Dipping a toe in to the political waters

Was any one else really embarrassed by the debate last night?  I’m not sure whether to blame the format, the moderator or the candidates, but I am leaning towards the latter.  The time clock would expire and a candidate would just keep talking and talking until finally the moderator had to interrupt.  Then, they would talk over her, or object to her interruption.  Which left the moderator in the position of having to decide whether to tell the President of the United States to sit down and shut up.  I was also really uncomfortable with their wandering around the room.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I think that it just has to be said: whether you feel that social justice requires less government to get things moving or a greater government safety net, I do believe that these are two men who care deeply about America and her people.  They have a different understanding of the role of government in people’s lives and different economic philosophies.  That is a matter that is open to debate for people of good conscience.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel that we are really free to vote our preferences in those matters in this election.  One candidate believes that abortion is a right that should be protected, that access to abortion should be widened, and it is pretty clear from his rhetoric last night that he also believes that fertility holds women back and is a burden.  That candidate’s vice president has said that he believes that life begins at conception, but he does not think it right to impose the consequences of that belief on others.

This is wrong.  Abortion is a grave sin against the 5th commandment, and materially supporting abortion is a significant moral hazard.  We have a moral right, and an obligation, to make laws which support our understanding of life.

There are other human rights issues at stake in this election, including, but not limited to, access to education, access to medical care, job opportunities, fair tax policy, discrimination and immigration issues.  None of these is as grave an evil as killing babies.  I’m sorry to say it that way, but if you believe that life begins at conception, than this is what abortion does, and we cannot support a candidate who is an advocate of abortion.

**** Hi all, this is Red, adding a thought from our Pope onto Mary Alice’s post.

“As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable.  Among these the following emerge clearly today: 

• Protections of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death

• Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family – as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage – and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;

• The protection of the rights of parents to educate their children.”
  

Pope Benedict XVI, March 30, 2006