I believe we need to keep politics out of our religions, otherwise the politics takes over. Read your history. Our politics needs to be informed by our beliefs but can never be our beliefs without corrupting them. Power has a tendency to do that.

And despite my registration as a Democrat, I have never voted a party ticket. I choose based on my conscience and inform my conscience constantly in reaching for God.

All that said, we have too many who think that party affiliation is an adequate substitute for personal conviction.

“Yet if he never speaks out against a single abortion, if he cannot even mention a case when the law should intervene and if, having power as a politician to do so, he does nothing to protect the unborn, it is not an unfair statement of his position.”

The problem with Obama is not that he has failed to “speak out against a single abortion” but that he thinks the law currently draws the lines correctly. In other words, the question for most people, including Obama, is not whether abortion itself is moral or immoral but which abortions to allow and which to make illegal.

Most pro-life activists are absolutists—no abortion ever under any circumstances. Others that are generally considered pro-life will permit abortion if it saves the mother’s life, and others extend it to rape and incest.

There are few pro-choice absolutists who would allow abortion in all circumstances. Most pro-choice activists accept the trimester system established by Roe. This is why it is easy to portray pro-lifers as extremists and pro-choicers as more reasonable or flexible.

It is thus inaccurate for you to claim that Obama does nothing to protect the unborn. He protects all those unborn that are already under protection of the law. He doesn’t join you in wanting to create still more restrictions on abortion and he certainly is not interested in prohibiting it altogether, but that doesn’t mean that he supports abortion in all circumstances.

Joe DeVet,

Can you document this claim? Certainly some Obama supporters argued that it was reasonable for those who were pro-life to vote for Obama for a number of reasons, including that he was “pro-life” in a broader sense than being opposed to abortion. A similar argument is being made this time around, as well. But I can’t find any evidence that Obama ever referred to himself as “pro-life.”

Pro-life and pro-choice are both woefully inadequate labels for describing a person’s position on abortion. And calling any of the major-party candidates for president of vice-president an extremist is empty political rhetoric.

In one particularly frustrating conversation in 2008, my interlocutor said that Obama had identified himself as pro-life! It was true, of course, that he made that claim. However, the claim itself is demonstrably not true. When I pointed out that he indeed said that, but that he was LY-ING, the person dismissed the issue with a comment that “God’s will will be done no matter what we do. So let us pray for that.”

Certain of the commenters on this article display the same sort of reasoning. For example, imagine at this late date pretending to need a “credible source” for Obama’s pro-abortion position.

Those whose thinking is so bent should contribute to the Common Good by staying away from the voting booth! Not that God’s will won’t be done–it will, in the end. Meantime, perhaps we could work hard to discern how His will should affect our civic behavior.

1. Thank you for this acknowledgement. It is a point denied by many pro-life Democrats. Let those who are pro-life know there is a compelling case against voting for Obama.
2. This is a meme you keep coming back to David: that the pro-life camp does not take an all or nothing stance. As I have remarked to you before, many of us in the pro-life camp see nothing wrong with punishing women in appropriate cases. However, the goal is to save unborn children and the fact that we cannot save all of them immediately does not mean we should shut up and do nothing. Nor should our opponents dictate to us how we should speak or act. Opponents of the slave trade in the 19th century took a gradual approach to tackling that particular evil. Many pro-lifers are doing the same now with abortion.
You say that “his Illinois voting record in no way indicates that he believes the unborn “may be killed at any time for any reason.”” Yet if he never speaks out against a single abortion, if he cannot even mention a case when the law should intervene and if, having power as a politician to do so, he does nothing to protect the unborn, it is not an unfair statement of his position. Neither of us would say that keeping slaves is a matter of private opinion and that the law should do nothing. Yet that seems to be the case the abortion lobby wants to make.
A question for Mr Obama brings this matter into sharp relief: Are there any circumstances under which an abortion should be illegal so that a woman is prevented from procuring it and a doctor from performing it? In other words, Mr President, please state the circumstances in which the unborn may not be killed.