As a Potential Victim of Abortion, I Didn’t Vote for Barack Obama for President
by Gregory Kane
January 5, 2009
LifeNews.com Note: Gregory Kane is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun and this article originally appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper. As with all editorial columns appearing on LifeNews.com, we may not necessarily endorse the views of the author.
I’ll turn 57 today. . What does that have to do with why I didn’t vote for President-elect Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008? That requires a little back-story.
Sometime between late March and early May of 1951 a 28-year-old black woman in Baltimore, Md. realized she was pregnant. She already had two infant daughters — one 32 months and the other not even a year old — and knew that her salary working in a sub-minimum wage job at a laundry would make feeding and rearing a third child difficult. She made arrangements with a woman she knew for what was then called a "back-alley abortion."
The appointment was set and she was prepared to meet the abortionist. She was waiting for the woman who made the arrangements to pick her up when, at the last minute and for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, she called the whole thing off. She decided she would have the baby after all.
I’m darned lucky she did. That woman was my mother. She’s told me this story several times since I’ve been an adult. And if she thought telling it would make me vote for a pro-choice candidate, running for any office in any election, she realizes now she was sadly mistaken.
My devout Roman Catholic mother voted for Obama on Nov. 4. Two weeks later my brother Mike told me she was upset with both of her considerably less devout Roman Catholic sons because we DIDN’T vote for Obama.
"If she thought we’d vote for him because nearly every other black person was going to for him, then she doesn’t know her sons very well," I told Mike.
I don’t know Mike’s reasons for not voting for Obama, but I sure as heck know mine. I have several. One is that I like for my presidents to have had some military experience. I guess I’m just funny that way, but if a man or woman wants to be commander-in-chief of our armed forces, then that man or woman should not pass on military service.
Another is Obama’s answer to the question about education put to him and Sen. John McCain in their last televised debate. Moderator Bob Schieffer told both candidates that America spends more per capita on education than other developed countries but our students don’t do as well on standardized tests. Obama peered straight into the camera and in essence said yes, that’s true, but he still intends to spend more federal dollars on something that federal dollars have been shown not to improve.
It’s hard to vote for a guy who, in essence, says he plans to waste even more of my tax money.
But it was the abortion issue that did it most for me. I have problems with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Obama and his pro-choice compadres seem to think the Roe decision is God’s 11th commandment.
In a speech to Planned Parenthood in July of 2007, Obama even linked the Roe decision to women’s liberation, and then pulled a demagogic stunt in criticizing the Supreme Court Gonzales v. Carhart decision.
"We know that five men don’t know better than women or their doctors what’s best for women’s health," Obama declared.
But we do know that seven men voted to strike down laws outlawing abortion on Jan. 22, 1973. And we know that on Jan. 23, 1973, tomcatting men across the land rejoiced because seven justices had handed them a "knock-her-up-and-get-out-of-the-consequences" card.
The abortion debate is about more than a "right to choose" or a "right to privacy." It’s about consequences, responsibility and a right to life. It’s about all those things my mother no doubt struggled with 57 years ago, when she decided that my right to life trumped her right to choose.
That’s why I’m around to celebrate my 57th birthday, and to vote against any candidate who can’t see why a right to life trumps a right to choose.
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