"But war and torture are ok with you?"

I just got a Facebook message from someone responding to a video I included with my posted items about Barack Obama and his protection of infanticide in Illinois. The comment was brief and quickly retracted:

"But war and torture are okay with you?"

In other words, if I am voting against Obama this November because he supports abortion (and protects infanticide, which should be chilling to anyone who hears of it), then (in this individual's logic) I must be voting for "war and torture," whatever that means.  (I think it was supposed to be a sweeping indictment of President Bush, but it's a little vague, even for a non sequitir.)

As an aside, I don't think anyone is for "war," in the abstract, unless they delight in death and destruction (which some truly evil people might).  I do think America needs to keep its promise to the Iraqi people and preserve the gains made there, especially over the past several months as the situation has turned with the surge.  But that's really neither here nor there.

That's right.  Your position on the war, whatever it may be, isn't really my concern here.  What's going on in our country, the the slaughter of millions of children and the destruction of the same number of women, is evil on a massive scale.  I don't know of any theologian who ever came up with a "just abortion" theory, because abortion is not like war.  The nuance of fighting wars and grappling with issues of international justice and peace do not translate to the systematic murder of millions of innocent lives.  That these are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society -- mothers and children, both -- doesn't seem to occur to many people in this debate.  That class warfare begins in the womb, where minorities and the poor are aborted in far greater numbers, also gets lost in the bumper sticker rhetoric of Planned Parenthood and NARAL. 

I am puzzled as to why it's awesome when Bono claims that our response to the AIDS crisis in Africa is a moral issue for Christians in America (which I believe it is, btw), but the community of Christians around me sits idly by saying NOTHING about abortion.  Nothing.  We can save the planet (and we should be good stewards, please don't get me wrong), but we don't care to stop infanticide.

Something is wrong.

Where is our moral courage?  Why does it seem like no one cares about the unborn?  Is it the prevailing cultural vanity that we're so beholden to?

Wesley J. Smith once said that the right likes to argue facts, the left likes to argue narrative, and the middle likes to argue style.  "Don't talk about abortion," they tell us, "it's so... gauche."  It's distasteful, you see, bringing up something as unpleasant as the killing of abandoned children.  That's so 1988.  It's much more fashionable to discuss your support for universal health care and alternative energy sources.  That's where the classy people are going...

Meanwhile, how will we approximate justice this November?   "Of course, abortion is wrong," my friends say, "but so is war/not providing health care to children/global warming/insert socially acceptable cause here.  It just doesn't matter as much to me."

My friends are missing something here, which Bishop Chaput addressed in response to Roman Catholics for Obama:

But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life—which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single reason I would be able to give to an aborted child.

For Obama (and the rest of you people)

The outrageous thing about Obama is not that he claims to do God's work — I heard George W. Bush say much the same at his 2005 inauguration, and I wasn't surprised then, either —
but that he sees his extreme position on abortion as having no conflict with that work.

First, if you haven't heard by now, Senator Obama voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, something not even Senator Clinton opposed. The man was literally voting to dump infants who survived partial-birth abortions into medical dumpsters.

I've been disheartened by the way my friends are responding to his clarion calls for change (like trading in our duty to protect the least of these for the far more sexy global warming crisis?), but there are signs that we're not the only twentysomethings who have problems with Obama and abortion.

This open letter from a Rhodes scholar is something I wish I'd written and something I wish everyone would read. Beautiful, succinct, logical and compelling...

Of course, some do deny that every human being has a right to life. They say that size or degree of development or dependence can make a difference. But the same was once said of color. Some say that abortion is a “necessary evil.” But the same was once said of slavery. Some say that prohibiting abortion would only harm women by driving it underground. But to assume so is truly to play the politics of fear. A compassionate society would never accept these false alternatives. A compassionate society would protect both mother and child, coming to the aid of women in need rather than calling violence against their children the answer to their problems.

Can we become a society that does not sacrifice some people to help others? Or is that hope too audacious? You have said that abortion is necessary to protect women’s equality. But surely we can do better. Surely we can build an America where the equality of some is not purchased with the blood of others. Or would that mean too much change from politics as usual?

It reminds me of something I read elsewhere, when an evangelical shared with other evangelicals why he could not support Obama in good conscience. They told him (with voices dripping in contempt, I imagine) he was "a single-issue voter." His response? "If I'd been standing outside of Auschwitz, I would have been a single-issue voter then, too."

Please, check out the whole thing here. And print a copy for your friends and family.