There has been a lot of posts by the more liberal Catholic crowd saying that Catholics are not truly pro-life if they don't support a override of the Bush's threatened veto on S-Chip.
I have not liked the attitude of these posters one bit I have to admit. There has been a lot of charges that we are not "Catholic" or truly Pro-life.
Vox Nova has been in the forefront of this debate. See ATTACKING-SICK-CHILDREN and WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS PLAY THE ABORTION CARD for examples.
Mirror of Justice had a great response here to all this at More from Ryan Anderson on SCHIP. Read it all. Here is a part:
What I found most curious, though, was Prof. Berg’s calling into question the intentions of those who oppose the proposed legislation to extend and expand S-chip: “I'm not so confident as Mr. Anderson that everyone in the debate is focused on helping the poor.” It is clear in context that he was questioning President Bush’s intentions. This doesn’t quite square with those who know Bush personally and have spent time working with him. Even pro-life, pro-poor Democrat John DiIulio, who has had a rather rocky relationship with the White House, has repeatedly stressed (most recently in his just-released book Godly Republic) that President Bush has very real and serious commitments to the poor. I don’t know if Prof. Berg also questions my intentions, or those of Brooks, Will, and Barnes, or, for that matter, Senator Sam Brownback, who voted against the S-chip expansion and is well known for his big heart for the poor.
It is tiresome—not to mention unhelpful—to insinuate that liberals care for the poor while conservatives do not. This charge also has the vice of being untrue (as Arthur Brooks persuasively argued in his book Who Really Cares?). Rather than assume ill will on the part of those with whom we disagree, we ought to consider that there simply are different ways of being pro-poor. Many conservatives believe and argue that their preferred policy solutions best help the poor. For a taste of this, see Yuval Levin and Peter Wehner’s recent NY Sun op/ed. At the end of the day, we have to realize that there are many competing and conflicting considerations about how to turn our moral and religious convictions into public policy.
To characterize those opposed to S-chip expansion as not really pro-life or not “focused on helping the poor” is simply unhelpful. Some may be. But many are not. (And, if we’re going to take this route, there’s equal room to question the true intentions of those in favor of S-chip expansion.) But the merits and demerits of the bill stand or fall on their own. People acting on equally serious commitments to the poor and with the same basic moral principles can disagree on the technical questions of which policy is most effective. The S-chip debate is not fundamentally a moral or religious one, but a practical one. It falls within the order of being that Aristotle described as techne; it stands in relation to the natural law as what Aquinas termed determinatio. On these questions, reasonable people of good will—including pro-life citizens—can disagree, which is one reason to pause before broadening the pro-life label to include contested legislation of this sort.
Using religion (and charging irreligion) to push through a legitimately disputed piece of legislation truly is partisan in the worst sense of the word—the type of abuse that anyone concerned with religion in the public square should reject. While our faith and moral commitments can tell us that we have real obligations to the poor, they can’t alone tell us how best to meet them.
I shall update this post with what Governor Huckabee's stand is on this issue in about a hour.
Update- Huckabee indicated in the debate this past week that he thought Bush should have offered a compromise on the legislation. I think that is correct but of course it appears the Democrats wanted to use this issue for political points. I suspect that faced with a Crisis the Democrats will relent and there will be a metting of the minds.
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