It’s hard to watch political news coverage and find answers. All we get are more questions, or – at best – a quick confirmation of our own perspectives. The reason might be that nobody dwells on any one topic for long. I’d like to address a commonly-held idea that I find problematic: the rejection of abortion as a litmus test.
Conservatives are sometimes “one-issue” people. I do think it’s important to avoid closing one eye to reality, but all issues are NOT the same. Yes, we should be concerned about social justice and the slave trade and world health issues…but that doesn’t mean we should whitewash the ‘old’ issues.
What would anyone (liberal or conservative) think were a band of terrorists to wipe out every living human being in both Baltimore and Charlotte? We’d be beyond outraged, wouldn’t we? The population of the two is roughly 1,300,000…the number of abortions performed in the US each year.
But that’s just 2008. Let’s look ahead to 2009, when the same terrorists wipe out El Paso and Memphis. In 2010, Milwaukee and Fort Worth are emptied. In 2011 – 2014 we lose every person in San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, and (in a year where killings have been reduced to just over 900,000) San Jose.
Not all issues have equal weight, or equal consequences. Yes, the abortion issue is a complicated one with educated and well-meaning believers and non-believers on both sides…but let’s not pretend that abortion – all by itself – is somehow the same as the death penalty, or pork barrel spending.
It simply isn’t.
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