"Right To Life" . . . Single Issue or Disqualifying Issue?

Pro-lifers, especially in an election year, are often attacked as being single issue voters. What is our answer?

Single issue groups have always played an important role in American politics from the colonists' single issue of "taxation without representation" to the abolitionists' single issue of slavery to the Vietnam War protesters. Voters often make their final decision about a candidate based upon one issue such as women's rights, minority rights, support for farmers, economic policies, or environmental issues. The list could go on and on.

The Right To Life movement is a single issue force in today's American political scene. We are here because of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions allowing abortion on demand; we will continue as a one-issue lobby until a Human Life Amendment is added to our U.S. Constitution.

A candidate's stand on abortion is of paramount concern to us for we realize that, if we are silent about this modern-day holocaust that kills over one and a half million American babies annually, we ourselves are indirectly responsible. As Edmund Burke stated, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is far good men to do nothing." We are compelled to support those candidates who will return our government to the protection of all members of our human family regardless of age, health, function or condition of dependency.

Abortion is the "disqualifying issue" for the pro-life voter. The National Right to Life Committee, of which we are an affiliate, has a position that simply being pro-life does not qualify a candidate to hold public office, but the unwillingness to support legislation designed to protect the innocent unborn does disqualify a candidate from holding public office.

Some issues are more basic than others. We pro-lifers must recognize the guarantee of the right to life as our top priority, for this single, basic issue will determine our country's future.

Consider this: Your candidate, with whom you agree on almost all issues, opposes freedom of the press. Would you vote for someone like that, even though it's only a single issue that divides you'? Of course not, because that single issue is important enough to disqualify a candidate. It works the same way on the abortion issue. If a candidate can allow the destruction of millions of innocent lives each year, how good can his or her record really be?