The Catholic Church, America, and North Bougainville - Why North Bougainville may become the new Guadalcanal in the War Against Catholics and America
Updates on the Pro-Life Movement at the Federal Midterm Elections 2022
The Pro-Life camp has had a mixed bag in the 2022 Federal US Midterm elections thus far.
We will go over them here by looking at the Senate first.
The current balance in the Senate appears to stay Pro-Life for now with the Republicans expected to receive at least 50 seats, with Pro-Life Democrat West Virginian and Catholic, Joe Manchin, still in power.
An interesting race for Pro-life politics is in Alaska where Catholic Republican but moderately Pro-life to pro-choice Alaskan Senator, Lisa Murkowski, is losing by just over 1 percentage point to the more Pro-life and Evangelical Republican, Kelly Tshibaka. However, due to Alaska using ranked choice voting, Lisa Murkowski is likely to receive over 50% of the vote in the further rounds, as she is likely to accumulate all of the Democrat votes. But, Kelly Tshibaka is still up for the first round of this newly introduced voting format. For those interested, a simple explanation that will still leave you confused is that in ranked choice voting, voters get to rank the people they wish to vote for and if their preferred candidate is eliminated by failing to reach a certain threshold, their next favored candidate gets their votes. Henceforth, when looking at Lisa Murkowski, she has around 42.8% of the vote and the Democratic Party candidate has 9%. These 9% of the votes are likely to transfer to Lisa Murkowski in a very high percentage, which would see Lisa Murkowski win by achieving at leaet 50% +1 of the votes. She is Pro-life to an extent, but has gone very pro-choice for the midterms.
The Republicans and Democrats currently have very close races in Wisconsin, Nevada, and Georgia, while Arizona could be closer depending on how many ballots are yet to be counted due to technical difficulties.
In Wisconsin, Pro-Life Lutheran Republican, Senator Ron Johnson, leads current Lietenant Governor, Mandela Barnes, by a full percentage point. Senator Ron Johnson is extremely Pro-Life and wants fetuses to have the same protection as humans, and in addition wants to ban stem cell research that uses human embryos. Lietenant Governor Mandela Barnes wants to make Roe the law of the US and thus legalize abortion federally. Many experts have called this race for the Republican Ron Johnson.
In Nevada, Pro-Life Catholic Republican and previous Attorney General of Nevada, Adam Laxalt, is leading by 1 percentage point over pro-choice and current Senator, Catholic Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. While Catherine Cortez Masto is pro-choice, she does advocate for protections for companies that wish not to provide contraceptives and presumably abortions too, if it goes against their religious beliefs.
In Georgia, Evangelical Pro-Life Republican Herschel Walker and pro-choice Democrat and Evangelical and Progressive Mainline Baptist pastor, Raphael Warnock, are headint to a special runoff election as neither received over 50 percent of the vote, but both finished in the top 2. It is important to note though, that Herschel Walker has been alleged to have paid for abortions in the past.
In Arizona, very pro-choice Catholic Democrat, Senator Mark Kelly, is leading Pro-Life Catholic Republican Blake Masters by 5.6 percentage points. Again, this may change due to issues in Maricopa County that are being corrected.
In addition, a few states look to have duplicates, most notably in California. Alex Padilla, a very pro-choice Democrat who is Catholic has won over Mark Meuser in two separate elections in the same ballot. This does not happen often, but is legitimate. When Vice President Kamala Harris became Vice President of the US on January 20, 2021, a special election was needed to fill her senate seat. Until this election, California Governor Gavin Newsome had to fill the seat and chose Alex Padilla. But, this was only temporary until the next state election could be held. But since the temporary seat's term ends January 3, 2023, and the new seat's term begins January 3, 2023, they decided to have the election for both the temporary and full term of this seat on the same ballot to cut costs and for other reasons, not without criticism. So, in case you are thinking another senatorial election will happen in California, you would be wrong. But to clarify, this is only one seat lost in the Pro-Life camp.
In addition to this, California's Proposition 1 that puts the freedom to have an abortion and to use contraceptives with no protections for even a viable fetus into law is passing at over 31 percentage points. Most have called this proposition already due to the insurmountable lead of the "yes" vote that allows this.
There are other notable points in these senatorial elections. Two Republicans in the Senate have a mixed opinion on Pro-Life topics. Presbyterian Republican Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia is generally pro-choice, but has voted for Pro-Life policies and is now in favor of the Hyde Amendment. Catholic Susan Collins of Maine is also pro-choice, but only to a limit. She supports many Pro-Life justices and voted against the attempt to codify Roe v. Wade into law, but she and Lisa Murkowski support a narrower version of Roe v. Wade to sign into law.
As of now, the experts have Republicans at 48 and Democrats at 46, with Senator Ron Johnson considered to have locked up his seat.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats are also trading blows.
The Republicans are expected to gain control of the House of Representatives but the question is by how much?
The New York Times has estimated a 224-211 result in favor of Republicans while some range from 219-216 to 235-200.
Most Republicans are Pro-Life in the House of Representatives, but there is also a Pro-Life Democrat.
Catholic and Pro-Life Democrat Henry Cuellar won re-election for the 28th Congressional District in Texas last night.
In addition, Catholic Brendan Boyle has been a Pro-Life Democrat in the past and won the Pennsylvania Congressional 2nd District last night. However, he appears to be pro-choice now.
Currently, the balance according to experts is 211 to 192 in favor of Republicans with 32 seats left to decide.
Thus, when we look at the current balance between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Congress members, we must look at two factors, the present numbers and expected numbers.
In present numbers, the House of Representatives sees a 212 to 191 balance in favor of Pro-Life Representatives, with an expected 225 to 210 balance in favor of Pro-Life policies.
In the Senate, the current balance is 47 to 46 with 2 mixed Senators and an expected 49-48 split with 3 mixed Senators and the tiebreaker going to the Vice President, thus favoring pro-choice policies overall unless at least 2 of the 3 mixed Senators choose to be Pro-Life fully.
There was some very good news for Pro-Life politics in other elections not mentioned. For example, very Pro-Life and Catholic Governors, Greg Abbot of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida both won their elections by quite a bit. In addition to this, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who is Pro-Life won re-election in Florida.
For the 5 non-voting members of the House of Representatives, we have seen a Pro-Life Catholic Republican elected in American Samoa (Amata Coleman Radewagen), a pro-choice Democrat elected in Washington, D.C. (Eleanor Holmes Norton), a Republican elected in Guam (James Moylan), a pro-choice Lutheran Democrat elected in the US Virgin Islands (Stacey Plaskett), and a Catholic Democrat elected in the Northern Mariana Islands (Gregorio Sablan) who is a big supporter of funding for Catholic schools. The 6th non-voting member is Catholic New Progressive (Republican) Jenniffer González of Puerto Rico who was elected in 2020 and will serve two more years. Some or these territorial representatives have little to no information on the abortion topic, and none of them can vote on legislation, but they can influence it and vote in committees.
There is a lot of the election yet to be decided and surely by the time you finish reading this, other results will be in, but hopefully this can give you some insight into the Pro-Life results of this election.
Also, a quick note. Being Catholic does not mean being a Republican or Democrat or even a member of the American Solidarity Party. Check them out as they believe in the Whole Life ethic, the closest thing to our Church on these topics : against the Death Penalty, against abortion, and against euthenasia, but for immigration.
And, the Catholic Congressional Democrats have released statements addressing how they still love their Catholic Faith, but disagree on the pro-choice topic with abortion. They advocate for more births and for an environment where abortion is less prevalent, they just do not think it is okay to make illegal.
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About the Author
Cole Kinder is a recent graduate of UCLA in political science with a focus on international relations. He has written one book, Foreign Policy in 4 Hours, Afghanistan 2021, and has written many articles on various websites such as Crisis Magazine. Cole Kinder specializes in international relations, domestic politics, religious studies (Catholicism), Slavic studies, sports, as well as geography.
