St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski urged Catholics to form a good conscience that prioritizes protections for unborn babies when they vote in November.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Rozanski emphasized the importance of ending abortion in a letter to Catholics, published Oct. 1 in the St. Louis Review.
He questioned how any Catholic can vote in good conscience for a pro-abortion candidate.
“If you don’t hold that abortion is the preeminent moral issue of our time, and if you don’t struggle to justify voting for a candidate whose record or policy would favor or even expand abortion, then you probably aren’t forming a Catholic conscience in preparation to vote,” Rozanski wrote.
Echoing words from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ voters guide, the archbishop said abortion is “the preeminent moral issue of our time.”
Since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court forced states to legalize abortion on demand, 62 million unborn babies have been killed in abortions. Today, nearly 1 million are aborted annually, making abortion the number one killer of human lives in America.
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Rozanski said other issues, including immigration, race and the environment, also are important for Catholics to consider when forming a good conscience, and he will not tell anyone who to vote for.
He concluded his letter by urging Americans to unify under the goal of promoting the Gospel of Christ.
“Our culture is drifting ever farther from the Gospel — and by that very fact becoming more and more in need of it,” the archbishop said. “We have too much work to do together to let the powers of the world alienate us from one another.”
“The day after the election our primary mission will be the same: to proclaim and give witness to the Gospel in all its fullness,” he added. “The winners will make some parts of that easier, and some parts incredibly hard. Either way, we’ll have a lot of work to do.”
A growing chorus of Catholic leaders has been urging voters to make the right to life for unborn babies a top priority when they vote in November. In a similar message this month, Cleveland Catholic Bishop Edward Malesic urged Christians to vote to oppose the “intrinsic evil of abortion” because it destroys the most fundamental of all human rights.
On Oct. 1, Nebraska Bishop Joseph G. Hanefeldt also wrote a strong message urging Christians to “get on our knees and pray for God’s mercy to save our souls, guilty of the tragic disregard for his sovereignty and the sanctity of human life, made in his image and likeness!”
Though abortion rates have been dropping steadily because of pro-life efforts, Democrat leaders now are calling openly to “expand access” to abortions. They claim the killing of unborn babies in abortions is “essential health care” and Americans taxpayers should be forced to pay for them.
The two major presidential candidates have opposite views about abortion.
Joe Biden and the Democratic Party support abortions without restriction and want to force taxpayers to pay for them. Biden said he plans to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and appoint Supreme Court justices who will support abortion on demand. Biden also said he would fight to end the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions – which could lead to 60,000 more unborn babies’ deaths each year.
In contrast, President Donald Trump and the Republican Party support protections for unborn babies. They want to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups of taxpayer dollars, and restore basic human rights to every human being.
During his four years in office, Trump has taken numerous actions to protect unborn babies, both on a national and global scale. He defunded Planned Parenthood through his Mexico City and Title X policies and introduced new restrictions to stop taxpayer dollars from funding research using aborted baby body parts. Trump stopped giving American tax dollars to United Nations Population Fund because it pushes abortions on other countries and has worked with China for decades to implement its forced abortion population control policies.
Additionally, the Trump administration has been fighting to protect pro-life medical workers from employment discrimination. Last year, it became involved in a Vermont nurse’s case after she said her employer, the University of Vermont Medical Center, tricked her into participating in an abortion against her will. It also created a new rule to better enforce conscience protections and punish medical groups that discriminate against pro-life medical workers.
