He still doesn't answer the fundamental question:

Is the abortion battle winnable?

We've had 20-30 years of the Christian Right being dominated by the Abortion Issue. And while I'm still entirely pro-life, I for one wouldn't mind enlarging the focus to more winable, equally (if less domestically) life-saving options.

On the other hand, 4 years of a botched Hillary presidency just might be the thing we need to give us momentum to overturn Roe v. Wade. Because having a conservative like Bush or a pro-choicer like McCain in office doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

4 years of a Pro-choice presidency would result in 3 or more "progressive" Supreme Court justices, locking in Roe v. Wade for the foreseeable future. Count me out.

I think asking if it's "winnable" is the wrong question. We should ask is it right, or is it wrong. I believe it will only be won in the hearts and minds of people, not necessarily through political action. But that doesn't mean we should just punt on the issue at the national level.

Also - I find this irritating: since when is McCain "pro-choice"?

Right--McCain's been solidly pro-life his entire career. And as for whether the battle's winnable--so far, we're winning it, if very slowly.

I really must take issue here. The most fundamental question is not,"Is the abortion battle winnable?"

The most fundamental question is, "Is the abortion battle the right thing to do?"

It doesn't matter whether the abortion battle is winnable. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

It is the right thing to do. Win or lose, it is the right thing to do. Period.

Brian - well said.

AM - great point. I was thinking about that after I commented - if nothing else, attitudes about abortion have changed a lot in the last 20 years. Still way too many abortions happening, though.

Okay, I think most of my comment has been quite effectively countered into insignificance.

One final part I'll stick to, though:

"I think asking if it's "winnable" is the wrong question. We should ask is it right, or is it wrong."

The problem is, the essence of voting in a political situation as complex as America involves compromise--that is, choosing WHICH right things to push for and WHICH wrong things to refuse to accept.

My voting used to be defined pretty much entirely by the abortion issue. If there were multiple pro-life candidates then (and only then) I'd look at other issues.

Maybe I'll return to my idealism--maybe right now I'm a bit overly cynical. But compromise--even compromise on central issues--has been central to the American political process as long as there has been an American political process. The slavery issue is the perfect example: America *would not have come into being* had people who *knew it to be wrong* compromised, recognizing the reality that it couldn't be overturned and something had to be done.

There are a lot of "life issues" there. Abortion is the biggest *domestic* problem, yes. But "aid to Africa," "the environment," and a coherent strategy for restoring Iraq to a pre-invasion level of violence are also life issues--and in some ways far more winnable. (I will, however, join Mr. Groothuis in my unhip opposition to federal funding for "cool tattoos.")

I am against abortion, just as I am against unnecessary war and systemic poverty. But I can only fight so many battles as a voter. I think a certain element of pragmatism is inherent in the political process--and I find the polarization of "aid to Africa, the environment, and cool tattoos" v. resistance to Abortion artificial and dangerous. I want all of it (except tattoos), I think Jesus wants all of it (though I don't know his stance on tattoos), and I recognize that in a fallen world, sometimes endless yelling on one issue only makes you hoarse and tired.

Thanks CR. I do agree that "endless yelling" isn't the right answer.

On aid to Africa, and not sure if this goes along with what you're saying or not: they aren't mutually exclusive. Our current pro-life Republican president has done more for Africa than any of his predecessors.

They can go together.

I'm going to send this to my daughter and my son who:

a. don't like Hilary and don't plan to vote for her ever,
b. don't like McCain either, mostly because he's old and to them the face of uncaring conservatism, and
c. may very well vote for Obama over McCain if that's the choice because they think Obama will get us out of Iraq and will help the poor and save the environment.

I think we (social conservatives, Republicans, religious right, whatever you call us) are in deep trouble as far as this election is concerned because my children and those of others I know are enthralled by Obama's optimism and they really believe that he won't do anything about abortion to make it more acceptable and that McCain or any Republican won't end it either. They say to me, "We've had a Republican, pro-life president for eight years, and what has he done to end abortion? Nothing. So what difference does it make if I vote for a Democrat who promises peace and prosperity and an end to global warming?"

And the bottom line is that McCain is really old, especially in the eyes of the twenty-somethings. Do you realize he would be the oldest president we've ever elected?

One thing also, Sherry - as in the earlier comments about Africa, Bush has actually been quite effective in one area relating to sanctity of life: he held the line against human embryo stem cell research. And it paid off with the discovery that adult stem cells can be even more effective (without harvesting embryos). Would a Hillary or Obama have done that? They would have done the opposite, I believe.

Your children need to understand that the Supreme Court will be radically different in the coming years based on who gets elected.

And about his age - ah, people live longer these days anyway :-)

Also - about the uncaring conservatism, McCain and his wife adopted a baby from Bangladesh in 1993. You can read about it here.

Speaking as one of the younger people in question, I don’t have “fetus fatigue.” I have everything-else fatigue. Abortion keeps me from voting for Democrats in most cases. Everything else (well, almost everything) keeps me from voting for Republicans. And the GOP is currently highlighting the everything else like crazy.

For a long time last year, remember, Rudy Giuliani was the nomination frontrunner. By a wide margin. That's how perverse the party's priorities are these days.

I don't think I'm the only one who thinks like this.

I should be more specific. Groothuis' monstrous "too many are now Stalinists" quip really requires me to explain my thinking a bit more. Here’s what fatigues me.

I'm tired of seeing my vote to save the unborn become a vote for the warfare state (also a human life issue) and unlimited executive power. I'm tired of not being able to be both pro-life and pro-civil-liberties. I'm tired of the logic that says it's OK to have the federal government intervene to prevent abortion or overthrow other governments, but not OK to let the federal government intervene to pay for medicine (again, also a human life issue). I'm tired of seeing the life and dignity of the unborn grouped in with a slate of "family values" that in practice has more to do with preventing those icky gay people from building stable families. I'm tired of voting for pro-life politicians only to watch them make regressive tax cuts, indefinite imprisonment without trial, and mysterious billion-dollar no-bid contracts their defining priorities in office.

I'm tired, in short, of being exploited. Of being exploited by reputedly godly but apparently corrupt, authoritarian, reactionary, Christian-nanny-statist, or merely deeply misguided and incompetent politicians. Of being exploited by people for whom abortion apparently represents part of an electoral strategy, not an especially pressing issue.

The Republicans can no longer expect to get my support simply by pretending occasionally to care about innocent human life. Remember, we're electing governments, not issues.

And it's a rather disorienting and lonely experience. For a lot of people like me -- or so I imagine -- if Democrats are willing to pretend to reach out to us even a little bit, while Republicans keep accusing us of hating our country and the nuclear family ... then the Democrats may just get us for a while. I don't really want that to happen, but I am really tired of not being able to vote for anybody at all.

Perhaps some of us younger folks are just looking at the problem differently. I don't like abortion, and I don't think God does either. But, I also don't think legislation will fix it. Abortion is the symptom, but the problem is much much bigger. You can't heal this one with a band-aid, and that's all the law would be, a band-aid. The Christian community needs to wake up and realize this. The women who seek abortions need to be loved, and they need to be served. And this country needs to be loved, with the love of God kind of love. But we always look for the easy way out. Well it won't work. We want to write checks to charities or to the church so we can feel good, feel like we did our part. We want to change the law so the government can fix the problem, and then congratulate each other on our successful service. But that just won't work. You can't legislate the love of Christ. You have to get out there and love people yourself. Like Jesus did. For what it's worth, I sincerely believe that more unborn babies would be saved if we stopped focusing on Washington and started focusing on providing support and love for the women who feel like abortion is their only option.

I have a real appreciation for what Jonathan and Lindsey are saying. Most, if not all, of these issues are not going to be solved in the political arena. They are sin issues of a fallen world. We need to step out of our comfortable churches, homes and cars and take care of real people in real need. Hearts need to be changed by the Holy Spirit and regenerated. That is the arena of our battle. It is an arena that doesn't require political compromise.

My only response to "it's just a band-aid" is: Why vote at all?
If legislation against abortion is just a band-aid, isn't government supplied health care a band-aid? Isn't welfare just a band-aid?

Yeah, legislation won't eradicate sin. It won't.

But when we vote, we vote candidates and issues, and in the array of candidates and issues, I just am confounded by the idea that voting pro-life is less meaningful than voting anti global warming or pro universal health care.
If you're going to vote at all, isn't concern for the millions of deaths of babies something that ought to rank pretty highly in consideration of that vote?

(Jonathan, I get what you're saying.)

I also think that it's easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize the church for "not doing anything".

Our church has supported an on-campus crisis pregnancy center for 25 years, and helped untold numbers of frightened young pregnant women navigate that tough road all the way to delivery, often placing the newborns in loving homes.

That's being pro-life. I get tired of the meme that "the church is doing nothing". People who work in those kinds of centers just aren't spending their time tooting their own horn.

I caution against false dichotomies. Just because one supports, for instance, repealing Roe vs Wade (to return the decision to the people) doesn't mean they aren't doing anything else.

Legislation can't fix sin. But imagine the difference in having a president who is all for, for instance, partial birth abortions. Allowing that - in a very real way - means ending the lives of at-term babies. It's not an abstraction.

I kind of like Obama. But I'm troubled by the fact that he opposed a law that would require babies born as live-birth abortions (or what are callously called "botched-abortions) to receive care and treatment like any other human being.

To Jared and Bill,
I shouldn't have used generalizations, that was bad (sorry). I guess where I'm from I hear more talk than I see action, and that bothers me. I do know that there are a lot of folks out there doing great things, and I didn't mean to trivialize their efforts. And for the record, I would support a repeal of Roe v Wade (but with certain exceptions, like possible death of the mother). I just don't think that's the *only* thing we should be fighting for (and no, I don't just mean pregnancy crisis centers or support systems for single moms, though those are great). I'm talking about our culture's attitude towards sex (and relationships) in general. I think abortion is a result of that attitude, so I think there's much more to be done than just change the law (though again, it's still an important issue, just not the *only* one). Thanks for pointing out my lack of clarity there, sorry.

Lindsey

No worries :-) - and I would definitely agree with your last comment.

Abortion as an issue has been held strongly to heart by Christian groups for years I guess on the basis you see it as a sin?

Yet in the past on this forum I have noticed many also backing the war in the middle East.

Why is it that concern splits into two separate groups, the ones that car about cell collections and the ones that don't seem to mind the more industrial form of killing in Iraq of fully formed and conscious humans ?

Also, If it were possible to bring to term every single human being does anyone worry about population concerns? (Note: I don't advocate abortion as population control, I was wondering just at the general concept of how many more humans on Earth this would mean)
Ivan

"and the ones that don't seem to mind the more industrial form of killing in Iraq of fully formed and conscious humans"?

I do mind.

And I'll accept that you don't advocate abortion as population control. But I still find your final question chilling.

I also, respectfully, don't want to debate you on abortion, as I doubt either one of us will change the other's mind.

Someone who advocates abortion is capable of every atrocity known to mankind. They've already crossed the line between civilization and utter barbarism.

If anything, a political candidate's view on this issue should be bedrock. Those candidates that support abortion have already stepped over the line into chaos. Therefore, they cannot, from a rational viewpoint, be considered as appropriate candidates for ANYTHING, much less high political office.

Yes, abortion is a watershed issue. We simply cannot have anyone leading our country who believes it. That we tolerate such leaders is one reason why God will weigh this country and find it wanting.

Christians have got to stop settling. Either support a candidate who upholds biblical beliefs and does not swerve from them, or stop voting. But don't settle. It's not a throwaway vote if you vote for a solid candidate who cannot win. We act as if winning is all that counts. But God sees our hearts. If we settle, how does that honor God?

It doesn't.

If voting in this election means you write-in a candidate you feel will walk the talk from a Biblical perspective, then do it. God will see that. Don't settle for compromise.

And for the sake of the unborn, our nation, and your own judgment before Christ, never even consider a pro-abortion candidate. Not for a second.

That's what I generally have to do, DLE. But I'm also keenly aware of the fact that it doesn't do the pro-lifers any good in the election, and in fact makes it (very slightly) more likely for pro-choicers to win. If a lot of people followed my example, Democrats would win every race. And it doesn't even give me the satisfaction of helping directly to end the Republican policies I disagree with. So it's pretty much a lose-lose and doesn't even salve my bleeding conscience very well. It actually doesn't seem too far from total withdrawal from politics.

Also, I disagree with some of your statements. It is not true that "someone who advocates abortion is capable of every atrocity known to mankind."

First, many people simply do not believe that the fetus is a human individual yet. They believe that it lacks something that is necessary for personhood. I disagree with them, and even many other pro-choicers do, but I respect their position. It is a failure to take the right view of biology, not a lapse of humanity. If you didn't believe the fetus was a human individual, you wouldn't be calling abortion murder, either.

Second, being pro-choice and pro-abortion are not the same thing, any more than being pro-free-speech and being pro-racist-speech are.

Third, it is possible to be pro-life without advocating immediate legal prohibition, just as it was possible to oppose slavery yet advocate gradual emancipation. Goals and methods are different things.

Jonathan,

I'm not sure I can buy that women who get abortions don't realize the humanity of what they are aborting. That may have been true in the bad, old days of "it's just a blob of tissue," but sonogram technology has basically shattered that myth. (That's one reason that NARAL has been against sonograms, even though that technology better ensures the health of women, exposing the pro-abortion agenda's major lie that they care about women at all.)

My wife worked for a crisis pregnancy center. When people come in for abortions nowadays, the vast majority know what they are doing.

Your second argument is flat-out wrong. Consider Nazi Germany. If you were for strengthening the Fatherland through cleansing of those elements within society that supposedly weakened it, then you were implicitly in favor of the death camps. You simply can't support the one and not tacitly support the other. Pro-choice and pro-abortion are the same thing.

Your third argument doesn't work, either. Again, in the Germany example, you might have said you were for saving Jews, but if you did absolutely nothing to stop their slaughter, then what good is your pronouncement?

In the case of abortion, goals and methods ARE the same thing. If you want the water to stop running out of your tap, the method is to turn the faucet off. There is no gradual solution to turning the faucet off. The same for abortion. The goal is to end it. The method? We make it illegal except under the most egregious conditions, and that bar of conditions is set high. The method that "turned on" abortion is the same one we use to turn it off. It's that simple.

And as for the slavery issue, less than ten years of court and government battles ended it. Roe is now 35 years old and the number of abortions in this country is increasing. We're seeing the phenomenon of women who have multiple abortions, using it as a birth control method. And now we have RU486 available, even though it is killing women who take it. I'm not even sure if RU486 use is tracked in final abortion numbers, either, so the numbers may be even worse. There simply is no "gradual emancipation" here unless the Feds turn the issue over to the states, like what happened with slavery. And that's not going to happen, so it's all or nothing.