In election, protecting conscience as important as ending abortion.

n ref­er­ence to my post yes­ter­day, a read­er writes: “In my opin­ion, a bet­ter ques­tion is whether abor­tion is real­ly the end-all elec­tion issue many con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics make it out to be. What if there were an issue as impor­tant as abor­tion that Catholics need to con­sid­er? I think there is. And I think it is con­science rights.”

Since at least 2009, when the debate sur­round­ing the Afford­able Care Act was swirling, I have been appalled by how con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics, espe­cial­ly cler­gy (includ­ing bish­ops), have been try­ing to manip­u­late the con­sciences of Amer­i­can Catholics by telling them they can­not vote for Democ­rats, even pro-life Democ­rats, under pain of mor­tal sin. This became even worse in 2012 with Oba­ma’s re-elec­tion cam­paign, and is at a fever pitch now.

Here is what Gaudi­um et Spes says:

“Fur­ther­more, what­ev­er is opposed to life itself, such as any type of mur­der, geno­cide, abor­tion, euthana­sia or will­ful self-destruc­tion, what­ev­er vio­lates the integri­ty of the human per­son, such as muti­la­tion, tor­ments inflict­ed on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; what­ev­er insults human dig­ni­ty, such as sub­hu­man liv­ing con­di­tions, arbi­trary impris­on­ment, depor­ta­tion, slav­ery, pros­ti­tu­tion, the sell­ing of women and chil­dren; as well as dis­grace­ful work­ing con­di­tions, where men are treat­ed as mere tools for prof­it, rather than as free and respon­si­ble per­sons; all these things and oth­ers of their like are infamies indeed. They poi­son human soci­ety, but they do more harm to those who prac­tice them than those who suf­fer from the injury. More­over, they are supreme dis­hon­or to the Cre­ator (GS 27).”

Here, in this doc­u­ment from Vat­i­can II, the Coun­cil Fathers equate abor­tion and “attempts to coerce the will itself” as “infamies.” They are list­ed togeth­er as grave offens­es against the Cre­ator (which I think was a title for God cho­sen delib­er­ate­ly here to rec­og­nize the human per­son, in his total­i­ty, as the apex of God’s cre­ative work).

I believe a Catholic could, in good con­science, choose to abstain from vot­ing in this elec­tion or vote for a third-par­ty can­di­date. But I will vote for Hillary Clin­ton for two major rea­sons:

One, to make the most emphat­ic state­ment I can in rejec­tion of Don­ald Trump by vot­ing for the per­son with the best chance to defeat him. Two, and even more impor­tant­ly, to take a stand for con­science rights against the con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic cler­gy and laity who are attempt­ing to fright­en Catholics away from vot­ing for Clin­ton by telling them (false­ly) that those Catholics who vote for Clin­ton will go to hell if they do. I did that in 2012 [by vot­ing for Oba­ma], and I will con­tin­ue to do it at least until priests and bish­ops stop doing this and repu­di­ate hav­ing ever done so, once and for all.

And the prob­lem is not just that some try to manip­u­late and fright­en Catholics away from vot­ing for Mrs. Clin­ton. Many also will try to manip­u­late and fright­en you away from not vot­ing for Mr. Trump—even if you say you will vote third par­ty, or stay home.

In my own case, sev­er­al peo­ple have hijacked dis­cus­sions on my Face­book wall in order to write long and graph­ic descrip­tions of what hap­pens dur­ing an abor­tion. Or to say that six­ty mil­lion dead babies are plead­ing with us to vote for Mr. Trump.

Yes­ter­day, some­one tweet­ed to me a graph­ic pic­ture of a bloody and dis­mem­bered baby as the kind of thing I would be respon­si­ble for—not if I vote for Mrs. Clin­ton, but mere­ly if I refuse to vote for Mr. Trump.

This is emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion. It is the tac­tic, not of thinkers, but of bul­lies.

And so my read­er is exact­ly right to take this stand for con­science.

Because—and this is what I was try­ing to point out through the chal­lenge in my pri­or post—when it comes to Trump vs. Clin­ton, no one has any rea­son to believe that Mr. Trump will be any bet­ter on the abor­tion issue. All you can do is appeal to your unthink­ing faith in what Mr. Trump has “promised.” Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it.

But where is the actu­al evi­dence that Mr. Trump’s “con­ver­sion” to the pro-life cause is actu­al­ly in earnest, and not just an elec­tion year play to the con­ser­v­a­tive base? No such evi­dence exists.

But Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it.

Do you real­ly mean to tell me that Mr. Trump has been so scrupu­lous­ly hon­est in all things, that we can take him at his word when he speaks of his pro-life sen­ti­ments? or when he promis­es to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court?

Real­ly?

But Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it.

In fact, in Mr. Trump’s case, there is good rea­son not to put faith in his pro-life “con­ver­sion.” He claims to have become pro-life because of the child of friends who decid­ed to keep him rather than abort him, as they had orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. And the child, said Mr. Trump, turned out to be a “super­star.”

But what if the child had not been a “super­star”? What if he’d turned out to be a “los­er,” or what if he had been born with Down’s Syn­drome?

In fact, Mr. Trump was asked that very thing. Here is his answer:

I’ve nev­er thought of it. That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. I’ve nev­er thought of it. Prob­a­bly not, but I’ve nev­er thought of it. I would say no, but in this case it was an easy one because he’s such an out­stand­ing per­son.

Don’t lie to your­self: Mr. Trump is not pro-life; he is pro-“superstar.”

But Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it.

So where does that leave us? That leaves us in an elec­tion where abor­tion is a non-issue. And that is where my read­er’s appeal to con­science comes in, and is exact­ly right.

Attempt­ing to emo­tion­al­ly manip­u­late Catholic vot­ers into vot­ing for Mr. Trump (because abor­tion) is an evil as great as abor­tion itself, because—as the Church tells us in Gaudi­um et Spes—one’s con­science is an inte­gral part of his very life.

I find it iron­ic that the very peo­ple who are so insis­tent upon the pri­ma­cy of pru­den­tial judg­ment on issues like water­board­ing, or the death penal­ty, or immi­gra­tion, sud­den­ly act as though deci­sions about vot­ing are not areas of pru­den­tial judg­ment. Some­how abor­tion is the only issue that mat­ters in these cas­es. And even when there is no evi­dence that Trump actu­al­ly means it when he claims to be pro-life, we are sup­posed to accept his word as though it were His Word.

Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it.

But vot­ing is always a com­plex and indi­vid­ual moral cal­cu­lus, involv­ing a great many ques­tions apart from abor­tion. And so Car­di­nal Ratzinger says That it is lic­it to vote for a pro-abor­tion can­di­date so long as you do not do so because the can­di­date is pro-abor­tion. Your vote must be jus­ti­fied by an effort to avoid “pro­por­tion­ate” evils.

How about these for pro­por­tion­ate evils? Don­ald Trump:

• is endorsed by Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, Islam­ic ter­ror­ists, Neo-Nazi ter­ror­ists, the KKK, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, Ser­bian war crim­i­nal Vojislav Seselj, Russ­ian Fas­cist Alek­san­dr Dug­in, and con­vict­ed mur­der­er Don King
• prais­es Sad­dam Hus­sein, tweets Mus­soli­ni quotes, uses pic­tures of Nazi solid­ers in his cam­paign mate­r­i­al.
• pledges to use libel laws against dis­sent­ing jour­nal­ists, in vio­la­tion of the first amend­ment
• refus­es to con­demn vio­lence engaged in by his sup­port­ers, promis­ing to pay their legal fees, and once claimed he could mur­der some­one on Fifth Avenue and not lose any sup­port
• calls for the exe­cu­tion of Edward Snow­den
• calls for war crimes by advo­cat­ing the killing of ter­ror­ists’ fam­i­lies
• promis­es to do “unthink­able” things in response to ter­ror­ism
• speaks out against the Gene­va Con­ven­tions as a hin­drance
• threat­ens to shoot down Russ­ian planes
• won­ders why we just can’t use our nukes
• calls for glob­al nuclear rear­ma­ment
• says the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment “showed strength” by crack­ing down on the pro­test­ers in Tien­na­men Square
• promis­es to seize oil fields in the Mid­dle East
• says he wants to invade Syr­ia with 30,000 sol­diers
• promis­es a return to more bru­tal forms of exe­cu­tion than lethal injec­tion
• asks Rus­sia to com­mit espi­onage against the Unit­ed States

And on and on and on. But you can check out the link above, which includes doc­u­men­ta­tion of these and every oth­er charge against Mr. Trump.

In this elec­tion, mr. Trump’s pro-life cre­den­tials are in enough doubt that there is no chance I would ever over­look every­thing else. “Trump said it, I believe it, that set­tles it” does not per­suade me. I will not vote for Mrs. Clinton—I have always said that I will vote third party—but a Catholic (like my read­er above) who decides that he or she must vote for Mrs. Clin­ton in order to stop Mr. Trump is act­ing with a Catholic con­science as ful­ly-formed as any­one else’s, and is absolute­ly right to protest against the emo­tion­al bul­ly­ing and manip­u­la­tion that oth­er Catholics, includ­ing cler­gy, engage in.

“Vote for Trump or the babies will die” is not a way to win peo­ple to your way of think­ing. Espe­cial­ly when it’s not true.