By Maria Gallagher, Legislative/PAC Director
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.”
The author of those words was Anne Frank, the young girl who epitomized courage in the face of terror during the Holocaust. Such wise words from a teenager whose life was cut tragically short.
I believe, like Anne, that, in their heart of hearts, people want to do the right thing. And I believe that is no less true at election time.
The problem is, there is a great deal of confusion in our overall culture and in our politics. The truth is often masked, and that makes a voter’s search for the truth difficult.
But it is not impossible to discover the truth—despite media manipulation, political spin, and inflammatory rhetoric. As the old TV series “The X-Files,” announced: “The truth is out there.”
The truth is that life is a fundamental good, and that no one can enjoy any other right without first having the right to life. This means that the fundamental life issues—abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia—are pre-eminent issues, and should be considered before all other issues (as important as those issues may be) when voting.
The two major party candidates for President have dramatically different views on the life issues. Republican Donald Trump supports a ban on late-term abortions—abortions in which fully-developed, living babies are killed in the womb. Hillary Clinton, in contrast, voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which outlawed a gruesome practice in which a baby was partly delivered, then killed.
Donald Trump supports a ban on taxpayer funding of abortion. Hillary Clinton wants to wipe out the Hyde Amendment, which bars tax funding of abortion except in the rare cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of a mother. Research shows that abortion totals skyrocket when taxpayer funding of abortion occurs.
Donald Trump will appoint Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution according to its text and history and not use the bench to legislate. Hillary Clinton has a pro-abortion litmus test for Supreme Court Justices. Because of the advanced ages of many of the members of the Supreme Court, the next President may appoint as many as four Justices. A President with a pro-abortion agenda could enshrine, or even expand, Roe for generations to come.
We have lost more than 58 million innocent babies to abortion since the tragic 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade. One million precious children die each year in our country because of Roe.
Countless mothers are left to grieve the children lost to abortion. Some turn to drugs and alcohol to numb their pain. Relationships frequently die with these abortions. Families are fractured, and limbs of the family tree are severed. For with each abortion, we lose the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who may have been born to that particular person who died in Roe’s wake. Often, the abortion is not actually the woman’s choice—research shows that as many as 60 percent of abortions are coerced, meaning that a boyfriend, husband, parents, or even grandparents are making the decision for her.
One of only two people will be elected President—third party candidates or write-ins simply cannot generate enough votes to win the White House. Staying home on Election Day, or skipping the office of President when casting a ballot, is, in this election, a vote against babies and their mothers. It is also a vote for a culture that fails to respect the dignity of life from conception to natural death.
Please do not throw away your vote this critical year. Cast your vote for life. Future generations depend on it.