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Gordon Street is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Lincoln. He is a member of the Lincoln Town Council and is chair of the Lincoln Lakes Region Democratic Committee and vice chair of the Penobscot County Democratic Committee. He and his wife sing in the local Catholic Church choir.
You might wonder how a 67-year-old, rural, white, male Catholic could be a pro-choice, anti-Trump Democrat, because each of those statistical categories tend to oppose abortion. Well, it turns out I am far from alone.
The latest survey of Catholic voters from EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research found 50 percent support the pro-choice candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris — a comfortable 7 percentage point margin over former President Donald Trump, who has only 43 percent support from Catholic voters.
The National Catholic Register reports that is largely because of “a commanding 19-point lead among Catholic women (men support Trump 49 percent to 43 percent)” but the preference for Harris extends to all but the most devout Catholics — those who attend Mass daily — who support Trump 55 percent to 30 percent. Of Catholics who go to confession “at least once a month,” 56 percent prefer Harris.
I suspect most Catholics are not single-issue voters. Nothing in the Bible specifically mentions abortion, but it does repeatedly say feed the hungry and welcome strangers (e.g., Matthew 25:35), suggesting support for immigrants, documented or undocumented. At least one verse suggests equality between men and women (Galatians 3:28) with the Catholic News Agency quoting Pope Francis two years ago as saying, “we have to keep fighting for women’s equality.” Several Bible passages specify murder is sin, but as the pope said in 2016, when he relaxed rules for absolving abortion patients, “there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away.”
Additionally, evidence is lacking that abortion restriction laws work. A 2020 Lancet study actually found the reverse. In countries with severe restrictions, the abortion rate went up 12 percent compared with the early 1990s, while in countries where abortion is generally legal, the abortion rate went down — 43 percent when excluding China and India. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the abortion rate was going down before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and since then, the Guttmacher Institute reports the legal abortion rate has been going up, from about 456,000 abortions in six months of 2020 (all 50 states) to more than 511,000 in the first six months of 2023 (just 36 states — because 14 states now have full abortion bans).
I agree with the majority of Protestants (56 percent) and Catholics (58 percent, according to the 2013 Pew Forum on Religion) that abortion is morally wrong, but racial and female inequality is also morally wrong, and anti-abortion laws compound that inequality. Who are we to support laws to take away women’s control over their own bodies? Especially when 71 percent of Black Protestants as well as 71 percent of Black Americans overall believe abortion should be legal in most if not all cases. Such statistics make it look more like a racial issue than a religious one.
Overall, more than 62 percent of Americans, according to a 2022 Pew Research survey, support keeping abortion legal in most or all cases, and in 2014, a Guttmacher Institute study of abortion patients found 62 percent reported some religious affiliation, including mainline Protestants (17 percent), Evangelical Protestants (13 percent) and Catholics (24 percent).
It should not be the role of the state to help religious groups keep members in line. Remember that Jesus chose not to challenge or overthrow the Roman government. His focus was on repentance and changing the hearts of men. Our role as Christians should be to persuade, not to control.
Sure, some restrictions on abortion make sense, such as limiting abortion once the fetus reaches viability outside the womb, the way it was before the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade. But other than that, legislation should not be used to establish control of one demographic over another. Leave that issue to a woman and her doctor and/or her pastor or priest, and vote for Harris and Tim Walz.
