The Grief of Politics

Before I became a Christian, I never thought about politics.

I lived in my tiny corner of the earth, trying to fit my square soul into a world with no square holes.

Politics had no connection to my life.

Politics was something men in pressed suits discussed in their quiet offices while sitting in smooth leather chairs.

Politics was a class in college taught in dry tones by a teacher uninterested in real life.

Politics was law and lecture; papers and pens, and best left to the news reporters to figure out and tell me when they had all the answers.

After I became a Christian, everything changed.

Now I had a relationship with the One who made life, and His words illuminated the world for me.

When I watched the news, I no longer took it for granted that I was being told everything I needed to know.

Because now I had a premise.

I had a foundation from which everything was viewed.

I had truth.

And politics changed for me.

I saw it as something that affected me directly.

I saw it move the world and by extension, move me.

I saw the people involved and realized their decisions could make my life better or worse.

And I started paying attention.

I was startled with an epiphany about the politics of abortion.

Roe v. Wade somehow got relegated to a political platform and people stopped talking about the consequences.

Broken women, broken hearts, broken lives.

...and something much more insidious.

I had a conversation a little while ago with a woman on the subject of abortion.

She believed Roe v. Wade was a necessity for women.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the government should never be able to tell women what to do with their bodies."

"Should the government allow its citizens to die before they're even born?"

"Don't be so dramatic," this woman admonished me. "A fetus isn't a citizen. It isn't even viable outside the womb."

"If the baby is viable," I asked. "Then would abortion be wrong?"

"Well," she said slowly. "That should be determined by a doctor."

I could sense a shift in her perceptions. She had never really had to think deeply about abortion before...it was always a campaign talking point, never a reality.

I understood. I had once done the same thing.

"Can't you tell me at what point in a pregnancy you think abortion should be illegal?" I asked.

"I don't think that's the issue," she said. "If we just prevented unwanted pregnancies in the first place, we wouldn't have to deal with abortion."

And with those words, she dismissed the uncomfortable place we all arrive at when we are forced to think about life and death.

Because it's so much easier to place abortion on that shelf with taxes and policies and let it move outside the realm of our daily lives.

But our daily lives will continue to play out until they bring us back to the same place.

When we are old and unwanted,

or disabled and unwanted,

or divorced and unwanted,

or just plain smelly and unwanted...our abortion legacy is waiting there to claim us.

We feel it in the fear permeating the country with the push for socialized medicine.

We know governments are incapable of dealing with individual needs. We know the weakest are the first to be sacrificed for the needs of the state.

They round us up and strike off the negative economic units first.

But even as our instinct for survival still thrives, we all feel the fear that it may be too late.

Because for the last forty years America has gotten so used to abortion, that we elected a man to the Presidency who voted to stop a law that would have prevented the worst form of abortion...infanticide.

The Born-Alive Act demanded that doctors and nurses make every effort to save the life of a baby that survived abortion. And it was based on the testimony of a nurse in a Chicago hospital who held these viable infants, unwilling to watch a living human being tossed into a utility room to die alone.

No one disputed her testimony except...Obama.

In the Illinois senate, Obama not only voted against the Born-Alive Act twice, but as chairmen of the Health and Human Services Committee, he made sure the bill never came up for a vote.It was not until he left Illinois for the U.S. Senate that the bill went for a vote and passed unanimously into law.

Unanimously.

When these facts came to light before the Presidential election, there was nary a peep of shock or dismay.

Not even from professing Christians.

And I knew America had lost its collective way.

There are many people like me, who stood in confusion while a man who admitted babies were a "punishment", was hailed as a hero in our land.

And yet now, with this healthcare bill scaring the daylights out of seniors and the rest of us who know what it will do...we get to see the effects of abortion.

Of what happens when our leadership defends it. When people vote for the hardest of hearts to protect it.

Do these people really think they would never be considered "unwanted" or looked on as a "punishment" one day?

Life is tricky that way. Some people call it 'karma'.

I call it a season of grief.

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http://erlc.com/images/article_photos/misc/father_and_infant_hands.JPG http://www.foxnews.com/images/218885/0_61_abortion_pro_support.jpg

Primary Issue Voter

I call myself a "primary issue voter"...not a single-issue voter.

From Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary, we can define the term:
PRI'MARY, a. [L. primarius. See Prime.]
1. First in order of time; original; 2. First in dignity or importance; chief; principal. 3. Elemental; 4. Radical; original.

I am a first-in-order issue voter.
I am a first-in-dignity issue voter.
I am a chief issue voter.
I am a principal issue voter.
I am an elemental issue voter.
I am a radical issue voter!
...oh, I like that. Radical issue voter.
Makes me feel positively anti-establishment!
But it's one of those good hearty words that stewed too long with the Birkenstocks...it's lost its flavor.

I'll stick with primary issue voter.

When I vote, I look at the person who wants my vote and I want to know one thing:
Is my life valuable to them?
They may say it is when they're on t.v.
But how do I know?
Will they ensure my protection? Will they ensure my liberty?
Those two things are not contradictory.

After 9/11, I think many people came to the conclusion that we had to sacrifice our liberty for our protection. I didn't think so, because I voted for George W. Bush based on the primary issue.
So, is my primary issue defense?

No.

It is life.

How a person views life at its most vulnerable is the lens through which they view all other issues.
This is an important concept.

If a leader believes that life begins in the womb and should be protected, then it's highly unlikely that person's other policies will harm me.
Taxes, healthcare, foreign policy, education, civil law...all these issues are the water that flows out of the pro-life faucet.
If a leader recognizes the life of an unborn citizen, that leader will recognize the value in my life.

My right to make a living and not remove my incentive by taxing me into a hole and making me dependent on government assistance.

My right to seek out medical care that meets my needs and not be forced into a system where money is "saved" at the expense of my life.

My right to live in my country in freedom without fear of foreign invasion or control.
In addition, a recognition that countries need protection...there will always be a dictator somewhere in the world salivating at the thought of being more powerful than America.

My right to teach my children as I see fit, give them my values, instill in them my beliefs...recognize they are my children, given to me by God.
A leader who sees life in the womb will understand this concept and not see children as vessels of the state to be filled with state-approved curriculum, for the good of all.

My right to be treated equally under the law as the child in the womb is treated.

But most important of all is that person's belief in the right of women to have a choice.
And abortion is not a choice.

Abortion is what women do when they have no choice.

It is prison they are sent to when there is no support, no help, no encouragement for them to have their babies.

A pro-life leader sees the potential of life in everything...especially in the lives of women.
Women have the right to give birth to the child growing within them.

It is our right.

Women should not feel threatened when a leader shows their love for life.
And when a leader condemns Roe v. Wade, women should feel secure, safe, reassured.
Because that leader understand a woman's value, and they understand that the law let loose on this land in 1972 was a Pandora's Box of death.
They understand it destroys women and takes from them their real birthright.

A pro-life leader loves women and wants them to live lives of wholeness and joy.

A pro-life leader does not want a country filled with broken-hearted women who have to live a life of pain; a life without their child; a life wondering every year how old their baby would have been, what he would have looked like, what he would have done.

A pro-life leader doesn't play on the fears of women, a pro-life leader reassures them.

How much of our country's real ills and woes would vanish if we protected women and their wombs?

How high would our taxes be if we had leaders who encouraged parents to keep most of the money they earned to care for their children?

How well-educated would our children be if our leaders broke the bureaucratic stranglehold on the public schools for the sake of parents and their children?

How much stronger our defenses and respect from other countries, if they saw us care for the least among our own? If they trembled at the thought of what we would do to protect our children?

How much better for our healthcare if our leaders valued the life of the vulnerable? Would we see doctors and hospitals protected from frivolous lawsuits? Would we see more innovation in medicines and cancer treatments? Would there be less anti-depressants for women and more birth centers?

One can imagine a world without abortion...and see real beauty.

Or see the lies and fears put upon women by leaders who don't want to lose the power derived from those lies and fears.
Abortion is an industry, a multi-billion dollar business of death for our children and crippling self-hatred for women.
A leader who supports abortion is not concerned about women's rights.
A leader who supports abortion has no compassion for women or their babies.
A leader with a pro-choice ideology sees society as a thing to be controlled, curtailed and packaged into a workforce which serves those ideals.

A leader who supports life is concerned about women's rights.
A leader who supports life has compassion for women and their babies.

A leader with a pro-life ideology sees society as individuals who need the freedom to live, work and grow for their own reasons...not the state's.

That is why I call myself a Primary Issue Voter.

Because life is first in order, principal, chief, elemental...life is primary.

Everything else is secondary.



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http://prolife.villanova.edu/images/maternal%20bond.JPG