How to vote when there is no pro-life choice?

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A priest today commented on voting choices. He said it is a sin to vote for anyone that supports abortion. I believe him. He said it falls under commandment Thou Shall Not Kill, that we are guilty of this also as tho we did it our self.
If I did not have a pro life candidate to vote for, I would leave it blank.
The evil one likes to confuse and to obscure things so we can not see what God is willing for us to do.
I personally would not compromise on this at all.
peace and prayers!
 
It’s a hard calculation. But if you think this woman might actually introduce a new limitation on abortion that doesn’t yet exist in your state, and that action would save lives, it seems to me you could vote for her. It sounds comparable to having to vote between politicians who all support slavery – but one will outlaw beating the slaves. It might feel disgusting to have to technically ‘for’ a person who is a slavery-supporter instead of non-existent abolitionist… but if that’s the most improvement that can be made right now, then I’d say do it, to protect the slaves to the maximum level possible right now. And keep fighting long term for total abolition.
 
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I would vote for the candidate that I thought would produce the most overall good for people.

God suggests to pray for your government, physicians, counselors,etc.
 
RuthAnne said:
Why would I choose evil?
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Yes, the lesser of two evils is evil. It sucks but the alternatives are 1) not vote (and thus you revoked your right to complain) or 2) rebel agianst the state (which goes agianst Christ’s teachings)

So, it would be better to vote than to not vote. For if you don’t vote you have no right to complain about the state of affairs in the union. If you chose to not vote, you are better off just leaving the country for a nation that better represents you (good luck trying to find one)
 
Or you could just not vote. A valid option despite what some will tell you.
 
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Since she seems like she is more or less in line with Catholic Social Teaching and is at least personally opposed to abortion, it would be totally fine to vote for her. She seems like a very measured candidate who, although not fully politically pro-life, would also not be vociferously pushing for the expansion of abortion like her opponent.

May God bless you all! 🙂
 
Thankfully that is not a concern currently as we have a staunch Pro Life President and administration.
 
OddBird said:
As a non-American, I sometimes wonder if you guys over the Big Pond realize how lucky you are to have pro-life options at all. Voting when no-one at all, big parties or alternative candidates, is pro-life, is what everybody has to do over here.
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I agree. The US even now have a party, The American Solidarity Party, that is completely on board with every point of Catholic social teaching. It’s quite amazing to have such a party. If all the Christians in the US voted for them somehow even by write-ins, the swamp would be drained and a new day would come.
 
LoveMercyGrace said:
A priest today commented on voting choices. He said it is a sin to vote for anyone that supports abortion.
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And this, to me, is the other side of the coin of the “American luck”. With all due respect to your priest, I think this statement is problematic and needs qualifying, like “it is a sin to vote for anyone that supports abortion when there are pro-life candidates.”

Such statements basically say that mostly everyone in Europe is sinning when they vote. But are they ? In a way, the frontlines on pro-life issues, here, have simply moved away from abortion and onto other, but not less serious, issues.

Do we want to have a society where euthanasia becomes the norm and where its limits are pushed back to the point that anyone “in intolerable suffering”, or anyone whose family says they are intolerably suffering, can be killed ? Do we want to see the horrors of the Dutch Groningen protocol (also known as “post-natal abortion”), which allows parents to end the life of a handicapped infant under certain conditions, generalized ? Do we want to see reproductive medicine used to allow single persons or same-sex couples to have children ? Do we want the next generation to be “catalog babies”, whose sex, IQ, or eye color will be predetermined ?

If voting for pro-abortion candidates is a sin, then I’ll keep sinning, because I cannot sit back and do nothing to prevent that from happening.
 
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Per FCFC, you can choose not to vote at all. That is your moral choice and is supported by the Church.

I’d encourage you to look at third parties. If only a quarter of American Catholics stood behind a solid third party candidate, if we joined local offices and even ran for local office, we could change this nation for good.
 
LoveMercyGrace said:
A priest today commented on voting choices. He said it is a sin to vote for anyone that supports abortion.
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That is very much an oversimplification. It can, in certain scenarios, be acceptable to vote for someone who happens to support abortion. The OP’s situation is a perfect example.
 
Bill6 said:
Since there will be no pro-life candidate on the ballot, how would you vote? I am considering voting for her because she would limit abortion at least to an extent. Still, voting for someone who is (at least publicly) pro-choice feels impossible to do in good conscious.
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If it were me, I would look at where they stand on an array of issues. They’re both pro-choice, but I’d lean towards the one who is slightly less vociferous about it.

But before making a final decision, I would look at where they stand on issues such as marriage, euthanasia, immigration, welfare, etc. While I’m 100% pro-life, I’m not a single issue voter; so, if both candidates hold pro-choice views, I’d look at what they say about other issues.
 
phil19034 said:
On the pro-life issue, it sound like the “personally pro-life but doesn’t want to impose” is the better choice. She might not be perfect, but sounds better than “strongly pro-choice”
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I think these wishy-washy types may have a stronger chance of being swayed to vote for, say, parental consent laws or tighter regulations on abortion clinics. “May” is the operative word here, however. Politicians are often “swayed” other ways, too. 🤑
 
Either the no-compromise or lesser evil approach to voting is morally acceptable. That said, I’d point out to the no compromise folks that if they had been Americans in 1860 and applied the same logic to slavery then as they do to abortion now, they would NOT have voted for Abraham Lincoln, the president who ultimately freed the slaves.

You see, Lincoln was not an abolitionist at that time – he didn’t advocate freeing all slaves immediately because he knew that would spark civil war. Rather he advocated not allowing slavery to spread into any new states or territories, but allowing it to remain legal in existing slave states. He believed this would eventually cause slavery to die out on its own. There were, in fact, prominent abolitionists of the time (e. g. William Lloyd Garrison) who refused to vote for Lincoln for that reason. Yet he was the “best” of the four (count em, four) candidates running in 1860, and he accomplished what no other president to that time had.

The scenario described by the OP pits what I would call a soft pro choice candidate against a hard/aggressive pro abortion candidate. In that situation I would vote for the former because that candidate will probably just maintain the status quo while the latter candidate could make things much worse – for example, implementing tax funded abortion, late term abortion, taking away conscience protections, etc.
 
You don’t lose your freedom to critique if you don’t vote. That’s an overused ad hominem.
 
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As I keep thinkign about it, I may vote for the “personally pro-life” woman. This is a crucial election for our district and she would do good in other areas. We Catholics in this district could limit abortion by voting for her, instead of letting her opponent spread abortion and other bad things more easily by us not voting at all. If, in the future, a competent and fully pro-life person runs, I’ll support them.

Thank you guys!
 
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StudentMI said:
You don’t lose your freedom to critique if you don’t vote. That’s an overused ad hominem.
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And if you live in Australia where you have to vote, drop in a blank ballot.

Many places have had people push for a “none of the above” option for ballots but politicians won’t approve of that because of their fragile egos.
 
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Nevada requires “none of the above” in all statewide elections, including for elector.

Until we were badly overrun by Californians over the last couple of decades, the combined vote for none of the above and third parties tended to be larger than the margin of victory . . .
 
I know that. It was a sarcastic question.

As far as not voting goes, those who don’t vote, in my opinion, have a morally stronger position to voice their complaints than those who do vote. If you vote, you are participating in a corrupt game where you choose between the evils. And your participation is tacit acceptance and approval of the winner, because those were the rules of the game that you agreed to play. So you really have no moral “right” to complain. On the other hand, if you refuse to choose between the evils, you should and do have the “right” to complain, because you never agreed with the game to begin with. You never agreed to accept the outcome.
 
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