It's Not Too Late to Vote for Life

Opinion by Robin G. Jordan

In their eagerness to elect the first Black President of the United States many voters, young and old, are not taking a close look at their candidate—his character, his record, his present and past associations, and for what he really stands. A number of Americans are uncomfortable in closely scrutinizing Barack Obama because is an Afro-American. Somehow they connect in their minds a critical examination of a Black candidate with racism. It makes them feel guilty. They do not want to be thought of as racist. It does not fit with their perceptions of themselves. They would like to be thought of as tolerant of other racial and ethnic groups beside their own.

In his bid for the office of President of the United States Senator Obama has been exploiting the unpopularity of President Bush and the fears of American in a time of economic uncertainty to put him in the White House. Politicians know that if they can define an opponent before he can define himself, they are likely to win the election. Obama has repeatedly sought to equate John McCain in the minds of voters with George W. Bush who is an extremely unpopular president. The obvious intent of this strategy is that McCain will become associated in voters’ minds with Bush and Bush’s unpopularity will be transferred to McCain. The voters will treat the election as a referendum on Bush.

Obama also knows, as every good propagandist knows, that if you repeat a half-truth or a lie enough times, people will eventually begin to believe it, including the propagandist who is telling the half-truth or lie. Americans are facing a period of economic uncertainty in which they may lose their jobs or their homes or in the case of college students not be able to find a job. Obama blames the Republicans for this period of economic uncertainty, as do other Democratic candidates for office, but a careful analysis of the factors that precipitated the present state of the economy show that the Democrats are by no means blameless for the economy’s present state. Obama takes advantage of the perception that Democrats deal better with periods of economic uncertainty. Whether this perception has any real basis is highly debatable. However, politicians exploit perceptions. Facts do not interest them unless they can be used to reinforce perceptions.

Obama has also been exaggerating the seriousness of the present state of economy, feeding the fears of the voters. He especially has been been playing upon the pessimism of younger voters who are faced with the prospect of not enjoying the prosperity in a capitalistic economy in the twenty-first century that their parents enjoyed in the twentieth century and therefore are open to a bigger role for government in the economy and their lives than older voters. What the economy has entered is a turndown, a recession--serious enough but not a 1930s type depression. What the economy needs is stimulation--a loosening of credit--and a recovery of confidence, not New Deal style public works programs. They will not provide an immediate stimulus and they will at best have only a palliative effect in the long-term. It is the wrong solution for the wrong problem.

If Senator Obama were elected President of the United States, he would bring a radical political, social, and economic agenda to the White House. I have posted in Anglicans Ablaze a number of articles on his position on various issues, as well as his record and his past and present associations. If you want to read these articles, type Obama’s name in the blog search engine window and click "Blog Search". It should pull up these articles. They include a number of articles documenting his position on abortion. Obama in the White House would result in the removal of the limits imposed upon abortion in the past few years. It would lead to the killing of thousands of unborn babies in their mother’s wombs and the murder of thousands of babies removed from their mother wombs during the last stages of pregnancy.

God gives life. We have no right to take life. Only God has a right to take life. The inconvenience of a pregnancy or the conceiving of a child under unfortunate circumstances—rape or incest—does not justify killing an unborn child or removing a baby from his or her mother’s womb during the last stages of pregnancy and then abandoning the baby to die in a hospital storage room. I was involved in child welfare work for 27 years. There are plenty of childless couples that would be willing to adopt an unwanted baby. There is no excuse for taking the life of baby in the womb or out of the womb. It is absolutely needless.

If you are a Christian, you know that in the Ten Commandments God has given us a clear command not to take human life. In the Old Testament we read God’s condemnation of those who sacrificed their children to pagan gods. In the New Testament we read how Jesus welcomed the little ones to him and blessed them. We also read how he told the disciples that whoever receives a child in his name receive him. Children are his special representatives. In killing an unborn baby in the womb or remove a baby from his or her mother’s womb and then leaving the baby to die, we are killing Christ. We join Herod in the slaughter of the innocents. Instead of welcoming the King of Kings Herod sought to destroy him. We are allying ourselves with death and the powers of darkness. Jesus came to conquer—not befriend—death.

Since the earliest days of Christianity Christians have stood for life. In the Roman Empire it was a not-uncommon practice to expose infants whose parents, especially the father, did not want them. When a baby was born, the baby was brought to the father. If the father did not welcome the baby into the family, claim the child as his own, the baby was exposed. The early Christians rescued unwanted infants from the refuse heaps of the Roman Empire, where they had been left to die. They took these children into their homes and raised them as their own.

However we lived before we became a Christian, accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord means that we have accepted God’s righteous reign—his rule—over our life. This means living our life according to Jesus’ teachings and example. Jesus teaches us to be good neighbors to all, to love them as ourselves. This includes the unborn baby in a mother’s womb. Jesus also taught us that we should treat others, as we would want to be treated. We would not want to be torn from our mother’s womb and left to die in a storage room. He welcomed the little ones and we should follow his example and also welcome them. We should not forget that the unborn are little ones too. Indeed for a Christian it is not enough that we should not countenance abortion. We must be advocates for all children, those who are not yet born as well as those who have already entered this life.

Our society has become a throwaway society. We use something once and then throw it away. But unborn babies are not disposable cameras or disposable diapers. They are living human beings, living souls—the Hebrew word is "nefed"—from the moment of their conception although they may not at first look very human. The Bible tells us that God knits each one of us in the womb. He knows us even before we were conceived. God gives each one of us life for a purpose. It is not for us to snatch life away from another human being—to put out the flame of life in another human being as we might snuff out a candle. Proponents of abortion view unborn babies as things—as fetuses, not human beings. A number of studies have shown that before we can kill someone, we must first turn them into a thing in our minds. In viewing unborn babies as fetuses, abortion proponents show that they have already taken this step.

If you are planning to vote for Senator Obama, I urge you to reconsider. Jesus teaches that it is not necessary for us to actually take a life to be guilty of having taken it. We have only to think about taking it or countenance someone else taking it. In the light of Obama’s strong pro-abortion position voting for Obama is countenancing the abortion of thousands of unborn babies in clinics and hospitals during his administration if he is elected President. Planned Parenthood is a major supporter of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would overturn most of the pro-life legislation of the last few years and guarantee abortions upon demand. Planned Parenthood is backing Obama. The organization, confident of the outcome of the election, is already
celebrating the anticipated passage of FOCA through the Democratic Party-controlled Congress and Obama’s signing of the bill into law.

If you are still undecided as to whom you are going to vote for and are not likely to make up your mind until the last minute in the polling booth, I ask you to consider well what I have said. They are not the words of a crank, a racist, or a religious bigot. They are the words of someone who is genuinely concerned about human life. Let your conscience guide you and vote for life.

If you have cast an absentee or early ballot for Senator Obama and regret your decision, you first need to admit you have made a mistake—the hardest part, confess what you have done to God, ask his forgiveness, and then do all in your power to make amends such as joining with others to take a stand for life. You can work with them to elect pro-life candidates to Congress, to the governorship of your state, to your state legislature. You can write, email, phone, and badger in every way imaginable the President, the cabinet officers and other people in his administration, your and other US Senators and Representatives, your and other state governors, and your and other state legislators. You can speak out for life in conversations with friends, in letters to the editor, your own and other people’s blogs on the Internet, in your own and other people’s videos on You-Tube, and do everything you can to let people know that you are on the side of life, not death, and to encourage them to join you. It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.

Part of Senator Obama’s appeal to voters is that he has a charismatic personality. His speeches are very beguiling. The offer of hope and the promise of change strike a chord with many voters. These voters, whether they realize it, are looking for a savior. Obama is speaking to a sense of hopelessness and a desire for change in their hearts that only Christ can really address. Instead of inviting them to put their faith in Christ, Obama is inviting them to put it in him—a fallible human being like themselves and not the Son of God. This is the same appeal a number of political leaders made in the twentieth century with disastrous consequences not only for their nation but also for the world. We are facing hard times due to the present state of the economy. But it is ultimately God who is going to bring us through these hard times and not a politician. Christ is the one in whom we should place our trust and confidence and not a junior US Senator from Illinois.