Voting for Pro-Choice Politicians
I’ve had a three different conversations recently related to voting for pro-choice politicians. Each time I’ve had these conversations, I’ve been told that pro-lifers shouldn’t let a politician’s opinion about abortion be a deciding factor as to whether or not one can vote for that candidate.
The argument is made that a candidate may indeed be in favour of “reproductive rights” (a delightful euphemism for something quite so barbaric), but I’m told that this is okay if that candidate is in favour of some social programme. I’m told that this is what it really means to be pro-life…
A game you can’t win
The real advantage of this position for the pro-choice advocate is that he can play this game ad infinitum. He will always be able to come up with another social cause which he’ll say demands our attention before we can get around to looking at abortion directly.
Even in some utopian future where there are state-funded programmes for every possible social ill, the pro-choice advocate can still postpone protecting the unborn by demanding first that more money be devoted to these government programmes.
The unanswered question
Each time I’ve had this conversation, I’ve asked a question:
Would you mind engaging in a thought experiment? Let’s say that there was a party or candidate which was onboard with all of your desired social programmes…but they also campaigned for the right for parents to have their child killed up until their first birthday. Would you vote for that candidate or party?
Question posed to pro-choice advocates
I’ve used different versions of this question, sometimes talking about a party which supports slavery, rather than infanticide. Either way, I have yet to hear an answer to this question.
Questions like this put the pro-choice advocate in a bind. After all, very few people could countenance supporting a politician who supports infanticide or slavery. This intuition points to an important truth, that one cannot vote for a party which endorses something obviously intrinsic evil.
I explain that I cannot vote for a candidate who endorses the killing of the unborn for the same reason that my interlocutor would refuse to vote for someone who endorses slavery, regardless of the candidate’s economic issues.