Under the baobab: Decisions made by a few people can have consequences for many others

It is time to make a decision. It will have consequences.

In 1928, former New York Gov. Al Smith became the first Roman Catholic to seriously run for the presidency. Only white Protestant men had occupied the White House. He lost. Historians speculate that his Catholicism was the reason. Southern conservative Protestants, in particular, feared that Smith would be under the control of the pope. Herbert Hoover won. A year later, 1929, the stock market crashed.

Thirty-two years later in 1960, Sen, John Kennedy ran for the presidency. He was also a Catholic. Kennedy had to respond to many concerns about his faith. He was victorious in one of the closest contests ever. During his administration the civil rights movement transformed the country.

This year former Vice President Joe Biden is the first Roman Catholic since Kennedy to be a major party candidate for the president. The fact that his Catholic religion is not a major issue is an indication of how far the country has progressed.

If appointed, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will be the sixth practicing Catholic on the current court. She will join Chief Justice John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. Some fear that her appointment will allow the accumulation of conservative votes. It might be enough to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which announced a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Justice Sotomayor, the only Catholic justice nominated by a Democratic president, is known to be pro-choice. The others have shown anti-abortion rights tendencies.

Judge Barrett, herself, has said, “As Catholics, certainly our faith helps us to form our conscience and our ideas and how we live our faith, but our religious beliefs should never be a substitute for impartial jurisprudence.”

Does her comment indicate that Roe v. Wade is safe as settled law?

Decisions do have consequences.

What happens if Roe is overturned? It won’t outlaw abortions. It means that each of the states will be free to enact legislation to outlaw, limit or approve abortion rights as they see fit. This will probably result in abortions being available in some states but not in others, similar to current marijuana regulations.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my wife and I are practicing Catholics. I was raised in the “liberation theology” tradition of the church. This philosophy emphasizes having social concerns for the poor and working for political liberation for oppressed peoples. My mentor, Father Clements, marched with John Lewis in Selma and Rev. King in Chicago. I was arrested with Father Berrigan and Martin Sheen on a Good Friday peace protest in New York. We are strong supporters of Pope Francis. We also believe that no one has the right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. As my wife says, “If the government can mandate that you can’t have an abortion, then like China, it can mandate that you must.”

Being a Catholic does not predetermine how a Supreme Court justice will vote on this issue. The church’s teaching is clear. Since life begins at conception, abortion is considered the taking of life. However, the practice of some functioning Catholics is not so clear.

As elders our opinion is relevant as advice not policy. In the end, we believe those affected by a decision should be empowered to render it. Decisions have consequences.

Being a Catholic also does not establish the moral validity of one’s opinion. Roger Taney was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court when he became chief justice in 1836. He authored the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision in 1857 which, inter alia, upheld the institution of slavery, identified the status of Black people in regard to citizenship, and established one of the main pillars of white supremacy.

He wrote: “We think ... that (Black people) are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time (of America’s founding) considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

In dicta he went further: “… when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. ... (Blacks) had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

Taney’s decision had major consequences. It propped up a decadent system, chattel slavery, which took the costliest war in American history to eliminate: 800,000 Americans died. It took the efforts of millions of people in a civil rights movement, the passage of five constitutional amendments, numerous acts of Congress and executive orders to restore those people, our fellow Americans, to dignity, equality and full citizenship.

It is time to make a decision. It will have consequences.