A Vote For Life Is A Vote For Death

All my life in church, I've continually heard pastors scream about "giving more and doing more." If everything is so RIGHT about Christianity, shouldn't people be willing to do this without constant coercion?

When the Pastors and Priests told you to only vote for "pro-life" candidates, did you know that you were also voting for:

• A pro-war, pro-death agenda?
• The rollback of environmental and labor laws to benefit big business?
• Tax cuts for the rich and continued neglect and indifference to the poor?
• Support of an American lifestyle based on comfort and greed, at the expense of our future and the rest of the world?
• A growing federal debt left for your children to pay?
• A sorry health care system that is designed to benefit rich, greedy companies and not people?

Oh, and one other surprise. According to one statistician, since President Bush took office in 2000, abortions have actually gone UP!

Yes, it's true. Dr. Glen Harold Stassen, who is also a Christian ethicist and pro-life supporter recently did some interesting research.

Statistics show that abortions in the U.S. steadily decreased in the 1990s, with an average decrease of 1.7 percent per year (Alan Guttmacher Institute). But then came George W. Bush in 2001.

"One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge," Dr. Stassen said. "Instead, the opposite happened."

In a state by state analysis, Dr. Stassen found abortions up in three states that had data available for 2003. For 13 states that had data for 2001 and 2002, he found that eight of them showed a significant increase of 14.6 percent, while the remaining five saw a slight decrease of 4.3 percent.

"Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction," Dr. Stassen says.

The reasons why abortions are going UP under Bush?

Reason 1: More women say they cannot AFFORD to have their child (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life). This is due to the loss of jobs in our country and the nationwide decrease of average real incomes. Oh, and minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation for over seven years now.

Reason 2: Half of all the women who abort say they do not have a reliable mate. Men who are jobless typically do not marry. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises.

Reason 3: Women tend to worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before the Bush presidency, abortion increases.

Adding to this, I, the Yellow Canary, would like to point out that President Bush is helping to increase abortions around the world by placing the "Gag Rule" restrictions on international family planning and removing the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund.

Conclusion: When You Voted For "Pro-Life" You Really Voted For More Abortions!

The real solution to eliminating abortion is not to throw desperate women in jail. Rather, we should work to provide these women with health insurance, jobs, child care, a decent wage, a responsible male mate, education ... and oh, the one thing that everyone forgot - love. Also, sex education and access to family planning services would ALSO help reduce abortion (yeah I know, those two things are evil).

Sure, the big companies and their minions behind the pulpits know how to "activate" their voter base. All I ask is that you do the research and really understand what you're voting for.

In the 2004 presidential election, a vote for "Life" was actually a vote for MORE abortions, MORE war, and MORE policies meant to appease the selfish masses, at the expense of everything else.

"But George Bush cut my taxes!" Yeah, right. I forgot — it's all about you.

Glen Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the co-author of Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, as well as other books and articles.