Given that the pro-life lobby seems to be walking hand in hand with right wing Republican/Conservative politics which are hostile to the poor, I don’t forsee them welcoming the financial burden and handing out the cash.
I am not sure what “right wing Republican/Conservative” means to you. Truth is, there is not that much difference between the parties in most respects other than the rhetoric. The Democrats talk a lot about the poor, but do nothing for them but shift money to those who purport to speak for them. The Republicans talk a lot about encouraging individual initiative, but do nothing to end the confusion of the tax code and regulatory oppression that discourages individual initiative. Both Dems and Repubs voted for the Iraq war. Last year, a vote to “immediately end the war” was overwhelmingly defeated by both parties. So, outside of the tax cuts, there’s not all that much difference, until you get to the life issues. When you get right down to it, both parties are busy shoveling money to their contributors, and not much more. Sometimes it seems to me it would be a lot less expensive if the government just wrote checks to the lobbyists and cut out the middle men.
But when it comes to the life issues, there truly is a difference. The Dems have found that a lot of money can be obtained from the abortion lobby, but that it is an unforgiving source. So almost no Democrat, regardless of religion, will do anything but support abortion. Unlike their purported concern for the poor, they really do push the agenda of the abortion lobby, because that’s where the money is.
There might be a degree of cynicism on the part of the Repubs in encouraging the aspirations of prolifers. No doubt the party enjoys the money and the votes that have pushed them to power for now. Still, the Repub party finds it necessary to push the prolife agenda, and really does it, at least for now. So, if the only serious difference between the parties is their respective positions on protecting the life of the unborn, there is only one way for a prolife person to vote. If the situation were reversed; that the Dems were prolife and the Repubs were pro-abortion, then you would see the prolife vote switch parties. I would be one of them.
The problem with all of these issues is that most people can’t seem to see through the rhetoric, including, perhaps most culpably, Catholic bishops. Notwithstanding that the Dems are blind and deaf to social justice, the bishops continue to have a kind of residual belief that they are not. The tragedy of this whole situation is that, with real leadership from church spokesmen, particularly the bishops, these issues could be “picked off”, one by one, because no politician would willingly give away 20% of the electorate starting out. Elections are too close for that nowadays.
The problem with prolife people is not that they are too close to the “right wing”, but that they are unfocused and unprioritized. I genuinely do think that if the religious people in this country were better led, abortion would at least be curtailed. Once that’s done, the religious leadership could, and should, focus on such issues as supporting the unwed mothers, reducing taxes on married couples with children, and so on. One thing at a time. I think the “Christian witness” of acting in this manner truly could have a profound effect on society.
But when the country’s message to its people, buttressed presently by the Dem party, is that unrestricted killing of the unborn is something sacred, then how can anyone expect the electorate to have charity in lesser ways? Abortion on demand is a disease of the soul of the body politic. The Nazis were known to be kind to animals, but that did not prevent their souls from being profoundly ill because of the evil things they were doing. The Dem party (and too many of the electorate) worry about the diminishing habitat of polar bears, but accept with equanimity the deaths of 45 million murdered children. It is profoundly, profoundly disordered, bespeaking a cancer of the soul. It is, in my mind, no accident that no social program worthy of the name has been passed or even proposed by either party since abortion on demand was imposed on the nation.
When one has cancer and a planter’s wart, one attacks the cancer first. That’s why I will vote Repblican as long as the Democrat party protects the killing of millions.
