Decide which candidate for President is ‘prolife’

To the edtior: I doubt I will ever forget a Sunday morning many years ago when a priest my family loved stood in the pulpit, reading us a letter written by our bishop about the upcoming presidential election. The Bishop was clear about what Catholics, and anyone with a reverence for human life, must do: vote for the candidate who was opposed to abortion. Our priest dropped his head after finishing the letter, then lifted it and said haltingly, “I just have to say . . . that there are many life and death issues to consider.”

I can’t think of a more emotionally charged moral issue than abortion. This has been true for most of my life, and I’m 67! Jesus Christ (my own favorite source when it comes to morality) and the Founding Fathers did not specifically address it. But they reminded us of the great value and even sanctity of human lives, and that means the lives of the hungry and the homeless, the lives of the neglected and abused, the lives of our servicemen and women, the lives of desperate refugees (“children at the border have heartbeats too”), the lives of the elderly, the lives of prisoners, the lives of Native Americans, blacks, Asians, the Hispanic, Europeans, Hindus and Muslims, whether living in this country or on other continents, the lives of any who are willing to care and sacrifice for the “family of man”, regardless of how they name and define God . . . or whether they even do that.

“Thou shalt not kill.”

“…and among these [inalienable rights] are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The only views on the topic of abortion that I have no time for are those that purport that it’s a simple question, a simple decision. It is not. It has been left to me to discern what Jesus or the Founding Fathers would do in 2020.

If you have not yet voted, perhaps you are still struggling to keep an open mind. If so, please watch, listen (to multiple news sources) and ask yourself where you hear life-affirming and life-respecting language and where you hear hatred, fear, and division. One of the presidential candidates calls himself “prolife”. Discern for yourself which one really is.

Vicki Cobian River Falls