Pro-life: Single-Issue voting?

A house without a foundation

No one reading this blog would dream of building a house without first providing for a strong and certain foundation. We know that without a strong foundation the beauty of the rest of the house does not matter, since the whole building is unstable.

The same principle can be applied when we are talking about the various rights and duties. Some rights are more important than other rights simply because they serve as the foundation on which other rights are built. This means that if the first right is not adequately protected, the other rights that are “built” on top of will inevitably unstable.

In the history of our country we have enshrined three rights as these foundational rights, as can be clearly seen by a quick read of the Declaration of Independence when it states,

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 among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments were instituted among men...

The Founding Fathers listed these three basic rights, since they knew that no other right could be guaranteed without these being protected. The fact that each human has these rights is so obvious to them that these rights are even considered to be “self-evident.” Simply put if these three rights are violated, none of the other rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights or other laws will last much longer.

Following this train of thought, it also seems that among these three rights that the right to life stands out as the foundation for the other two rights. The reason is simple. A human cannot exercise his or her liberty nor can he or she pursue happiness if they are not living. A dead human does not exercise freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. There will never be a campaign by the NRA to make sure corpses maintain the right to bear arms. Such ideas are just absurd.

Life is simply the foundation for all other rights.

This same sentence from the Declaration of Independence also states that “all men” have these rights. Moving the language to the twenty-first century we can see that the Fathers meant all humans. So a law that violates any human's right to life, violates the basic principles of the United States. So the laws of the country must protect life, and to a certain extent this may even mean compromises on other rights, including to a limited extent the right of privacy (which you will not find in any part of the Constitution).

This clearly includes restricting abortion, since it is a matter of science that at the moment of conception a new human comes into existence. So even the youngest fetus deserves to have his or her life protected. Each of us was a fetus at one time, starting out as one cell than a cluster of cells, and we developed into who we are today. We are the evidence that a fetus is a human.

There is clearly an attraction to politicians that offer comprehensive welfare programs. This appeals to the natural sense of charity that all men and women of good will have. But if this same politician does not support a clear commitment to protecting life, especially innocent life, than his or her policies on any other number of issues become irrelevant.

Hold on, we cannot be single issue voters?!

This is not single issue voting! When a vote is cast for a politician that is committed to protecting life, a vote is being cast for a politician that is protecting the foundation of all other rights. Ultimately there are no other rights if life is not protected. So a vote based on one issue, the issue of life is not single issue voting, a voting for the protection of all rights.

I encourage challenges to this posting.