Politics is the art of the possible, said law professor Doug Kmiec in the Los Angeles Times. As a pro-life Catholic, I’m currently besieged by Republicans telling me I have a moral duty to vote for the pro-life John McCain over the pro-choice Obama. That’s not how I see it. McCain has made the usual Republican commitment to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court in hopes that it one day might overturn Roe v. Wade—a strategy the GOP has been pursuing for decades without saving a single life. Obama, on the other hand, would leave Roe intact, but has concrete proposals that would immediately reduce abortions, especially among the poor: educate teens that “sexuality is sacred,’’ and provide government-supported pre- and post-natal care, maternity leave, and income support for women who choose to keep their babies. As someone who’s “serious about preserving life,” I feel I should vote for the candidate most likely to save the greatest number of actual lives. In 2008, that may well be Barack Obama.
Catholics, don’t be fooled, said Kathryn Jean Lopez in National Review Online. Obama’s views on abortion are far too extreme for any “follower of the pope to back the senator.” He not only wants to keep abortion legal, he wants to fund it with taxpayer money, while stripping funds from “crisis-pregnancy centers” that educate women about the alternatives. Worse, said Robert George and Yuval Levin in The Public Discourse, in the Illinois State Senate, Obama spoke out against a bill “protecting children who were born alive after an attempted abortion.” His supporters are desperately trying to downplay that vote, arguing that Obama couldn’t possibly have supported letting injured babies die. Shocking as it is, however, the charge “has the very considerable merit of being true.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
