me that condition (1) is satisfied. Is "the act itself" of voting for B morally good or indifferent? Not indifferent, and not morally good either, although it is better than the alternative. But note that I am not forced to vote for either: I can vote for neither. And it is not clear to me that condition (3) is satisfied either. So my tentative judgment is that DDE cannot be used to justify morally voting for B over A, or Trump over Comrade Kamala. But it doesn't follow that no moral justification is available. But now it is time for Mark Levin. Have a good evening if that is possible given the current world situation.

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  6. Ian M. Avatar
    Ian M.

    The primary aim of the pro-life movement is not saving babies’ lives but saving souls. The great achievement of the pro-life movement has been keeping abortion a contentious issue in the public eye. So long as this remains the case, a sizeable share of the population will continue to regard abortion as murder and thus avoid corrupting their souls.
    The great danger that Trump and the GOP represent is that by abandoning the anti-abortion position, abortion becomes a settled issue: then people simply won’t regard abortion as a big deal, but just as another relatively trivial matter, the way that, say, contraception is regarded today. In recent years, we’ve seen this process play out on the marriage issue. The spiritually corrupting effects of such a development are impossible to quantify. The only way for social conservatives to continue making abortion an issue is to *continue making it an issue*: at minimum this involves vocally criticizing and rebuking Trump for his betrayal on abortion.
    The columnist excerpted does not even seem to be aware of this dimension, he seems to have short-term blinders on. His description of the position of social conservatives who express reservations about voting for Trump as ‘wicked’ and his implication that they are ‘neutral’ makes it hard to take him seriously and bespeaks a remarkable lack of perspective. That’s nuts. An example, I think, of how modern mass democracy intellectually corrupts us (to say nothing of its morally corrupting effects).
    I also don’t see this as a case of letting the best being an enemy of the good. I see it more as taking a bigger-picture view of things. One can disagree that not voting for Trump would be better for the anti-abortion cause in the long term, but simply pointing to the fact that more abortions are likely to happen under Harris does not address this larger perspective.

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  7. Kurt Schneider Avatar
    Kurt Schneider

    Thank’s again. Considering what you have explained to me, I can offer a slightly different argument. If one is voting for Trump because of his abortion policies, that would be formally cooperating with evil. This could not be considered good or indifferent. However, it is possible to vote for Trump, not because of his views on abortion, but because of some other good or goods. Maybe I vote for Trump because of the good of border security, defense of female sports, avoiding foreign wars, support of Israel, tax cuts, and his general love for the American people and our history. My vote is not formally cooperating with abortion, but merely providing material support for it. In this case the bad abortion policies are merely permitted. Nor am I simply voting for “the lesser evil” which would imply formal cooperation with evil. What is being voted for is a positive good. Furthermore, Trumps bad abortion policies are not the cause of the good of border security, etc. In other words a vote for Trump brings about all of his policies immediately and not in any order of causality.
    I think Catholics can make a positive case for Trump, but it can’t simply be because he is less bad on abortion. Another possible solution for Catholics is an appeal to subsidiarity. Trump has said he wants each state to regulate abortion and the federal government should stay out of it. Edward Feser recently wrote something in opposition to this view, but other Catholics have defended it. I have no firm opinion either way. Thank you for the stimulating discussion.

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