Thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade, abortion on demand is now an ingrained part of American culture. Many Americans are willing to consider it a "right" even as they would never consider an abortion for themselves. Roe is now a precedent protected by a wall of other precedents in the law. If Roe were to be overturned tomorrow, we would be in for a battle on a state-by-state basis that might take decades -- and might not turn out as we hope.I can understand the fatigue and the sense of frustration. On the other hand, we have witnessed a growing respect for life as ultrasound technologies have opened the womb to view. We have seen the Supreme Court allow that some abortion procedures can be ruled outside the law. We see pro-life convictions growing among the young. This is a moral conflict that might take a century or more to run its course.
I can understand the desire to reset the equation, to transcend the tired divisions. I can even understand the desire to move on, to go on to other issues of great and grave concern. I can sense excitement about a candidate who represents generational hope, and whose election could do so much to heal racial lines of division.
But I just cannot get past one crucial, irreducible, and central issue -- the moral status of those unborn lives. They are not mine to negotiate. If abortion were a matter of concern for anything less than this, I would gladly negotiate. But abortion is a matter of life and death, and how can we negotiate with death? What moral sense does it make to settle for death as "safe, legal, and rare?" How safe? How rare?
Our considerations of these questions will reveal what we really think of those millions of unborn lives. Do we consider the battle for their lives permanently lost?
Those fighting for the abolition of slavery pressed on against obstacles and set backs worse than these because, after all, these were human lives they were defending. What if they had listened to those who, after Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise, said that the battle was "permanently" lost? What if they had been intimidated by critics accusing them of "single-issue" voting?
If every single fetus is an unborn child made in the image of God, there is no moral justification for settling for a vague hope of some reduction in the number of fetal homicides. If the abortion fight is "permanently lost," it will be lost first among those who claim to be defenders of life -- those who tell us that the argument is merely changing.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
How Can We Negotiate With Death?
Al Mohler writes well here on the abortion issue:
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"But I just cannot get past one crucial, irreducible, and central issue-- the moral status of those unborn lives."
Thank you, Dr. Mohler. How any Christian can reason that because there are legitimate issues, other than abortion, at play in the election, that it is somehow okay for a Christian to vote for Obama, is beyond me.
To answer the arguments of Christian Obama supporters, yes, we do need better health-care (not a form of socialized medicine though, as under Obama), yes, we need a better educational system, yes, we need help for the truly poor (both of which McCain wants), and yes, we need to end the war in Iraq, *wisely* (which McCain will do, but Obama may not).
Ultimately though, Christian voters *must* deal with the fact that McCain has a voting record of protecting unborn human lives in the womb, while Obama has a voting record of *actively encouraging* legal abortion of these lives *on demand* in *radical* ways, such as we have never before seen from a Presidential candidate of either the Republican or Democratic parties.
Obama is not simply "confused" on this issue, in a way that he can be "persuaded" that he is wrong. He is radically, militantly even, in favor of the "choice" to exterminate human lives, just because they happen to be *temporarily located* inside the bodies of women.
Even before being born-- in fact, scientifically, from the moment *of conception*-- these unborn lives are actually *separate human beings,* each with his/her own individual DNA. Obama wants, and has *consistently* voted for, a legal culture where the killing of these unborn lives will be radically available on demand.
By contrast, McCain has voted to legally protect those lives (with the lamentable exceptions of rape and incest-- because unborn human lives are still actual *human lives,* even in those terrible cases). McCain's voting record on abortion is pro-life. Obama's is not-- decidedly not.
Moreover, before one more person says that "Republicans have done nothing in eight years to stop abortion," I will say emphatically that President Bush *did* appoint two pro-life judges to the Supreme Court, which *did* result in the outlawing of partial-birth abortion. McCain has said that that he will only appoint "strict constitutionalist" judges to the Supreme Court-- which, among other things, means *pro-life judges,* as Roe vs. Wade was not a "strict constitutionalist" decision, legally speaking!
McCain will act (and has acted, in the past) to legally protect the lives of the unborn in the womb. Obama will act (and has acted, in the past) to continue to legally allow the *extermination* of these lives. Based on his past voting record, Obama will even *legally expand* the situations in which unborn lives can be exterminated.
Think soberly about it, Christian voters-- and vote accordingly.
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