"Pro Life, Pro Obama"

One of the best arguments I've read this year.

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EXCERPT:

Kmiec has also rightly noted a tendency among many in the prolife movement to ascribe excessive importance to the results of elections, including this one. This has long been my impression of the prolife movement. Having reduced everything to the issue of abortion, they tend to attach excessive (I almost wrote utopian) hopes and expectations to the outcomes of elections. In this year’s campaign, they appear to believe that everything hinges on electing John McCain, who will appoint prolife justices who will in turn overturn Roe v. Wade.

There are serious problems with that approach. To begin with, it mistakenly treats this election as though it were a referendum on abortion. It is not. Voters are not being asked to vote directly up or down on whether we support legalized abortion—as have the electorates of some other countries (Ireland and Portugal, for example). Of course, if we were faced with such a prospect then the prolife rhetoric about how important it is to vote a certain way would make a lot more sense. But we are not faced with a referendum on abortion. Instead, we are asked to choose between candidates campaigning on a wide range of issues (candidates who, once in office, may or may not carry out the policies they are proposing). This is the familiar situation that causes so many conscientious Catholic voters, myself included, to feel so conflicted.