Was the Catholicism question out of line?

[angus]

Yes.  They only asked how Catholic beliefs affected their views on abortion, but never how Catholicism affected their views on war, social policy, health care, 47%, etc.

It was a total softball to Ryan, and even though Biden answered it well, it's not really fair to cherry pick an issue that one candidate is clearly more "in line" with church teachings.

I voted no. 

Generally, I think we worry too much about each candidate's ethno-religious identity, and I know I complain about it frequently on this forum, and I certainly wouldn't have asked such a question, but it was a fairly narrow question aimed at highlighting two candidates' differences on a particular issue that is important to many voters. 

I agree that Biden handled it well.  I disagree that it was a softball to Ryan.

[angus]

The question should have been how does pandering to your respective bases affect your views on abortion.

Fair enough, but the question was open-ended:  "what role have your religious views played in your personal views on abortion?"  Either candidate had the opportunity to answer that his faith in his ability to exploit the electorate had more to do with his position than his faith in Jesus.  Maybe the moderator just figured out a really subtle way to ask just what you suggested.

Call me naive, but I got the impression that they both answered honestly.  You can agree or disagree, and you have to suspend judgment on the poor grammar, but it struck me that Paul Ryan really believes that he doesn't see how a person "can separate their public life from their private life."  Similarly, Biden struck me as being honest when he said that he accepts the Church's position on abortion as a de fide doctrine and "...I accept it in my personal life, but I refuse to impose it on" others.  

I don't often get the feeling that politicians are being completely honest, and this is especially the case with the candidates for President and for Vice President, but in this case they seemed to me to be answering the question honestly.  This exchange was a rare moment of straightforward answers in a debate that was otherwise filled with obfuscation, dodging, condescension, and a complete failure to offer an honest summary of their intentions of governing.

[angus]

Again, is there any other job interview during which an interviewer would be allowed to ask how a candidate's religion would influence his decision? Unless you're applying for a job at the Vatican, it's grotesquely inappropriate.

It's not that weird.  

Okay, what if we had two Jewish candidates, and one of them was the sort of modern guy that ate bacon every morning for breakfast and was married to a Mexican American, and the other was a skullcap-wearing, white-shirted, kill all palestinians and let God sort 'em out, orthodox sort of Jew, and the moderator asked something like, "hey, how does your religion inform your views on foreign policy?" it'd be the same thing.  Many American voters care about foreign policy.  

Or we can do Hindus killing flies, or Mormons smoking, or Baptists dancing, or pick your favorite, so long as it has something to do with an issue that many Americans feel strongly about and as long as we have two candidates of the same ethnoreligious identity, one of whom falls into a stereotype and the other of whom does not.  

I'm not calling any of it politically correct, but then I loathe political correctness in the first place.  This moderator wanted to ask about abortion.  Now, if it were up to me, no candidate would ever have to spend time explaining his or her position on abortion.  Firstly, because it doesn't rank in my top ten--and probably not in my top twenty--issues.  I don't really care much one way or the other how a candidate feels about human fetal abortion.  Secondly, I also think that's it's probably a highly personal issue and I'd just rather not hear about it.  It's private, and your personal feelings about it are none of my business.  But you have to understand that there are many American voters who care about this sort of stuff.  They want to know how candidates stand, and they have a right to if they're so inclined, and therefore reporters have a duty to report on it.  She was merely being a good reporter.  In televised debates, a "moderator" is essentially a high-profile reporter.  She knew that debate watchers will be interested in the candidates' views.  In this case, we happen to have two Catholics.  Catholicism is more than just a religion, just as many other "religions" are.  Catholicism, in particular, is a huge, powerful cultural and political institution.  She wants to bring up the issue of abortion, an issue in which many voters seem to have an interest, and an issue in which the political body known as the Catholic Church has lots to say.  It was a fair question and it was answered well enough by both candidates.

[angus]

Pro-choice Catholics are always trolled with this sort of attack. But pro death-penalty or Iraq war Catholics aren't. There's definitely a double standard.

I'm not sure I would have considered that question out of line either.  Again I'd label it politically incorrect, but not out of line.  If capital punishment were a huge campaign issue this year, and the moderator wanted to ask two Catholics how their religious views informed them on the issue, it would be fair game.  It would be interesting to see how they spin it.  Again, good reporting.  No one seems to talk much about capital punishment, though.  I gather that the issue does not distinguish these two candidates, or that it isn't a hot-button issue the way abortion is. 

[angus]

I have some difficulty in believing in Biden's response, that he presonally believes life begins at conception but doesn't want to force his views on others. To say life begins at conception is a statement that carries a lot of weight; it means we effectively have ~800k murders in the US annually. It does not make much if any sense to accept this as true and then effectively say he's personally opposed to killing but doesn't want to force his opinion on anyone. Perhaps it may be possible to genuinely hold the opinions Biden's record shows on abortion and think that he is taking the best path to reducing it by enacting progressive economic policies, though I've always thought this is a little dumb too (like wouldn't outlawing it be the thing to do that would most drastically reduce the number of abortions....). There may be someone on the street somewhere who could be a faithful Catholic and believe this but I have trouble believing many hold this view, especially those in politics. Biden also didn't say that either. He started off talking about social justice (which had no apparent connection to the question whatsoever or at least none Biden stated) and then said we can't legislate morality. It sounded like "we can't legislate morality" combined with "we have a moral duty to help the poor".

Of course life begins at conception.  What a silly thing to argue about.  The sperm and ovum unite through fertilization, creating a zygote that will implant in the uterine wall.  That is how human life begins.  For flowers, mullosks, trees, and algae, the details are different, but there's a moment that sets the ball rolling and that moment begins the life.

It's a little disingenuous to pretend that this should affect fertilization policy.  It'd be one thing if we really had some deep-rooted societal objection to killing, but that is demonstrably not the case.  Our nation was born of a violent and illegal insurrection, and we've been killing each other ever since.   We sentence people to capital punishment, we send our own sons and daughters to die on the desert sands in order to further our economic interests, and we regularly acquit those who kill in the name of self defense.  Even Paul Ryan himself, who, like Joe Biden, claims that life begins at conception, offers rape as a legitimate circumstance under which a life might be aborted.  Does that embryo know that it was the product of rape?  Does mitosis happen differently when the genetic material came from a stranger rather than a friend?  Of course not.  If you look deep enough, you can find inconsistencies everywhere, but to get hung up on a question such as "when does life begin?" is like putting the horse after the cart. 

I think Biden answered the question very well.  So did Ryan.  (Ryan, by the way, does have a more consistent view than Romney here:  in a radio interview in August, he said that he believes that rape is simply another method of conception and "not an excuse" to abort.  To be fair, in the debate he merely suggested that the administration would "oppose abortion except..." in certain cases, so it seems as though he has not vacillated.  I give him credit for that.  I assume that his handlers before the debate made clear that he should not mention his philosophically consistent views and instead only focus on the Romney administration policy points.  That is what he did, and to that extent you can say that he strayed from the original question just as Biden did.  If this is the first time you have ever seen politicians rambling, then you must not be watching very closely.)

[angus]

Half of zygotes never implant, so classifying life as beginning at fertilization is pretty absurd. So absurd that 60% of Mississippians rejected it last November...

What Mississippi rejected was a bill.  I remember it well.  A life can begin and end in a few minutes, and the fact that half the zygotes never implant doesn't necessarily preclude this.

What I am saying is that it intellectually dishonest to argue over whether "life begins at conception."   The reason I think it is faulty is because it presupposes that the answer to the question should affect the law.  It's like saying you cannot get an abortion if we determine that a developing fetus is a human.  But if we really believe you cannot get an abortion precisely and only because the fetus is a human, then we must also immediately end capital punishment, and we must immediately end all the other killing we allow.  Clearly, we are comfortable with killing humans.  Whether the average Mississippi voter buys into this notion I cannot tell.  That bill never should have been written, and it's best that the voters voted against it.  There were many good reasons to reject that law, and probably a few not-so-good ones, but the fact that it was rejected does not tell us whether the majority of the voters really believe we have never found legitimate reasons to kill one another.   On the other hand, the fact that so many discussions of abortion seem to hinge around the question of whether life begins at conception is further evidence of the exploitation of the ignorance of the population by the elected officials that I alluded to in my Greatest Problem thread last month.

[angus]

two things.

One, there's a difference between the execution of guilty criminals and between killing the innocent.

your post makes the faulty assumption that those are orthogonal sets.   They are not.  Many guilty criminals have been proven later to be innocent of the crimes for which they were executed.

Anyways, it does not necessarily follow that just because abortion is wrong, that capital punishment is also wrong.

I never said it was.  In fact, I have never tried to lump together all people who argue that abortion is wrong.  Some of them make very intelligent arguments against it, in fact.  I said that if you really believe that the deciding factor determining the legality of human fetal abortion is whether you consider the developing fetus to be a human, and if by that criterion you decide that it should be forbidden, then you have ruled out killing humans, and must necessarily decide to stop supporting wars and executions and stop cheering when folks are acquitted of killing other people. 

I actually have no ethical qualms with abortion, and a politician's view on the subject, one way or the other, doesn't really sway my vote one way or the other because I don't consider it a highly important issue.  If we could solve all our other problems, then yes, I suppose a pro-choice politician would win my vote, ceteris paribus.  But things are never ceteris paribus in politics, so it hasn't come up yet.  As for capital punishment, I do admit to having qualms with it, but again I haven't yet allowed a candidate's position on that issue sway my vote either.  Mostly because if I only restricted myself to voting for anti-capital punishment politicians, then I wouldn't get to vote very often, would I?

I accept on some level that we kill each other from time to time, and we apparently allow ourselves legitimate excuses for this.  We cheer when people are killed.  Did you ever see the movie A Time to Kill.  Even I found myself cheering when Carl Lee Hayley was acquitted. 

[angus]

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If the innocent criminals ought to be spared execution, than so should the unborn children be spared from abortion.

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Yet no qualms with abortion. That's not very consistant is it?

I'm not sure, but you were the one who first suggested that one does not follow from the other.  

Ah, look, I recognize that both can be creepy, or demoralizing, but I don't want to get into a situation where we're making it more difficult for people to obtain legal, safe abortions.  Considering the alternatives--which might include illicit, unsafe procedures, or embryos developing inside of women who don't want and can't afford babies, or may be using meth or cigarettes during pregnancy--it's probably the best of some bad options.  Just like if you have a guy who has admitted to, and been found guilty, of murdering people, and would likely murder many more, and our only options are to spend taxpayer dollars supporting him for the next 40 years while he teaches younger convicts how to be worse thugs, or just erase him.  It's the best of the bad options.

[angus]

I wonder if the "Belief in the Afterlife" can affect whether a person supports abortion.  

possibly.  I've never been pregnant, and will never become pregnant, but I have had similar musings along these lines.  For example, if a person doesn't want a baby to suffer, either because she hasn't the means to support it or doesn't think she is ready, then maybe she considers terminating the pregnancy.  A belief that the baby has a soul that transcends its mortal coil, it seems to me, might ease the burden of guilt.  The soul, being immortal, is unaffected by such transient, fleeting instances as might occur during curettage of the uterine lining.  If, on the other hand, the pregnant individual is unconvinced of immortality, then aborting the baby becomes more difficult.  In that case, abortion of the fetus may be viewed as a hard death sentence, and one that the pregnant individual has a hard time pronouncing.

Such philosophical discussions obviously don't make for good soundbites and and really do not belong to the world of policymaking anyway, so they don't make their way into candidates' debates, but it can be delicious food for thought for those predisposed to ponder such questions.  

[angus]

I was also thinking that "if Heaven exists, and you are judged" then voluntarily killing a baby's soul would be seen as a bad thing.  Of course, some religions believe that you automatically enter Heaven no matter what things you do on earth.  But the feeling of guilt in killing a life unnecessarily may somehow affect your "afterlife experience."  

I gathered from your post that you had reached a different conclusion than I did.  I actually thought about this at one time as well, but had reached the conclusion I posted.  I don't think it would be religion-dependent in that case.  Catholic priests, for example, console miscarriage patients who fret over the fact that the baby was never baptized.  One commonly overheard analogy is about a cup holding all the water that it can.  It seems that a spontaneously aborted fetus with a soul should not be judged any differently than a surgically aborted fetus with a soul.  In Mormonism, the soul sort of flies around for thousands of years, looking for a body to enter.  It was never clear to me whether this entrance occurred at the moment of conception, or birth, or somewhere in-between--Mitt Romney might know--but if the soul attaches itself to the body at fertilization, then is dislodged by D&C, which of the Seven Kingdoms of Heaven does it enter?  I guess we could ask Mitt Romney that as well.  My guess is that it must enter one of them, and if the parents are Mormons, then probably the highest one.  In Hindu, the soul is unaffected by externalities, so I can't imagine that an aborted fetus would have to go back to being a goat or a rhesus monkey in the next life just because it was aborted.  Now, if you're a resurrectionist, like the ancient Egyptians or the many American Protestants during the time of the Civil War, it could be an issue.  What possible use could the embryonic limbs be in the afterlife?  In this case, I guess you could argue that belief in the soul might inhibit abortion, unless, of course, it was known that the baby would have some serious birth defect.  In that case, the abortion might offer the soul a chance for a "do over."  

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Why not smother the newborn instead?

I believe that happens sometimes.  I don't know how it is where you live, but in Pennsylvania that is illegal.  (I actually looked it up.  2010 PA penal code, title 18, Chapter 32, section 3212 expressly forbids infanticide.)  There's at least one valid reason not to smother the newborn.

I don't often post in these abortion threads--and there have been many!  They can go on for days, and no one ever changes anyone else's mind, so they're best avoided, but this one was clever.  And it was Harry's.  And I like Harry.  Also, it was thoughtful, and it was an unusual take on the question.  I only disagree about Biden not handling it well.  Frankly, I don't much like Joe Biden and I certainly don't trust him, but all we have to go on is his answer to the question because we can't read his mind.  His answer to the question was a very mainstream view.  He can be described as Pro-Life (in the sense that he claims to accept the position of the Church that abortion is wrong) and Pro-Choice (in the sense that he does not want to use the law to enforce morality.  This seems to be the position held by a plurality of Americans, and he enunciated it well enough.  The question was framed in terms of Catholicism only because both candidates are nominally Catholic, but I think most religions would say the same thing.  Here, for example, is an excerpt from reformtaoism.org:

On the exclusive grounds that the destruction of life and the disruption of Nature is in direct conflict with the Tao, we would oppose abortion without hesitation; however, other factors are involved. Abortions are almost always sought by people who must take such action to preserve their own lives or way of life and perhaps the lives of people they love....  We advise that the choice to abort a pregnancy be avoided whenever possible and reasonable, but we support those who choose to have an abortion, providing that their reasons for doing so are generally sound.

one more thing:  I looked up gallup polls on this issue, and have found that I am not alone.  Apparently at least a third of the voters don't consider abortion a major issue in politics, and another 44% don't consider it a deal-breaker.  Only 17% of registered voters (and 18% of adults surveyed) say that a candidate must share his/her views in order to be under consideration.  That has always been my contention, but it was interesting to see polling data (gallup.com) that validated my assertion.