As Election Nears, Roman Catholic Bishops Try to Raise Awareness of Church's Opposition to Abortion

With the presidential election just 40 days away, many Roman Catholic bishops and parish leaders are working aggressively to highlight the church's opposition to abortion.

In Chicago, the archdiocese's Respect Life office and five other anti-abortion groups are holding a round-the clock prayer vigil for the next 40 days outside a medical clinic on the city's North Side that performs abortions. On Wednesday, the first night of the vigil outside Family Planning Associates, more than 100 people gathered, many holding white candles and rosary beads, staring at the clinic as they prayed. No mention was made of either Sens. John McCain or Barack Obama, but apprehension about the election was in the night air.

"The purpose of the vigil is to end abortion," said Mary Louise Kurey, director of the Respect Life office. "But the election is definitely one of our intentions as we are praying together."

An equally passionate group of Catholic activists is speaking out to tell voters that abortion is not the overriding issue in the campaign. They are advocating a more comprehensive definition of pro-life and the totality of the Gospel. Among them are Catholic constitutional scholar Douglas Kmiec, whose latest book is "Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Questions About Barack Obama."

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide, the procedure has divided the 47 million Catholic voters in the U.S. in nearly every election. Catholics are classic swing voters who have picked the winner of the popular vote in the last nine presidential elections, according to a study by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Forty-one percent of Catholics are independents in 2008, a significant 11-point increase since 2004, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

McCain says he is opposed to abortion, but he voted to support federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Obama supports keeping abortion legal, but backs abortion-reduction programs.

This year, the inflammatory issue took somewhat of a higher profile after Catholic Democrats Sen. Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on NBC's " Meet the Press" about the church's teaching on abortion.

Activists like Chris Korzen of Catholics United, which wants to reduce the number of women ending their pregnancies, said the controversy created an unnecessary distraction by shifting attention to theology instead of policy. Catholics United recently released a national television advertisement citing McCain's vote against children's health care and support for the Iraq war as inconsistent with the church's pro-life teachings.

"I think the questions we need to ask are not what do our candidates believe, so much as what are they going to reduce abortions," Korzen said. "The unfortunate comments from Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Biden were an unwelcome distraction from the real issues at hand, which are how can we actually unite as a nation to implement policies that will reduce abortion to the greatest extent possible."

Lisa Sowle Cahill, a theology professor at Boston College, said the basic position of the U.S. bishops is explained in "Faithful Citizenship," the voting guide issued last fall that condemns abortion as "evil" but states that there are other important life issues.

"Catholics don't only talk about abortion. The Catholic bishops have talked about Immigration, the war, the death penalty, health care, poverty, employment. Those things are equally important, and I see Obama doing more on those issues," she said.

Kmiec, a Catholic scholar and a Republican who served in the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, said he decided to support Obama because he found his platform consistent with the church's standard of social justice.

"If one finds a political candidate that has spoken well to the full schedule of concerns and, in addition, has said that he wishes to discourage abortion . . . then you have the beginnings of what the Holy Father would say are countervailing, proportional concerns of serious moral weight that can overcome the very serious shortcoming of being pro-choice," he said.