Former President decries abortion

By David Jones

We have always thought that Jimmy Carter was an intelligent, decent man with whom we had many differences of opinion. He was probably an excellent naval officer. His presidency, in our opinion, left much to be desired.

Yet Carter could surprise us from time to time. In an oft-mocked interview with Playboy he confessed that he had “lusted in his heart”; this was not merely a smarmy attempt to connect with the Playboy readership: Jimmy Carter truly agonized over his human frailty and sad condition of the human soul in modern times. Agreeing to the Playboy interview and admitting that he had experienced lust may not have been the wisest political move for its time, but it certainly paved new ground that would later be covered by another American president who did more than lust in his heart.

One of the mysteries with Carter, given his Southern Baptist background and outspoken faith in other areas, is that he was not outspoken on the issue of abortion. Assuming the presidency just four short years after Roe v. Wade, Carter had an opportunity with “the bully pulpit” that was largely wasted.

His stance was that of an abortion moderate, which is to say, not much of a stance at all.

Nearly 30 years later, meeting with reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the former president seemed to want to make up for that oversight.

Former President Jimmy Carter yesterday condemned all abortions and chastised his party for its intolerance of candidates and nominees who oppose abortion.

"I never have felt that any abortion should be committed -- I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors," he told reporters over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, while across town Senate Democrats deliberated whether to filibuster the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. because he may share President Bush and Mr. Carter's abhorrence of abortion.

Perhaps making sure he would be quoted in at least a few newspapers, Carter added this:

"I've never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion."

How many lives might have been spared from the abortionist’s trade had Mr. Carter simply uttered those lines as the nation’s chief executive? This is not an attempt to downgrade what he did yesterday: better late than not at all. But inevitably one has to wonder what the effect of a strong pro-life stand by a Democratic president would have meant to the nation. Perhaps that is why he said this:

In Washington to promote his latest book, "Our Enduring Values," Mr. Carter acknowledged he made mistakes in office. "I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president."

Of course Ronald Reagan was strongly against abortion. But it was four years later, the abortion industry was ramping up and Reagan spent most of his political capital with a hostile Congress trying (and eventually succeeding in cooperation with Pope John Paul II) to win the Cold War. The abortion industry continued to grow and prosper, and attitudes among many Americans at the least became ambivalent to the butchery taking place in shopping center clinics across America.

There are signs that the times are changing. That the American people are turning away from abortion as a contraceptive tool. There is new hope with the addition of a strongly pro-life chief justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, and a nominee-

in-waiting, Samuel Alito, that the balance on the court might be shifted away from preserving the “all abortion, all of the time” status quo to recognizing that the nation’s commitment to life and liberty must include all of its citizens, from the womb to natural death.

Perhaps the prayers and the pro-life witness of many are now bearing fruit. Jimmy Carter’s flat declaration that all abortion is wrong is a good sign, and we choose to believe that he is saying it not to try to prevent further erosion from his old political party, but because he sincerely believes it. (Aside from his anti-abortion statements, we find little else in his recent comments that show he has changed much from his earlier days.) Also, recent opinion polls the number of Americans who oppose abortion has risen, while the numbers of people who favor abortion with no restrictions continues to drop.

But we would cautiously advise more prayer and more pro-life witness. In our home state of Oklahoma we look at numbers that still suggest that between 10% and 15% of all pregnancies end up in abortions. While that is better than the 20-25% reported in 1985 by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (and we trust its numbers because it is the bought-and-paid-for research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider), it is still evidence that we are failing to protect our least brothers and sisters from harm. It is proof that we have not yet mounted an effective Christian witness of prayer and outreach that would change hearts and minds.

God would love nothing more than to assist us in this task, as He can do so much more than we can. But it’s part of our test, the burden of our times, and He will not interfere with the free will of those who choose abortion, or those of us who He has placed here to work against it. That is why the entire idea of being “pro-choice” is so ridiculous. Of course there is a choice involved. There has always been a choice available. It is the moral choice between the life of an innocent human being and the death of an innocent human being.

Death may be a “legal” option but the morality has not changed. As Jimmy Carter indicated this week, Jesus Christ would never choose abortion for one of His little brothers and sisters. And Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God Himself.

We are among a growing number of the faithful -- Catholic and non-Catholic -- who believe that the signs of the times, balanced against many prophecies that issued from good people, even holy people, over the last 150 years, indicate that we are entering a time of trial and formation that will test the true mettle of our faith. These are probably not “the last days” as most people think of them, but are times of chastisement and purgation -- a “cleansing” -- as the result of evil to which we have become accustom, to tolerate.

For Americans, and for much of the so-called civilized world, abortion is at the top of that list.

The prayers and the pro-life work that we do now can help mitigate the chastisement even at this late hour.
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