You Should Be a Single Issue Voter, by Rob Schwarzwalder

I am a single-issue voter. My type is derided regularly. Too narrow. Too extreme. Unable to see the other side. Too limited in vision. Not sufficiently “nuanced.” Insensitive.

Am I? No. The destruction of persons in the womb is the single greatest moral issue of our time. It surmounts every other issue. The ongoing killing of the unborn is far more important than tax reduction or fuel efficiency standards.

Narrow? Insensitive? That is the jargon of moral rationalization. Of not wanting to be associated with people who are too rambunctious or uncouth for your taste. And worse: of confusion regarding what matters most.

How Will You Vote?

This means I vote Republican. An imperfect party run by imperfect people who imperfectly implement the GOP’s commitment to the sanctity of life. But the party of Lincoln remains the party that affirms human value from conception onward. The overwhelming majority of its statewide and national office holders are pro-life.

My stomach tightens when I read things like this: “Michael Wear, who conducted faith outreach for the Obama White House and serves as a Democrats for Life board member,” said before the election that “I want for Christians to be able to affirm what is good and reject what is bad in both parties. That’s the type of conversation I want to see more of in 2018 and going into 2020.”

Michael Wear is a brother in Christ. He is also a very young man who enabled a statist president to pursue sexual radicalism in public life. A weakened military. Massive government intrusion into healthcare. And an adamant dedication not only to abortion-on-demand but federal subsidies of the procedure. And mandating that religious institutions and private companies provide through their insurance contraceptives that can kill unborn children.

Politics is about choices. It’s fine to “affirm” good things in the Democratic party, but it all comes down to one thing: For whom will you vote?

Pro-Life Democrats: An Endangered Species

The handful of Democratic pro-life politicians have not done well at the polls. “Pro-life” Democrats like senators Joe Manchin and Bob Casey are PLINOs — pro-life in name only. “After a decade in the Senate, Casey has become an increasingly reliable vote in support of abortion rights — scoring as high as 100 percent on NARAL Pro-Choice America’s vote tally in 2016 and 2017,” reported Politico earlier this year.

Joe Manchin? A 33 percent lifetime voting average from National Right to Life. Makes me want to cheer. Very quietly.

There is one truly pro-life Democrat in Congress: Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski. With a 75 percent rating from National Right to Life, his own party wouldn’t endorse him in this year’s primary. President Obama’s former aides even held a news conference attacking him. Why? Lipinski did not vote for Obamacare due to that measure’s requirement that “private companies to pay for birth control within their health insurance offerings.” Including such organizations as the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Thankfully, Lipinski won his primary. But he will be an isolated voice in the Democratic Congress.

Are There Other Important Issues?

Are other issues critical to the moral well-being of our society? Yes. Racism and racial divisions are profound among them. So is the sexualization of our culture, ranging from the angry homosexual left to indiscriminate sex among many youth to the gruesome twin epidemics of pornography and sexually-transmitted disease.

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Yet abortion is unique, in that it is irreversible. Racial bigotry can be fought. Pornography can be resisted. Death is final. There is no resurrection to life once a baby is dismembered in her mother’s womb.

We should talk about and address, consistently, bravely, and biblically, these other vital issues. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

What we shouldn’t do, though, is render a number of things morally equivalent. They are not. One rises above all the rest.

Moral Courage and the Need for Endurance

Abortion is never mundane to the women preyed upon by the abortion industry. Or to the little ones destroyed, without anesthesia, within their mothers.

It is uncool. How much more righteous one might feel marching for the popular, media-approved theme of the moment.

This is where long-term moral courage kicks-in. At a meeting of Evangelical leaders we attended several years ago, my friend Ryan Bomberger, himself African-American, asked this: No one, in the 1860s, would have said there was any issue in our country more critical than ending slavery. Should anyone now say there is any issue more critical than ending abortion-on-demand?

His question echoes still. It should resonate in every Christian heart. It should inform our votes and our prayers and our willingness to take compassionate but unpopular stands.

Does it in yours?