During the election season, I found that a great many professing Christians were abandoning conservative leanings in favor of an Obama presidency. Those in this category with whom I spoke personally had evidently been influenced by Jim Wallis, or a Wallis-like perspective. They professed to be adamant “pro-lifers” but argued that pro-life includes opposition to war, opposition to the death penalty, opposition to poverty, and so forth. Abortion is just one of many issues, so they argued. And, in the end, we have seen that voting strictly on the abortion issue does not change anything; it remains legal, so why waste a vote on that one issue when there are so many other issues on the table?
Elsewhere I have made clear my views on whether Christians should be one-issue voters, and I will not rehearse those arguments here (see my post “Should Christians be One-Issue Voters”). But what of the claim that voting on abortion does not change anything? For anyone paying attention, a lot has changed in a very short period of time. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to lift a ban on federal funding for international groups that promote and/or perform abortions, thus reversing a policy established by George W. Bush. This only confirmed what many had warned of prior to the election, namely, that Obama is not simply pro-choice; he is pro-abortion (see, for example, Robert George, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism”). Why, after all, would anyone (pro-choice or not) think it appropriate that Americans fund overseas abortion, yet less do so during a time of economic recession? The only possible explanation, once one cuts through the political rhetoric, is that Obama has an extreme pro-abortion agenda.
For those who feared this was only a taste of things to come, their fears have been confirmed. As The Washington Post reported Saturday, the Obama administration is moving to rescind job protections for health workers who refuse to provide “care” they find objectionable (see “Health Workers’ ‘Conscience’ Rule Set to be Voided”). In other words, Obama is now in process of forcing health care workers to choose between conscience (and, in many cases, religious commitments) and their job. If, for whatever reason, one opposes abortion, he or she must either participate in the “procedure” nonetheless or risk losing his or her livelihood.
Apparently how one votes relative to the abortion issue does change things. Obama has brought change, as promised, and no doubt we are in for four more years of change along these same lines – if not more, should he be re-elected. My one consolation this side of the return of Christ is the boldness of those leaders in the Catholic Church who – unlike the droves of apostatizing nominal U.S. “Christians” – have been willing to stand up publically in opposition to the ills of the U.S. government (see, for example, “Catholic Biships warn Obama they’ll fight on Abortion”; “Catholic Bishops plan to forcefully confront Obama”; as well as “Pope Benedict strongly Rebukes Pelosi over abortion”).
All this leads me to ask, have any of the Christians who voted for Obama suffered buyer’s remorse yet?
