Why You Must Vote Pro-Life

There are so many pressing issues impacting our country today, from the economy, healthcare and religious freedom to national defense, immigration and jobs for Americans here at home. How candidates for political office stand on each of these issues can vary greatly, even within the same party. So how do you prioritize issues and decide who deserves your vote? If you’re Catholic, how a candidate stands on life issues should be at the very top of your list.

Why? First of all, our faith demands it. In 1999, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement titled Faithful Citizenship that sums up the responsibility of every Catholic to prioritize human life issues. “Catholics are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the moral wisdom anchored in Scripture and consistent with the best of our nation’s founding ideals. Our moral framework does not easily fit into the categories of right or left, Democrat or Republican. Our responsibility is to measure every party and platform by how its agenda touches human life and dignity.”

As Americans and Catholics, we need to grasp and embrace the concept that the protection of human life is not an afterthought - it is essential to every other right. Our founders thought is was so vital that they spelled it out in our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

There can be no true liberty, no pursuit of happiness or anything else of lasting value for that matter, in a society that does not value life. As Pope Benedict XVI elaborated in an Austrian address on September 7, 2007, “The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other human right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception to its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right – it is the very opposite.”

As Catholics and Americans, it is duty to champion the right to life in our everyday lives, and we must not leave that moral compass at the door when it comes time to exercise our most important civil right by voting. Sometimes it’s easy to vote pro-life. You may naturally gravitate toward a presidential, senatorial or congressional candidate who espouses pro-life views.

But what if you don’t? What if your political views in other areas align more closely with a pro-choice opponent? What if the race in question is your state rep, your state’s governor, a judge or a local councilman or school board member? Should their stance on life issues have an impact on these much more local campaign?

As faithful Catholics, our answer should be yes. How a candidate stands on life is a fundamental issue you simply can’t overlook. You might not think it’s a relevant for a local official, who deals more with roads and zoning than life issues. But it can be. Think of all the state legislators who stepped up to the plate to defund Planned Parenthood in their own backyards, while our federal officials still struggle to do so. Consider local officials who are called to decide whether peaceful prayer vigils outside abortion clinics infringe on patient rights. Think of the county, state and district judges who had to rule on various aspects of the infamous Terri Schiavo case.

Even if an elected official never has to make a judgment call on an issue that touches their views on life, this most fundamental right is a key indicator of their moral character. How can you possibly trust someone to look after your children’s education, your right to free speech, your religious freedoms or anything else if they don’t believe in your most basic rights? As you listen to the candidates who will soon be asking for your vote for every office from president to dog catcher and everything in between, consider the words of Pope Francis in an audience with Italian Movement for Life in 2014: “Human life is sacred and inviolable. Every civil right is based on the recognition of the first, fundamental right, the right to life, which is not subject to any condition, of a qualitative, economic and certainly not of an ideological nature.”