However, what is surprising–but hardly unique among Mormon liberals–is a rather bizarre attempt, at least to my mind, to suggest that Mormons’ overwhelmingly Republican voting preference is correlated correlated to an equally overwhelming failure on the part of Mormons to “line up exactly with the nuanced views of the LDS Church” on abortion. Unfortunately, some of the “nuanced views” cited seem to be more those concocted by Mormon liberals, than anything actually preached from more “orthodox” Mormon pulpits.

For example, I’m aware of no CJCLDS authority who has suggested that “quickening” (and Brigham Young’s statement about its theological significance in an unrelated context) is relevant to the Church’s stance on abortion, but this seems to be favorite trope of Mormon liberals attempting to justify their pro-choice political position. By contrast, in the rather official, public context of a devotional address at Brigham Young University in 1999 later published in the Church’s official magazine, The Ensign,, a current CJCLDS Apostle, Dallin H. Oaks, who happens to be a former law professor at the University of Chicago no less, roundly denounced the craftiness of the “pro-choice” label as seductively misleading, and articulated a theological basis for the LDS Church’s stand on abortion, and even LDS members’ obligation to stand for correct principles about it, that has nothing to do with the arguments cobbled together by Ms. Stack. From the point of view of the Mormon liberals, of course, such pronouncements–if even acknowledged at all–are just evidence of the lack of “openness” among CJCLDS leaders, and more particularly the less open-minded Mormons who don’t agree with them.