Not Pro-Choice, but Pro-Abortion

A number of Christians I know are supporting Senator Obama. When I ask about their views of Sen. Obama's position on abortion, I hear responses like...

"The president doesn't have much influence on that, really."

"He wants to strengthen the economy and provide more help to reduce unwanted pregnancies."

"McCain is not a real pro-life candidate, either, look at his position on stem-cells."

"The abortion issue is a low priority compared to decisions about the taxes and foreign policy."

"It has no bearing on how he'll make decisions about important issues."

"I'm not a single-issue voter. I'm voting for the smart guy."

Quoting my grandfather: "If you have a belly button, you're entitled to your opinion. That's about all your entitled to."

I do believe a political leader's stance on abortion and his public record speaks to character and values, including how he'll make decisions about other issues. We're judged by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable. And I do believe the US president has influence on abortion.

If you'd care to examine Senator Obama's actual statements and record on this issue, please read through this article by Robert George, which has many links to sources so you can check through the facts. The man is not consistenly pro-choice, he's actually consistently pro-abortion. As Mr. George writes,

"Barack Obama's America is one in which being human just isn't enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama's America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: "that question is above my pay grade." It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator's pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy - and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then."