|
Since the Catholic Church views abortion as gravely wrong, it considers it a duty to reduce its acceptance by the public and in civil legislation. While it considers that Catholics should not favour abortion in any field, it recognizes that Catholics may accept compromises that, while permitting abortions, lessen their incidence by, for instance, restricting some forms or enacting remedies against the conditions that give rise to them. It is accepted that support may be given to a political platform that contains a clause in favour of abortion but also elements that will actually reduce the number of abortions, rather than to an anti-abortion platform that will lead to their increase.〔(Frank K. Flinn, J. Gordon Melton (editors), ''Encyclopedia of Catholicism'' (Facts on File 2007 ISBN 978-0-8160-5455-8), p. 5 )〕 ==United States== (詳細はRoe v. Wade'' Supreme Court decision that opened the door to the legalization of abortion, the right-to-life movement in the U.S. consisted of lawyers, politicians, and doctors, almost all of whom were Catholic. The only coordinated opposition to abortion during the early 1970s came from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Life Bureau, also a Catholic organization. Prior to ''Roe v. Wade'' decision, abortion was not a high priority for Catholic bishops in the United States. Neither was abortion a prominent issue in American politics prior to ''Roe v. Wade''. It was not a major platform plank for either party in the 1968 and 1972 elections. In the 60s and early 70s, there was a shift as a number of Catholics and Southern whites abandoned their traditional affiliation with the Democratic party and began to support the Republican party. This shift is evidenced by the fact that Nixon received only 33% of the Catholic vote in the 1968 election compared to 52% in 1972. As a group, Catholics represented a quarter of the nation's electorate and were now one of the nation's largest swing groups. Both parties began to aggressively woo both the Catholic voters. Although the Catholic hierarchy could not dictate who Catholics voted for, they did have a substantial influence over the faithful in their dioceses. Politicians were aware that the bishops could bring employ significant time, energy and money to support the issues that were important to them. From their perspective, the bishops were eager to regain some of the influence that their predecessors had wielded in the earlier part of the 20th century.〔 After Roe v. Wade, the involvement of the Catholic hierarchy in American politics increased to an unprecedented level, with bishops devoting more time, energy and money to the issue of abortion than any other single issue. The substantial role of the Catholic Church in the abortion debate has received much attention in the American media . Mobilization of a wide-scale pro-life movement among Catholics began quickly after the ''Roe v. Wade'' decision with the creation of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). The NRLC also organized non-Catholics, eventually becoming the largest pro-life organization in the United States. Connie Paige has been quoted as having said that, "()he Roman Catholic Church created the right-to-life movement. Without the church, the movement would not exist as such today." In the two years following the Roe v. Wade decision, U.S. bishops focused on passage of a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would ban abortion. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Catholic Church and the politics of abortion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|