Eight or nine years ago, when I first began to digest my political surroundings I was a sworn conservative – or so I thought. As all good political ideologies, mine was informed by a deep moral imperative, perhaps the most common to bond young conservatives today: the issue of life.
As had been explained to me by a fair number of mentors early on, abortion was not only wrong, but abhorrently so in the eyes of the Lord. If we as a population did not defend life, what could we defend?
But I will admit that the more I looked around, the more confused I became regarding my bedfellows in the GOP. I was pro-life; thus, I was rather stunned to find out that such a political commitment also made me against gun control and against properly funding education. I realized being "pro-life" meant supporting a health insurance industry that profits off dropping coverage to the sick and elderly. "Pro-life" meant brewing a firestorm to keep Terri Schaivo alive, but staying quiet while our judicial system sentences black defendants to death four times as frequently as their white counterparts. The world I was standing for didn't exactly add up to one that valued and defended the principles I associated with true life.
My confusion did not settle with a Bush presidency. It almost seemed as if I'd been lobbying against the essence and opportunity of life by cutting taxes for the rich, and programs for the poor. Why did my political allies work for big oil and pharmaceutical companies while those I was taught to bemoan supported our social services and non-profits? And why even try defending an executive branch that suspended Habeas Corpus to prisoners of war held without charge, while to a tried and convicted felon on pay-roll, it instead extended a pardon? All the while, my peers in the community held mostly their pro-life values at the forefront of their votes, while those they fought to elect never got around to doing anything about it.
Year after year, pro-life groups represent perhaps the most well-funded and highly mobilized special interest in politics with hardly anything to show for their movement except thousands of down-ticket Republican-elects. Since its passing, four Republican Presidents have presided over 23 years of Roe v Wade, with rarely a serious challenge considered. If pro-life voters have the audacity to demand a young woman have a child she may not be able to support, they shouldn't let their elected officials off the hook in not carrying their own campaign promises through their full terms.
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the issue of abortion lengthily discussed on either the evening news or the floor of congress. But since we’ve got a Presidential election to survive, I’d bet that Republican operatives are banking on the wedge issue going center-stage in John McCain mailings and television advertisements everywhere.
Therefore, as a pro-choice voter cut from pro-life cloth and strong advocate for a culture of true life and wellness in our local communities and national dialogue, I have two prayers for my pro-life friends this year.
My first is that people on both sides of the fence can find leadership that brings both respect and maturity to such a sensitive and emotional issue like reproductive rights and the ethical dilemmas surrounding it. I long for a population that stops speaking in black and white and realizes that this issue more than almost any other exists for most voters in delicate shades of gray.
I hope for a pro-life movement that, unlike its manifestation in South Dakota recently, refrains from trying to plow through an abortion ban that does not even make exceptions in cases as morally depraved as rape or incest. I hope that pro-life voters reject such attempts as no less than insulting to what protecting a life should mean.
I hope for an awakening that the label “pro-life” demands more than nine months of maternity and a successful operation in the birthing units of our hospitals; yes, a movement that knows being pro-life also calls us into our children’s classrooms ensuring quality funding for teachers and schools, safety in their parks and playgrounds, affordable health-care for every child and opportunity regardless of their economic backgrounds.
And I firmly reject the label “pro-abortion Senator” that the Right to Life news so often placed upon Senator Kerry’s head, and will inevitably plaster against the eventual Democratic nominee: I've never met someone who considered themselves "pro-abortion" – it’s by definition erroneous, and it’s logically absurd. so please keep the political discourse honest, and at an adult level.
Likewise, I search for a political alternative to the more militant activists who write off their opponents as either loony crusaders or culturally primitive. In the mind of many a critical thinker, a pretty accurate difference between partial birth abortion and infanticide might be about ten minutes. And it's still a radical sound just to call a spade a spade.
Can we move beyond the bumper sticker politics of, “Against Abortion? Get a Vasectomy!” It may be kind of funny to some, but it’s kind of offensive to others. The movement doesn't grow if people don't feel welcome - and it's hardly bulletproof. How does "Against War? Don't Start One!" or "Against Slavery? Don't own one!" sound? It's not helpful to say dissenting voices should surgically remove themselves. And it's not democratic. And it's not smart. And it's not nice.
I hope for a consensus that most of us exist far from either extreme and closer to one-another. I long for an expression of politics that reflects how similar our dreams for a healthy, sustainable and diverse community truly are.
That is my first hope for the coming typhoon of an election.
My second, is that the well-funded scream machine of the Republican National Committee is strenuously examined critically by the voters that have tirelessly found membership in it.
I seek a break from the fear fest and amnesia that inspires a constant majority of white protestants to forget how with a Republican President, Supreme Court and Congress in both 2005 and 2006, no one made a serious effort to ban abortion at all. I would ask pro-life voters to stop supporting puppets that both publicly oppose and publicly ignore the issue. And I applaud the Catholic pro-life organization that ran ten critical radio ads in the districts of ten pro-life representatives condemning their refusal to fund a federal health insurance initative towards children who had none and to this day remain without, including the assertion: "that's not pro-life".
It will be interesting to see to whether the past 8 years continues an endless forgiveness for impotently pro-life politicians, or an inevitable flight away from them. It's interesting to note that the number of white protestant voters who supported a Democrat at the top of their ticket in 2006 had tripled since only two years prior. Thusfar in 2007 and 2008, Pastors & Clergymen nationwide have joined a coalition ranging from college students to Ivy-league faculty in financially supporting Democrats in greater volumes than Republicans.
And regardless of voting or donor trends, can we agree that morality has yet to be monopolized by either political party, and activists on both ends should refrain from suggesting so?
Since I understand that it’s difficult to take political advise from those who seem ideologically different from ourselves, I am choosing to invoke the words of one of the pro-life communities most adored orators (and one whose short-term memory actually impresses) in summarizing my own hope for a new American discourse.
Frank Schaefer is the son of Francis Schaefer; the senior of the two is considered by many as pratically the Hercules of the pro-life movement in the 1970s. His son (also a mega-spokesperson for the pro-life movement) has re-framed the issue bravely and eloquently:
In explaining what many would call the contradiction of being both “pro-life” and a vocal endorser of Senator Barack Obama's bid for the Presidency as a Democrat, Francis Schaefer writes these words:
In 2000, we elected a president who claimed he believed God created the earth and who, as president, put car manufacturers and oil company's interests ahead of caring for that creation. We elected a pro-life Republican Congress that did nothing to actually care for pregnant women and babies. And they took their sincere evangelical followers for granted, and played them for suckers.
The so-called evangelical leadership -- Dobson, Robertson et al. also played the pro-life community for suckers. While thousands of men and women in the crisis pregnancy movement gave of themselves to help women and babies, their evangelical "leaders" did little more than cash in on fundraising opportunities and represent themselves as power-brokers to the craven politicians willing to kowtow to them.
Similarly the Republicans have also been hypocrites while talking big, for instance about their pro-life ethic. But what have they achieved? First, through their puritanical war on sex education they've hindered our country from actually preventing unwanted pregnancy. Second, through the Republican Party's marriage to the greediest and most polluting earth-destroying corporations they've created a climate (both moral and physical) that has scorched the earth for-profit, with no regard to future generations whatsoever.
A leader who believes in hope, the future, trying to save our planet and providing a just and good life for everyone is someone who is actually pro-life.
It is my opinion that Senator Obama stands for a far truer version of being “pro-life” than the cheap imitation so many conservative voters have been supporting for decades. Yet I also understand that it’s not my place to tell you how to vote. In fact, no one should tell you how to vote (especially not if their name is Dr. Dobson.)
When it comes to issues of faith and moral imperatives, it is difficult to publicly suggest that one idea absolutely trumps another. The truth is just the opposite – issues such as this one require a quiet meditation over our personal convictions and a learned and deliberate vote for what that quiet voice inside us has advised, regardless of what any one party activist says.
So if you’re a pro-life voter, and you deeply disagree with the suggestion that a Democrat offers the best path towards creating a nation and a culture that truly values life, please understand that I actually value that perspective, assuming it is one informed by both thought and conviction. (And one that understands there is more to news coverage than the Right To Life tabloids).
And please understand that, in addition, I deeply disagree with and outright admonish the suggestion that President Bush – or Senator McCain – fits that same bill. It is a decision I have come to after a deep investigation of the candidates and the political landscape, and one that is informed first and foremost by what I believe to be upright and full of integrity. The tragedy of so many pro-life voters is their failure to understand that most liberals vote the way that they do because of conviction. Incredible how much we have in common, really.
Thus, as of here and now, I do believe with conviction it would be both a moral error to flat-line illegalize abortion, and I have many religious allies in that conclusion. Yet I charge our politicians on both sides of the aisle to aggressively sort out how we can make that practice less necessary. Coincidently, I believe this is the page that most of America is on, including the Democratic candidate that Francis Schaefer has endorsed. When asked his position on the issue in a debate last year, Obama responded:
“I think that most Americans realize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families that make these decisions. They don’t make them casually, and I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors, and their families, and their clergy – and I think that’s where most Americans are . . . [but] there is a broader issue here, which is that – can we move past some of the issues on which we disagree, and can we start talking about the things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in the circumstances where they’ve got to anguish over these decisions; those are areas where I think we can all start mobilizing, and move forward – rather than look backwards.”
I know what you're thinking: building a coalition between the pro-life brigade of the right and pro-choice militias of the left isn’t predictable or easy.
But I swear I have found myself with stranger bedfellows before.
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