Catholic Barack Obama Supporters Can’t Rationalize Abortion, Infanticide OK

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 20, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Catholic Barack Obama Supporters Can’t Rationalize Abortion, Infanticide OK

by Austin Ruse
August 20
, 2008

LifeNews.com Note: Austin Ruse is president of the New York and Washington DC-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. These views are his alone and do not reflect the position of C-FAM. Ruse is also a member of the McCain Catholic Steering Committee and one of the first pro-life advocates to endorse McCain.

John Kerry achieved the unthinkable four years ago. As was expected, he lost the faithful Catholic vote, those who attend Mass at least once a week and generally support the teachings of the Church.

But he also lost the nominally Catholic vote, those who call themselves Catholic but have skipped Mass for the last thirty years and find the Church’s teachings less than compelling. The latter have been traditionally an easy get for Democrats, even pro-abortion Democrats.

Yet Kerry lost the nominally Catholic vote in state after state, even in the states he won, with the exception of his home state which he won by a hair.

Perhaps the reason Kerry did so badly was, in fact, his clumsy display of Catholicism.

One can imagine even “pro-choice” Catholics being slightly embarrassed by the idea of one of their own in the White House – a Catholic, but not really. Maybe the whole battle over Communion made them cringe a little. Better to let Protestants like Clinton and Gore carry the abortion banner.

Clearly, the Democrats have a Catholic problem. Some politically liberal Catholics are starting initiatives to correct it.

Alexia Kelly, who held the Catholic outreach post at the end of John Kerry’s ill-fated bid, started something called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Chris Kozen started the more aggressive Catholics United. There’s a new group called 10,000 Catholics for Obama. And the Obama campaign put together a Catholic committee.

Their pitch is well known: Republicans have delivered little in the way of stopping abortion yet abortions took a dip during the Clinton years because of a heightened federal commitment to "social justice." Too much capital is wasted trying to criminalize abortion, capital which, had it been spent on the poor, would have reduced abortions all along.

Abortion, after all, is too polarizing and has caused deep riffs in the body politic. Obama will be the greater healer of our nation’s divisions and will heal this one, too. And by the way Republicans are bad on the war.

Their criticism of Republican inaction on abortion may be dubious in its sincerity but it still rings true. Yet, despite frustrations, there is no place else for faithful Catholics to turn. Certainly not to Obama.

Obama’s record shows he would be the most radical pro-abortion president in history.

I suspect that most presidents post-Roe have cared little about the issue and likely wished it would go away. But Obama cares about the issue, deeply. How else to explain his conviction that Roe guarantees not abortion but the right to a dead baby?

But Obama cares about the issue, deeply. How else to explain his conviction that Roe guarantees not abortion but the right to a dead baby?

More to the point: How do Obama Catholics reconcile their anti-abortion beliefs with a candidate who as state senator voted to kill a bill that would have done nothing more than require medical treatment for babies born alive after abortion?

Picture the child. Likely conceived without love by a mother and a father who had no intention of protecting her; leaving her to the wolves if she dares to appear.

Against her is arrayed immense power. The U.S. Supreme Court that provides legal sanction for her killing, the medical and legal establishments, academia, the media, the entertainment industry, the Democratic Party and much of the Republican Party, and even the United Nations.

Major charitable foundations give billions of dollars to protect the legal right to kill her. Yet this child somehow slips the abortionist’s knife, somehow squirms away from the dominant pro-abortion ethos and is born alive. There is no member of the human species more alone than this child at this minute.

Yet she is not safe. Barack Obama voted to let her die in a pan.

He voted against a common-sense measure that would have allowed this living and breathing child, without a friend in the world, to keep on living.

When confronted, Obama claims he voted against the bill because it didn’t have language ensuring that the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade would not be impaired, even though nothing in the bill could have had such an effect.

But documents just uncovered by the National Right to Life Committee reveal this excuse to be a first-class sham. There was, in fact, language that would have effectively protected Roe in the bill. Obama knew it, yet voted to kill it anyway.

Barak Obama doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose abortion because in cases like this a woman made her choice and got her abortion. What she didn’t get was a dead baby. According to the Catholic left this is the man who will reduce abortions in America. This is the man who will heal the abortion divide. Obama Catholics have a lot to answer for.

 

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