Back to 1960

NIcholas Cafardi, a law professor at Duquesne University, and a prominent anti-abortion Catholic, has come out in favor of Obama. I find some his article puzzling. He offers two arguments: the argument that abortion is one among many moral issues, and the claim that Obama will do a better job than McCain at lowering the abortion rate. On his first argument, he offers this:

Despite what some Republicans would like Catholics to believe, the list of what the church calls “intrinsically evil acts” does not begin and end with abortion. In fact, there are many intrinsically evil acts, and a committed Catholic must consider all of them in deciding how to vote.
Last November, the U.S. bishops released “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a 30-page document that provides several examples of intrinsically evil acts: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, torture, racism, and targeting noncombatants in acts of war.

I find two curious points here. First, his list comes from paragraphs 22 and 23 of the report (page 8), but curiously he does not mention that the list also includes genocide. Why does he leave off just that one item. Perhaps it is because Obama is on record as opposing leaving U.S. troops in Iraq even if their departure could lead to genocide. Funny that he forgot to type that one word in. There is a second curious point.
But what about an unjust war? In 2003, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said flatly that “reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist.” McCain voted for it; Obama opposed it.
It is not merely that the Catholic Church is not pacifist. Judgements about the prudence and desirability of a war are often more than simply theological questions, and the Catholic Church has long recognized that. The pope is not the final arbiter of whether the Iraq war was just, and the pope knows it. Cafardi is implying the opposite. I wonder if Cafardi wants a return to 1960, when JFK had to demonstrate that the pope did not dictate to him.
On his second argument, that Obama would be better than McCain in reducing abortion, I offer two observations. First, the National Right to Life Committee takes vigorous exception to Cafardi’s sanguine views on Obama’s abortion advocacy. Second, I am curious about this comment.

Let’s suppose Roe v. Wade were overturned. What would happen? The matter would simply be kicked back to the states — where it was before 1973. Overturning Roe would not abolish abortion. It would just mean that abortion would be legal in some states and illegal in others. The number of abortions would remain unchanged as long as people could travel.
That is a remarkable empirical proposition. I would think at a minimum for Cafardi to make this claim, he ought to explain why the abortion advocates have put so much energy, money, and time into defending Roe v. Wade if it is really that irrelevant.