States have rights — with big limits
Camden, N.J.: Charles Camosy’s guest op-ed (“Biden’s HHS vs. abortion common ground,” Nov. 30), an unofficial amicus brief supporting the return of the right to regulate abortion to the states (like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to do), is either fatuous or disingenuous. And the last person one wants protecting the individual’s right to choose is a professional theologian. We fought a civil war to emphasize that no one state or confederacy can overrule all the others. Mississippi is not the United States, a difference that’s not only obvious but decisive if the conversation turns to abortion (or race). If the states’ rights argument had prevailed in the last quarter of the 19th century, slaves would still be slaves in 11 states and the practice of certain religious faiths — like Catholicism, the sect I was raised in — would be dangerous or socially sanctioned. There are states’ rights and human rights. It’s the federal government’s job, not the job of a state motivated by sectional pride and religious bias, to protect the latter by regulating the former.
If my former co-religionists and Catholic theologians find this offensive, blame it on my high school education and what I learned from a Jesuit named Frank Moan. One afternoon, I caught him with his feet up on his desk and reading “Candide.” A 17-year-old wiseass, I reminded him that all of Voltaire was on the Church’s Index Expurgatorius, or index of forbidden books. In other words, if he dropped dead that moment, he’d go straight to hell. The late Frank Moan didn’t even look up. “God gave me my free will before the Church gave you your Index,” he said, and threw me out of his office.