The following is a continuation of a debate from elsewhere. Sorry if you're not in the loop.

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Put yourself in my shoes for a moment: I believe that human life is sacred, that life begins at conception, and that the chief responsibility of government is to protect innocent human life.

Now, if you believed what I just laid out, could you be “pro-choice but anti-abortion”?

Believe me, I do understand your viewpoint. I’d love it if I could just take the easy way out and say that I was personally opposed to abortion but “didn’t want to impose my values on anyone.” That would be so easy. But I’d have to ignore my deeply held principles about the dignity of the human person. I can’t do that, and you should understand that asking me to do so is like telling an abolitionist that if they don’t like slavery, they shouldn’t buy a slave.

As for whether or not using the term “infanticide” is “inflammatory”: if a child is born alive, is breathing, is moving, is fighting for survival, and it is simply left to die because it is unwanted… What would you call it?

I was going to write a big post detailing why I support John McCain and Sarah Palin, but to be honest I've grown so weary of this election that I just don't have it in me. So instead, I'll just rattle off some bullet points.

• In all honesty, I'm not a big fan of McCain. One can't help but respect him for his service to our country - I mean, come on, the man spent 5 years in a Vietnamese prison camp - but his political career has been a decidedly mixed bag; his desire for "reform" and constant need to be seen as the bipartisan maverick (see the gang of 10 judges compromise) has been a constant irritation.


• That being said, we have to look at the other viable option for president: Barack Obama. Obama makes McCain look like a staunch conservative by comparison.


• Foreign Policy: The dominant issue in this year's foreign policy debate has been Iraq. Obama has been consistently wrong on the issue, in my opinion. It's perfectly legitimate for him to have opposed the war in the beginning; that's fine. I disagreed with him then, and I would still do so today. But since his election to the Senate, he has consistently called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq before the US had achieved victory. The fact of the matter is that once our troops had been committed to the theater of battle (which they had been in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion), I believe it is incumbent upon our political leaders to commit to nothing less than victory. Obama would have settled for far less.


• One of George Bush's weaknesses (and also one of his strengths) is his loyalty and stubbornness. This double-edged sword was never more in evidence than in 2006-2007, when he remained committed to the strategy being pursued by his generals in Iraq well past the point where it seemed necessary to make a change. John McCain, to his credit, very early on began to insist that we needed to commit more troops to Iraq in order to stabilize the situation and restore order. Barack Obama strongly opposed this troop surge strategy. Eventually, Bush came around to McCain's position, put General Petraeus in charge, and since the beginning of the surge violence in Iraq (as well as American casualties) have plummeted. I believe that the surge was the major test of foreign policy acumen for the two major presidential candidates. John McCain passed with flying colors. Barack Obama failed miserably.


• Beyond the war, Obama's shifting positions on whether he would or would not meet with our enemies (including Iran) for talks without precondition have done nothing to convince me that this man has any core principles upon which he would base his decisions. McCain has no such problems. And frankly, Joe Biden was right when he guaranteed that the world would severely test the young senator from Illinois within 6 months of his election. I simply have no confidence in Obama's ability to respond effectively to such a test, be it from Iran, North Korea, or Al Qaeda. I have no such doubts with McCain.


• Domestic Policy: Again, McCain isn't exactly a shining star of conservative thought, but he's practically Hayek compared with the alternative.


• Democrats don't understand the free market. Obama is a hard-left Democrat. Obama worked with ACORN. Obama and his ilk were instrumental in causing the financial meltdown. Is it wise to put the people who built the bomb that destroyed the market in charge of fixing the market? No.


• Barack Obama hung around with Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist and real-life actual hardcore marxist. That's reprehensible to begin with, but the real problem isn't just hanging around with Ayers. It's that he worked for a decade with Bill Ayers on "education reform." Stanley Kurtz at NRO has done a fine job of detailing the type of "reforms" that Ayers and Obama were pushing. Browse his archives for the scoop. Or just consider this: in November of 2006, Bill Ayers was in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela where he said that he and Chavez "...share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution." I can assure you that he wasn't talking about the Reagan Revolution. Is that the kind of reform that you want to see in your kid's school? How much of Ayers' belief and value system does Obama share? We don't know, and our incurious media has made no effort to inform us.


• Let's talk Jeremiah Wright: Wright subscribes to a system of belief known as Black Liberation Theology, which was developed by "theologians" like James Cone. The fact of the matter is that Black Liberation Theology, while it uses Christian terms and plays at being a Christian religion, is in fact not Christianity at all but is instead little more than a racist doctrine intent upon achieving black political power. Obama attended Wright's church for 20 years. He chose Wrights church. According to his own books, he did so at least in part because he identified with the messages that Wright delivered from the pulpit. Knowing what we know about Wright and his theology, this leaves us with 2 options for Obama, neither of which reflects well on him: 1) he really never did agree with Wright's theology, and attended Trinity simply to advance his community organizing activities and political career; or 2) he agrees with the racist theology espoused by Wright. It's odd to hope that someone was an insincere believer, but in this case, I do.


• The Moral Case against Barack Obama: Many of the issues that I feel strongly about in this election are, for Christians, prudential issues. Christians can disagree about issues of war and peace, of how to help the poor, of how to best approach economic issues. But Christians are not allowed to disagree on the fundamental issue of the sanctity of human life. On the issue of abortion in particular, Barack Obama has a record that should shock the conscience of, well, anyone, but at the very least should horrify those who believe that human life is created in the image of God and is therefore sacred.


• The most egregious offense of Obama against the sanctity of human life came in the Illinois senate, when he repeatedly voted against legislation intended to require that infants who survived abortion attempts be given adequate medical care. His reasoning for opposing the legislation was that if we acknowledged that these children who were born alive after a failed abortion were actually human, we would have to grant them human rights, and such an action might have a negative impact on abortion rights in the future. Keep in mind that we have the testimony of a nurse who had cradled one of these babies who had been left to die in a closet rather than be given any medical treatment.


• In other words - and I'll put this in a way that reflects best on Obama's position - he was unwilling to curtail a practice that could arguably be called infanticide because to do so would acknowledge that a fetus is actually human, which might have a negative effect on the "right to abortion" somewhere down the road. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: based on this reasoning, I have no problem calling Obama a moral monster.

In the end, I think it's clear that this election is a referendum on Barack Obama's fitness for office. It has been since the primaries ended. John McCain represents a safer choice for those who can't convince themselves that Obama isn't just far too risky to put in power. While I've never been terribly enthused about his candidacy, I can say for certain that John McCain is an honorable man, and I believe he will serve honorably in the office of the Presidency. I believe that Obama is something like Carter without the morals - he will be disastrous for our economy, and will signal weakness to our enemies, thus inviting attack.

McCain/Palin '08 is the clear choice this year. Here's hoping enough people see Obama for what he really is.

Putting politics aside for a moment, I'd like to express my best wishes to Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama's grandmother, who appears to be gravely ill. It's a rough thing to go through with any grandparent, and I'd imagine that this situation would be especially tough for Sen. Obama, considering that his grandmother played a major role in raising him when he was young. My thoughts are with Mrs. Dunham and the Obama family in this trying time.

Barack Obama lies about his clear public record yet again.

Via Hot Air

There's been a lot of ridiculous speculation and stupid controversy surrounding Trig Palin, most of which deserves to be completely ignored. This bit of commentary, however, deserves to be highlighted for how monstrous it is:

...a senior Canadian doctor is now expressing concerns that such a prominent public role model as the governor of Alaska and potential vice president of the United States completing a Down syndrome pregnancy may prompt other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions.

This "doctor" seems to have no concern whatsoever for the humanity of those with Down Syndrome. It never seems to cross his mind. His primary concern seems to be that Sarah Palin's example may cause other women to... choose to have their babies, rather than have abortions.

Perhaps the thinking on the issue is different in Canada, but here in the US, the pro-choice side generally tends to try to appear as though they want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. This is a nod to the fact that no matter how you slice it, abortion is morally problematic. This "doctor," on the other hand, appears to be more concerned about the bottom line of the abortion industry than with looking at those tough moral questions in an honest manner. Ed Morrisey at Hot Air had this to say:

This sounds more like the abortion industry worrying over a declining demand than a physician caring for a patient. Parents of DS children manage to have fulfilling lives, and they would say because of their child and not despite the decision to give birth. The Palins do provide a role model in that manner, as do the millions of other parents with such children who get no special attention for their love and sacrifice.

What kind of doctor looks at this situation and says, “The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada”? Does the sight of a strong family represent that great a threat to the abortion industry in Canada or elsewhere?

Apparently so.

Having had a situation like Bristol's in my family, I know that it takes a lot of guts to do the right thing and keep the baby. She's got a lot of hard work in front of her. My hope and prayer is that everything works out for her and the baby's father.

This is turning out to be quite a year for the Palin family, between Trig, this new and unexpected baby, and the whole VP thing. I have great respect for them based on what I've seen so far, and I really regret that they've had to face the kind of ridiculous rumors that have been swirling around for the past 48 hours. Sarah seems to be a class act and a tough lady, and I wish her and her family the best as they go through this together.

Suddenly, the left is concerned about motherhood. Ain't that special? Allah ponders the future:

This is phase one. Phase two will be, “Wouldn’t a strong, responsible, authentic feminist woman have aborted it?” Man, I’m downright giddy at the thought of where the next eight weeks are going to take us.

Jill Staneck has a contrast between Palin's pro-life stand and Obama's refusal to support born-alive infant protection legislation:

Palin is a pro-lifer who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. Palin and her husband chose to deliver her fifth child, Trigg, earlier this year even though he was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. Her doctor recommended abortion but Palin and her family refused. Indeed, 90% of babies with Down syndrome are aborted in the U.S. today.

But Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in April, "We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed."

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, actively opposed legislation as IL state senator to protect little babies with Down syndrome who had survived their abortions but were being shelved in a hospital soiled utility room to die.

In fact, I presented my testimony 3 times before committees then-state Sen. Obama sat, describing my experience of holding a baby with Down syndrome for 45 minutes until he died who was an abortion survivor.

Obama was unmoved and aggressively opposed the IL Born Alive Infants Protect Act.

Unbelievable.

I know what Slublog is talking about:

Obama, who is the father of two girls, likely watched the 20-week sonogram that is now a regular part of the pregnancy experience for most couples. I simply cannot comprehend how a father who saw his children in the womb during that sonogram can be so pro-abortion. The minute I saw pictures of my daughters on that computer screen, I was smitten and struck by the humanity of the fetus.

If Obama saw that, and remains a pro-abortion tool, then he’s an idiot or worse. However, that doesn't explain his position on this particular issue. There is much debate over when life begins, but some sort of consensus exists that it happens once the baby has left the birth canal. Based on his votes, that's not enough for Obama. His position and his votes are based entirely on the intent of the mother - if the mom intended to kill the baby, it should die even if it left the birth canal and survived the abortion procedure.

Sheesh, Obama is disgusting.

Ed Morrissey hits the nail on the head regarding Obama and infanticide:

If child abuse is an evil that must be confronted, then infanticide is even more evil. What did Obama do when he saw this evil? Did he confront it, as one of God’s soldiers? Or did he facilitate it?

The answer now from the Obama campaign is clear. Obama facilitated evil in order to protect abortion on demand, which was never threatened by S.1082 in the first place. That much apparently wasn’t above his pay grade.

What other conclusion can you come to after you read this article:

That family had wanted a baby, but when they learned that theirs would be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. For that, they went to Christ Hospital in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

In “induced labor” or “prostaglandin” abortion — a common procedure at the hospital. The doctor administers drugs that dilate the mother’s cervix and induce contractions, forcing a small baby out of the mother’s uterus. Most of the time, the baby dies in utero, killed by the force of the violent contractions. But it does not always work. Such abortions sometimes result in a premature baby being born alive. Sometimes the survivors live for just a few minutes, but sometimes for several hours. No one tried to save or treat them — it is hard to save someone you just mauled and tried to kill. But something had to be done with them for the minutes and hours during which they struggled for air.

Stanek says her friend had been told to take this baby and leave him in a soiled utility closet. She offered to take him instead. “I couldn’t let him die alone,” she says.

Stanek was horrified by this experience. This was not an abortion — it was something worse. Could it be legal to take a living and breathing person of any size, already born and outside his mother’s womb, and just leave him to die, without any thought of treatment?

First thought - that hospital needs to change its name, and the United Church of Christ needs to take a long, hard look at itself for allowing this sort of thing to occur at a hospital affiliated with it. Disgusting.

But back to Obama - when legislation was proposed to stop this sort of barbarism, he actually spoke against it in the Illinois Senate. Let that sink in for a moment.

On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only senator to speak in opposition to a bill that would have banned the practice of leaving premature abortion survivors to die. The bill, SB 1095, was carefully limited, its language unambiguous. It applied only to premature babies, already born alive. It stated simply that under Illinois law, “the words ‘person,’ ‘human being,’ ‘child,’ and ‘individual’ include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development"...

Here is what Obama said on the Senate floor that day in opposition to the bill:

There was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so … this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.

The absurd conclusion of Obama’s argument is hard to miss. He implies that “pre-viable” babies born prematurely, even without abortions, are somehow less “persons” than are babies who undergo nine months’ gestation before birth.

But even this is not the most important part of his argument. That would be his first sentence — the one about “caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion.” He seems open to this idea. And he does not state explicitly that a pre-viable, premature baby is not a “person.” Rather, he is arguing that the question of their personhood is a moot point. Even if the state should perhaps provide care for these babies, any recognition of their personhood might threaten someone’s right to an abortion somewhere down the road. That made the bill unacceptable to him.

Most people, whatever their view on abortion, agree that the Constitution at least guarantees the rights of born and living human beings. Barack Obama does not agree. For him, the Constitution exists primarily in order to guarantee the right to abortion, and other rights of human persons — born and alive — are secondary. Beginning with abortion rights as his premise, he draws as his conclusion the unfortunate but necessary legality of infanticide.

Christians who are thinking of voting for this guy really really need to take a long look at this episode. It's legitimate to disagree on the morality of war or domestic economic and welfare policy; but infanticide?

More food for thought.

Absolutely unbelievable:

While in the Illinois legislature, [Obama] opposed a Born-Alive Infants Bill. What this means is that when he, as a state legislator, was presented with the reality that babies who had survived abortions were being left to die, he would not raise his hand to provide those children legal protection. His reason: He didn’t want to cede ground to crazy pro-lifers. He warned: “Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a . . . a child — a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.”

What kind of a moral monster do you have to be to accept that logic? How utterly blind to human suffering, how uncompassionate? This is just sick. And I refer you to my earlier statement. As a society, we really need to take this issue more seriously before it corrodes our souls down to nothing.

Note, if you will, a new link banner over in the sidebar to a site called Abort73.

The Sunday prior to last was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in many churches in the US. I ran across that link while browsing through some resources that my church had made available to members of the congregation on the issue of abortion, including a little booklet from Abort73.

I'm about as pro-life as they come, and I'm pretty passionate about the debate once it gets going. I've long felt that the argument over abortion in America has been framed incorrectly from a moral standpoint. The pro-abortion side has, for a very long time, been quite successful in focusing attention on their buzzword of "choice," as if the choice made by a pregnant woman about whether or not to keep her baby was far more important than the life of the baby itself. And as long as the debate is focused on concepts like women's rights and the virtue of being able to make free choices, the pro-abortion side will always win - after all, who wants to oppress women, and who doesn't love freedom and the ability to make free choices?

And while in general, the right of free choice is important, it is not more important than the right to life. For instance, if you offend me, inconvenience me or wrong me in some way, I am not free to choose to kill you in response because the value placed on your life is (or should be) much higher than the value placed on my ability to choose a course of action to right the perceived offense, inconvenience or wrong. There is such a thing as a hierarchy of rights, because some rights are dependent upon others, and thus some rights trump others: The right to choose (or, put another way - the right to pursue happiness) is meaningless if you don't have liberty. And liberty is meaningless if you don't have life. Ultimately, all of our rights depend upon the fundamental right to life.

And so, since life is the most important fundamental human right upon which all other rights depend, the ultimate question in the debate over abortion must be this: when does human life begin? If abortion is a transaction that involves, as the pro-abortion crowd constantly claims, only a woman and her doctor, and the fetus is nothing but a non-human clump of cells and not a separate, living human person, then there's no problem. But if that fetus actually is a separate human life, we have a holocaust on our hands.

And that's exactly what the situation is. The only reason abortion is not recognized as a holocaust is because of the way the debate has been framed. The intrinsic value of the unborn child's life and the horrifying injustice of abortion have been obscured by all the talk of "women's rights" and "choice." And let's be frank: because abortions generally happen out of sight, and because a fetus doesn't necessarily "look human," and because we've never met the fetus and never will, well, it's easy to just not think about it too much.

The more I think about the abortion issue, the more chilling it becomes. And not only because of the millions of lives lost to the procedure, but also because of the corrosive effect that it has had on our society. When the Supreme Court made its huge error in legalizing abortion on demand, proponents of the procedure argued that there was no slippery slope, that this would not lead to legalization of assisted suicide and eventually active euthanasia, that abortion would never be taken so lightly as to become little more than a method of birth control, and so on. And yet, today abortion is primarily viewed as a method of birth control, assisted suicide is available in some jurisdictions and has many advocates, and medical professionals are even starting to talk about active involuntary euthanasia.

Back in 1995, I wrote the following:

We hear a lot in our society about the importance of “death with dignity.” Often this phrase is used in the promotion of physician-assisted suicide by people who argue that those with terminal illnesses should have the right to “hasten their death” in the face of suffering. In so arguing, however, advocates of assisted suicide reinforce the idea that those who suffer have no intrinsic value as human beings that would cause society to favor sustaining their life; and as a result they strip those who suffer of any dignity at all. They seem to say that the terminally sick and aged have no inherent dignity - but it can be earned by choosing suicide.

The assisted suicide movement - like so many well-meaning “compassionate” efforts - fails because it does not recognize the inherent worth of every man, woman, and child. Dignity and value are not commodities that rise and fall on some moral market in response to the fluctuations of human frailty. They are intrinsic to what we are as humans. They are a part of our very nature, as real a part of us as the blood that flows in our veins.

These thoughts come to mind as I read of the passing of Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the modern Hospice movement. Her life’s work has allowed countless individuals to face the end of their life with some amount of physical comfort, often in their own home surrounded by their loved ones. There is a profound truth at the core of the movement that she founded: that dignity in death comes not through the act of dying, but through the act of living one’s life to the fullest until death.

One of the most important concepts in Western society is that individuals are not granted rights by a government, but that individuals have been endowed with certain rights by their Creator. Because we are created in the image of God, we each have intrinsic value from the very first moment of our life to the very last. To chip away at that idea is to do damage to - and potentially to destroy - the foundation of every other right that we have. Abortion is nothing more than a chisel, chipping away at and cracking this fundamental foundation of our rights. It has been incredibly damaging to our society, and it will continue to do damage until we have the courage to see it for what it really is. Go look. How comfortable are you?