It is the unavoidable elephant in the election room.
A lot of folks want to pretend it is not there. But it is.

Maybe it's because I became Catholic in January, or maybe it is because I have actively supported the pregnancy resource center in my own community for years, but for some reason I have received an email barrage this year. All revolving around the role of abortion in this and any Presidential election.

A simple question has crystallized in my mind: Does abortion trump all other issues, including war, poverty, racial equality, immigration, tax reform, as the key issue on which one votes? Does abortion supersede all the other issues? In a word, yes.

Or put another way, can a person of faith, especially a Christian, ever vote for a candidate who is pro-abortion? In a word, no.

My own team here at the show disagrees with me, not because they are pro-abortion. We all agree abortion is wrong. But they believe it is one issue among the others. It is not.

I admit my thinking has changed on this issue over the years. And it has become much more focused over the past 10 years or so. Perhaps because I am a father of two girls. Perhaps because my faith has deepened. Perhaps because I have sat with a number of women as they received the results of their pre-natal ultrasounds. Two weeks ago, I visited with a close friend, a young woman who would not consider herself a believer. We looked at her ultrasound, and as she saw the 9 week old human inside her, she had an "Aha" moment. This was a real live person.

Faith and science agree: life begins at conception. That is when everything necessary for a human being is put together and becomes a real life.

Is that a human being? Yes
Are humans made in the image of God? Yes
Does that give human life a unique value in creation? Yes
Is God ever for the shedding of innocent blood? No

I would never vote for a candidate who advocated for the legal extermination of 1 million gay people, or Jews, or poor persons, or Presbyterians, per year. How could I possibly vote for a candidate who sees nothing wrong with the termination of that many unborn children? It simply is not morally possible.

This issue is a scar on the American people. It reveals our selfishness and our love of stuff as well as our disregard for mercy and love. It trumps all others.

How can any other issue compare to the taking of vulnerable human life, to the tune of more than 40 millions unborn children since the 1970's?
Reasonable people of good will and faith disagree on many issues. There are multiple ways to address poverty, racial equality and war. But there is no room for debate on the moral issue of the extermination of children.

I am not voting for a candidate or for a party. I have voted in the past decade for Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians at the federal level. Now I will vote for those who cannot speak for themselves. I will be voting for children by proxy. I will vote for them to live rather than die. And I will work and give for this same goal in addition to voting.

Advocating for the lives of the unborn does not automatically qualify a candidate to be the President. However, NOT advocating for the lives of the unborn does disqualify one for that office.

Because the President of the USA can make a difference. Not solely because of his ability to appoint Supreme Court justices (e.g., Ginsburg is 75 and John Paul Stevens 88). Not solely because he becomes the moral leader of the free world. But also because he will have a large influence on pending subjects like:

1) The Freedom of Choice Act – which would provide a federally guaranteed right to abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy
2) Partial birth abortion – which amounts to infanticide
3) The federal funding of abortions - paid for by taxpayer money – making you and me complicit in this moral evil
4) Consideration of the repeal of the Hyde amendment
5) The Pregnant Women Support Act

Not to mention the issues of cloning, stem cell research, and the mas production of human embryos purely for use in experimentation.

So, like Martin Luther, here I stand. I can do other. While I care about other important issues, they all pale in comparison to the moral gravity of abortion.

I have become a one issue voter. Abortion trumps all others.