The news is making it sound like an overwhelming majority of people at Notre Dame oppose Obama coming to speak because of his pro-choice stance, which leaves me wondering why the college invited him in the first place, and why they haven’t canceled. If graduation is going to be marred by protesters, wouldn’t it be better to bring in a pro-life speaker, even if it’s not the President of the United States? And I’m entirely serious when I say it: why don’t they just cancel?
But this bring up another pet peeve of mine. For eight years, “pro-life” President Bush was in office, and even after appointing conservatives to the Supreme Court in what’s generally seen as a 5-4 conservative lead, and even after issuing sweeping Executive Orders giving himselves powers his predecessors never had, abortion is still legal in America. So in terms of abortion in America, nothing is different with Obama than with Bush. I suspect the argument is probably more about attitude and the Presidents’ personal moral convictions, but I think that’s even worse: Bush thought abortion was murder and yet did nothing to stop it.
I usually try to stay out of the abortion debate, but right now it’s not making a whole lot of sense to me.
I think they don’t recind the invitation because it is just too big a deal to have the President of the US at graduation. Plus it would be seen as pretty insulting. In the long run people will forget about Obama coming and the school takes the long view.
I think that Bush did little about abortion because there is little the President can do about it. But attitude is important. Intent is important. Even if nothing changes or can change would you feel it was a non-issue if someone asked a pro-slavery or pro-discrimination official to talk at a Catholic school? I doubt it. Would you vote for someone like that even if you believed they could not put those policies into practice? Would Obama? Abortion is that sort of issue for many people. There is a principal involved that goes beyond ones ability to put related policy into action.