Dr. Callahan is an author, lecturer, college professor and licensed psychologist. Her most recent book is Created for Joy: A Christian View of Suffering. This blog entry appeared in America magazine, a national weekly published by the Jesuits.

Why Catholic Pro Lifers will vote for Obama

Dr. Sidney Callahan

Why am I as a 'mass going' staunchly pro life Catholic, voting for Obama? Of course I disagree with his views on Roe vs Wade, but I think that his policies and programs more comprehensively follow Catholic social teaching than McCain's--and they even result in fewer abortions.

There's a lot of evidence that providing aid and support for women, children and the poor, lowers the number of abortions. Pro lifers can choose to see present results rather than repeating exhortations for the future.

After all, to roll back and change laws in a democracy, the legislators, the courts and the majority of voters have to be convinced, and this process of moral reorientation on abortion can be a slow process. Think of the arguments you have with your friends and family.

In the interim, when immediate overthrow of a flawed law is impossible it is morally permissible, as John Paul II expresses it, to recognize "the art of the possible" and try to "limit the harm done by such a law."

Moreover, Catholic pro life advocates for Obama desperately want to limit the grave moral evils and dangers to life arising from pursuing preemptive wars, defending the use of torture, continuing the death penalty, and flouting of Constitutional and international law. As billions are spent on the destructive Iraq war, the needs of the poor, the ill and the schools are neglected, and the whole economic system falters....

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