In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am virulently opposed to abortion. Since I believe that life begins at conception, I hold Roe v. Wade as one of our nation's darkest moments. Roe has rendered forty-five million of our countrymen and women dead before getting a real opportunity to live in the sacred name of “choice”.
Rather than waste another column pointing out the inefficacy of the pro-abortion argument, I will impugn the character of another group of citizens who has abdicated responsibility on the abortion front. Though the party is “pro-life”, the republicans have used abortion as a means to buy votes of mostly Christian citizens.
Pro-lifers often take heat for being single-issue voters. While it is one thing to disagree with someone, it shows a tremendous capacity for ignorance to be unable to comprehend where a political enemy is coming from. If the fetus is really a child, abortion is the greatest injustice being perpetuated by Americans, bar none.
Thus, it is entirely consistent for pro-lifers to vote based on this one issue. But what if this issue were to suddenly fade away? Surely some members of the republican party would find a new ticket to punch come election day. Eleanor Clift recently made a similar observation in Newsweek.
Now that the GOP is within striking distance of overturning Roe, they're having second thoughts ... "Any activist will tell you they'd rather have the issue out there than to have it resolved," says this pro-choice Republican, who has worked on the Hill and for various Republican interest groups. "If Roe were overturned, we'd be electing Democrats as far as the eye can see."
What's a good pro-lifer to do? Obviously we cannot vote for the democratic party. For though the commitment to end the evil of abortion is tepid in republicans, it is non-existent among their democratic counterparts. The obvious—if disappointing—answer is that citizens concerned for innocent life must look to that ugly alternative of American politics, the dreaded third party.
In truth, voting for a third party is probably a waste if the only measure of worth is who wins in the current election cylce. For if pro-lifers turn out en masse to vote for a third party candidate, the election will probably be thrown to the democrats. Though unfortunate, this is hardly the end of the world. Surffering through a Hillary presidency may be just the trick to get the GOP to realize pro-lifers mean business.
In thirty three years, all the gains on the abortion front have been small ones made at the state level. The republican party has been a source of platitudes at the national level, and little else. For they know the game. As long as abortion is legal, they have a very large and very loyal base from which to draw votes to remain in power.
It is high time we called their bluff. One day, pro-lifers may be able to march on an altogether different day, marking the day the injustice known as abortion was purged from our midst. As long as the republicans are allowed to refrain from fighting, save in campaign speeches, that day is going to remain but a pleasant fantasy.
2 comments:
I will take issue with the remark "the committment to end the evil of abortion is non-existent in Democrats".If you were to substitute the word "evil" with the word procedure I suspect you would actually find a huge majority who would like to see it end as well.They would prefer using sex education, birth control( including morning after pills),less Puritanical societal attitudes about sex and the body in general,elimination of poverty, etc..If after all this an unplanned pregnancy still occured, say, a single mom trying to go to school and hold down a job, if she knew society would help her through her pregnancy and child rearing years it would no doubt affect her decision.
In other words,a progressive stance is to use the power of the state to increase the options available to all it's citizens rather than to decrease the options of one portion of the citizenry.Abortion would then become obsolete as would starvation and death by preventable disease,or any other manifestation of injustice.You just have to let us run the world for a while to see the benefits!( sarcasm)
Are you opposed to morning after pill,preventing fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus?
You always shed light on things in a way that opens something new up and for that I thank you. It seems odd, but I hadn't thought that the anti-statism of the Republicans--as well as myself--may actually encourage abortion. That being said, there a lot of good Christian charities that help the down-trodden, and more poignantly, adoption services which provide women a better way out of the mess they often find themselves in.
Many of the rank and file of the Democratic party tolerate abortion in extreme cases, which, though problematic is not completely evil. We cannot except an immoral procedure even in extreme cases if it is truly immoral. The viability of the fetus does not changed, even if the woman was raped or a victim of incest.
That being said, most of them would probably want the procedure to become relatively rare. The same cannot be said for zealot pro-choicers and the party leaders who kowtow to this special interest group. Thus, while your point is valid, I still could not vote for the democratic party, though perhaps--I can't believe I'm writing this--for a select candidate.
As for the morning after pill, I am, like my Church, opposed to it. I am opposed to all methods of birth control. For a clear aliteration on this position I would check out Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on the matter.
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