"The Issue of Single Issue Voting" 

If your house were on fire, would you rush out for shingles to fix its leaky roof?  Or if your son were hit by a car, would you stop on the way to the hospital so your daughter could visit the dentist?

Of course not. You would set priorities:  stop the blaze, save the dying child.  No one would find you guilty of neglecting the roof repair or of loving one child more than another.

In every area of our lives, we must decide what issues and problems are most crucial.  We must rate them according to which deserve our closest attention and the biggest commitment of our time, resources, and energy.

However, people who put a candidate's position on the right-to-life issue as a top priority when they cast their vote are often condemned for being "single issue" voters and for not caring about other issues.

Would you vote for someone who shared your views on every other issue but said that crime is good, or that a man has a right to be a rapist, or that the poor should starve?

Obviously not. How then can we vote for a person who says that the direct and deliberate killing of an innocent human being to solve someone else's problems should be a legally protected right?
 

Are there any historical parallels?

A voter of the middle nineteenth century might have refused to cast his ballot for a candidate who asserted that blacks were inferior and should remain in chains. We would recognize that no matter how important other issues were, the voter's abhorrence of the idea that one human being is entitled to own another outweighed them.

Likewise, a German citizen of our own century would be justified in refusing to support a politician who said Jews were subhuman and unworthy of the law's protection.  We would not criticize such a voter for putting his opposition to the philosophy that led to the Holocaust ahead of the many other serious problems Germany was facing.

Our answer to these spineless candidates should be, "I'm glad you personally do not support the deliberate killing of 1.5 million innocent babies each year, but as long as you condone a law that allows others to carry out the killing, I cannot support you."

There are too many indications that the mentality which permits pre-born babies to be killed to "solve" their mothers' problems is threatening other vulnerable human beings:  the handicapped newborn whose existence disrupts a family; the seriously ill adult whose "quality of life" is so low as to justify withholding treatment and even food and water; or the old and ailing grandparent whose care costs so much in financial and emotional resources.

It is becoming only too painfully obvious that society's disrespect for life is getting in the way of attempts to solve so many other pressing problems.  As someone has well said, "having made our peace with the death of the most innocent among us, it is small wonder that we are so ineffective in dealing with poverty, teen pregnancy, violence, etc."

We should not vote for someone simply because he is against abortion.  But if a candidate supports the legal right of one person to take the life of another innocent human being, we must withhold our vote.

Taken from "If Your House Were On Fire," by Minnesota Citizens Concerned For Life - Published here with permission of MCCL, September 10, 1998.

Single Issue Voting - by Dr. Wanda Franz, NRLC President

The right to life is the core fabric of any "seamless garment" of social justice--not a hem or a sleeve or a decoration. Without the right to life, the seamless garment of social justice is in shreds. When the lives of the innocent can be taken, all lives are in danger. The first duty of the state is to live up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence and protect the "unalienable" right to life that is "endowed by the Creator."

Voters and candidates may honestly disagree about "lesser" issues, such as how high taxes ought to be and how states or cities should be administered. But on a fundamental issue, like the right to life, it is morally justified and required to be a single-issue pro-life voter. Pro-lifers should firmly reject all attempts to force them out of the political contest simply because they are single issue voters.

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