Why vote Pro-Life?

“I’m pro-life, but I don’t want to impose my views on others.”  Have you heard this argument before?  I bet you’d have never heard this one, though:  “I’m an abolitionist, but I don’t want to impose my views on slaveholders.”  Or this: “I oppose torture and terror, but I don’t want to impose my views on Hitler’s Nazis.”  

The truth is that if you are truly pro-life, this means you believe that human life begins at conception, and that each of us got our start as unique human beings at the moment of conception.  If you are truly pro-life, that means that you understand that purposefully stopping a human being from continuing to live is killing. 

I hope it goes without saying that killing an innocent person is wrong, and this is not a matter of opinion that is open to political correctness.  If we believe that there should be laws in place to prevent and/or punish murder, then this should not change based on the age of the victim.   

Now, if you believe that every woman should have a legal right to terminate the life of her unborn baby if she so chooses, then you are “pro-choice”.

But please don’t patronize real pro-lifers, people who stand up for the dignity of human life, by associating with them only when they stand unopposed.  If you are willing to look the other way as innocent babies are killed in the womb, then you are not “pro-life”; you are “pro-choice”.  There is no such thing as “pro-life, but…”

I’ve also heard of pro-lifers being accused of being “one-issue” voters.  Actually, I’ve fallen into this trap myself.  My political interests include immigration reform, affordable healthcare, renewable energy, peace.  But what am I really saying when I choose a candidate who seems to want to do so much good … for those of us who survived our mothers’ pregnancies?  That I only care about those issues that have a direct effect on me personally?  

If a candidate were running for president, and his proposed policies on the economy, healthcare, foreign policy, taxes, education, social security, energy, immigration, etc. all aligned with your views, and you believed he could deliver on all of these, BUT one of his domestic policies involved Jewish concentration camps or the enslavement of African-Americans, would you still vote for him?  

No? You wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice a segment of the population for the sake of improvement in quality of life for the rest of us? So how is the killing of babies before they are born any different?

And in reality, let’s not kid ourselves that abortion doesn’t affect those of us who do not face unplanned pregnancies.  A nation that allows the slaughter of the innocents will not stand up for any segment of society when it is difficult or unpopular.  A nation that looks the other way when abortions kill so many of our next generation is a nation that is not connecting the dots between abortion and other societal evils.  

Allowing a woman to abort her child instead of providing affordable child-care for her so she can continue her education or keep her job is not “pro-woman”.  Allowing women to abort their unborn children instead of opposing the portrayal of women as sex-objects throughout the mainstream media is not “pro-woman”.   Allowing exceptions for abortion in the case of rape without increasing the penalty for the rapists is also not “pro-woman.”

Speaking of exceptions for abortion, let’s be real.  If we believe that abortion kills, then how is the baby conceived in rape any different from a baby conceived within a loving marriage? If we allow one woman to have an abortion but not the other, then what we are saying is that if the woman chose to have sex, she deserves the consequences of her actions.  With this mentality, criminalizing abortion is a punishment for the woman who chose to have sex.  This is in no way “pro-woman”.  (And by the way, pro-choicers are no more fond of this "exception" than I am.  See here.)

Pregnancy is not a “punishment”.  It is the natural result of sexual relations.  Obviously, it’s not fair for a woman who did nothing to put herself into this situation to continue to suffer the consequences of the violence done against her.  But is more violence really the answer?  

Maybe you have heard this observation before: The problem with an eye for an eye is that everyone ends up blind.  What’s more, why is the innocent child being punished for the violence brought against his mother?  Why are we not focusing on the criminal, the rapist, the hater of women?   

Deuteronomy 24:16 states: "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers."

It’s so sad that innocent children must pay as a sort of reparation for the sin of their biological fathers.  It means that our nation participates in a form of human sacrifice, the appeasement of feminists who desperately grasp at straws to find restitution for the evil of rape. (I don’t mean any disrespect to feminists by this.  I used to identify myself as a feminist, but that’s for another post.)

What I think a “pro-choice” candidate is doing is trying to get the feminist vote by pretending to be “pro-woman” while not bothering to make hard decisions that would actually improve women’s lives, prevent the sexualization of young girls, encourage women to value themselves by means other than their physique.  Not doing all these things but being “pro-choice” is nothing more than a cop-out.

And so this is how I came to realize that if I call myself pro-life, then I must vote pro-life.  Liberty and the pursuit of happiness have meaning only if life is respected first.  Therefore, I vote pro-life.

Psalms 139:13-14

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.