Second, President Bush moved quickly to use the power of his office to end the Clinton practice of permitting federal American funds to go to foreign organizations that support abortion – reinstating the so-called “Mexico City policy” initiated during the first Reagan Administration. The Washington Post also reported that the Bush administration would reconsider FDA approval for RU-486, the abortion pill.
As the words and deeds that will constitute the Bush administration begin to accumulate, so do the diagnoses from both left and right. Conservatives rejoice in the early indications that President Bush will take his pro-life position seriously, while liberals have continued to claim that Bush says one thing, and does another. For example, according to the Washington Post, Joe Andrew, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called the inaugural address a “very nice speech” but said the President’s “actions speak much more loudly, and it’s right foot forward, right foot forward. This is a pretty quick about face, to go from Saturday to Monday.” He meant that the rhetoric of the Inaugural was inconsistent with the pro-life action Bush took in re-instating the Mexico City Policy.
How can even the chairman of the Democratic Committee think that a speech affirming the Declaration of Independence is inconsistent with opposition to abortion? I think it was because Bush’s address was, at best, vague at points, and carefully avoided any indications that the American creed it was evoking would really require hard choices on some of the deep moral disagreements of American political life. Joe Andrew could at least pretend, after hearing the inaugural, that he did not expect the kind of determinate action that Bush took in restoring the Mexico City Policy.
What makes Andrew’s pretense of confusion understandable? In his speech, Bush said that the grandest of the ideals that have united Americans across the generations is, “an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.”
“Americans,” Bush went on, “are called to enact this promise in our lives and our laws.” “Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along.” Later in the speech, the President noted that building “a single nation of justice and opportunity” is “in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image.”
From these and other statements in the speech, the hearer could learn that Americans believe that our vocation as citizens derives from our national faith in human equality. The crucial implication follows that we are committed to the burdensome and never completed task of seeking to establish justice in America. The hearer would even note that the duty to seek justice is imposed by the Creator Who made us equal, and that the justice we must seek is accordingly His justice, not a justice we choose or define.
Most of this is close indeed to the very words of the Declaration, and far from the squishy liberal platitudes that turn out to be euphemistic equivalents to a creed of human will and self-satisfaction. Bill Clinton wanted to “put people first,” and would no doubt have been willing to accept an “unfolding promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no insignificant person was ever born.” Still, Bush’s formulation is better in its conjoined assertion that our “unfolding promise” is one we are not free to unmake, because of its roots in the order of Creation itself.
So, again, why is Joe Andrew able to suggest that while the speech was very nice, the end of American support for abortion abroad is not? I think it is because President Bush so carefully chose to apply the force of the American creed only to issues on which there is not, in fact, national disagreement. No one can disagree, for example, with the statement that, “in the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise.” Even here he is forced to acknowledge in the next sentence that there is disagreement about the causes of this affront to “the quiet of American conscience:” “whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love.”
What will we do when we have national disagreement about the very existence of the affront to national conscience? How shall we proceed from the point of agreement that we must at all costs seek justice, to address the question of whether a given practice constitutes a profound failure of that duty? Will it be enough to exhort Americans to a renewed fervor of love, and of dedication to a vague resolve to include everyone?
Does President Bush believe that, “in the quiet of American conscience, we know that [abortion] is unworthy of our nation’s promise.”? If so, how does he intend to help that ember of conscience turn to a flame of national resolve to protect innocent life?
Perhaps he would ask us to watch what he does, not what he says. Perhaps not everyone, perhaps not even every president, is called to lead a national discussion of the most important particular moral matters. Can we, instead, watch and learn as he ends American support for abortion abroad, appoints pro-lifers to lead the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, and removes RU-486 from the market on grounds of safety?
While this may be so, there are two problems with President Bush’s inability or unwillingness to complete the argument of his Inaugural Address by applying its grand principles of human dignity and equality to the particular issue of abortion. First, because the deeds of this administration will in fact be a mixture of the pro-life and pro-abortion positions, and because he will not tell us how important abortion is in the hierarchy of American conscience, we cannot rightly interpret the particular decisions he makes.
What are we to make, for example, of the appointment of a pro-abortion advocate to the position of Secretary of State? Does President Bush believe that it is a matter of little importance whether American foreign policy advances a vision of human dignity that requires respect for innocent life? How is the selection of Secretary Powell consistent with the end of support for pro-abortion international organizations? Such questions are simply not answerable without clear statements from the Bush administration about the importance of the pro-life cause to the particular decisions President Bush makes, and the connection of the pro-life cause to the high principles of American life, which he stated in his inaugural address. And until such questions are answerable, each particular action of the president that bears on the pro-life question – appointments, policy decisions, statements – will be unpredictable as well, will invite misinterpretation and disappointment from those who don’t get what they want.
More important, however, is the effect on our national moral discussion of Bush’s apparent reluctance to tell us directly whether ending abortion is a pre-eminent concern of the American conscience. The new President is calling us to a new national resolve to love each other according to the truth of our human dignity. It is a high resolve, but one that can easily become muddled – particularly when professional muddlers like Bill Clinton and his cadres are still close to power. Moral and compassionate zeal will simply not be enough – we have to remind the nation how to love not only strongly, but intelligently. It DOES matter why the poor are still with us, and we cannot move effectively to eliminate poverty until we reach a better agreement about its causes.
Similarly – even more so – we cannot hope to love each other effectively as a nation seeking justice and equality under the mandate of our Creator until we recover the courage to apply our best moral reasoning to the preeminent moral challenge of our time – restoring respect for the common humanity even of the defenseless unborn. President Bush’s evocation of high moral principle in the inaugural was welcome, and so was his end to the unconscionable American subsidies for aborting third-world babies. What remains for high statesmanship is the explicit and emphatic argument that such actions as reinstating the Mexico City Policy are precisely the fulfillment of the high moral principle to which he is devoting his presidency. He should say it, mean it, and explain it. Such an explanation might move Joe Andrews from confusion to outrage, but it would move the hearts of millions of Americans to join the President in a labor of love that would truly merit the President’s confidence that he has been placed in office by a higher power, and for an important purpose.
