Vote for a Pro-Choice person or Pro-Life tyrant or neither?

[LeafByNiggle]

?..The reality is that no Catholic should ever vote for someone whose party platform includes abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research…
…Just tell your friend that Catholics are charged to vote pro-life. Period.

If it really were that clear cut then the Faithful Citizenship document from the USCCB would have said so instead of taking great pains to balance all factors, as they did in paragraph 34.

 

[Nate13]

1. Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is
   so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the
   proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate
   who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the
   voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty
   of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a
   candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness
   to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.

1. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable
   position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons.
   Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to
   advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental
   moral evil.

I leave you with the weight of determining what specific issue or collection of issues could stand up as a grave moral reason on the same level as abortion.

1.37 million lives a year in the U.S alone dead + all those killed by use of the morning after pill or the off chance of being killed by the pill + 1.37 million women who’s lives are forever affected by the fact that they willingly choose to kill their own child whether they realize it or not.

I’d also add that statistics show almost 10% of women between the ages of 12-44 have used the morning after pill before. This involves almost 62 million women, 10% of which would be 6.2 million more innocent deaths assuming that each of the 10% had only used the morning after pill to kill one child each. This also adds another 6.2 million lives of women who have been affected by abortion, because they made a willful choice to take a drug to kill an unborn child. This total would not be per year of course but rather added to the grand total of deaths caused by abortion in the U.S which is up near 40 million.

Can we not come together to defeat this evil so we can then go on to handle lesser evils? Can we get a little efficiency going on in this fight to defend life?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

I’d also add that statistics show almost 10% of women between the ages of 12-44 have used the morning after pill before. This involves almost 62 million women, 10% of which would be 6.2 million more innocent deaths assuming that each of the 10% had only used the morning after pill to kill one child each.

Not every woman who used the morning after pill was pregnant, so your estimate of deaths due to that pill is not valid. But if you are so interested in numbers, consider that of the 4 million live births in the U.S. each year, an equal number of fertilizations fail to implant and simply fall out. (since the implantation rate some say is about 50%). So do we show any concern for those innocent lives? Or do we assume that their deaths were God’s will and that we should not try to rescue them?

 

[St_Francis]

If it really were that clear cut then the Faithful Citizenship document from the USCCB would have said so instead of taking great pains to balance all factors, as they did in paragraph 34.

The document merely describes things that need to be taken into account and what the Church teaches about these issues. It is leaving the decision up to us.

However, the document does point out the fact that abortion, etc, are issues which involve an intrinsic evil, acts which are evil in and of themselves and have no situation which could possibly justify them.

The really odd thing is that because Catholic teaching and social mores intersect on the issue of racism, Catholics would all immediately reject someone they perceived as truly racist, no matter what his position on other issues, but of course, this is why racists don’t even get a chance to run.

 

[Nate13]

Not every woman who used the morning after pill was pregnant, so your estimate of deaths due to that pill is not valid. But if you are so interested in numbers, consider that of the 4 million live births in the U.S. each year, an equal number of fertilizations fail to implant and simply fall out. (since the implantation rate some say is about 50%). So do we show any concern for those innocent lives? Or do we assume that their deaths were God’s will and that we should not try to rescue them?

First off I believe my estimation is very conservative in that it only assumes each of those women used the morning after pill once. It is very likely that many of them used it many times and probably have ended more than 1 pregnancy that way.

Secondly I would wish to do what I could to save those lives as well, however at this point I don’t believe we do have any control over that now do we? Maybe if we stopped concentrating on ways to kill unborn children we could make some headway in saving them? It is definitely astounding how many ways human ingenuity has come up with to abort a child in the womb.

However let me respond to your question with another question. Do we show concern for the lives of innocent people killed by natural disasters, and just assume every death at the hand of a natural disaster is God’s will, or do we try and save them? The deaths caused by natural disasters as well as the deaths caused by the way our reproductive systems have been made to work are one in the same. Many of these deaths are unpreventable in today’s age, however this does not mean we are to stop trying to find ways to save lives.

I would also like to show you that your tactic of distraction can be used against you. For instance on the issue of healthcare you may point out that many many people’s lives are affected by government policies on this issue. I would then pull out a distraction by pointing out that everyone dies eventually anyways and even with some of the best healthcare in the world 2.4 million people die in America every year excluding those killed by abortions. I’d also point out that you are paying to save the lives of people that in many cases have willfully done things that they knew were bad for them and would endanger their lives such as by smoking cigarettes, drinking excessively, or eating unhealthy. Do I have compassion for these people even though they did stupid things? Yes, but not at the expense of lives of the unborn that are killed every year by no fault of their own.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Yes, my comment about failed implantations was a distraction, as was the original comment about the number of aborted babies. If it is wrong to abort a million babies then it is wrong to abort one. Statistics do not add or detract from the fundamental moral question about whether a Catholic is bound to vote based on a single issue. As you rightly said, “I leave you with the weight of determining what specific issue or collection of issues could stand up as a grave moral reason on the same level as abortion.”

 

[St_Francis]

Another thing about the Faithful Citizen socument is that it is to guide us for all elections, not just for President.